switchback | FFのDQNスレより

2004.06.07 Monday

FFのDQNスレより

これが元

１．【ジラートの幻影】で狩場を投入し、ソロが不可能な問題を回避できたのはご存知のとおりです。新たな【プロマシア】でも狩場を増やし様々な問題を回避していくつもりです
２．新しいジョブを追加しないのは現状のジョブバランスがまだ完成されていない状態なのです。まだ修正を加える余地があるジョブがほとんどですので。
３．【楽な相手】という表記の相手が楽に狩れないという意見が沢山ありましたがこれはパーティ視点から見て【楽】という意味です

じゃぁなんで低レベルとかだとソロでもつよ狩れるんだろう…

漏れはボブ・サップと同い年だが、今闘っても勝てるワケがない。
だが双方5歳同士の時なら勝てないまでも、いい勝負をする自信がある。
つまりそーゆーことだ。

納得した(笑)

Category: ナカノヒト > エフエフなコト | 40 comments | 0 trackback

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Hollister Deutschland at 2013/09/01 05:21 AM: Now Coco looks to follow in the footsteps of her father, as a bidding war has erupted amongst record labels desperate to sign her band, I Blame Coco. A contract is yet to be finalised, but with such interest before she has even completed her A-Levels, it looks likely that Coco will follow fellow celebrity children Kelly Osbourne, Lizzie Jagger, Jaime Winstone and Lily Allen, in matching, or even eclipsing the fame of their parents.?Stocking Filler ScentsTis’ the seasonwe girls look forward to most, if only for the ribbon-tied box with the oh-so ornate bottle inside. We're talking the ultimate Christmas present – PERFUME. With this in mind, click through our gallery to check out what the experts will be putting on their lists this festive season...?Notice to our readers…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 ?Tali Lennox has been named as new face of Karen Millen's spring/summer 2012 collection. With her rock 'n' roll background and striking features, Tali Lennox embodies the 'bold, confident' woman that Karen Millen wanted to channel for their S/S 2012 collection. The 19-year-old daughter of music legend Annie Lennox and Israeli film producer Uri Fruchtmann, decided to follow in her parents unconventional footsteps by dropping out of school before completing her A levels to take up modelling. And it's a risk that evidently paid off. The 5'9' beauty looks effortlessly cool in the stunning shots which feature's this season's tropical colours and bold prints. Gemma Metheringham, creative director of Karen Millen said: 'To sum up the mood of the season, it is upbeat and uplifting, and this is reflected in our new campaign. 'Our collection has a lightness to it and, as this is the season of the separate. 'We are encouraging our customers to create their own looks and style using our wonderfully versatile pieces.' Tali already has a rather impressive modelling CV having walked for a number of fashion giants including Christopher Kane, Prada, Missoni, Miu Miu and Chanel, plus she's featured in campaigns for Topshop and Burberry. She previously explained her decision to venture into the fashion world, telling The Evening Standard: 'I was never really the type who wanted to be at school. 'I don't believe in the pressure of having to follow a certain timeline,' she said. Adding: 'It's great when you're doing a shoot and it's something bizarre; you can feel really confident in a different character.' ?Rosie Huntington WhiteleyThe beautiful people were out in force last night for the LA launch of Burberry's Body fragrance. Poster girl of the scent and all-round stunner, , was the lady of the hour looking gorgeous in an oyster pink silk dress by the brand and matching strappy sandals. ?She’s proved to be a frugal shopper before, with her love of affordable British high street brands, and the bagged yet another bargain yesterday as she picked up some winter sale items when she hit the shops in Chelsea. According to sources, Kate was spotted browsing the stores along the King’s Road in the plus west London district, where she popped into the boutique and she tried on a number of items. With an eye for a bargain, she finally plumped for a with embellishment detailing around the neckline, that had been reduced in the sale from £169 down to £84.50. And it’s good news for fans of the Duchess’ style, because we’ve just spotted the top on the Anonymous by Ross+Bute , with all sizes still available. However, we don’t expect that to be the case for much longer, if recently released research is anything to go by. According to a new retail study, women spend an average of £250 each trying to look like the . From her elegant Reiss dresses and her classic Burberry trench to the blue Issa number she wore for her engagement announcement – anything Kate wears sells out instantly. So, if you want to the Duchess’ latest look with her new purple top, be quick before they all go.   ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Following the success of her Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June and her involvement in the London 2012 Olympic Games, 's triumphant year continued yesterday as she jumped 20 places to be named the 26th most powerful woman in the world in . , who is also commended for her history-making, peace-keeping trip to Northern Ireland in June where she shook hands with former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, is only one of two Brits who make the respected rankings' top 100, with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling also named on the list but coming in at number 78. The top 10 is, unsurprisingly, dominated by political leaders and business power players with Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, named the most powerful woman in the world. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff are placed in the number two and three spots. Bill Gates' wife Melinda (4), who co-chairs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, First Lady of the United States (7) and Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg (10) also make up the top 10. The worlds of celebrity and fashion are well represented too, with pop stars and placed at numbers 14 and 32 respectively, actress in at 66, and and , who both appeal to the huge latin music market, coming in at 38 and 40. Designer Diane von Furstenberg is the highest placed fashion name in the 33 spot, thanks to her hugely successful fashion labels and her role as the President of the CFDA. Other notable fashion figures include Burberry's American CEO Angela Ahrendts (45), magazine editrix Anna Wintour (51), designer Miuccia Prada (67) and the world's richest model, (83). Click on over to to see the complete 100. ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Notice to our readers…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 ?Not just packing in the stars for its spring/summer 2010 show, Topshop hosted the hottest party of the weekend on Sunday night, attracting the toast of the style scene. In her first LFW spot, American Vogue matriarch Anna Wintour led a guest list that read like a who's who of the fashion industry, which included Burberry's Christopher Bailey, , Giles Deacon and Henry Holland.Philip Green's favourite employee, , was naturally there to up the glamour factor, rocking a lace-panelled bodycon dress, but there was no shortage of supermodels, with , , Yasmin Le Bon, Lily Donaldson, Natalia Vodianova and Jacquetta Wheeler ensuring the evening was packed full of beautiful people. Not just fashion faces, , and David Walliams provided a smatteing of small screen stars.?Notice to our readers…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 ? strikes a seductive pose on the cover of Japan’s Numero Tokyo Magazine, flying the flag for British fashion in a turquoise trench. The former Spice Girl can be seen sitting on an exotic tiger print chair clutching her chest, wearing nothing but the double-breasted leather coat and her long dark hair worn straight with an eye-skimming fringe for the March issue of the fashion title. Shunning one of her own creations, Victoria opted for a Burberry Prorsum Resort 2012 design – the same coat that stylist Rachel Zoe wore to the British label’s in Los Angeles in October last year. You can recreate the look too (if you have a spare £2,995 lying around!), with the trench still available to buy on the . But what do you think of Victoria’s latest magazine cover? Do you like it? Tell us in the comments box below. ?She might have been out hitting her favourite Italian fashion spots, but it's good to see still has a taste for English style, doing so in a new-season mac. The stylista indulged in a spot of retail therapy clad in the hottest cover-up of the season: the fashion house's ruched-skirt trench. In typical Posh mode, she kept her legs bare but added high-impact accessories, including signature oversized shades, the Dolce & Gabbana Miss Sicily bag and towering platform heels.But there was one more accessory worth noting. In a rare public outing, she shopped alongside husband , who was suitably coordinated in grey slacks and a putty-hued leather jacket. Unlike his wife, he wrapped up against the Milan chill in matching grey hat and scarf.?Notice to our readers…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 ?A fitting finale for another style-packed , returned to the capital, and didn't fail to impress.Yes, the clothes were beautiful, with soft silhouettes, feather-light fabrics and spring shades of pink, blue and lavender, but you couldn't help but be in awe of the stellar star-studded , with Gwyneth Paltrow, Victoria Beckham, Liv Tyler, Mary Kate Olsen, Freida Pinto and Alexa Chung all pulling up a pew.WATCH all the stars arriving, plus the full spring/summer 2010 collection below: ?Notice to our readers…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 ?London Fashion Week is well and truly underway, with Matthew Williamson, , Henry Holland and all exciting the style pack over the weekend. Today is set to be another fashion-packed day as , Erdem, Giles and are set to showcase their A/W 11 collections. And the one big name on everybody's lips is, of course, Brit boy Christopher Bailey. , the gold ticket in fashion week, is set to take place at 4pm today in London's Kensington Gardens. Whether it's shearling jackets, studded leathers or trench coats, Bailey's collections are always a leading sartorial trendsetter. And if the clothes weren't enough - a stellar model line-up and is always guaranteed. But for those of us who haven't managed to snag a ticket, fear not fashion fans, as Burberry are set to live stream the show - not just online at Burberry.com - but at Piccadilly Circus this afternoon. Yes that's right - the famous digital screen (viewed by 1.2 million people every week) will be bringing a little bit of fashion week right to the heart of London. 'We are thrilled to be bringing the Burberry show to our widest audience yet in an immersive, interactive and entertaining experience. We have always used digital communication to deepen our connection with the customers and allow people all over the world to experience Burberry no matter where they are' says Bailey. And we are equally as thrilled - don't forget to snag your spot on the Piccadilly steps at 4pm. ?Want to see what went on behind the scenes when struck her pose as the ? Flexing her fashion credentials, the Harry Potter star gets a dose of grown-up glamour in the smouldering autumn/winter '09 campaign, which sees her ditch the Hogwarts uniform for the iconic trench and pose beside of posse of Burberry boys. Check out the on location video, and see the actress prepare for her close-up, discuss her fashionable new role, and take her place before Mario Testino's legendary lens. ?We've bagged you a front row seat at the hottest shows on the schedule with our live streaming video player. Watch the week's much-anticipated autumn/winter 2011 collections, coming straight from the capital's catwalks. Click on to see shows coming to you live, round-ups - or discover when the next must-see show will be airing. Happy viewing fashion fans, and let us know your thoughts on the London collections in the comments box below. ?Front Row FavouriteKate Moss led the celeb contingent of fashionable front-rowers at all the top shows in Paris this week, from pal Stella McCartney's to Hedi Slimane's debut at the newly named Saint Laurent. See which other stars - Taylor Swift, Emma Stone, Jennifer Lopez and many more - took a fancy to French fashion this week, and don't miss Kate's latest modelling gig for Mango. ?When stepped out in a trench on Shrove Tuesday, style commentators were quick to comment on the match made in fashion heaven - the Royal bride-to-be wearing a homegrown sartorial classic, and naturally, the world soon sat up and took notice... Within hours the Burberry website had sold out of Kate's double-breasted cover-up of choice in an array of sizes, which features a pretty frilled hem and traditional aviator-style buckle belt. As the latest recruit to the fashion house's bulging A-list fan club, we couldn't resist pitching Ms Middleton against some fellow Burberry belles - , and - all devotees of the label's outerwear. Opting for a light neutral hue, Gossip Girl wore her mac over a cocktail dress back in November 2010, while that same month teamed polka dot tights with a studded custom-made version - the perk of being Burberry's leading lady in those uber-stylish ads. has long been a Burberry advocate, opting for the classic camel trench, almost identical to Kate's in cut and silhouette, but teamed with bare legs and chunky ankle boots. Four style stars, all with a penchant for Christopher Bailey's designs - but who do you think wears their Burberry trench best? Let us know your verdict in the comments box below. ? and may not seem the most likely of Hollywood pairings - one's an earth mother-of-two, the other a recently rehabed rock chick - but when it comes to style, they share a common obsession – teeny-tiny minidresses. This penchant for thigh-skimmers leads us neatly to today's A-list fashion match-up, as both actresses have donned glittering gold strapless dress, but styled it up in very different ways. First up, Gwynnie debuted the style back in February, when she took to the stage at the . Keeping her never-ending pins under-wraps, Ms Paltrow teamed the dress with dove grey opaque tights, towering Mary-Jane heels, and wore her blonde locks loose and natural. Toning down the high-octane stunner, she even layered up with a slate grey cardi later in the evening. Onto the latest style spot, and Mischa got back to work - following her stint in rehab - and donned the frock for filming of new TV show, The Beautiful Life. Although in character, the look was in tune with the former OC starlet's signature rock chick styling, eschewing heels for studded flat biker boots, and little else but black nails and loose long locks. The dresses might be matching, but the styling couldn't be more different. So the question is, who glittered that little bit more? Who wore it best? Let us know your verdict in the comments box below. ?A timeless fashion classic, the Burberry trench has been warming the backs of Hollywood's most stylish stars for decades, from Audrey Hepburn to Kate Moss, Anne Hathaway, Rachel Bilson and Kate Hudson. The style continues to be a hit with the hottest stylistas, and this season's Burberry Prorsum dip-dyed version is no exception. In a marriage of British style icons, was first spotted in hers back in February, and seems to have rarely been out of it ever since. Stepping out after the NME awards, the TV starlet belted hers up, and teamed it with another fashion classic, a little black quilted bag. From London to New York, where the style cropped up on another best-dressed list staple, . Putting her own chic take on the mac, the Superman Returns actress teamed hers with a long tangerine skirt, black baggy tee and sculptural shoes. With her hair loosely tied back and her mac casually open, she was the picture of NY cool. So now it's time for today's fashion challenge! Two sides of the pond, on two of our favourite fashionistas, but the question is, who wore it best? Let us know your verdict in the comments box below. ?If you want to know how to stay stylish against the current chill, then look no further than today's who wore it best candidates - the lovely and . Both have snapped up autumn/winter '09 cosy shearling coat - which is in stores now - and teamed their winter warmer with very similar get-ups.Keira has been spotted on multiple occasions leaving the West End's Comedy Theatre, where she's currently starring in The Misanthrope, wearing the design with skinny blue jeans, black knee-high boots, and on the pictured evening, a Breton striped top and scarf.For Ms Lively, again some skinny denims and winter boots were the perfect cold day ensemble, while she added a beige knit sweater, fedora and black shades. But who is your winter style star? Does Keira have the edge with her nautical tee, or does Blake pip her to the post with some high-end accessorising? Let us know your verdict in the comments box below.?It’s a whole new year in 15 little days and we’ve got some big news about what’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.From the thousands of designer runway looks, we chose the 10 most prominent trends to feature in our 2011 lookbook. 10. The Bigger The Better 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. 9. Big Legs It’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. 8. See-Thru 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. 7. Dripping In Style This super-simple trend perfects the “I’m not trying too hard” 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. Don’t drown your drapey look just because the sun’s out–keep your layered style by the pool with drapey cover-ups like this one from : 6. Ruffles 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. 5. All About Orange It’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. As for the guys, we know you’re not as inclined to…well…care…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.4.Casual Slouch 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, “slouchy” 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. 3. Sport the Shorts Don’t be afraid of shorts. Because stuffing your hot, sweaty legs into a pair of jeans in 80 degree whether isn’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′s biggest combinations, and a distressed lace-up pair are the perfect finishing touch to this sporty look. 2. Punky Spunky It’s really never a bad idea to dress like a badass from time to time. This look is all about a “statement” piece–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. 1. (Real Men Wear) White Pants When you’re not dressing like a badass, why not dress like someone who knows what a “galley” 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. Wishing you and your wardrobes all the best for 2011. Happy shopping!All photos from NYmag.com ?Kate Bosworth attended the Burberry Body event last night in Los Angeles wearing a bright patterned dress from, you guessed it, Burberry.The actress kept the look simple from there with no jewelry and a clutch and heels also from Burberry.What do you think of Kate’s look? ?Christopher Bailey, the creative director of Burberry, and actor Simon Woods are engaged to be married. Congrats hot British dudes.The pair, who met in 2009, will likely be married later this year after Bailey . The grooms will be in good hands clothing wise, as Bailey designed the suits for Marc Mezvinsky and his groomsman for his .Woods has starred in films including Penelope and Pride & Prejudice as well as the television series Rome, and once dated British actress Rosamund Pike. Then he started dating dudes.This wedding is going to be awesome. ?Ever since my favorite frenemy Daria Morgendorffer moved to Lawndale I never get to see her. Sure me and the bespectacled misanthrope have the occasional phone convo, but I feel like we need to reconnect. Reconnect through the beauty of holiday gifts. I just don’t know which of these preses she is going to like the best. I mean, she’ll hate them all, but which will she hate the least.Oh and if you don’t know our friend Daria, you can head over to and catch episodes of her show. It’s really fun, in a totally ironic way.Also, look at what we are this holiday season. ?In this go-g0-go world, you’ve got to have the right timepiece to not only make sure you stay on schedule, but look good doing it. Here are some amazing watches at a variety of price points that will have you look stylish upon arrival and departure:First of all, everyone needs a good fun watch for casual apparel. This ($130) is sporty, comes in vivid hues and has digital features that are great for the gym or other casual activities.If you’re looking for something that’s still sporty but a little more posh, check out this gorgeous ($675). In a gunmetal finish with a brushed, textured stainless steel accent around the face, it’s a stylish addition to any wardrobe.Have a very design-oriented recipient on your gift list? Check out the ($275.) With its sculptural face and Swiss quartz movement, it’s bound to be a crowd pleaser.For those who prefer a sleek timepiece with a leather strap, look no further than the ($350,) a modern timepiece with minimalist appeal.Of course, there’s always the fantasy watch, say it with me: “There’s no place like Chanel.” For someone who’s REALLY special, slap down the black card on a . At around $21,250, he’d better be worth it. ?Oh you and your sartorial shopping needs. When only the best will do (and when will anything LESS than that do, really?) you need to find outlets that will give you top-end merchandise and deliver fast to the door of the lucky person who made that all-important gift list. I understand completely, which is why you need to know about Net-A-Porter’s?men’s site.Yes, please direct your attention to , a highly-curated set of beautiful clothing, accessories and the like for the stylish man. Never again worry about what to buy your boss, your father, grandfather or esteemed male with impeccable taste in your life (that would be YOU, hon.) The gift site has six major categories for your shopping ease and features everything from basics to high-ticket luxury accessories. The designer list is outstanding: , , , , and ,? just to name a few.So, if you’ve decided to look on the posh side of life this holiday, I’d check out the site. Oh, and be sure to pick up a thing or two for yourself. After all, charity does start at home. ? and boyfriend Michael Polish are engaged, this coming from the actress in a recent travel diary she did for This has not been reported yet as far as we know, so congratulations to the couple!Bosworth?wrote a piece for the magazine’s online summer travel series on her trip to Seoul, and began her post by writing, “On our first day in Seoul, my fiance, Michael Polish, and I venture out to discover Changdeokgung Palace.”The actress, 29, and director, 41, have been?together for just over a year. Bosworth previously dated actors Orlando Bloom and Alexander Skarsgard, while Polish was married to makeup artist Jo Strettell and has a daughter Jasper. ?Twenty years. Two people. One Burberry ad?If you’re a “The Way We Were” fan who woke up early to watch the royal wedding today then you might want to be sitting down while you read this.The for the new Anne Hathaway pensive, romantic drama has hit the web, and this pot of tea is being served with a heaping tablespoon of received pronunciation drama. Let’s just say that this acting ensemble definitely passed their british accent final with flying colours.In addition to questionable dialects, “” is about Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) two friends that have very special days together every July 15th. Also I’m pretty sure Patricia Clarkson dies in it. (spoiler alert cancer head scarf alert)“One Day” is being directed by Lone Scherfig, who recently directed “An Education.” It is based on the bestselling novel by David Nicholls. Watch the trailer and keep melting away to all this British romance today.SOMEBODY BUY ME A TICKET TO LONDON! ?Kiernan Shipka, star of Mad Men, is 11-years-old. Hudson Kroenig, son of male supermodel Brad, is three-years-old. Yesterday both were the subjects of features detailing their vast designer wardrobes and love for Chanel. Get ready to cry.Let’s start with young Kiernan, who is amazing as the young Sally Draper on Men. In interviews she comes off as down-to-earth and fun loving, but that doesn’t mean this young celeb is shopping at the Gap. In fact, little style superstars Elle, Hailee and Chloe better watch their backs cause Kiernan is bringing it.In her style diary for Lucky, Kiernan wore clothes and accessories from the following labels over the course of one week: Chanel, Stella McCartney (twice), Paul & Joe, J Brand, Ralph Lauren (kids), Burberry, Marc Jacobs (twice) and an American Apparel skirt for good measure. And this pales in comparison to young Hudson’s closet.Do you know who Hudson’s good pal is? It’s Karl Lagerfeld! This is why Hudson walked the Chanel show with dad Brad when he was one, and got to keep his outfit. He also shot a Fendi campaign with dad, and got to keep his outfit. Oh and Karl sends him gifts, clothes and custom stuffed animals, kind of like your aunts and uncles only infinitely better.Hudson also loves Nikes, and there are at least seven different pairs showcased in his fashion spread, not to mention the two pairs made by Fendi and the Chanel jean boots. And he can wear the Fendi sneakers with his Fendi jeans, Fendi sweater and Fendi fedora for a day at the park!Why wasn’t our father Karl Lagerfeld’s muse?Kiernan Shipka: Eight Days, Eight Outfits []Hudson Kroenig [] ?After capping off her biggest year to date in 2011 with a smoking Vogue Italia cover and the closing spot on the Victoria’s Secret runway, it was assumed by everyone that New York Fashion Week would be all about Karlie Kloss. Even the 19-year-old beauty strut her stuff, but now comes word she is skipping the New York season for the first time since she debuted on the Calvin Klein runway at the age of 15. But why?No one knows for sure other than the fact that her an “engagement has come up.” So let’s speculate!Give us your best guess below. ? “Do you know how many Jeff Bridges I had to sit on to get to where I am today? ONE.” Photo via Getty Images. After finished watching Toy Story 3 last weekend, it had to take a week off to reflect on stuff like ‘childhood’ and ‘Randy Newman,’ but it’s back! Put away your tissues children, it’s all just computer magic anyway.This week, we talk the can’t-go-wrong marketing tactics of connecting any product to Queen Elizabeth or faux fur. (Side note: Does anyone know if there are any drag queen stores that have a royal warrant ? Like, other than Burberry…)Our movie of the week is The Social Network. A timely film about (who’s up for a . . Please.).And as always there’s a great surprise at the end, for those brave enough to make it all the way through, that shows you how to apply this cinematic work of art to your own life. [LIKE IT ON FACEBOOK PUN.]Enjoy! ? Yup, that’s Patrick (He’s second from the left in the right picture). He’s not bad, right?Kate Moss isn’t Burberry’s only famous face these days. For their upcoming fall campaign, the designers of a few hot British rockers to be the new faces of the line.I took notice when I saw Patrick Wolf in the mix! Check here to see his video ” Apparently, along with opening for Amy Winehouse, this glam rocker’s been trying his hand at fashion. I will give him he’s very striking (and incredibly tall).Along for the campaign with Patrick are singer (and friend of Patrick!) Edward Larrikin and Jonny Epstein and Kieran Webster of .The Burberry logo, a knight on a charger, supposedly inspired the look of the fall line, along with the styles of medieval Britain. Photographer Mario Testino has the credits for this photoshoot.I usually like it better when models handle modeling (and regular Burberry models are mixed in for this campaign), but these guys are really good! I never would have guessed. ? Patrick Wolf in his “Vulture” video gear. That nice, waifish, mild-mannered, arty, young, queer/bi British singer (and sometimes-Burberry-model) has a dirty new music video!!! It’s for his single from his new album, The Bachelor, due on June 1st.OK, maybe the video’s not “dirty” exactly; it’s more suggestive. But it does feature Wolf writhing around in leather harness-y gear and little black briefs while being cuffed or gagged or wearing a gasmask-like apparatus. Saucy!Watch it (and view bits of Wolf’s nice bum) after the jump! Spanking good fun!Strap yourself in! It’s time for some Wolf-man action! Attaboy Patrick! Now we just need to see someone else in there, rolling around with you!Who would you wanna see Patrick getting into a bit of the old slap-and-tickle with, eh? ? In Full Flower: Carrie’s Back. Full disclosure: I saw the this past Friday night at a here in NYC. I can’t give away any plot points but I can say it’s pretty damn fun. There’s drama and major life changes for Carrie and the gals. (Expect more on all of this later…)But I’ve got to say the biggest impact made by the movie may just be the crazazy over-the-top visuals fashion-wise. It’s like a big fruit-salad of color and couture exploding all over your face with every new scene.As has been reported, Sarah Jessica Parker has about 81 costume changes throughout the flick. She first appears sporting an updated version of her trademark flower (see above), and this one is straight out of little costume-shop of horrors. It’s gonna eat her, I think. But then it doesn’t. (Maybe that’ll be on the DVD?)Here’s a video all about the insane clothes that costume designer (and fabulously out NYC icon Patricia Field) corralled for this uber-glam film. Sex and the City’s writer/director Michael Patrick King flanked by his muses. The shoes! The colors! And it’s not all about the women. The first time uber-gay Standford Blatch appears (and he’s never been one to be meek when it comes to his attire) he looks like he’s wearing some kind of Pantone color-wheel clown suit by Burberry. Hurrah!And some of the NYC press chimed in similarly (via ) today:“Costume designer/stylist Patricia Field fills every scene with enough labels to keep any fashionista salivating,” Colin Bertram in the . “Me, I got lost during the first fashion montage of clothes that would have made Dynasty look modest,” adds FoxNews.com’s Roger Friedman. And another critic at Friday’s screening declared: “Women wept, cheered. It’s the Neiman Marcus catalog on steroids!”My favorite fashion moment? Carrie’s mega-ridiculous “Bridal Couture photo-shoot for Vogue” montage. She poses and preens in a sequence of gowns by (gasp!) Vera Wang, Carolina Herrera, Christian Lacroix, Lanvin, Oscar de la Renta and Christian Dior before settling on a demure number by Vivienne Westwood. It’s ridiculous and gorgeous. Carrie in her Vivienne Westwood wedding wear. Cute, right?I also love this dishy bit on the NY Times style blog, , which popped up last week. Their blogger goes off on and critiques a promo pic for the film, and it’s catty. But, hey… Carrie, Samantha and the gals can take care of themselves, right? And proving they really have nothing to worry about, today’s ends on this gushy note: Just like any great night out with best friends, "Sex and the City: The Movie" is awash with so much love that it lingers long after the last cocktail runs dry.Cosmos for everyone!For more major fashion coverage, check out the page on LOGOonline.com. ?While You Were Sleeping: Harry Styles Calls ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ ‘Educational’?While You Were Sleeping: Lindsay Lohan & Barbara Walters Bond?79-year-old jewel thief facing new charge in CA Published: January 26, 2010 8:20 PM By The Associated Press SANTA ANA, Calif. - (AP) ? An international jewel thief who claims to have pocketed a small fortune in gems while shoplifting in ritzy stores from New York to Monte Carlo was arrested in Southern California for allegedly trying to steal a coat. Doris Payne, 79, pleaded not guilty to a felony count of grand theft in Superior Court on Tuesday in Orange County, district attorney's spokeswoman Farrah Emami said. Court officials said Payne was represented by a public defender, but the attorney could not be reached for comment. Payne was arrested Friday after security guards said she walked out of a department store with a $1,300 Burberry trench coat, Costa Mesa police Lt. Mark Manley said. Payne was on parole for a previous theft conviction at the time and she remained jailed without bail Tuesday. Payne, who was born in Slab Fork, W.Va., has described a five-decade career of shoplifting in the U.S. and . Authorities said she used at least 22 aliases. Her career was detailed in a 2005 story by The Associated Press based on court records and interviews with Payne, prosecutors, detectives, agents, friends and jewelry store employees. The account said the exquisitely dressed and well-mannered Payne would waltz into a store and begin trying on diamond ring after diamond ring. When the clerk had taken out a number of fancy items and was thoroughly confused, she would steal one and casually slip out, sometimes with the ring on her finger. The Jewelers Security Alliance, an industry trade group, sent out bulletins in the 1970s warning about her. The daughter of an illiterate coal miner, Payne said her criminal career began when she was 23 and walked out of a jewelry store with a $22,000 diamond. "I've had regrets, and I've had a good time," she said. Payne has served jail time in , , , , and . Variety reported last year that had signed to star in a movie about her life called "Who Is Doris Payne" that was in development. Messages seeking comment from Berry's representatives were not immediately returned. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ?A his-and-hers vacation in Scottsdale Originally published: February 18, 2010 4:01 PM Updated: February 18, 2010 4:34 PM By ALISON LOWENSTEIN Special to Newsday Photo credit: Westin Kierland Scottsdale Guests swim in the pool at the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa in Scottsdale, . After enduring a winter filled with frigid temperatures and snowstorms, you might be in need of some sun and relaxation. Consider putting the skis aside and dusting off those golf clubs to head out West to Scottsdale. With championship golf courses and renowned spas, this sunny city is the ideal place to recharge. (Temperatures from mid-February through April range from 50 to 77.) The Sonoran Desert offers intoxicating mountain views, making it an ideal backdrop for a relaxing escape. Scottsdale is home to some of the country's best destination resorts. There also are many activities and sights to occupy you off the resorts.What to see THE WRIGHT STUFF If you are interested in architecture, your trip won't be complete without a visit to Frank Lloyd 's Taliesin West, where you can take a guided tour of the famed architect's private winter home and studios. The property is still a working architectural school, and the tour will take you through Wright's life and work here ($18-$32, 480-860-2700, ). DESERT TOUR Experience the beauty of the Sonoran Desert up close - in the back of an open-air vehicle. Spend three to four hours traversing the landscape with Wild West Jeep Tours ($90 includes pickup from Scottsdale area resorts; 480-922-0144, ). SHOPPING Scottsdale is a shopping mecca and is home to the largest mall in the Southwest, Scottsdale Fashion Square, where high-end shops include Barneys and Burberry (480-941-2140, ).Things to do ? BASEBALL Scottsdale Stadium is the spring training home of the from March 3 to April 4. Fans can watch the Giants play against other Cactus League teams, including the L.A. Dodgers and . Tickets are $7-$30 (877-473-4849, ). DINING Calling all foodies: Scottsdale sponsors the 32nd annual Culinary Festival April 13-18. Patrons can sample dishes from more than 50 restaurants and watch cooking demonstrations from notable chefs ($5-$10 admission plus $1 tastings, 480-945-7193, ). CULTURE Through April 10, the Scottsdale Civic Center Mall hosts Native Trails, free festivals, concerts and other activities that pay tribute to the area's Indian communities and history (480-421-1004, ). Just want to play a game of golf or indulge in a spa getaway? Consider taking a break at one of these relaxing resorts - all of which offer pastimes that are bound to please him - and her. ?Where to stay ? ?Fairmont Scottsdale Resort ? 7575 E. Princess Dr., 866-540-4495, Your biggest challenge will be trying not to get lost on the expansive, manicured grounds that overlook the McDowell Mountains. In addition to spacious rooms, which all have private balconies or terraces, and the five heated pools, the resort boasts the luxurious (and massive) Willow Stream Spa. It has an extensive list of treatments, a rooftop pool, waterfall treatment area, eucalyptus inhalation rooms, spa suites for couples and many other amenities. The Fairmont offers guests 18 holes of golfing on a championship Tournament Players Club of Scottsdale course and at the TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course. DEALS The That's Impressive! Golf Package includes a two-night stay, and one round of golf for each person at both courses (from $512 a person, based on double occupancy, through March 31). The resort's "Girlfriends Pajama Party Package" includes overnight accommodations for two, plus a pair of spa manicures, pink pajama gifts, cocktails at Stone Rose Lounge and ice cream at bedtime (from $605 a room a night through April 30). ?The Westin Kierland Resort and Spa ? 6902 E. Greenway Pkwy., 480-624-1000, RATES From $289 a night (double occupancy) The Westin Kierland embraces both the Southwest and the area's Scottish history. This elegant resort pays homage to the Scottish immigrants who built the Arizona railways and mines. Each evening, guests are invited to hear bagpipes being played at sunset. The resort also boasts three nine-hole courses and many golf amenities, including transportation and FORE-MAX golf training. The resort's Agave, the Arizona Spa, has 20 treatment rooms, a salon, steam rooms, lap pool and a large menu of treatments. If you have kids in tow, you'll find this resort to be quite family-friendly, with various kids' activities, including a water park crowned with a 110-foot water slide. DEALS Unlimited golf for two, plus accommodations from $439 a room, a night. At the spa, a $169 Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes package includes a choice of any three spa services, such as massage, facial treatment, foot therapy, polish and paraffin or blowout. ?The Boulders ? North Tom Darlington Dr., Carefree, 888-579-2631, The Boulders, right outside Scottsdale on 1,300 acres in the scenic Carefree, Ariz., desert, has adobe casitas and is surrounded by 12-million-year-old boulders. It's home to the luxe Golden Door Spa, where you can take fitness classes or visit a labyrinth or the O'furo, a traditional Japanese bath. If you came to golf, two 18-hole courses have striking desert views. You'll also find four pools, tennis and outdoor adventure excursions. DEALS The His & Hers Golf & Spa Getaway Package includes a private casita for two, food and beverage credit of $25 a person, plus a choice of one round of golf or $150 spa credit per person. You'll also get unlimited access to spa facilities and fitness classes (from $525 a room a night, through April 11). ?The Millennium Resort Scottsdale McCormick Ranch ? 7401 N. Scottsdale Rd., 866-866-8086, For those who want a boutique resort experience, The Millennium Resort Scottsdale McCormick Ranch offers 125 Southwestern-style guest rooms with balconies or patios. The lakeside resort has two 18-hole courses and views of Camelback Lake and the McDowell Mountains. Besides golf, the resort offers tennis, volleyball, fishing, biking, paddleboating and canoeing. Although there isn't a spa on the premises, the hotel offers packages with the nearby Spa at Gainey. DEALS The Dine, Stay and Play package includes accommodations, a $100 food and beverage resort credit and golf for two (from $349 a night through March). ?Camelback Inn ? 5402 E. Lincoln Dr., 800-582-2169, Spa and golf lovers will find much to occupy themselves at this resort, set on 125 acres at the base of Mummy Mountain, overlooking Camelback Mountain. Golfers can choose from two championship 18-hole courses. Other facilities include a driving range, an oversized pueblo-style golf clubhouse and a golf shop. The Spa at Camelback Inn reopened in 2003 after an extensive renovation. It has 32 treatment rooms, a pool and a spa restaurant. DEALS Unlimited golf for two, including accommodations and daily breakfast for two starts at $399 a night. The Camelback Spa package for two includes breakfast and two 60-minute spa treatments (from $459). ?Al Roker, Martha Stewart earn Hudson Valley Tweets of the Week Friday September 14, 2012 5:30 PM By Photo credit: Newsday.com composite With celebrity weddings, fall TV premieres and reality TV show dramatics, it's been a busy week in the world of entertainment. And there's no better way to cap it than with the Hudson Valley Tweets of the Week. For the first week of September, we'll break it down with Al Roker's buddy, get the scoop on a surprise wedding from a famous insider and mull the musings of three comedians. (And if you missed any of the previous HV Tweets of the Week shenanigans, .) At No. 5, former Yorktown resident Al Roker is hanging out with Punky Brewster herself, Soleil Moon Frye (who, in case you didn't know, is a rather attractive adult these days), and "Meet the Press" host David Gregory. Now, I almost opted to go with that showed off his 15-song "Today" show playlist, beginning with the theme from "The A-Team" and ending with Flo Rida's "Club Can't Handle Me." But I had to go with the photo of Al, Punky and Gregory, just so I could have the opportunity to embed this clip of former Saugerties resident Jimmy Fallon teasing Gregory for gettin' funky to the music of Yonkers native Mary J. Blige. At No. 4 is Martha Stewart. It's her , and while we try to spread the wealth in this recurring feature, we had to get her take on this week's big celebrity wedding of fellow Bedford residents Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. After all, for the ceremony in South Carolina. Stewart's tweet linked to an "exclusive" Martha Stewart Weddings blog post, which mostly proved to be an exercise in name-dropping. "Ryan and Blake opted for an intimate, personalized party, gathering their immediate and extended family at a rustic barn in South Carolina," reads an excerpt. "Ryan, who has been a long-time fan of Charleston, chose to mark this special occasion in one of his favorite towns. The bride and her bridesmaids walked down the aisle in custom Marchesa gowns designed by Blake's friends, Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig, with shoes created for the celebration by Christian Louboutin. The groom and groomsmen wore specially made Burberry suits with custom leather suspenders designed by the groom's friend, Christopher Bailey. The couple exchanged unique wedding rings by Lorraine Schwartz." I like how the guests of the bride and groom are nameless, but the clothes they are wearing get all the love. I get the feeling Martha Stewart Weddings would be have just as pleased if the bridesmaids and groomsmen were just animatronic mannequins peddling the products. At No. 3 is comedy writer-director Jason Woliner, a former child actor ("Shining Time Station") and Pelham High School grad who's the executive producer of the hilariously twisted and equally random Adult Swim cult hit, "Eagleheart." When he's not hanging out with "Eagleheart" stars Chris Elliott, Maria Thayer and Brett Gelman on set, he's avoiding so-called Internet hangouts hosted by a search engine. I know what you're thinking: "Oh, cool! I get to hang out with a constantly buffering video of Steven Spielberg while trolls harass him about 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'? Where do I sign up?" The only good thing Google+ Hangouts ever gave us was This week's Tweets of the Week runner-up is Eastchester native Bobby Moynihan, who kicks off his fifth season as a cast member on "Saturday Night Live" tomorrow. But is his heart elsewhere? Hey, both shows are funny, despite the fact that only one of them is trying to be. At the top spot of the countdown is Stony Point resident Tom Cotter, who of "America's Got Talent." He may have been last night's runner-up, but he will forever have finished first in the hearts of comedy fans in and beyond the Hudson Valley. And on this countdown! That counts for something, right? (It does not count for $1 million, however. Sorry, Tom.) Which of this week's tweets is your favorite? Vote in the Hudson Buzz poll below. Did we miss your favorite celebrity tweet with a Hudson Valley connection? Let us know in the comments section or . And check out the , which we update every week! Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ?'American Idol': Hollie’s fashion flop Thursday April 5, 2012 10:02 AM By Photo credit: Fox Poor Hollie Cavanagh. Her “Flashdance” hit bombed and so did her turquoise fringy haystack of a dress. It was like someone gave her directions for wearing it ? skip around like a nut job, and don’t forget to shimmy. The whole season has been a miss for this contestant ? she’s dressed too old every time, though this might have been her worst. The problem with some of the looks last night was a lack of authenticity. The contestants need to dress for who they are. Cavanagh should look like a young, fresh thing, not like some trying-too-hard diva. Elise Testone failed here, too. In a one-shoulder white blouse and long, black trumpet skirt that was not flattering, as well as too many blingy accessories, she went for torch singer instead of the rocker she really is. She looked soooo much better during her Tom Petty duet with Phillip Phillips wearing jeans and a berry colored peasant blouse. And speaking of Phillips, puh-lease stop wearing brown ? it matches his skin tone, beard and hair and dulls him down. Again he donned the super baggy jeans, along with a rumpled button-down and a brown tee. In the duet he looked better in a casual blazer and black shirt. The contrast is good for him, but truth told, he is the real deal ? a bluesy rocker who cares more about the music than the look. PHOTOS: Deandre Brackensick was spot on in a button down, jeans and slim tie -- the hair flowing - - he’s got a look. Colton Dixon did the rocker thing, again in his favorite skinny jeans worn with an oxblood leather vest and casual white tee shirt accessorized with a black scarf. Perhaps a bit too self-conscious but it worked. And he's gone blonder -- he's a handsome dude, and this, along with his manicured shadow of a beard was good. Joshua Ledet needs to modernize his look. Again he went for a graphic, striped blazer (a slightly better fit this time around) worn with too-tight pants. He could look hipper and sound just as great. Jessica Sanchez modernized the '80s moment with a slim, ruffled acid washed denim jacket with big shoulders. Her tiny frame can rock almost anything ? including the skinny leather pants she wore, and a cool white tee shirt with net cutouts and neon green straps. Her geometric jewelry story included a studded neon Lucite bracelet. Jennifer Lopez told her, “I love the way your look is developing.” We can imagine that girls and young women are going to want to steal her look. We have to admit that Skylar Laine came turned out better than usual, though still not fab in a raspberry colored prom dress (it matched the raspberry strand in her hair) with a high-low hem, and ew, white stilettos. Randy Jackson, sporting a red shirt with big multicolored polka dots said, “I like the way you look,” and Ryan Seacrest added, “You look very pretty tonight.” Her decision to de-countrify in a fashion sense was conscious. She said, that she put on “a pretty ol’ dress.” Best look of the night? Seacrest, who appeared on “The Today” show in New York early yesterday morning, but looked fresh as a daisy for this L.A. gig later in the day donning a perfectly tailored charcoal Burberry suit with a purple pocket square. He's the man. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ?'American Idol' fashion: Black and white all over Thursday March 24, 2011 10:54 AM By Photo credit: FOX For the Motown moment on "American Idol," contestants, with little variation, wore black and/or white. It was the tale of three white jackets (and oh, how differently they fit) when it came to Jacob Lusk, Stefano Langone and Haley Reinhart. Lusk’s wrinkled linen number fit so badly that he couldn’t raise his arms, though his vocals were uplifting. Langone’s now trademark blazer, untucked shirt, jeans and patent sneaker ensemble was smooth and fit perfectly. Reinhart wore a black and white shawl collared tuxedo jacket – this was OK, but eeks, the short and vest outfit paired with towering stilettos – not her best choice, though Steven Tyler said, “You don’t look a day over fabulous.” Ryan Seacrest (always in perfectly tailored Burberry) couldn’t keep his red carpet experience out of the mix last night when it came to Pia Toscano. Her black matte jersey dress fit like a glove and while Seacrest didn’t ask, “Who are you wearing?,” he swirled her around to show off the dramatic ruched and plunging back with its sequin inset. Real fashion va-va-voom. PHOTOS: We think wannabe prom queens everywhere will be looking for Lauren Alaina’s zebra striped chiffon number. With its high sequin waist and startling red inset, this would make a major statement at the dance. It was Alaina’s very best look to date, and even Jennifer Lopez, opalescent in a peachy shade, said, “You look amazing tonight.” Most of the boys donned black. Rocker James Durbin did a jacket adorned with piercings, chains and skulls. Paul McDonald rasped in skinny black pants and shirt, and Seacrest noted, a silver cougar pin. Scotty McCreery crooned in a black button down, jeans and even black cowboy boots. Naima Adedapo wore gray – crazy huge bell-bottoms that moved perfectly with her African dance movements. Her strappy fitted top showed of her athletic body. Lovely Thia Megia’s dress featured a black strapless bodice and a ruffled, tiered skirt in nude. A big multicolored sequin heart necklace was a perfect accessory for the teenager. Only Casey Abrams opted for a slash of color in a tomato red shirt topped by a brownish blazer. Seacrest said the growling contestant looked “dapper,” while Tyler commented that he had, “a crazy-assed out-of-control ego,” which may have been tamped down a bit with a slight overdose of hair product on this night. Speaking of Tyler, well, he did a cool, sparkle-dusted chiffon cheetah top, jeans and a neck full of glittery hippie necklaces. Our favorite visual of the night, however, was the sign held up by an audience member in his honor that read, “Steven Tyler, you’re my mom’s hall pass.”?Babylon- Islip police report Originally published: May 11, 2010 6:08 PM Updated: May 12, 2010 4:57 PM Reports from county or village police, May 2-8AmityvilleAn Islip Terrace man, 49, was arrested at his Lincoln Avenue home May 8 and charged with third-degree burglary. He is a suspect in connection with a burglary at Vincenzo's Restaurant and Pizzeria on Sunrise Highway.Items including a GPS unit and a TV were stolen from an unlocked vehicle on Avenue E May 6.Bay ShoreA...?Bare shoulders dominate Oscar fashion Originally published: February 26, 2012 9:37 PM Updated: February 27, 2012 12:18 AM By ANNE BRATSKEIR. Special to Newsday Photo credit: Getty Images Actress arrives at the 84th Annual held at the & Highland Center in Los Angeles. (Feb. 26, 2012) Double-stick tape may have been the accessory du jour at the 84th annual Academy Awards last night as more than a few red carpet stars wore seriously plunging necklines.Most uncomfortable, perhaps, was Rooney Mara in her deep-V white Givenchy. Pundits saluted her for breaking out of her "Dragon" girl black, but she kept checking to make sure all was in place. Viola Davis -- killer in emerald,...?Beauty spot: Lip fixes for summer smiles Published: June 24, 2011 3:03 PM By BARBARA SCHULER Photo credit: Handout Japanese artist Yayoi Kusma inspired Lancome's limited-edition Natural Juicy Tubes, six flavors of lip gloss --among them Happy Honey, Dot Apricot. The latest products to enhance your pucker:?Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama inspired Lancome's limited- edition Juicy Tubes, six flavors of lip gloss -- among them Happy Honey and Dot Apricot -- all with hydrating shea butter, $15 each, at makeup counters or lancome-usa.com.Burberry's new Lip Mists have a natural vitamin C found in wild rose extract, along with just a hint of color. They...?Beauty Spot: Lovely lips Originally published: January 27, 2012 12:34 PM Updated: January 29, 2012 12:58 PM By BARBARA SCHULER Photo credit: Handout Go matte or shiny with True Commitment from Addiction NV Cosmetics. Each comes with a matte shade and a coordinating shiny gloss. Three combos are available: red/pink shimmer, orange/gold shimmer, bronze, clear shimmer; $26 each at addictionnv.com. (Jan. 2012) Taking their inspiration from the classic Burberry trench, the Burberry Lip Glows plump up fine lines and hydrate. They're available in three shades -- Nude Gold, Ruby and Bright Plum -- $24 each at select Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue stores.Sugar is the key ingredient in the lip treatment from Fresh -- it's a natural, long-lasting moisturizer. Add to that meadowfoam seed and apricot kernel...?Beauty spot: Summer scents Friday July 6, 2012 2:56 PM By Barbara Schuler Dolce & Gabbanacelebrates the Italian Riviera withLight Blue's Dreaming inPortofinofor women, $49-$89, and Living Stromboli for men, $46-$75. Florals like peony and rose combine with citrus blends for the limited-editionBlooming Bouquet, the latest fromMiss Dior; $64 atNordstrom. Give your home a touch of summer withSlatkin & Co. candlesin... ?'Beekman Boys' offer style tips Originally published: March 18, 2011 12:38 PM Updated: March 21, 2011 11:08 AM By JOSEPH V. AMODIO. Special to Newsday Photo credit: Photo by Bruce Gilbert The Fabulous Beekman Boys, Brent , left, and , right, hosted a cocktail party and style clinic in the men's department of Bloomingdale's at Field in . They show off their signature boots with customer Mike O' Connor, center. (March 15, 2011) The "Beekman Boys" took time off from farm chores to hang out one night last week at Bloomingdale's in Roosevelt Field, where shoppers enjoyed hors d'oeuvres, drinks and fashion tips from cable TV's latest reality sensations."The Fabulous Beekman Boys," a series that debuted on Planet Green last year, chronicles the lives of Dr. Brent Ridge and Joshua Kilmer-Purcell, a couple that went from...?Big-time bargain sale of kids stuff Published: May 12, 2011 9:45 PM By KEIKO MORRIS Photo credit: Newsday/Karen Wiles Stabile Gail Roca, founder of Kids Kloset, arranges some of the clothing for children. (May 12, 2011) While shopping for used items may carry a stigma in some circles, a group of several women Thursday proudly traded stories of deals they had scored in the past: a gently used child's Burberry outfit that sells for $140, purchased for $8. An almost new deluxe red Radio Flyer double-seater red wagon bought for $30. Or an expensive plastic playhouse snagged for $40."My snobby friends say,...?Browse Manhattan holiday store windows online Sunday December 18, 2011 4:05 PM By Nina Ruggiero Photo credit: Getty/ For those who love to window shop but don't love crowds or cold weather, TurnHills.comhasgathered 38 of Manhattan's popular store window displays on one interactive new website, just launched this December.Simply click on the stores, ranging from H&M and Forever 21 to Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Burberry, and the window will pop up. Roll your mouse over the items on display... ?Celebs shine at Met Museum's Costume Insitute gala Published: May 3, 2010 9:54 PM By JOSEPH V. AMODIO Special to Newsday Photo credit: Getty Images From left, designer , actress and actress attend the Gala Benefit to celebrate the opening of the "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity" exhibition at The on May 3, 2010, in . A bevy of A-listers glammed it up at last night's gala, celebrating the new exhibit, "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity," co-chaired by Vogue's , and Gap's executive vice president of design, Patrick Robinson. "It took me a minute to catch my breath, when I got the call from asking me to take part," Robinson said as he arrived at what's often called "the party of the year" - one usually headlined by designers of pricier labels. The exhibit celebrates iconic American fashion trends, from 1890s Gibson girls (sporty, sleek), to '20s flappers (rebels) to '30s screen sirens (glam-o-rama). And modern-day versions of all three were easy to spot on the red carpet. The Gibson-ish gals: (in white Francisco Costa for ), (in a sweet white ), and Queens native (also wearing , but in black). The flappers: (in a brocade mini), Katy Perry (in a dress that actually lit up), and Gisele Bundchen rockin' black fringe and lotsa leg. The sirens: Too many to count. , in between school exams (in sleek white Burberry), of "Lost" (gray lace ), (teal ), (in gray tulle .) Then there's (in blush Heritage), (in for Gap, getting her heel caught on the steps in all that tulle) and (in gold ), with train trouble. But she had alongside to straighten it. "Look!" she exclaimed. "It doesn't get better than this!" ?Chelsea Clinton glows in Vera Wang Sunday August 1, 2010 9:59 AM By Anne Bratskeir Photo credit: Getty Images Who did Chelsea Clinton choose to design her wedding dress for her nuptials (details were beyond hush-hush) on Saturday in Rhinbeck, NY?Final answer: Vera Wang.After weeks, maybe months of speculation about what the daughter of secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton and former president Bill Clinton would wear to her wedding to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, the 30-year-old,... ?Chelsea Clinton had 2 Vera Wang gowns for her nuptials Originally published: August 1, 2010 9:08 PM Updated: August 1, 2010 9:20 PM Photo credit: Getty Images Former President escorts his daughter Chelsea during her wedding ceremony. (July 31, 2010) Staff and Wire reports RHINEBECK - needed two gowns by for her elaborate wedding to - one for the ceremony and one for the party. The more formal dress worn by Clinton on Saturday at the Astor Courts estate had a strapless bodice, laser-cut organza ball skirt and a glittery embellished belt. For the reception, she changed into a Grecian-style gown with a narrow, black grosgrain belt. Wang also dressed the bridesmaids. They wore strapless bias-cut gowns made of lavender chiffon with plum-colored bows. The designer was a guest at the event and said it was a "privilege" to dress Clinton. She said the bride "radiated joy, youth and happiness." As mother of the bride, Secretary of State tapped , designer of one of her inaugural gowns when her husband was president, to make her raspberry-color embroidered gown. The groom wore a custom wool-mohair mix tuxedo by Burberry. Hundreds of guests attended the wedding at the historic Beaux Arts estate, which has been for sale since 2009. The five-bedroom, four-bathroom home, complete with indoor swimming pool and tennis court, was commissioned in 1902 and completed two years later. Owners Kathleen Hammer and Arthur Seelbinder signed on to purchase the property in 2004, and restored the home to its original floor plan - seven fireplaces, powder room and grand salon included. With Jennifer Barrios ?Couple splits, guy wants $400k in court Published: January 1, 1970 4:20 AM By Patrick Winn Global Post Middle-aged widower wants ex-girlfriend to refund lavish Gucci, Mercedes and karaoke expenditures Patrick WinnMan meets woman. Man hooks her up with nearly $400,000 in spa treatments, Apple products, payments towards a Mercedes and production costs for two Chinese-language karaoke video discs. Man thinks they're getting hitched but the affair fizzles. Can he get a refund?...?Cyber Monday's hottest deals and bonus gifts Monday November 28, 2011 11:58 AM By Nina Ruggiero Photo credit: Handout Cyber Monday is here, which means if you chose to relax this weekend instead of lining up outside Best Buy or fighting crowds at the malls, it's not too late to score a good deal.Just turn on your computer, get your credit card ready, pull up a comfortable chair and start stretching out your clicking hand, because there are enough online sales this Cyber Monday to keep you glued to your mouse... ?Designers expand children's wear for rich Published: August 12, 2012 8:30 PM By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO. The Associated Press Juliet Sandler dresses in the latest $650 dresses and $400 shoes from Parisian fashion house . Juliet is 3. Her mother, Dara Sandler, says she dresses her daughter in the latest fashions because Juliet is a reflection of her. "I dress my daughter exactly the way I dress myself," says the 33-year-old Manhattan mother, who spent $10,000 for her daughter's summer wardrobe. She plans to spend a few thousand dollars more for fall. Top fashion designers are pushing more expensive duds for the increasingly lucrative affluent toddler demographic. This fall, , , and Marni launched collections for the pint-sized. Luxury stores and are expanding their children's areas. Late last year, opened its first children's store on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. Some designer houses such as Oscar de la Renta and Marni say they're careful to keep the clothes appropriate for kids. But there are plenty that raise eyebrows because of their eye-catching prices and sophisticated styles. American households are expected to spend an average of $688 outfitting their children for school, says the , and that includes supplies such as pencils and notebooks. That's most families. Some will spend $795 on Gucci backpacks or $1,090 on leopard-print puffy coats from Lanvin. Sasha Charnin Morrison, fashion director at Us Weekly, admits that some of the clothes are outrageously priced. But, she says, things such as $200 Gucci sneakers make her kids happy. Critics say the trend promotes elitism. "This creates a class system of the haves and have-nots," says Alan Hilfer, director of psychology at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. "It creates a culture of envy." Only five years ago, the high-end children's wear business was dominated by just a few major designers such as , Burberry and . But the recent influx of others is the latest sign that affluent shoppers have gone back to splurging since the recession. It's a "mini-me" phenomenon, says Robert Burke, a New York-based fashion consultant. "It feels good. It's like one for me and one for you," he says. The trend isn't limited to Manhattan or , but is occurring in other big cities such as Boston and Chicago, he says. Sales of designer children's wear are also strong in resort areas where retirees who tend to dote on their grandkids live, he says. Luxury children's sales account for just a fraction, or just over 3 percent, of the $34 billion market, but it's growing faster than the rest of the children's wear and clothing market, according to NPD Group Inc., a research firm. For the past 12 months ended in May, children's wear sales rose 4 percent, with the upscale component up 7 percent, according to NPD's most recent data. That compares with a 3 percent rise for the overall clothing market. Designers, seeking more growth, are now looking at children's wear as another way to deepen their relationship with their customers as well as reach out to new ones. The designers are targeting household incomes of at least $350,000, says Marshal Cohen, NPD's chief industry analyst. That's about seven times the U.S. median household income of $49,445. Many of the new designer entries are more expensive than some of the established brands. Ralph Lauren's cotton shirts for boys are priced about $59. Dolce & Gabbana's plaid shirts for boys run $190. ?Despite Hurricane Irene, the shopping must go on Thursday August 25, 2011 5:33 PM By Nina Ruggiero Photo credit: Handout 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!)If you've got power during the storm, cozy up to your computer and have... ?Eddie Redmayne paints the town 'Red' Published: May 13, 2010 3:30 PM Photo credit: Johan Persson Photo/ Eddie Redmayne as Ken in Donmar Warehouse production of " Red " a New Play by John Logan . Directed by . Other stars include as . (Photo by Johan Persson) ltc Got a room that needs painting? Call Eddie Redmayne. He currently stars in the two-man Broadway play "Red" at the Golden Theatre, and one of its most riveting moments is when he and Alfred prime a canvas with blood-red paint. Molina, as the legendary abstract artist , and Redmayne, his harried apprentice, start on opposite sides of a huge canvas, slapping on paint like it's some raucous athletic event, taking huge brushstrokes, back, forth, back, forth, making a mad dash to see who can cover it with red first. They wind up beat, spattered with paint . . . and now, each nominated for Tony awards (Molina for best actor in a drama; Redmayne for featured actor). Redmayne, 28, won an Olivier Award when he played the role in . His movie credits include playing 's son in "The Good Shepherd" - he credits his big lips for getting him the gig - and 's son in the creepily incestuous "Savage Grace." Throw in a Burberry ad campaign for good measure. Redmayne grabbed coffee in the East Village with Newsday contributor Joseph V. Amodio to discuss art, bomb scares and nasty-sounding English cuisine. That scene where you prime the canvas stopped the show opening night. Everybody applauded. We started rehearsing that from day one - and it was disastrous. The director would have to resurrect us out of this suicidal depression. [He laughs.] "We cahhhn't do it!" It looked so bad - streaky, messy. It's harder than it looks. But you finally got it down. It's something we love - getting our hands dirty with pigment, hammering the frames. . . . It's a wonderful sense of "not acting." Because you're actually . . . doing stuff? Yes. And it's just the two of us onstage. So part of our process is learning that studio, so if stuff does go wrong - like one night I tripped carrying a bucket, and paint went all over. But I know where the towels and mops are onstage. Another day a light shattered . I took out a dustpan and brush but there were shards of glass everywhere. How do you like New York? Love it, man. I'm having the time of my life. Aside from yahoos with bombs. The bomb scare was near your theater, right? What's incredibly weird - my brother got married in that weekend. So I was on a dance floor in the Scottish Highlands at 5 in the morning. That's right - you Europeans party till all hours at weddings. We do. [He smiles.] And suddenly I start getting text messages, "I hope you're safe, mate." And I'm like, what? And then I look up on the Internet and see that it's on our street! They closed off 45th Street. So the show played to a very small house that night. I heard you don't cook much but you make a mean bread sauce. That's true! [He laughs.] That's amazing, how did you . . . ? So what the heck is bread sauce? Some weird English . . . ? My dad always says it's the reason you have roast chicken. Do you want my recipe? You saute an onion, crumble slightly stale bread into a bowl, add milk, salt, pepper and cloves, and reduce it down so it's this thick sauce. It's absolutely delicious and goes with roast chicken. It probably sounds revolting. What's up for you next? "The Pillars of the Earth," a miniseries that will be on in July. It's based on a book - one of Oprah's favorites, so it sold through the roof. It's an extraordinary story of the building of a cathedral in medieval England. It's historical fiction, with , . . . I play Jack, who starts off . . . mute . . . and ends up, after eight hours of miniseries, as some master-builder. It's an amazing part, actually. Your parents are OK with this crazy career choice? They've always been amazingly supportive. You take a massive amount of pounding as an actor. Fundamentally, you're pretending to be another human being, and because we're all human, we know what other human beings are like. So anyone can criticize an actor for not looking or sounding real. That's a nice way of saying "Everybody's a critic." You have to grow a thick skin. Have you? Uh . . . I'm in the process . . . yeah. I hope to get there eventually. ?Emmys 2012 red carpet fashions sizzle Originally published: September 23, 2012 9:26 PM Updated: September 23, 2012 10:12 PM By ANNE BRATSKEIR. Special to Newsday Photo credit: AP Actress , from "," arrives at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. (Sept. 23, 2012) was mopping his brow early on as the temperatures soared near 90 on the red carpet Sunday night -- poor guy, had to wear a Burberry tux jacket the whole time. Not so for the gals, who for the most part went with a less-is-more mantra, and despite a sweaty spray tan or two and some collapsed coifs, they sizzled. Shades of green and blue were big: wore a slit-to-there (and we mean there) sea foam gown, while looked mermaidesque in a body-hugging teal slit low in the front and lower in the back. 's frothy was icy blue and 's white column was embellished with big, graphic, blue crystals. PHOTOS: MORE: Along with the soft colors, there was an oxblood moment with a slew of stars strutting the season's "it" color, from , in , to donning a fitted to in a strapless J.Mendel that, ahem, barely contained her. And speaking of decollete, there was plenty of daring in that department. ' silver Christian Siriano was -- well -- gravity-defying, and even Amy Poehler flashed more skin than usual in her sparkling Stella McCartney. Citrus colors juiced up the red carpet, too. Julianne Moore looked swell in her bright yellow Christian Dior gown, but long sleeves? Julie Bowen's sexy, lean strapless Monique Lhuillier looked cooler, and pregnant Claire Danes' bright yellow Lanvin had room for an extra passenger -- she said it was "bump-friendly." A few of the stars delivered flowers, most notably Julianna Margulies in a classic strapless Giambattista Valli, and Elisabeth Moss in striking Dolce & Gabbana. Missteps? Lucy Liu's full-metal Versace -- a touch "Knights of the Round Table," and it caught on and tore 's wispy gown. Ouch. ?Fashion's Night Out events on Long Island Originally published: August 31, 2012 12:03 PM Updated: September 4, 2012 10:45 AM By NINA RUGGIERO. Special to Newsday Photo credit: Michael E. Ach Display of designer Brian Atwood shoes during Fashion Night Out at Saks at Mall in Huntington Station. (Sept. 8, 2011) The annual shopping spree known as Fashion's Night Out is set for Thursday night, the fourth year the extravaganza has invited the public to get in on the Fashion Week action.In New York City, heavy duty names like Tommy Hilfiger and Michael Kors will make appearances (see the entire schedule at fashionsnightout.com). But Long Island shoppers don't need a red carpet invitation -- or even...?For Lewis, it's all about the promise Originally published: January 15, 2011 8:58 PM Updated: January 15, 2011 10:20 PM By LAURA ALBANESE Photo credit: Frank Koester St. Mary's Chavaughn Lewis (40) attempts a shot as Will Regan of Nichols H.S. (Buffalo, N.Y.) goes for the block during the CHSAA state tournament at Adelphi. (Mar. 6, 2010) There are countless ways to start Chavaughn Lewis' story - little threads of life that pay tribute to his athletic attributes, his basketball smarts, or that indescribable spark of something special that shows up every time there's a basketball in his hands.He grew up playing ball in Queens, he went to St. Mary's High School in Manhasset to hone that skill, and he plans to do it for a very...?Haute hoods: Designers keep your covered Published: November 8, 2010 1:09 PM By JOSEPH V. AMODIO Special to Newsday Photo credit: Handout For the wild at heart, there's Spirit Hoods, a new faux-fur line Hoods aren't just for, well, hoodies anymore. Oh, no - they've gone glam.Stroll through the posh shops at the Americana in Manhasset, and you'll find yourself slipping into cozy hooded knitwear (at Max Mara), a hooded dress (at Malandrino) or a luxe stand-alone cashmere hood from Brunello Cucinelli (at Hirshleifers).Or click on over to Saks Fifth Avenue's website (saks.com), and you'll...?Here we go: Oscar fashion Sunday February 26, 2012 5:00 PM By 4:57 PM It's a bit early but we're already anxious to get a gander at the beauties on the red carpet of the 84th annual Academy Awards. What will be the trends this year? Who will be the designer of the moment? So far, we've learned that E! Red Carpet host Ryan Seacrest, who just arrived at the Hollywood and Highland Center (formerly the Kodak Theatre) only takes 20-minutes to get dressed, though clearly his coif was already done. For the record, he allllllways wears Burberry. Our spies have given us a little intelligence, but we've got to see it to believe it. Stay tuned. 5:01 This just in: Badgley Mischka has dressed Penelope Ann Miller who stars in Oscar favorite "The Artist," and is wearing a custom rose gold sequin chiffon halter. Also wearing Badgley Mischka, E! Live From the Red Carpet host Kelly Osbourne in a black gown with emerald beading that she plucked right off the fall 2012 runway. We just saw it a couple of weeks ago at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week and we saw here there - she called the collection "Silent film meets Scarface." Huh? She looks really good. Oh and Brooks Brothers was most pleased to announce that they created a custom-made tuxedo to all-around favorite Kermit the Frog! He'll be cheering on nominee Bret McKenzie, nominated for Music (Original Song) for “Man or Muppet” from Disney’s The Muppets. 5:37 "The Descendants" Amara Miller is wearing couture Valentino - a nude, pearl dappled sheath with sheer sleeves chosen by her stylist -- one of Hollywood's most famous - Jessica Pasteur. Ok, folks, she's 11. And very cute. But couture Valentino? Jeez, starting 'em young. 5:49 Just saying, we are praying for color. So far those lingerie colors -- rose, nude, beige - so Golden Globes. C'mon ladies, bring it. 5:58 A fierce fashion moment as Milla Jovovich appears on the red carpet in white, oops it's silver, one-shoulder, super-embellished couture Elie Saab. She looks super glam but puhlease - bring on some color. She calls it, "Clean and radiant." 6:15 Bridesmaid Ellie Kemper wears what she calls "Hollywood rust," body-hugging, strapless, sequin number by Armani Prive. It matches her hair. "The Artist" star Berenice Bejo looks pretty mint in mint Elie Saab - kind of a vintage vibe - long sleeves and plunging neckline. Love it? Not exactly. 6:19 Melissa Mccarthy wearing a heavy duty glittery collar in some off rosy color by Maria Rinaldi. She's starting a clothing line! OMG Jessica Chastain looking so fab. Ok, Shailene Woodley's white dress is wrong for her - and wrong for the Oscars. C'mon girl. It's too old. She says "It's so different. So classy and simple." It's Valentino Couture. 6:27 Best accessory of the night: Jessica Chastain's grandma Marilyn. We loooovvvved her gold embellished dress - Alexander McQueen, and it was very regal! (Don't forget McQueen designer Sarah Burton did Kate Middleton's wedding dress)!!!!! 6:29 Michelle Williams is wearing brilliant red - tiered. Can't wait to see more. 6:38 George Clooney's girlfriend is swathed in sculptural metallic satin by Marchesa, kind of a coppery-gold. The girl can work it, and she's giant! Hair down and swept to one side. We like. But up 'til now still thinking Chastain was most stunning. Yes or no? 6:48 Viola Davis' got a deep plunging bustline -- emerald green Vera Wang -- form-fitting until the bottom which features a series of ruffles and pleats at the bottom. And her mom did her hair! From the quick glance we got at Rooney Mara - it might be an uh-oh. No dragon girl for her this time - a white lace-ish dress - droopy. Not so sure. 6:58 It's a matter of love - Michelle Williams - in frilly chiffon coral Louis Vuitton, she looks darling. And not so much - Rooney Mara -- in Givenchy. Wings are covering the girls, plunge is deep, color - she went the opposite of black - white. Unexceptional. What do you think. Love the Tadashi Shoji on Octavia Spencer - white, super-embellished capped sleeves - so figure flattering, she looks elegant! 9:22 Let's discuss Gwyneth Paltrow's white strapless slither topped by a cape. Loved it! So swanky - not surprisingly, Tom Ford. Always a bombshell Angelina Jolie did a black Versace - slit from here to eternity!! 10:56 Meryl Streep wearing gold sparkle Lanvinnipped at the waist - she looks pretty good! Still debating whether JLO had a wardrobe malfunction or not. What do you think? 11:35 Overall some daring cleavage and loads of bare shoulders. Hits: Gwyneth Paltrow, Michelle Williams, Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis...lots of goodies. Good night!?Holiday stragglers find shortages of hot items Published: December 22, 2009 4:08 PM By The Associated Press ANNE D'INNOCENZIO (AP Retail Writer) NEW YORK (AP) ? Looking for UGG boots? Or what about the last string of holiday lights or inflatable Santas to spruce up the lawn? You might be out of luck.Some last-minute holiday shoppers are facing disappointment. Stores are running out of key holiday items ? and not just Zhu Zhu pets, those robotic hamsters that have been hard to find since before Thanksgiving.Even sparkly tops,...?How Net-a-Porter uses journalism to sell fashion Published: January 1, 1970 3:27 PM By Barry Neild Global Post LONDON, United Kingdom ? Net-a-Porter, the online designer fashion retailer, chose an inauspicious time to launch ? right when the dotcom bubble burst. Eleven years ago, when internet start-ups were toppling like dominoes, the only investors in untested business ideas were reckless gamblers or people with unswerving convictions in the potential of their brainchild. Natalie Massenet,...?Huntington-Smithtown police report Originally published: May 11, 2010 5:22 PM Updated: May 12, 2010 5:09 PM Reports from county or village police, May 2-8CommackA refrigeration unit on the roof of a building on Jericho Turnpike was discovered stolen May 2.The lock on a propane storage cage at a Moreland Road business was cut and propane tanks stolen May 3.Two Brentwood men, both 22, were arrested May 4 and charged with grand larceny. The suspects are accused of stealing televisions...?Islanders star John Tavares: Fashion is 'pretty cool' Wednesday October 6, 2010 11:45 AM By Anne Bratskeir Photo credit: New York Islanders Hockey Club Hockey isn’t the only game in town for Islanders star center John Tavares, 20, who, along with his team will hit the ice Saturday, Oct. 8, at Nassau Coliseum for the season opener against the Dallas Stars.He’s into the fashion game, too. His small, newish “JT91” collection of trucker hats, T-shirts and hoodies by CCM-Reebok is, he says, “catching on a little... ?Jessica Sanchez in chains, Phillip Phillips is dull on 'American Idol' Thursday May 3, 2012 10:12 AM By American Idol female finalists chose clothing and accessories that moooovvved with the musical groove last night. Some were good. Some not so much. For her first look, tiny Jessica Sanchez donned a skin-tight little white mini dresses that she topped with a snakeskin necklace (snake being a popular pattern of the evening) and a gilded cage of sorts ? a vest of chains that undulated with her dance moves ? kind of cool. Second time up, movement was less important -- she sat still amidst the candles wearing a white frock with a dark sequin bodice that boasted a strippy harness effect at the front. The girl must have kicked off her sci-fi high sparkly shoes pre-song, and amiable Ryan Seacrest (he in a shiny Burberry suit) brought them to her. Maybe Skylar Laine was going for that same kind of swingy thing, but one had to wonder, “What was she thinking?” about her Pocahontas-meets- Elly May black and white woven dress featuring black strands that went from her hips to her calves. She wore sparkly cowboy boots and the whole look lacked grace and finesse though Steven Tyler said her dress was “fabulous.” She did look quite lovely for her second appearance, in a high-low one-shoulder dress with a computer generated snakeskin pattern. (Of note: Tyler too was wearing a python print on his shirt.) PHOTOS: Hollie Cavanagh sparkled in a pink, white and beige little dress first up ? the print somewhat Pucci-esque - pretty. Her nod to movement was long dangling earrings that went past her shoulders -- really dramatic. And speaking of long, her second dress was perfect….when she sat atop a piano. But the black textured short dress with net cutouts ? featured a L-O-N-G chiffon skirt that caused a little troubled when she went to face the judges. “That’s a lot of dress,” noted Seacrest who may’ve stepped on the skirt. As Cavanagh tried to haul it up, Seacrest said, “I’m used to the red carpet.” There’s not much to say about Phillip Phillips, who kept it dull, but added army green to his deadly repertoire of neutrals and allowed some of the unkempt beard to grow back. In the judges’ eyes, it was Joshua Ledet who was both the vocal and fashion star of the night. We preferred his casual second look ? a wooly jacket with leather lapels and cuffs worn over a tee. But the guys went nuts for Ledet’s crazy first jacket that featured a dark body with sequin striped white sleeves. Tyler indicated that the glittery sleeves made it hard to concentrate while Randy Jackson shouted, “The jacket is fly and what about the flower? What kind is it?” referring to the yellow daffodil boutonniere. Maybe they all know a lot about music, but they don't know much about flowers. Seacrest called it…a tulip. Tags: , , , , , , , ?Keith Richards' daughter's case dismissed Published: April 21, 2011 8:31 PM By JENNIFER PELTZ. Associated Press Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards' daughter Theodora will get her New York City graffiti and drug case dismissed in exchange for doing two days of community service, a judge said Thursday.Theodora Richards, a 25-year-old model, smiled but stayed mum as she left a Manhattan court. She has until late June to do the community service and won't have to enter a plea.Police said officers...?Kourtney Kardashian baby -- fashionista in the making Monday July 9, 2012 2:24 PM By Nina Ruggiero Say what you will about reality TV couple Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick, but they do make stylish children.While other 2-year-olds run around in onesies, their son, Mason, is seen in wayfarers, plaid button-downs, Burberry scarves and loafers.The family welcomed first daughter, Penelope Scotland Disick, Sunday, and it's likely Mason's little sister will give him a run... ?Long Island Plastic Surgical Group opens at Americana Manhasset Thursday September 30, 2010 3:11 PM By Anne Bratskeir Now you can get your Burberry and your Botox injections, your Louis Vuitton and your laser hair removal, your Prada and your peel, all at the swanky Americana Manhasset shopping center, where tucked upstairs above some of the toniest stores around, the Long Island Plastic Surgical Group has opened a new, medi–spa.The space, a serene study in celadon and gold, with oversized patient... ?Mariners' Wells lives fantasy against Pettitte Originally published: May 13, 2012 8:37 PM Updated: May 13, 2012 10:06 PM By GREG LOGAN Photo credit: AP ' (33) celebrates as he returns to the dugout after hitting a two-run home run during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the at Yankee Stadium in New York. (May 13, 2012) Like most of his Seattle teammates, never had faced until the 39-year-old hero made his comeback Sunday at the Stadium. But as a Yankees fan from upstate Schenectady, Wells said he had seen plenty of Pettitte on TV and in person. When Wells came up with a man on in the sixth, he was ready for the moment of his dreams. Pettitte got a fastball up in the zone and Wells sent a long, slicing drive to rightfield, where it hit the foul screen for a home run and a 4-1 lead in what became a 6-2 Mariners win. "I've seen him a lot on TV, so I was scouting him from the time I was a little kid, expecting to play here and bat against him," Wells later said with a laugh. "He was my sister's favorite pitcher, too. She said, 'Andy Pettitte's coming back next week.' I said, 'Yeah, and I've got to face him Sunday. So who you going to be rooting for?' " It was a surreal day for Wells, who visited Yankee Stadium with the Mariners last season but didn't get into any games. He left 16 tickets Sunday for family and friends, including his parents and sisters. "I couldn't let it get too crazy because it's been a dream of mine to play in Yankee Stadium and hit a home run," Wells said. "So facing Andy Pettitte, it was a lot of things coming true today. It's pretty special." Last year on , Wells gave his mom a Burberry bag, but she asked for something more precious this year, and her son delivered. As he was circling the bases, Wells said: "I was like, 'Oh, man, this is awesome.' My mom said, 'Hit a home run for me,' like it's an easy thing to do. 'OK, Mom. Sure.' When I got past home, I gave a little acknowledgment to my mom and my family." got the first hit off Pettitte with two outs in the fourth, pulling a cutter into the leftfield seats for a 2-0 lead. Facing a pitcher with 240 major-league victories was a thrill for him, too. "It was awesome," Smoak said. "I watched him on TV since I was a little boy. Our scouting report was that his velocity wasn't what it used to be, but he was throwing 88, 89 today. He definitely had some stuff behind it . . . He was definitely tough on us early on. I was waiting for a fastball and I got a slider or a cutter over the plate and put a good swing on it." was one of the few Mariners familiar with Pettitte. In the fifth, Saunders dragged a bunt to the right side and was safe when Pettitte failed to cover. "Over the past few years, the only way I could get a hit off Pettitte was by bunting, so I just was looking for an opportunity," Saunders said. Saunders was impressed by what he saw from Pettitte. "He wasn't throwing quite as hard, but he still had bite on his cutter," he said. "It's amazing he can come back after two years and still pitch like that. To do what he did today, I feel like he's going to get better as he gets more starts." ?Meet Diane Von Furstenberg at Bloomie's Friday September 16, 2011 4:26 PM By Virginia Dunleavy and Julie Gordon Photo credit: Handout Sept. 20 and 22 FOR THE CURE. Stop by the Chanel shoe trunk show on Sept. 20 at Saks Fifth Avenue, Walt Whitman Mall. On Sept. 22, get a Wacoal bra fitting, 10 a.m. yo 4 p.m.; $2 goes to Susan G. Komen for the Cure network, for breast cancer research; 631-350-1242.Sept. 22 MEET DIANE VON FURSTENBERG. The designer will visit between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., at Bloomingdale’s... ?Meet Oscar de la Renta at L&T and Betsey Johnson at Sephora Friday October 7, 2011 4:53 PM By Virginia Dunleavy and Julie Gordon Oct. 12 Oscar de la Renta stops by Lord & Taylor’s Fifth Avenue store, noon-2 p.m., for the launch of his fragrance. You can meet the designer with a purchase of his “Live in Love” gift box ($156); a donation will go to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.Oct. 12-16Memorial Sloan-Kettering Thrift Shop’s annual coat sale with great bargains on gently worn designer... ?Now that's cold! NYC terrier mugged Originally published: February 10, 2010 3:48 PM Updated: February 10, 2010 5:02 PM By The Associated Press NEW YORK - (AP) ? A Brooklyn woman said a mugger stole a doggie coat right off the back of her mild-mannered terrier. Donna McPherson said she tied up Lexie, her 10-year-old Westie, outside a Park Slope supermarket "for two minutes" while she bought milk. She heard a "funny bark." When McPherson went outside, she found the little white dog shivering. His green wool coat, with leather trim and belt, were nowhere in sight. McPherson said the dog coat was worth $25. She said that, fortunately, Lexie wasn't wearing his pricier Burberry. ___ Information from: , http://www.nypost.com Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ?On sale now: Tuesday's top five picks Tuesday January 31, 2012 11:42 AM By Nina Ruggiero Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images Love designer clothing but hate paying full price? Me, too.Searching the web for sales can be time consuming, so I've gathered my five favorite discounted items online Tuesday.1. What: Tory Burch Darlene leopard print topWas: $295Now: $73You save: $222Why it's a steal: My fashionable co-worker Erin Geismar found this deal online today. The bold animal... ?Pre Roll Test Story Published: May 4, 2010 11:02 AM By Connie Mango Special to Newsday Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean aliquam, ligula vel fermentum fermentum, ante magna sollicitudin nisl, vel sagittis mi urna a dolor. Cras vitae viverra libero. Maecenas volutpat fermentum erat et vehicula. Sed feugiat felis nec dui interdum placerat. In varius leo quis magna suscipit porta. Proin gravida venenatis lobortis. Vivamus ut nibh in massa mattis ultrices feugiat ac risus. Phasellus quis nibh nec nisi condimentum laoreet quis et quam. Duis in erat ac ligula laoreet adipiscing in sit amet arcu. Etiam suscipit nibh in neque malesuada tristique. In at justo in lorem lobortis dapibus porttitor quis lacus. In sit amet augue non augue porta mollis ut non enim. Pellentesque et magna mi, eget aliquet orci. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Maecenas quis euismod magna. Sed ut mi nunc, nec feugiat nibh. Etiam nulla sem, euismod et cursus quis, semper a lectus. Aliquam erat volutpat. Phasellus nec vulputate turpis. Aliquam et ligula vitae nisi gravida sollicitudin ut in eros. Praesent vitae purus nisi. Etiam vitae metus in mauris luctus ultricies. Mauris malesuada rutrum ligula, id facilisis eros venenatis quis. Pellentesque id dolor odio, quis mattis mi. Nunc ac leo lacinia magna tincidunt suscipit. Duis aliquet laoreet lacus at sodales. Maecenas a dui tellus, eu porttitor mauris. Vestibulum porttitor posuere diam, eget varius orci tincidunt eget. Aenean tempus sagittis porta. Suspendisse non mi vel urna imperdiet condimentum nec ac dolor. Curabitur vel lacus orci. Vivamus ac consequat erat. Vivamus dignissim ultrices dolor. Nunc a posuere libero. Cras vulputate orci nec tellus interdum vitae eleifend mauris accumsan. Donec blandit adipiscing diam id eleifend. Integer volutpat justo et ipsum sodales tristique. Donec varius, orci eu aliquet consectetur, massa velit mattis nisi, in blandit magna orci vel elit. In ut erat erat. Duis aliquet pretium eros euismod bibendum. Vivamus sodales, massa eget lacinia accumsan, lectus magna convallis leo, varius euismod nisi enim ut felis. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Curabitur quis libero turpis, non sagittis urna. Suspendisse leo ante, ornare eu volutpat in, porta quis augue. Donec pretium velit eget libero hendrerit vestibulum. Aenean vitae felis eu orci tristique volutpat eu eu nisl. Sed egestas ante sed nisi interdum aliquam. Proin a quam bibendum est dapibus egestas. Curabitur nec dictum lorem. Etiam congue, risus vitae congue mattis, arcu lorem imperdiet erat, quis lacinia quam magna fermentum justo. Vestibulum pretium ante placerat dolor dictum rhoncus. Praesent ultricies metus nec mauris vestibulum accumsan. Vestibulum non leo lorem. Fusce sed purus eu ipsum mattis ullamcorper. In vel leo ante, eu iaculis dui. Aliquam erat volutpat. Nulla faucibus fermentum mi at vehicula. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Maecenas ullamcorper feugiat semper. Mauris nunc turpis, condimentum nec ornare semper, imperdiet id tortor. Mauris dapibus vehicula vulputate. Donec pellentesque leo et lectus pretium pulvinar. Nam tortor turpis, mollis laoreet commodo ut, malesuada ac odio. Vivamus elit massa, iaculis id aliquam rutrum, bibendum sed orci. Sed lacus ligula, imperdiet eget gravida consectetur, consectetur non ligula. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pretium laoreet neque nec feugiat. Fusce nec justo odio. Curabitur nec velit ac nunc mattis molestie. Aliquam ullamcorper varius arcu ut iaculis. Vivamus nec porta sem. Donec adipiscing, turpis sit amet consectetur interdum, metus justo ullamcorper mauris, laoreet pretium libero urna at quam. Vestibulum quis magna nulla, dapibus gravida felis. Pellentesque pulvinar convallis metus. Nunc nunc urna, egestas at vulputate ut, tristique et libero. Quisque commodo, mauris sed lacinia imperdiet, erat elit luctus eros, eget volutpat purus ipsum a odio. In eu eros odio. Suspendisse pulvinar auctor laoreet. In accumsan adipiscing aliquet. Maecenas ac auctor nisi. Curabitur gravida dui ligula. Pellentesque interdum tempus aliquam. In est arcu, imperdiet id suscipit vel, molestie at purus. Nam ut metus nisl, a molestie augue. In vitae massa enim, ut tincidunt diam. Quisque sed neque ligula. Pellentesque rhoncus accumsan luctus. Pellentesque porttitor purus id felis rutrum at luctus quam vehicula. Cras at enim a turpis feugiat ultrices a eget lacus. Integer fringilla nisl egestas lectus placerat dictum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec in orci nisi, id convallis elit. Praesent porttitor eros nibh, eget scelerisque lacus. Vivamus mollis iaculis tellus, non sagittis odio blandit a. Nam non eros est. Fusce neque odio, luctus sit amet rhoncus sed, molestie non metus. Nullam tortor sapien, pharetra lacinia fringilla at, interdum in elit. Mauris placerat, ipsum sed laoreet tempor, nibh est condimentum massa, non vulputate odio urna quis tellus. Nulla pellentesque accumsan dolor, nec ultrices justo mollis at. In eget enim nec libero posuere facilisis eu a risus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Nam ipsum lectus, vestibulum at molestie eu, vestibulum vel turpis. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Integer justo ipsum, ultrices a venenatis sit amet, gravida sit amet felis. Aenean ultrices nisi vitae urna tristique et pulvinar lorem viverra. Duis nisl eros, vestibulum ut mollis vitae, pretium in lectus. Nunc sit amet risus sed eros interdum hendrerit. Etiam fringilla, velit ut iaculis facilisis, sem eros iaculis elit, condimentum ultricies turpis magna a nisl. Cras molestie dapibus ipsum vel suscipit. Vivamus eu sagittis justo. Etiam sit amet tellus quis nulla vulputate adipiscing. Quisque lectus magna, bibendum in eleifend vel, semper sed felis. Pellentesque eget urna vitae ligula ullamcorper ultricies a sed metus. Ut lacinia elit sit amet felis consequat sed ullamcorper est laoreet. Maecenas tempus, velit at semper ultricies, nunc massa lacinia lectus, eu dapibus lacus mi ut enim. Donec sagittis euismod sapien in accumsan. Quisque aliquam luctus tellus nec vestibulum. Ut semper neque in ipsum sagittis non accumsan massa condimentum. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Proin tempor, dui at ultricies suscipit, nisl massa mollis tellus, vitae sagittis orci nunc ac dui. Morbi tincidunt varius lorem et commodo. Ut consequat sollicitudin dolor, et ultrices ipsum commodo ut. Quisque risus ligula, molestie in adipiscing ac, ornare ut velit. Phasellus id nisi leo, vitae consectetur lectus. Fusce mauris tellus, consequat in semper a, accumsan sit amet ante. Ut elit est, tincidunt eu molestie a, tristique ut erat. Aenean felis erat, pharetra ut vestibulum vel, gravida eget lorem. Phasellus pellentesque dui et arcu tempus mattis dapibus metus pellentesque. Aenean non neque imperdiet sem vulputate vulputate. Vivamus aliquam placerat felis, sed tristique purus sollicitudin quis. Ut tellus eros, porttitor non venenatis convallis, tempus non metus. Nulla dictum sollicitudin posuere. Aenean metus elit, fermentum et adipiscing sed, ullamcorper sagittis lacus. Donec hendrerit auctor augue sed faucibus. Sed sit amet dui libero, vitae eleifend odio. Integer vitae enim ut quam bibendum consequat. Nam et urna eget quam pellentesque feugiat quis vitae diam. Fusce accumsan dolor eget nunc dapibus consequat tincidunt turpis congue. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Nam fermentum gravida justo, id aliquet nisi pretium congue. Donec imperdiet augue ut turpis dictum in pretium neque aliquam. Duis lorem ligula, tincidunt sit amet pellentesque eget, porttitor a sapien. Aenean eu elit risus, in ultricies eros. Fusce id orci ut purus scelerisque aliquet. Maecenas viverra rhoncus venenatis. Quisque condimentum laoreet ultrices. Donec convallis nisl a turpis consequat congue. Donec fermentum porta consectetur. Suspendisse potenti. Nam adipiscing egestas est, quis tempor lorem eleifend at. Aliquam ut sapien nec augue porttitor sollicitudin quis sit amet lectus. Curabitur ac est vel metus vehicula condimentum. Sed vestibulum dui ac ipsum tristique molestie. Integer sed risus eget ipsum auctor laoreet. Vestibulum euismod pharetra fermentum. Pellentesque in dolor lacus, non feugiat leo. Sed eget sem ut neque suscipit lobortis. Cras eu felis urna. Duis rutrum consequat lectus condimentum elementum. Quisque lobortis tortor ac mauris pretium consectetur. Praesent tincidunt eleifend arcu at iaculis. Suspendisse potenti. Sed vel arcu eros. Nunc eget erat congue dui malesuada tempor. Proin sit amet dapibus elit. Integer ut lorem diam, non ultrices ipsum. Praesent vitae metus augue. Aliquam vel venenatis mi. Suspendisse eu lectus quam, eu iaculis neque. A bevy of A-listers glammed it up at last night's gala, celebrating the new exhibit, "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity," co-chaired by Vogue's , and Gap's executive vice president of design, Patrick Robinson. "It took me a minute to catch my breath, when I got the call from asking me to take part," Robinson said as he arrived at what's often called "the party of the year" - one usually headlined by designers of pricier labels. The exhibit celebrates iconic American fashion trends, from 1890s Gibson girls (sporty, sleek), to '20s flappers (rebels) to '30s screen sirens (glam-o-rama). And modern-day versions of all three were easy to spot on the red carpet. The Gibson-ish gals: (in white Francisco Costa for ), (in a sweet white ), and Queens native (also wearing , but in black). The flappers: (in a brocade mini), Katy Perry (in a dress that actually lit up), and Gisele Bundchen rockin' black fringe and lotsa leg. The sirens: Too many to count. , in between school exams (in sleek white Burberry), of "Lost" (gray lace ), (teal ), (in gray tulle .) Then there's (in blush Heritage), (in for Gap, getting her heel caught on the steps in all that tulle) and (in gold ), with train trouble. But she had alongside to straighten it. "Look!" she exclaimed. "It doesn't get better than this!" ?Prosecutors: Ex-Miss Russia forged prescription Published: May 19, 2010 9:36 PM By COLLEEN LONG Associated Press Writer Photo credit: AP Anna Malova was arrested Tuesday afternoon by the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement at a pharmacy after she filled a prescription for 85 pills of the , prosecutors said. (Nov. 22, 2003) A former Miss Russia was charged Wednesday with forging a prescription for painkillers on a pad stolen from her psychiatrist's office.Anna?Malova was arrested Tuesday afternoon by the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement at a Manhattan pharmacy after she filled a prescription for 85 pills of the painkiller Vicodin, prosecutors said. A pharmacist there said she had come in with a similar...?Rumor has it Adele will design plus-size clothing line Tuesday September 18, 2012 4:07 PM By Nina Ruggiero Photo credit: AP British singer Adele is known for her powerful vocals and heartfelt lyrics, but it seems the mom-to-be's next steps might be into the fashion world.She made a glamorous appearance on the U.S. Vogue cover in March, and now Vogue UK is reporting she might be teaming up with Burberry's creative director, Christopher Bailey, to design a plus-size clothing line.The curvy 24-year-old has... ?Shop talk and sample sales Published: September 16, 2011 2:38 PM Sept. 20 and 22FOR THE CURE: Stop by the Chanel shoe trunk show, Sept. 20 at Saks Fifth Avenue, Walt Whitman Mall. On Sept. 22, get a Wacoal bra fitting, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; the $2 fee goes to Susan G. Komen for the Cure network, for cancer research; 631-350-1242. Sept. 22MEET DIANE VON FURSTENBERG, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at Bloomingdale's 59th Street store in Manhattan; 212-705-2000....?Snippet of Madonna's odd 'Give Me All Your Luvin' debuts on 'American Idol' Thursday February 2, 2012 8:48 PM By During the break on "American Idol," a snippet of Madonna's new video for "Give Me All Your Luvin'" debuts, with her in shades and a Burberry trenchcoat, wheeling a baby carriage down a suburban street. Then prancing through the neighborhood as cheerleaders (with cameos by Nicki Minaj and M.I.A.) and high school football players pay homage. OK... Mark Ingram, who works in the hotel where the auditions are being held, is next up with his coworkers behind him. Sings Stevie Wonder's "Overjoyed," and unfortunately, it's just not good. PHOTOS: You want to like him, he has a big voice and looks like he could be good -- but he was off-key and couldn't sing. "I love everything about you except the melody," says Steven Tyler. "I want to say yes to you so bad, but I can't," says Jennifer Lopez. He then belts out part of Wonder's "Part-Time Lover" and thankfully, they cut him off. Agree? Disagree? Tell us in the comments below, or on Twitter using #ndidol. Tags: , , ?Watch out for great fashion Wednesday March 10, 2010 7:00 AM By Virginia Dunleavy Photo credit: Handout March 13See the latest in trendy watches, including this G-Shock metallic blue digital watch, and others from Baby-G, Burberry, Fruitz, Marc by Marc Jacobs and more, 2-5 p.m., Bloomingdale’s Roosevelt Field; 516-873-2700. Get a gift with G-SHOCK and Victorinox purchases.Handout... ?Woman: Thief stole coat right off dog's back Published: February 10, 2010 8:01 PM By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A Brooklyn woman says a thief stole a doggie coat right off the back of her mild-mannered terrier.Donna McPherson says she tied up Lexie, her 10-year-old Westie, outside a Park Slope supermarket "for two minutes" while she bought milk.She heard a "funny bark." When McPherson went outside, she found the little white dog shivering. His green wool coat, with leather trim and belt, were...?Woman sought in theft of designer coats Originally published: January 10, 2012 7:09 AM Updated: January 10, 2012 8:11 AM By GARY DYMSKI Photo credit: SCPD police are seeking the public's help to identify the person who stole merchandise Jan. 2 from Bloomingdale's in the Mall in . Crime Stoppers and the Suffolk County's Second Squad detectives released photographs Tuesday of a woman wanted for stealing $6,000 worth of designer coats from a store in the Walt Whitman Shops.Police said the woman, whose photo was taken from video surveillance cameras, entered the Bloomingdale's at the Huntington Station mall at about 7 p.m. on Jan. 2.The woman took five Burberry...?When Bravo's "Project Runway" returns on Wednesday night, some lucky New Yorkers will have already had a peek at the chosen designers. Last Tuesday afternoon, the show's contestants held a preview fashion show on the plaza at Lincoln Center. Among the most promising fashionistas were the show's opener, Kevin Christiana, and closer, Carmen Webber, both of whom live in New York City. Christiana, 30, sports a shaggy haircut, beard and more than a couple tattoos, but his style of tailoring leans toward the European old school - he learned sewing from an Italian aunt. "I like taking a menswear inspiration and transforming it for women while giving it a little edge," he says. "I stay away from the whole ball-gown thing." His first runway look paired a classically geometric strapless dress with leathery leggings. Another outfit brought a touch of rock 'n' roll glitter to a weekend riding getup. Target audience: rebel socialites, haute Eurotrash and the cast of "Gossip Girl." North Carolina-born Webber, 37, cofounded New York's Sistahs of Harlem clothing line. Her wearable pieces walk the line between barrio and Burberry, mixing luxurious plaids with urban edge. "I'm never afraid to mix textures and colors," she says. "For fall, people always want to do chocolate brown, black, gray, but the cold weather is when you need colors to pop." Whether either designer will sur- vive the test of time and judges Heidi Klum, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia remains to be seen. Seasoned "Runway" contestant Santino Rice, sitting front row, branded both designers "strong," but added that they'll need not only glamour but guts. "It's just having the tenacity to deal with all the bull- that gets thrown at you," he said. "Also, if you're the kind of person who's like, 'Oh, no, they want me to cut this up?'" He shakes his head wearily. "Get your scissors out." ?Gay fashionistas, including Elton John's husband, David Furnish, were spitting mad last weekend after a bodyguard for Pharrell Williams cast them out of the hip-hop star's party lair in Milan. Furnish, actor Rupert Everett and Burberry designer Christopher Bailey were among the stylish gents chilling in the VIP lounge at a GQ bash when a member of Pharrell's posse announced the party's star wanted more ladies in his presence. Or, as the guy who delivered the eviction notice put it, "There's too much sausage [in the room]." "It was disgusting and blatantly homophobic," says our spy, who was with the group. "We just left and issued a fag-wa against Pharrell. We hope his next album tanks." Openly gay GQ editor Jim Nelson was allowed to stay, as was Everett, who was covering the Milan shows for Vanity Fair. Afterward, a mortified GQ publicist apologized to the outcasts and invited them back. They refused. Furnish confirmed to us that he'd been booted, but was impressed that Pharrell came over to sort things out at yesterday's Versace show. "Pharrell was totally unaware of [the slight]," said Furnish. "It all came from a security guard. Pharrell said he felt awful." A rep for Pharrell, whose new album, "In My Mind," hits stores July 25, maintained: "There were a lot of people in his greenroom after the performance and apparently security stopped letting people in, so he went out to the party to hang out." Meanwhile, back in New York, Jay-Z carried on his crusade against the snobby Champagne makers at Cristal when he arrived at his Radio City concert on Sunday with two bottles of Krug. "We all won," said the rapper-turned-Def Jam CEO, who launched a boycott against his once-beloved Cristal because of allegedly racist comments made by a company exec. "If someone don't want our business, we will take it somewhere else," he told us after his two-hour show that began with Jay rolling onstage in a 1996 Lexus GS. (The wheels were part of the 10th-anniversary celebration of his album "Reasonable Doubt.") Joining Jay onstage were The Roots' ?uestlove, who conducted a 60-piece orchestra, a fresh-out-of-ear-surgery Foxy Brown (a little off-key, but still looking hot) and Hova's stunning gal pal, Beyonce Knowles, who dueted with him on "Can't Knock the Hustle." Semi-retired Jay, who announced he'll be heading off on a world tour, was toasted at the Rainbow Room after-party by Alicia Keys, Naomi Campbell, Chris Tucker, LeBron James (in a seersucker hoodie), L.?Forget Fashion Week. This season, designers are all about the boob tube. Long before "," fashion and television were feeding off each other, but it's never quite clear who's the chicken and who's the egg in this relationship. "I think it's symbiotic," explains fashion director and "" host . "We're not just drinking the Kool-Aid here. But sometimes it does seem like fashion is one big 'Project Runway' episode, and everyone got the same assignment." And this season, it's all about what's on the small screen. So what TV-inspired styles should we be copying in the coming months? "For spring and summer, there's a lot of bright colors, florals and ladylike clothing with a bit of bohemian twist," explains Garcia. "Fall will be a lot heavier, with Gothic, medieval, romantic looks." The key to keeping these looks fresh and not too costume-y are the accessories. "The newness is more about the jewels and the accessorizing. There was a lot of jewelry - both costume and real on the runways. With the recession, it's a way to update your wardrobe more easily instead of buying a whole head-to-toe look." For more info on spring looks, check out the May issue of Elle magazine, on newsstands tomorrow.THE TUDORS THE SHOW: This historical bodice-ripper just started its second season March 30, and stars as the lusty . "I am obsessed with this show," admits Nina Garcia. "I was sick with bronchitis and watched a marathon and now I it and stay up late to watch it." She adds, "If I had to choose anyone's wardrobe, it would be 's. I just don't want to get beheaded." THE LOOK: "This look is very dramatic," says Garcia. "We're seeing lots of blouses with high, Elizabethan necklines, and jewelry reminiscent of armor." Achieving this style really comes down to two things: luxurious fabrics and powerful accessories. Go for heavier fabrics like velvet and brocade in rich jewel tones like emerald, sapphire and ruby red. Phot (top right) - Dress: Derercuny, $2,640 at derecuny.com Shoes: Report Signature, $275 at reportshoes.com Necklace: , $1,100 at Ring: Fallon, $92 at Barneys GOSSIP GIRL THE SHOW: Freshman CW series "Gossip Girl," which returns with new episodes April 21, is already a hit with teens and adults alike - in part because of the characters' prep school chic style. "This is a show that's clearly taking its cues from what's happening in fashion," says Garcia. ?Reality show curiosity Bobby Brown has been denying Lowdown's exclusive that his 14-year-old marriage to Whitney Houston is in trouble. The 36-year-old crooner told People mag that his 42-year-old wife was "definitely upset" and interrogated him over Lowdown's report that he flirted with young women at a concert, and told them: "We ain't together no more. We're getting a divorce." "I joke a lot," Brown explained. So maybe he was joking when - according to actress Tamala Jones - he crudely propositioned her during Nick Cannon's birthday party at an L.A. bowling alley. Brown was "drunk and jaws just clicking and clacking back and forth," Jones says in the latest issue of Smooth magazine. "He came over and said, 'What's up?' ... He picks me up and he's like, 'I heard you been in Atlanta, girl. Why you don't come and see me? Don't you know I always wanted to f- you?' I'm like, 'Boy you better put me down! I am dating somebody that's in the business, and he's from Atlanta. ... You know my dude and I know your wife.' ... He said he wasn't even with Whitney anymore." During a second close encounter, Jones says, "I got snatched back. ... It was Bobby; he pulled me by my hair and kind of like pulled me back. I was like, 'You better stop playing,' and I walked on. Then he yanked me back harder and now my whole body tripped back and I'm 'bout to fall. I turn around and he pushes me. I push him back! Then he pushes me again. So I sock-push his a-!" She says Bobby's brother Tommy broke it up. But yesterday, Tommy Brown told Lowdown: "I have no comment on that. Bobby won't have a comment on that. ... Have a good day." Earl-y end for aristos' marriage? It ain't easy being rich and titled while staying happily married. Lowdown hears that "It" couple Rufus and Sally Albemarle (above) - the 10th Earl and Countess of Albemarle - have separated. So have mega-wealthy gadabouts Nathaniel and Alex Kramer. At the Museum of Natural History's recent Winter Dance, the 40-year-old Rufus was being fawned over by various lovely ladies - just another night of New York party-hopping - while 42-year-old Sally was apparently back in London. The Albemarles, whose May 2001 Havana wedding was splashed over a 10-page spread in Vanity Fair's international edition, have a 3-year-old son (whose second birthday was celebrated with a glitzy party at New York's Burberry store). The Kramers, meanwhile, are coping with a "pretty bad" split of their own, says a Lowdown spy. The 45-year-old Nathaniel, grandson of Allen & Co. founder Charles Allen Jr. and a Tony-winning Broadway producer, married the 35-year-old Alex - his second leggy-blond wife - in 1998 at his parents' Palm Beach mansion. No word on who's staying at the couple's sprawling East Side co-op. None of the parties responded to Lowdown's detailed messages. QUICK & DIRTY SUMMERS OF DISCONTENT That was BBC correspondent Stephanie Flanders, who was a Clinton-era Treasury Department adviser, neatly summarizing yesterday the sinister forces that pushed her onetime boss, hard-charging former Treasury secretary Larry Summers, from the presidency of an Ivy League university: "It seems the White House, the Treasury Department and the entire international -financial system can cope with the Summers management style, but the fragile flowers of -Harvard cannot." MEAT OF THE MATTER PETA President Ingrid Newkirk is using scare tactics against Universal Studios, whose home entertainment division is hyping the DVD release of the Uma Thurman (l.)/Meryl Streep comedy "Prime" by sending out 100 4-pound boxes of beef on dry ice - each containing six prime rib filets and six burger patties. "What a limp excuse for a PR stunt," Newkirk told Lowdown yesterday. "Many men, in the 'prime' of their lives, find that eating meat lets them down in the bedroom. Yes, eating meat is linked to impotence because the fat and cholesterol in meat eventually clog the arteries to all organs - not just a man's heart." SNARK ATTACK! PR divo Ronn Torossian misses no opportunity to get his name in the paper. But I bet that Martha Stewart - once she stops gagging - will have no trouble rejecting his kind offer of a PR apprenticeship so she won't get cold-cocked in the future by Donald Trump. "Watching this public feud unfold," Torossian says, "makes me and my staff cringe." Touching, I'm sure - but the last time I checked, Ronn, Martha was a near-billionaire with a corporate empire and a TV show named after her. And you??Look out -- there may be a new Burberry babe on the block.The 24 year-old singer is rumored to be collaborating with on a plus-sized collection, reports .The voluptuous chanteuse, now pregnant with her first child, has yet to confirm or deny the rumors. Reps for the tony brand have yet to respond to the News' query for confirmation.Adele has been one of the few curvy ladies able to wear the brand's tartans and plaids -- in the U.S., sizes for apparel tend to stop at an XL or a size 14.Head designer Christopher Bailey created looks for Adele for the 2011 Brit Awards and MTV Video Music Awards."I've met Christopher Bailey a few times," she’s reportedly said in the past. "I've always loved Burberry. I remember saving for three years to get my first bag before I got signed."Adele has made a habit of taking questions from the media regarding her weight in stride."I've seen people where it rules their lives, you know, who want to be thinner or have bigger boobs, and how it wears them down," she told last year. "And I just don't want that in my life.""I have insecurities of course, but I don't hang out with anyone who points them out to me."Burberry has tended to stick with British beauties of the slender variety for its advertising campaigns.Past faces and bodies for the brand have included models such as Kate Moss, Agyness Deyn, Jourdan Dunn, and the actress .lgoldwert@nydailynews.com?The entire SoHo store - both floors - of Aero is on sale through Saturday. Furniture (vintage and new), bedding, accessories, etc. - everything is 20% to 50% off. Reed slipper chair upholstered in natural canvas and saddle leather, originally $2,475, is $1,350; Aero suede tote bag with embossed leather lining, originally $350, is $210; oversize batik floor pillow, originally $350, is $175. Aero, 132 Spring St. (between Greene & Wooster Sts.); (212) 966-4700. Hours: Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. GET GORGEOUS Look glamorous while protecting your skin this summer - at the beach, on a boat or even in the pool - with glominerals products. Made with pharmaceutical-grade antioxidants, natural, high-pigment minerals and broad spectrum UV protection, gloPressed Powder, gloProtective Liquid Base and gloBronze make for a flawless complexion, and improve health and appearance of skin by delivering concentrated vitamins and essential fatty acids to nourish and protect skin. Glominerals products, usually $8.75-$35, are available through dermatologists, spas and boutiques nationwide. Clydes of Madison will give 10% off to readers of this column who bring it to the store. Clydes of Madison, 926 Madison Ave. (between 73rd & 74th Sts.); (212) 744-5050. Hours: Mon.-Wed. & Fri., 9 a.m.-7:30 p.m.; Thurs., 9 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sat 9 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sun., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. CERAMIC Only 10 minutes from Manhattan, just over the 59th St. Bridge in Astoria, Queens, is Terrafirma, the ceramics studio where artist Ellen Evans designs and produces unique handcrafted tabletop accessories and dinnerware, as well as plant containers and vases. Beginning tomorrow, through Friday, many of the items are up to 60% off. (All Terrafirma products are food, oven and dishwasher safe.) To see the various designs, visit www.terrafirmaceramics.com. Planters in various shapes are $30-$65; dinnerware, usually $18-$28, is $8-$16. Terrafirma Ceramics Studio, 35-35 35th St. (between 35th & 36th Aves., third floor); (718) 937-7515. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. DESIGNER DEALS Tomorrow through May 18, Shelly and Renee Productions is having its semi-annual Big Sale, featuring more than 30 European and American designers (up to size 16). Evening wear, outerwear, sportswear, shoes, handbags, etc., are up to 70% off. A percentage of the sale will benefit the Evelyn Lauder Breast Cancer Research Center. Missoni skirts, usually $490, are $99; Michael Casey gowns, usually $2,200, are $390. S&H Productions, The Crown Building, 730 Fifth Ave. (between 56th & 57th Sts., suite 604); (732) 539-8750. Hours: Mon.-Thurs., 9:30 a.m.-7 p.m.; Fri. and next Tues., 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. OLDIES BUT GOODIES If you haven't been to the annual POSH Sale, the Lighthouse International's annual event, you don't know what you've missed. This year, it runs Thursday through next Sunday, and if you hanker after Armani, Chanel, Ralph Lauren Prada, Burberry, Hermes and the like as well as other gently used - and sometimes new - fashions for women, men and children, come early and pick them up at a fraction of the original prices. POSH Sale, Lighthouse, 110 E. 60th St. (between Lexington & Park Aves.); (212) 821-9445. Hours: Thurs.-Sun., 11 a.m.-7 p.m. CAREER WEAR Harve Benard is having its semi-annual warehouse sample and stock sale of women's career and casual sportswear Thursday through next Sunday. Harve Benard, 125 Delawanna Ave., Clifton, N.J.; (973) 249-1230. Hours: Thurs., 3-9 p.m.; Fri., 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sat., 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. To be listed, please fax DETAILED information to Mila Andre at (212) 210-2203 or E-mail mandre@edit.nydailynews.com at least TWO WEEKS in advance.?The ladies at the Met's lived up to Monday night's theme of "The American Woman," showing an eye for fashion and a knack for thrift. arrived at the annual fashion fete in an original, but dished to us that her BFF has been doing some serious bargain shopping as of late."On Sunday, we were at a party at 's house and Gayle came wearing an that she had bought at an outlet!" said the talk-show queen. "She didn't know Oscar was coming to the party."But King wasn't embarrassed by her off-the-rack purchase. "I'll be wearing another Oscar dress that I bought at the same outlet to the '' premiere," she laughed.And surely isn't stuck up about style, either. The "", all dressed up in , ditched her designer duds for the gala's afterparties."Blake showed up at the Boom Boom Room in a white T-shirt, sequined mini and ," says one partygoer.She wasn't alone: , who rocked to the Met bash, was spotted in jeans and a black tank at Boom Boom. , who sported early on, donned an identical after-hours outfit.But perhaps the most noticeable aspect of Sienna's ensemble wasn't her casual couture, but a rather shiny accessory: on-again, off-again beau .After months of keeping their relationship hush-hush, our spies at the bash say that the two "couldn't keep their hands off each other" throughout the evening.Other ladies kicking up - and off - their heels after the Met gala include , and , who were all spotted dancing -barefoot at the bash. Meanwhile, Oprah boogied on a banquette nearby, but, by all accounts, she kept her -footwear on.?When a batch?of watches went missing, investigators smelled terrorism - but their noses ultimately led them to a ring that peddled knockoff perfume.Port Authority police raided wholesaler Metro Perfume on Wednesday, arrested nine people and seized more than $1 million worth of counterfeit merchandise, sources said.It was the result of a probe that began two months ago when 27 Casio watches vanished from a cargo shipment somewhere between and a warehouse.Cheap and dependable, Casio watches are the timepiece of choice for many terrorists; 1993 bomber used them as explosive timers. The report of their theft aroused concern among detectives who wondered if they were targeted by jihadists.But tracking the stolen timepieces didn't take Port Authority investigators to terror cells, but instead to a crowded shop on Broadway where designer scents sell for as much as half off retail, sources said.Undercover cops went to Metro Perfume on Wednesday, posing as discount-hungry customers, and bought knockoff watches and perfume, sources said.When they announced a raid, they discovered more than 100,000 counterfeit items, including Dolce & Gabbana and perfumes and watches.Sprinkled among the fakes were some legitimate goods, authorities said.As police were raiding the store south of , a truck pulled up with a new shipment of counterfeit goods, a source said.Nine store employees were arrested and were waiting to bearraigned in .?A small-time alt-rock band from , is attempting to turn the tragic death of into fame and fortune for itself through a macabre PR stunt. Biteboy, a group that lists convicted felon/boy-band impresario as a consultant, has penned a tune calling for a confession from , Caylee’s mother and the prime suspect in the 2-year-old’s killing.“My son Ricky [Namey, the band’s lead singer] lives across the street from the , where Casey’s being kept,” Rick Namey told us. “That gave them the idea for this song.”Poppa Namey, the band’s manager and a “pal” of Pearlman’s, sees nothing wrong with abhorrently exploiting the slaying of the tot, because he thinks Biteboy is essentially a newspaper. Um, what? “[Caylee and Casey Anthony are] the biggest news story in the world, and Biteboy writes news. We’re media,” Namey said. Asked how a band could be considered a media organization, Namey responded, “ won the . Music is media.” (Namey is referring to an honorary Pulitzer that Dylan received in April.) “When you put out a record, it’s called a pressing. So we’re press,” Namey continued. “Biteboy is the same thing as a newspaper. Our songs are our op-ed pages. And freedom of the press is for everyone, man.”But Biteboy has gone even further in its quest for attention. Namey said the band did a “roll-up” at Casey Anthony’s house when she was out of jail. “That’s when we show up on a trailer, play our song and split before the cops come, since they never give us permits,” Namey said. “Biteboy taunted her to do a benefit for missing children.” He had no response when asked if he thinks his marketing tactic is vile, and instead stated that he’s looking to point out the “hypocrisy and double standards of media.We consider Biteboy to be media. So why is it cheap and tawdry when we cover a story, but not when does? She’s making millions in advertising from covering the same story.”But if Biteboy smashed that double standard, who would ever care about its shock tactics?“There may be validity to that,” Namey admitted. “I don’t know if we would trade unfair criticism for being ignored. The basic idea is to get attention, no matter how we get it.” In that case, you’re welcome. SCENE & HEARD enjoying a plate of veal parmigiana at the Palm Tribeca... , ? & hanging out together at Rose Bar... at a viewing of his “True Beauty” reality show at ? and shushing the crowd by yelling, “I want to hear everything I have to say on the show!” does a fierce impersonation, and now the “” comedian is ready to tackle one more celeb: . “I just have to give her a voice,” the “Bride Wars” co-writer tells us. “She’s got a lot to say, a lot of opinions. She’s very smart and she can wear that coat like no other.” She adds, “But I think I’m going to make her arrive in a spaceship.”DID ANYONE REALLY BELIEVE could actually snag perpetual bachelor ? Paparazzi sure went wild when the two were spotted together at ’s, but we hear Paris actually spent most of the night cozied up to . Sources close to Maisel deny the two are dating. ? WICKED WHISPERS: Which reality star announced in the middle of a business lunch, “Whoops, just got my period!” ? and then kept eating as if nothing had happened? ?Something old, something new, something borrowed, something . . frugal? Savvy brides are finding ways to cut wedding costs without sacrificing style. "We did everything except for the catering and location for under $1,000," said , 36, a graphic designer and fine artist from , who got married at the Boathouse last September. "My dress was a $68 dress from Target [Mizrahi] that I customized," she said. Her friends DJ-ed and took the photos, and the most expensive part was for her husband, Paul? - a suit, bought on sale at Syms for $500. "I made hundreds of paper flowers for decoration, did my own stationery, made matchbox favors, got over 100 candles for about $70," she said. Weart wasn't the only bride to put her creativity to work. Sarissa Singletary-Phillips, 32, a Clinton Hill fashion stylist, forgot the florist and took care of centerpieces and flowers herself when she got married last September at the Prospect Park Picnic House. "I used curly willow branches that I bought from the flower district by the bunch, used pillar candles that I found online at a wholesale price and beaded garland from Michael's," she said, adding that her favors were homemade candy apples, purchased in bulk by a caterer and prepared with a recipe found online. Phillips also saved money by having a wine bar instead of top shelf liquor, had a friend DJ and, instead of renting several limos, she rented one party bus. "We used the party bus as a place to lounge and chill out before the reception," she said, pointing out that there is no bridal suite at the venue. Also married at the Picnic House last September, Eric-Renner Smith and Maya Frank-Levine, both 27 and from , were happy with their choice. "This was much cheaper than some of the other places we'd been considering, even the all-inclusive types," said Smith, a teacher. The couple used Naturally Delicious as a caterer. "We were happy to splurge on good food," Smith said, "because we'd saved money on the location and I wasn't too keen on fattening the pockets of some catering hall owner." They also liked the familiarity of the location. "Prospect Park is something I use nearly every week," Smith said, "and I felt that, as long as the money had to be spent, I was glad it was going to something I believe in." Experts insist there are plenty of ways to save on weddings. "If you have the time, you have ways to save," said , a former owner/chef of an off-premise catering business, who has overseen thousands of weddings. "Any wedding benefits from having flowers on a buffet table and also on individual tables," she said. Roses, tulips and orchids are the best picks, she said, because they are not as delicate. "You can buy a clay pot anywhere, sponge paint it to whatever color your theme is and plant an orchid in the pot," LaViolette said. "You pay $25 instead of $75, and it's simple and beautiful." She also said, if you have a fall wedding, you can use gourds and pumpkins in a basket instead of flowers. "Other brides have grown wheat grass in little square wooden pots," she said. "Then, they put pieces of the turf on the table and decorate it with votive candles as a centerpiece." , 30, of , did just that. "My friend bought all seasonal flowers and branches and supplemented the decor with other things like bird houses," said Schwartzberg, adding the Boat House is, "so beautiful that it doesn't need to be dripping with flowers, anyway." Schwartzberg also cut down the cost of her wedding last October by getting a dress "off the rack" at for $500, doing her own makeup, eliminating favors and a bridal party and sending out an e-mail Save the Date. But she didn't stop there. "We bought thank-you cards at Target and rented a set of speakers and used an instead of a DJ," she said. "We booked a photographer late, which made him more flexible with his rates and had gorgeous filled cupcakes instead of a wedding cake, which saves about $400." To make the ceremony more personal, one of her friends got ordained online and performed the ceremony. Schwartzberg isn't the only one with great ideas. , 40, who works for the , got married this past June at the Picnic House. "Even before the economic crisis, we had a small-budget wedding due to our small nonprofit salaries," said Fermiole, whose husband works at the in . "We asked our very talented friends and family - in lieu of gifts - that they contribute in some small way to our day." Friends made the wedding cake, played the viola during the ceremony, took photographs and guided guests to the Picnic House. One friend also had their band play during the cocktail hour and Fermiole had help planting herbs in clay pots that had triple use - decorations, centerpieces and favors. In the end, the efforts were all worthwhile. "Our wedding was beautiful, personal and the gifts of time and talent made it even more so," Fermiole said. Here is a list of venues where you can get hitched without spending a bundle:? ? Parks You can get married in any park in the borough and have your reception there with a Parks Department permit. If you have less than 20 people, a permit is not needed. If you have between 20 and 100, a permit is only $25. Taking photographs and shooting video in parks is also free. Remember, alcoholic beverages and amplified sound are never allowed in the park at any time. Call 311 for details. Fulton Ferry Landing The Fulton Ferry Landing and the Brooklyn Promenade cost nothing to get married on, and no permit is required. Prospect Park Picnic House The Prospect Park Picnic House can hold up to 175 guests for dinner and dancing and 220 for cocktail parties. It is available for rental in eight-hour blocks, including tables and chairs. The fee is $4,250 plus $500 refundable security. If you plan your wedding in the winter months of January through March 2010, you get a $500 seasonal discount. Call (718) 287-6215 for more info. Palm House If you have a daytime reception at the Palm House at the , you'll save about $1,600 on weekdays and $2,000 on weekends for the rental and about $20 on catering fees per person. Weekday receptions between November and February are $1,250. On weekends, the price is $1,500. Weekdays through March and April are $1,875; weekends are $2,500. Weekdays from May to October are $2,500; weekends $3,125. The venue holds up to 400 for a cocktail reception and 300 for dinner and dancing. The price includes a five-hour affair, open bar, food, linens and more. Call (718) 398-2400 for more info. The ceremony-only fee is $350 for up to 50 people. Only one wedding is done each Saturday and Sunday, between 9 and 10 a.m. Call (718) 623-7220 for more info. Sahara 2337 Coney Island Ave., (718) 376-8594 "The difference between us and a catering hall is that we do not charge for the room, just for the food served." Pay by the plate, $33 plus tax and plus service, maximum $50 a plate. They serve a full menu, salad, appetizers, main course and dessert, with 10 different menus. Rooms hold up to 120 people. Ask for Mercil. Il Fornetto 2902 Emmons Ave., (718) 332-8494 You can have your reception right on the water in . You'll pay up to $60 a plate, and they have options to add top-shelf liquor to the party for $18 per person, passed hors d'oeuvres and other extra options. Astoria Caterers 1870 Bath Ave., (718) 996-8126 This hall gives you a reception with all the trimmings. Food, music and an emcee is $60 per person. If you want decorations and centerpieces, it is $100 per person. The hall holds up to 270 people. Old Stone House Old Stone House accommodates 80 people standing, and 60 seated. When rented with the first floor gallery of the house, it can hold up to 120 for buffet and cocktails. You can also rent a tent to expand capacity. The fee to rent is $200 for four hours on Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. plus $75 for each additional hour. There is also a $400 surcharge for weekend/evening rentals. Call (718) 768-3195 for more info. Prospect Park Boathouse? The Prospect Park Boathouse can hold up to 110 guests for dinner and dancing indoors, 200 for cocktail parties and 300 with optional tenting outside. The rental fee is $4,000 and you must use outside catering by Moveable Feast Catering. They can be reached at (718) 965-2900. The Boathouse also offers a ceremony-only option for weekend mornings for a maximum of 40 guests for $750. If it rains, you can be moved up to the balcony under an awning. Call (718) 287-5252, ext. 102, for more info. ?The sun had not yet come up, and was practically empty at 6:30 a.m. on a chilly day last January, but the Hermes boutique in Terminal 2E was open and the saleslady was more than happy to show me the putty-colored Jypsiere bag advertised in the window for 4,600 euros. Did I mention it was 6:30 in the morning? I hadn't even had a cafe creme yet and the bank where I hoped to change a pocketful of euros back into pathetic dollars was still not staffed. But there I was, already clocking 12 percent discounts at Hermes, , and . Once limited to tax-free cigarettes, vodka, and the , the $37 billion global duty-free shopping business has taken on a whole new look since the concept made its debut in 's in 1947. "If you walk through any airport you would think the world was run by ten brands," says -based Italian designer , referring to the plethora of Dior, , Prada, and boutiques popping up alongside every runway. One of Valli's discoveries on a recent trip to was a trove of Panpuri beauty products at the airport. Of course, fragrances and beauty products have long been a staple of most duty-free shops. I remember stocking up on such hard-to-find French pharmacy products as Embryolisse and Avene at Orly airport in the mid 1990's. But these days, those quaint pharmacies and organic beauty shops are often overshadowed by the more glamorous luxury brands. Much of the growth in duty-free shopping in the past 10 years can be attributed to security measures that force travelers to arrive earlier and therefore spend more time at airports. Once they've cleared security?potentially enduring the dreaded pat-down?fliers now find themselves in a virtual luxury mall where the doors open at dawn and often don't close until almost midnight. My friend , a fragrance executive based in , clued me in to the bargains and services now available when she regaled me with stories about tracking down a pair of "sold-out" Gucci boots at 's Malpensa airport, shopping at the Valentino boutique in 's Fiumicino Terminal 3, or calling ahead to her Chanel salesperson at 's Terminal 3 to make sure they had a certain dress in her size. "It's my obsession. If I could be anywhere in the world, I'd like to be in Terminal 5 at Heathrow," she says, laughing. That's where she finds Smythson diary refills, Boots chemist vitamins, and a great Elemis spa. regularly flies in and out of Geneva, , , Milan's Malpensa, JFK, and Heathrow, and often does her shopping at Venice's airport. "In Zurich there's a whole side of duty-free that's open until ten p.m. seven days a week, which is a real convenience," she says. "If you arrive late from a trip you can still buy food to take home." The best duty-free shopping really does depend on the destination. 's has a great selection of wines, Zurich has a branch of the Swiss chocolatier Sprungli, and has Hediard, where Ratti has been known to buy a cheese plate, "if I'm feeling brave and can sit with it on my lap on the plane!" The ne plus ultra of duty-free shopping can be found in Hong Kong?"like 's Fifth Avenue in an airport"?that Ratti says is worth the detour. Even in , on the way home from a safari, Ratti discovered a store selling beautiful locally produced children's pajamas and caftans. In my latest early-morning spree I caressed piles of brightly colored cashmere sweaters at , ogled 's white-gold Ballon Bleu watch, and even tried on Van Cleef & Arpels's long necklace. The Prada shop had a black-and-white-checked floor just like the one in its Galleria Vittorio Emanuele shop in Milan, a detail that seemed to make a black nylon trolley for $1,631 all the more alluring. I considered buying a few chic Prada pouches in rich shades of fuchsia and tangerine as last-minute gifts. And I even wandered into a kids' store selling and Bonpoint. Seven in the morning still seemed awfully early. Instead I settled on a T-shirt for my daughter. ?“Gossip Girl” star and Hollywood hunk got married Sunday in the Palmetto State.Lively, 25, and Reynolds, 35, traded “I dos” in front of friends and loved ones at the Boone Hall Plantation in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., according to People magazine.Florence Welch, of the band Florence and the Machine, sang at the couple’s reception, which took place under a large white tent at the suburban Charleston venue, sources told the glossy.About 70 guests attended ? all checking their cell phones at the tent entrance.The newlyweds planned the wedding in just one month. Lively asked for days off from the “Gossip Girl” set just three weeks ago, a source told the Daily News.Lively walked down the aisle in a Marchesa gown, while Reynolds was decked out in a Burberry suit with custom-made leather suspenders created by designer Christopher Bailey, reports Their $3,000 wedding cake, baked by Maggie Austin Cakes in Maryland, was driven eight hours and across three state lines to the reception, The News’ source said.The minister who married them was flown in from Connecticut.Manhattan jewelry designer Lorraine Schwartz made the couple’s rings, the source said.Reynolds and Lively met while filming the 2011 film “Green Lantern.” They have been dating about a year and bought a home together in Bedford, Westchester County, earlier this year.It’s the first marriage for Lively, who has previously been linked to her “Gossip Girl” costar Penn Badgley.Reynolds was married for two years to actress Scarlett Johansson. They split in 2010, shortly after he was named People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive.”Locals suspected something was up when Lively’s mom and sister were spotted over the weekend having dinner in Charleston with Bette Midler.Midler was among the guests invited to the wedding and also sang at the reception, E! News reported.?The estate of is suing British-based clothes company Burberry over use of the Hollywood icon's name in what it said was an advertising campaign.But Burberry has filed a countersuit, insisting it did not breach Bogart's rights by using a photo of Bogart wearing one of its trenchcoats in the movie "Casablanca," and seeking damages from the actor's estate.Both companies filed their legal action in the United States on Wednesday, a couple of weeks after the estate raised the issue with the classic English clothing company.The Bogart Estate filed its action in Los Angeles, saying Burberry used the trench coat picture from the final scene of Oscar-winning 1942 classic "Casablanca," on Twitter and Facebook, without its permission."Just as Burberry needed to obtain ( actress) 's consent before using her name and image to promote Burberry's brand and products, it needed to obtain permission from the Bogart Estate to use Humphrey Bogart's name," said lawyer Michael O. Crain."Burberry's business hinges on respect for its own intellectual property rights, so it is quite surprising to see that it apparently has so little respect for the clear rights of others."But Burberry counter-sued in New York, saying the photo was licensed from photo agency Corbis for editorial use. It said Burberry first contacted it about the issue on April 10.Burberry said the image was used in the context of a historic "timeline" of the British company, used on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, showing the development of its "culture, products and people" over the decades."Burberry's use of this photo and description were intended to reflect on the long history, significance and influence of Burberry fashion in society," said the Burberry lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by AFP."Burberry's use of the image... was not directly connected to the sale of any merchandise, but rather was a historical positioning of the image within an educational project along with numerous other photographs...", son of the Hollywood legend, was not convinced, saying: "This is such an incredibly disappointing and disrespectful action by Burberry."Apparently they believe a shoe company can advertise the fact that wore its brand while jogging down the street, or a beverage company can claim drank its product in one of his movies -- all without even asking, much less obtaining, the actors' permission."Wouldn't that be a nice, clever way to get Hollywood icons to endorse or advertise products without paying compensation or, more importantly, obtaining permission?He added: "What's next, a cigarette company can start an advertising program claiming Bogie smoked its brand, and there's nothing our family can do about it?"Bogart, who also starred in films including 1941's "The Maltese Falcon" and 1951's "The African Queen," died in 1957 aged 57.?Shopping on Thanksgiving weekend is like gambling when you're in Vegas. You just gotta. Shoppers across New York City continued to hit the stores yesterday in pursuit of holiday bargains, setting the pace for what retailers predict will be a modest improvement over last year's dreary sales figures. "People seem to be in a good mood. There's an energy in the air," said Joy Werner, who was shopping with a friend at Filene's Basement on Sixth Ave. in Chelsea. Werner, of Manhattan, said she chose to shop yesterday rather than Black Friday - the traditional kickoff to the holiday shopping season - because she hoped to avoid the stifling crowds and the rainy weather. ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based firm that monitors shopping nationwide, estimated yesterday that Black Friday retail sales totaled $7.2 billion, a 4.8% jump over last year. The day after Thanksgiving earned its nickname because it's traditionally when retail balance sheets move from red to black. Black Friday shopping generates as much as 40% of annual revenues and nearly all the year's profits for key gift destinations such as toy stores and apparel chains. "It's a very good start to the holiday season," said Barbara Thompson, a managing partner at ShopperTrak. "That's the best raise we've had in a while." Thompson cited the improving economy and good weather as reasons for the sales surge. "People are out shopping," she said. "The sales started earlier this year." At Bed, Bath & Beyond on Sixth Ave., Jennifer Andrews and her family were pushing two carts chock full of bags. "These happen to all be necessities," said Andrews, 38. "The gifts, I'm doing the majority online." Andrews said she was underwhelmed by the bargains. "I didn't find them very impressive," she said. Anne Keating, a senior vice president at Bloomingdale's, said the company's flagship store in Manhattan had an "excellent" sales day Friday. Cashmere and Burberry items were the top sellers. "It was so busy," she said. "It was amazing." Keating said the number of tourists visiting the store Friday was unusually high. Because Thanksgiving fell so late in November this year, as last year, there will be only four weeks of shopping between turkey day and Christmas. Thomas Wendorff, executive director at Century 21, located next to Ground Zero, said he expects this holiday season to compare favorably to last year's. "It's a very, very busy store. We're anticipating a good Christmas season," he said. Century 21 was closed for several months following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. "This area of the city is coming back," he said.?A chic ex-con was collared Tuesday just hours after he robbed a Park Avenue bank - the thirteenth heist he’s committed since April, police said.Dubbed the “Burberry Bandit” for his fashionable threads, Cornell Neilly would calmy walk into the banks donning designer sunglasses, pass a note to the teller and flee with cash, police sources said.Neilly, 21, who lives in the Amsterdam Houses near Columbus Circle with his mom, never wore the same outfit twice during any of the stick-ups, the sources added.He was sometimes caught on camera wearing Burberry duds, the sources said.Neilly spent six months in state prison for drug sales before he was released in March 2009, records show, before heading back in August, 2010 for selling drugs again.He was released just ten months ago and placed on parole until August 2013, state records indicate.Police nabbed him as he waltzed around Harlem on W. 128th Street and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard on Tuesday - a short time after he held up a Chase bank on Park Avenue in Midtown, police sources said.?Burberry, known for its distinctive status-symbol plaids and classic styles, is suiting up to put its own shares on the public market. British parent company Great Universal Stores said yesterday that its Burberry unit will sell up to a quarter of its business in a partial IPO sometime in the next 18 months. "We've reinvented Burberry in the last three years - taking it from a slightly older, traditional style business to an international luxury brand," said David Tyler, Great Universal's chief financial officer. The thinking is that a partial stock sale will help pump up Burberry's market value and in turn enrich majority owner Great Universal, which has struggled recently with other business groups. "Now the question is whether or not they'll sell the whole thing before the whole trend for luxury labels goes wrong again," said Nicholas Bubb, a retail analyst at SG Securities. Locally, Burberry has plans to expand its 57th Street location through the addition of a next-door property. The new store, with twice the selling area, is scheduled to open in late 2002?Burberry won $180 million in Manhattan Federal Court against China-based counterfeiters who used a sophisticated and ever-expanding online store network.The two default judgments rival the $164 million award that luxury lifestyle brand Tory Burch won last year in Manhattan Federal Court in a nearly-identical case.Earlier this month, the company behind Ugg boots was also awarded $686 million by a federal judge in Chicago against rogue online websites.Judge Thomas Griesa signed the order in Burberry’s favor late Thursday, providing an important win for the long-standing British company known for its iconic plaid pattern and trench coats.Burberry also won custody of 236 domain names the counterfeiters were using to sell knockoffs. Burberry now has permission to move to shut down new websites the counterfeiting network tries to establish in the future.In a statement, Burberry said it was pleased with the outcome: “Counterfeit goods area a major industry issue, impacting brands and customers alike, and we appreciate that the Court understands the importance of protecting brands against such infringements.”Burberry said in court papers the infringing websites were selling hundreds of shoddy replica Burberry products ? including handbags, scarves, shoes, wallets, belts, ties, outerwear and sunglasses.The online stores copied Burberry’s trademark, logo and advertising images in a deliberate attempt to make it appear that the online stores were authorized retailers of Burberry products, court papers said.?The nation watched her grow up - and now we've witnessed 's fairy-tale wedding.And like true American royalty, she wore a show-stopper of a dress.The former First Daughter wed in bucolic upstate in a breathtaking custom gown that managed to pull off every bride's dream: modern, elegant and timeless at once.Arm in arm with her dad, she walked down the aisle in a classic A-line strapless gown made of silk organza with a tulle bodice draped on the bias. All the froth was weighted with a beaded belt.For a rustic touch, the silk organza skirt was layered and raw at the edges, crafted with a trendy technique called laser cutting.The total effect, bridal fashion experts agree: perfection."Chelsea looked every inch a modern-day princess," says , editor in chief of . "Chelsea was the epitome of bridal style today - effortless ease, yet polished and confident."Clinton likely collaborated closely with Wang, the legendary bridal designer who has outfitted celebs from to for their nuptials.The stars choose her because, well, she knows how to make a bride look beautiful. When married in October, her lace Vera Wang gown covered her shoulders - and set off a frenzy for sleeves that resonated throughout the bridal world.Clinton's gorgeous gown will likely send brides in a sprint to emulate her style, looking to incorporate raw edges and layers in their own wedding-day wear."Every year, there's something new and different, but the impact of celebrity is that it tells brides they can look classic and still incorporate trends," says , 's fashion editor. "It encourages them to take more chances."Wang outfitted the bridal party, too (although her mom, , wore ), while Mezvinsky kept it classy - in a tuxedo.For a groom, simply looking handsome is never out of style.?Is China suffering from bling fatigue? The central government's attempt to rein in its high-ranking civil servants' ostentatious displays and promote a "frugal working style" sounds like bad news to the luxe industry.At parties, on their blogs or in the street, the only children of the first generation of high-ranking officials -- who enabled the shift towards a capitalistic economy -- are keen to flaunt their Vuitton, Burberry, Cartier and Dior paraphernalia.But a string of corruption scandals that made the headlines and pushed Beijing to crack down on bling and promote a "frugal working style" could spell bad news for the international brands who were counting on China's luxury boom.From October 1 onwards, officials will have to rein in their expenses: no more luxury gifts (a huge part of Chinese networking culture), sports cars and gargantuan banquets.Times are changing. Marketing people have coined the term "bling fatigue" to describe what's happening. Billboards promoting luxury products are out, but internet sales of the same products are thriving, proving that discretion is key.The luxury tastes of the Chinese market may also be shifting, according to Fflur Roberts, Euromonitor's global head of luxury goods research, published Monday that suggests luxury brands like Prada that are less focused on logo-oriented products could fare better than others.?First Eva Longoria, now ? can't these women keep their pants on? The 45-year-old supermodel appeared on the most recent cover of Vogue Mexico wearing a black bustier, a studded leather motorcycle jacket and a pair of black panties. The Burberry Prorsum biker jacket was reportedly from Crawford's own closet, according to Fashion Etc. Is going sans culottes going to be the spring trend? Early last month, on "The Late Show with David Letterman" wearing a blazer, no top and shorts so short, she appeared as though she had left the house without her bottoms. But it wasn't her nearly bare derriere that nearly caused a scene ? it was a poorly timed button pop. "Uh, uh, uh," Letterman said, losing his train of thought with his eyes fixated on Longoria's chest. "Oh, Lord."? cops on Wednesday busted a ring of counterfeit handbag dealers who made millions, lived in fancy homes, drove flashy cars - and were all scamming the welfare system, police said.Six Queens homes owned by the welfare fraudsters were raided, leading to 11 arrests and the seizure of some 13,500 counterfeit handbags and $50,000 in cash, police said.The bags were knockoffs of high-end models by , and Coach and had a street value of roughly $1million, said of the NYPD's organized crime investigative division.The 11 scammers who were arrested were identified through a counterfeiting bust last April, Santos said.As cops investigated the outfit, which hawked the fake wares on Canal St. and on Broadway in , they learned that they were welfare cheats as well."We found out they were all carrying benefit cards, living in luxurious locations, driving luxurious cars," Santos said, noting the scammers bilked the system of roughly $200,000 in benefits in the past two years alone.The 11 who were nailed - and one man who fled the country - all claimed to the government that they were employed in low-paying jobs. But they were really living the highlife and driving fancy cars, Santos said.Six of them owned posh pads in and .The homes cost between $800,000 and $1 million, and the crooks plunked down as much as half the sale price in cash, Santos said.The scammers, who were not immediately identified, were hit with a slew of charges, including welfare fraud, grand larceny, scheming to defraud and money laundering.?Playboy sure knows how to pick Daisys. Daisy Lowe, the former Chanel, Burberry and Marc Jacobs model and daughter of rocker Gavin Rossdale, graces the cover of the September issue of the skin mag, out Friday. And if what she's wearing in the photo doesn't shock you, what she's got on - or, more accurately, what she doesn't? -- for the pictures inside the magazine might. has the scoop on the racy eight-page photo spread, and apparently she's not much as she sits poolside in the sun, smokes cigarettes and skinny-dips. Rossdale has yet to publicly comment on his daughter's shots. The Bush singer and husband of Gwen Stefani didn't find out he was Lowe's father until she was 14.He had a one-night stand with Lowe's mother, musician-turned-fashion designer Pearl Lowe, and it wasn't until a teenage Daisy questioned her parents and took a paternity test that the truth came out. Still, a close relationship with her sometimes-wild mother is said to be very important to Daisy. In 2010 she told , "Mum had me so young, and there is such a small gap between us, that she always treated me as an equal rather than as a child. I grew up thinking I was a little adult, Mum's little mate." Still, she looks up to her mother as an example. "You are a great mum and a great role model for me," she said. "And the benefit of you being so young is that I get to live so much of my life with you. It makes me want to have children when I am still young. I definitely want to have kids by the time I am 26."?Dolce & Gabbana want to be Italian for beauty.Following in the footsteps of fellow fashion brands like and that have also extended their beauty ranges recently, the design team is readying more products for their offering this fall, reports . In addition to their Animalier face bronzer, which launched earlier this year, fans of the brand will be able to shop (15 shades, $55 each) and Passion Duo Gloss Fusion Lipstick (20 shades, $34). "A woman who applies makeup is doing a very sensual act that captures the attention," told WWD. "So the quality is important, but also its image, its packaging.... Everything in our products is designed to have women feeling sensual, and extremely feminine while using it." The new products will become available in September. ?Whoa Hermoine!? is all grown up on the . The 21-year-old oozes 1920's era sophistication on the cover the July issue of? with short, slicked back hair subtle, smoky eye makeup and glossy wine-colored lips. Watson wore a metallic dress, a gold chain-mail top paired with an Undercover brass feather skirt; a bejeweled Dolce & Gabbana minidress; and a nude-and-gold Aquilano Rimondi dress with jewel-encrusted thigh-high boots for the photos. Watson tells that she's still after having spent her formative years in front of the camera as the brainy witch . "I have lived in a complete bubble," she told Vogue. "They found me and picked me for the part. And now I'm desperately trying to find my way through it." She's already on the way to becoming a fashion and beauty veteran. Watson has appeared in ad campaigns for and has helped design three organic clothing collections for People Tree. "It was such hard work," Watson said. "I didn't realize what I was taking on. I was doing 12-hour days on and then coming home to work for two more hours, sizing and cutting designs." She said that she "practically cried" when famed Italian designer approached her about collaborating on the eco-friendly line Pure Threads. Watson is no stranger to the beauty business either. In April, made her the face of its Tresor Midnight Rose fragrance. She told Vogue that her fondness for cosmetics began in the makeup trailer while she was filming the early Harry Potter films.? There, she would experiment with makeup artist 's products."That was my playground," she said. "I would sit and play with lipsticks, foundations, and eye shadows; and every now and then Amanda would let me do the extras' face paint for the Quidditch matches." Still, Watson's role model isn't that of a model, a designer or a movie star ? It's musician and poet . Watson, by Smith's recent autobiography "Just Kids," found her to be an inspiration. "I want to live like Patti. I want to write like Patti," she said. "The book was so honest and brave. I loved the way she sees the world. I really felt that life was more beautiful after I read it and I felt more hopeful."? and her new boyfriend do it doggy style in his band's?new music video. The ""?star appears?alongside in the video for One Night Only's?"Say You Don't Want It" as a pure-bred dog. The 20-year-old actress and her teen boy toy are shown being chased out of shops, running around the streets of , holding hands and dancing. At one point, when Watson is tossed a pretzel from a street vendor, Craig licks her face. When the?duo looks in the mirror towards the end of the video, it is revealed that Watson is a fancy pure-bred lost in the city, while her 19-year-old boyfriend is a city-wise mutt. ? Just as the two are about to kiss (sans spaghetti), Watson's owner drives up and takes her away. Craig's canine alter ego looks on sadly as his girlfriend drives away. "It’s kind of an ode to 'Lady and the Tramp,' " Watson told?the 's Radio 1?of the video. "George is Tramp and I’m Lady." Watson and Craig met when they were both modeling?for .?They have been dating for about a month, according to the Daily Mail. and caused a paparazzi frency at the this weekend.The actress, who caused a paparazzi frenzy with her boyfriend?at the Glastonbury Festival this weekend, reveals she and Craig share a love for music."When I was in the States, George was taking me through a lot of his music as he was recording it," she told Radio 1. "I couldn’t believe [how good the music was]. I’m a big fan. Everything he did was amazing." Having wrapped up filming on the last "Harry?Potter" film two weeks ago, Watson had time to star in the video."I just really wanted to be involved somehow and we did the video together," she told the radio station. "It was very much our idea.""Say You Don't Want It" is the first single from Craig's 's second album, which?hits shelves?August 16.?“Harry Potter” actress Emma Watson may be getting into high fashion with a new Burberry campaign, but last night she made an unintentional style statement. Battling the elements at the London premiere of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the 19-year-old's dress flew up to expose her nude-colored underwear beneath her designer gown. But little Hermione Granger seemed unphased by the wardrobe malfunction. Good thing she was wearing a pair of granny panties, rather than going commando like many of her colleagues in Hollywood have been caught doing in the past. Watson's male co-stars didn't have the same problem with the windy weather, but a heavy downpour soaked actors Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, who play Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, respectively, in the film, despite having umbrella holders accompany them down the red carpet. Watson managed to keep her 1970s Ozzi Clark gown relatively dry as she made her way down the red carpet. The vintage gown, which had a waist-high slit allowing for the actress' very own Marilyn Monroe moment, was the latest high-fashion move by the British actress. In addition to becoming the new face of Burberry for their Fall 2009 ad campaign, Watson was recently photographed by Chanel designer Karl Lagerfield for a French magazine. Perhaps the budding British actress is considering a future in fashion? The actress is reportedly taking a break from her acting career to study in the U.S. this fall. ?They each braved early-morning wakeup calls, endless lines, tourists in Times Square - and the competition of hundreds of possibly betterprepared candidates for the job of their dreams. Those eager, mostly young people lined up outside the ESPN Zone and waited for hours to try for a spot on the second season of ESPN's "Dream Job" - which raises a sports fanatic from obscurity to a shot at fame as an ESPN sportscaster. The early birds arrived at 6 a.m. Four hours later, only about 60 people had made it inside to slog through a 30question sports trivia quiz and be put through their paces by ESPN's team of casting directors. It was not pretty. "If you want this thing, show some passion! Show some energy!" railed Howie Schwab to no one in particular. Schwab is a fount of sports trivia. He's the test-maker at ESPN. He knows what he's looking for in an ESPN anchor: "We're looking for personality." Indeed, there were some real characters at the audition. Take Pamela Gonzlik, a 56-year-old Christian missionary from Manhattan. "I'm loony for the Mets," said Gonzlik. She was wearing a Mets cap that looked like it had been used as first base at Shea. She had a tiny American flag stuck into her hat. Gonzlik has gone to hundreds of Mets games. "I had season tickets from 1968 until 1970," she said. "I knew all the players." One year, she got a Christmas card from Nolan Ryan. "I hate my real job, and I want a different one," said George Prinzo, 31. Pinzo pays the bills with consulting work, but he moonlights as a standup comedian. As a high-tension lineman, Howard Johnson, 28, shimmies up telephone poles for a living. But, of course, his true calling is to be on TV. "I'm photogenic. And I can wing it," he said. Johnson was wearing a neatly pressed gold silk suit and matching tie with a Burberry rain hat and small diamond hoops in both ears. But it takes more than just a pretty face to win over the merciless casting directors. "We're looking for sports knowledge," said Schwab. "The quiz grades have been pretty low. That's very disappointing." The casting directors brought contestants inside in groups of eight and bombarded them with questions. "What's your catch phrase?" shouted one casting director. If the contestant wasn't quick enough, he or she was going, going, gone! "Next!" Carmela DiPalma, a 39-year-old spa manager from Long Island and one of the minority of women in the crowd, came up with a pretty good one: "Chicks dig the long ball.?A "law enforcement" placard left on the dashboard of a van that sparked a terror scare in was stolen, the head of the nonprofit that issues them charged Friday.But the slammed the group for even making the placards, saying it might take "legal action" to stop them.The placard looks so much like a real police parking pass it fooled a cop who checked on the illegally parked van on Dec. 30.Two hours later, a 911 call about the mysterious van - with no plates and blacked-out windows - sparked a bomb scare, replete with street closures and office evacuations.Cops say the van - which contained only knockoff scarves - belongs to , 36, who was arraigned Friday.The , , street peddler - who says he is not the owner - was charged with a felony for allegedly forging the expiration date on the van's temporary registration.He also faces a violation of the city administrative code for unlawful possession of official police cards.The placard in the windshield was issued by the , which is run by , an ex-investigator for the district attorney.The association - which says its purpose is to honor cops - offers "Vehicle ID Cards" for $20.Freyre didn't buy a card, and the group's lawyer said it was stolen."We filed a police report," he said. "He should be charged with possession of stolen property."The group could be facing its own legal problems, with the NYPD saying it's conducting a review to see how it can stop more from being issued."The placards have no authorized use and are manufactured in a way to mimic law enforcement," said.Discioarro insists the cards are not for parking, just identification, and claimed the city is trying to scapegoat Basso."They let a van with no plates sit at the center of the world for two days without plates," he said. "Where the heck is our anti-terrorism protection? It's unbelievable."?Legions of fans are as anxious to see what is wearing on the big-screen version of "" as they are to find out whether Big leaves her at the altar. That's because over the show's six seasons, Carrie went through even more outfits than she did men. And with Carrie's style evolution came fashion-icon status for the actress who plays her. Only , after all, would dare wear this hat. "Her looks are outrageous," says stylist , "but in a girl next door sort of way. We love her for being ballsy enough to wear outrageous things. She's having fun with it, so we have fun watching it. If she took it all so seriously, it would be too over the top." On and off the red carpet, Sarah Jessica Parker (who's won a coveted award for her iconic style choices) has risen above the fashion fray as that girl who can pull off, well, anything. From the grass-and-butterfly topper at this week's premiere of the film to a gold lame bra in 1991 (that she brazenly paired with velvet genie pants), Parker's choices have made her the poster girl for go-for-it style. And while the show taught us that "he's just not that into you" and the singular appeal of the Rabbit, it also taught us a lot about how to dress - and even more often, how not to. CARRIE BRADSHAW The show's would-be everywoman, Carrie favored over-the-top styles that were alienating more often than they were envy-inducing: Think Bjork, not . For every fairy tale couture gown that made us wish we had a spare $50,000 to spend on a pretty dress, Carrie would send our minds reeling with a feather-bottomed skirt or a pair of hot pants worn with an overcoat and tube top. Despite these consistently inexplicable choices, Carrie's look evolved over the show's six seasons. Before "Sex and the City" became a phenomenon, Carrie's look was a late-'90s mishmash - think blue feather boas, chunky mules and awkward below-the-knee skirts. And as the show surged in popularity, stylist Patricia Field sought to up the ante, and Carrie's looks became increasingly outre. Her outfits were just another ratings juggernaut - the sartorial equivalent of "Who shot J.R.?"TAKE IT FROM CARRIE: ROTATE YOUR ACCESSORIES If there’s one single lesson to be gleaned from Carrie Bradshaw’s sometimes inexplicable fashion choices, it’s that the little things make all the difference. Carrie’s embellishments are what really caught on with viewers. “Her lasting legacy was definitely the accessories,” says style expert , citing “the nameplate necklace, the big flower, the oversized sunglasses years before was doing it,” and, of course, the heels every viewer craved?Fashion Week sashays into town this Thursday with its semiannual circus of designers, models, celebrities and paparazzi.And it all happens behind closed doors."It's torture," wails , a junior forced to join the majority of local fashionistas in admiring the city's most fabulous event from afar."It's like the Greek myth about the guy [Tantalus] who is always hungry, but he can't reach the fruit," she says. "It's right uptown, but I can't get into it."A little detail like not having a ticket isn't stopping true fashion junkies from drooling over every look that comes down the runway, however. Die-hard devotees will stay glued to their computer screens and watch live feeds streaming from the tents, or pore over blogs and glossies for gossip items and interviews with their favorite designers.Gee wants to take it even a step further."I'm trying to find some friends who will stand in the cold with me outside the tents," says the 20-year-old communications major, who blogs about campus fashion at StudentStyleNYC.blogspot.com. "I've never been to a fashion show before, but I don't want to stand around alone, because I'm going to feel like such a creeper."If I could go to 's show, I'd be in heaven," she adds wistfully. (l.) and Maria Alexa Gee (r.) are?avid Fashion Week followers. (IP; Santos for News)That, of course, will require a plane ticket to , too. , 35, has a more homegrown plan."I do what I do every time Fashion Week comes around: stay glued to my TV, and then every single day I read in Barnes & Noble so that I don't have to buy it," laughs the lower East Side fashion junkie."I feel like kind of a loser," admits the freelance TV producer, who looks anything but while rocking a faux fur coat and perfectly coiffed bouffant. "I am not in any way affiliated with the fashion industry, but I still obsess over it and do everything I possibly can to still be in the know. I love it."Martinbrough pieces together what's happening daily with WWD before tuning in to behind-the-scenes coverage on -TV."They play the runway shows," she says, "and they interview the designers and the fashion editors who go to the shows, and get their take on each designer. And of course, they throw in a few celebrities, too."She's looking forward to the and collections in in a few weeks, and keeping an eye on what , and are wearing.?Bleecker?Street is officially the new after a blockbuster real-estate deal pushed prices for retail property into the realm of world-famous shopping strips.The quaint corridor, once filled with antique shops, delis and laundermats, is now home to the third-most expensive storefronts in the city.Three properties were sold this week for $34 million, or $6,700 a square foot. The only retail units to fetch more since 2003 have been on and Fifth Aves.Commercial rents in the neighborhood have surpassed Bond St. in and the Champs-Elysees in . The residential prices in the nabe also are the highest in the city."This street has more than arrived," says Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of retail for , which was not involved in Wednesday's deal."The and can't compete with it anymore. Only Fifth Ave. and Madison compare. It's like the Left Bank of Paris over there, it's so pretty."The three spaces - 367-369, 382-384 and 387 Bleecker - were sold to a real estate investment trust by Beck Street Capital. They have big-brand tenants; and recently signed long-term leases.Fashion designer , who started the Bleecker St. retail explosion in 2001 when he leased a store at 11th St. and Bleecker, has six area shops., , and all have Bleecker addresses.Real-estate experts said rents in the neighborhood recently hit $800 a square foot. They're only $600 on London's Bond St.The $34 million deal went to contract just three weeks after the property went on the market. The seller said the premium price shouldn't have come as a surprise."The area already had the highest residential prices in the city," said , Beck Street Capital's senior managing director."It was only a matter of time that these blocks would experience a complete retail makeover. It was relatively easy to see that global luxury brands would find a home here."As wealthier homebuyers move into the area, the retail cachet will only rise, and $6,700 a square foot could one day seem like a bargain.Not everyone is happy about the big spending.HelenAnn Lally has owned , a neighborhood package, mail, and concierge store, for 17 years.It's on a stretch of Bleecker between W. 10th and Christopher Sts., where small businesses thrive - for now."I know we'll have to make a lot more money to stay on the block," said , a resident. "I hope we can generate the business to handle that."?You can have your recession and your , too. With the economy tanking, fashion-conscious New Yorkers are looking to save big bucks by buying used designer duds. "You can't afford in , especially right now," said , 31, as she sifted through the racks at 7, an East Village boutique. "Here you can." A Marc Jacobs jacket was marked down to $70. Nearby, there was an entire row of Chanel gear for under $500. , 29, scored a blouse for $50, nearly 80% below what a new one would cost. "Look, it still has the original price tag on," she exclaimed. "It was $260!" The business climate may be bad, but business attire just can't be. Buying used suits can save you big bucks, especially when you have to wear a suit and tie to work. "It's hard to justify spending $2,000 on a suit when you can find one for $300," said , 32. His best find: a $1,000 suit - in great condition, he swears - for just $100. Mariana Capos Barbosa Lima, 33, walked out with a Pucci skirt for $90, multiple pairs of for $20 a pop and espadrille shoes for $100. "All of this would've cost me $2,000 at least," she said. "I saved so much!" The savings add up, even for those who just want something to wear. , 32, spent an afternoon sorting through racks at the thrift store and went home with a light blue buttondown cotton shirt for $6.85 and a nearly identical top for $6.99. "I'm looking for cheap things," he said. "Casual, easy kind of shirts."?The dollar is struggling, but Americans traveling abroad can still bag a bargain at luxury designer outlets in .Even the likes of , and can't resist supersized discounts on posh labels like , Armani and Dior - as well as brands that Americans simply can't buy at home. Banish the unlikely image of fellow outlet fan rifling through a dusty bin in search of factory-second athletic socks. Instead, try to bend your brain around the reality of Europe's deluxe discount developments, which lure shoppers from around the world with four key factors: drastically reduced prices, a blend of highbrow and hard-to-find brands, architecturally intriguing environments and locations near tourist destinations. These outlets typically sell the same goods that were in the designer boutiques a year ago, and are now at least 30% off the original cost. If you hit the shops when they switch seasonal merchandise - especially in January, and June and July - you can find couture at truly cut-rate (although not necessarily cheap) prices, with discounts of 70% or more. Here are a few outlets that might tempt you. Just don't forget to pack an extra suitcase for brand-name booty. La Vallee Village ?Forget cheap fluorescent lighting and swimming-pool-size bins filled with wrinkled castoffs. At La Vallee - a collection of more than 75 shops practically on the doorstep of , 45 minutes outside the city - presentation is as important as the merchandise itself. At , a scented sachet is attached to the designer's signature pleated and frilled white blouses, making the prices, which average 59 euros (about $77), smell that much sweeter. In the window of , white dominatrix heels with silver studs (reduced from 775 to 504 euros, about $722) draw bold stares - whether it's for their design or the price is anyone's guess. And in Armani, you'll find the expected assortment of neatly pressed suits and leather jackets, as well as a selection for infant fashionistas, like a tiny sweater in jet black (to hide the baby fat?) slashed from 90 to 44 euros ($57). Bicester Village ?, and have all been spotted browsing among the racks at Bicester Village, an hour outside . More than 100 brands are housed within shops resembling seaside cottages painted in cheerful shades. Park benches beneath old-fashioned street lamps offer a welcome place to rest following an afternoon of hard-core shopping at stores like Dior, Versace, , and , a British brand known for classic tailored men's wear. "You see these brands in the High St., but when you go to the outlets, they are so much cheaper," says , who frequents designer outlets around England. A recent shopping spree yielded a prize - a Burberry wallet discounted from 130 to 29 pounds (about $45). ?Castel Romano Designer Outlet, 15 miles outside , encompasses more than 110 stores, including , Valentino, , and Frette and Pinko, an Italian label that proffers fun, flirty designs from evening wear to pink sequined bikinis. The Romanesque architecture is highlighted by Palladian windows, red tile roofs and columned pediments adorned with elaborate friezes, reminiscent of the entrance to an ancient temple. The same developer also has outlets in Serravalle Scrivia, between and ; in Barberino del Mugello, near Florence, and recently launched Veneto Designer Outlet village in Noventa di Piave, 25 miles from . ?Emma Watson is raising the high-fashion stakes as the new face of Burberry. The 'Harry Potter' actress models the British fashion label's iconic scarves, trench coats and handbags in a series of new ads for the label's Fall line, Burberry announced Tuesday. "Having known and admired the lovely Emma Watson for quite some time, she was the obvious choice for this campaign who like the images she fronts, has a classic beauty a great character and a modern edge," Burberry's creative director, Christopher Bailey, said in a press release for the advertising campaign. Watson gets some male company as well, aiming to give the ads a "true British attitude," according to Bailey. The images were taken by famed photographer Mario Testino in Westminster, England, where the label has its global headquarters, the Horseferry House. Is the 19-year-old actress considering an eventual foray into fashion? In addition to wearing designs by Chanel and Alexander McQueen on the red carpet, the starlet took a daring fashion risk last week, stepping out to a dinner honoring Rodarte wearing one of the designer's net-embellished creations. She also recently posed for Chanel designer Karl Lagerfield, who photographed Watson for French magazine Crash. With three more 'Harry Potter' films to come, including "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" premiering this summer, Watson appears to already be working hard to put her "Hermione Granger" look behind her. ?File this one under Things That Make Absolutely No Sense, Except Possibly as a Way of Getting Your Name Mentioned in a Gossip Column. On Tuesday, Christina Milian posted on her MySpace blog a detailed denial of any relationship with a young actor by the name of Eric West. "I probably shouldn't give this that much attention buuuuut ... I have NO idea who Eric West is. There is a rumor I am dating this guy and I have no idea who he is! No offense to the guy, but I just had 2 get that off my chest." Except that they co-hosted an event for -Elton John's AIDS foundation last -August, and were photographed together at the last New York Fashion Week. Sorry dude, I guess that means you're dumped. Prince dancer's misstep? Prince might want to consider -giving his backup dancers a raise, as police say one of them has been trying to supplement her income by smuggling cocaine. Cecilia Maximilia was arrested April 17 with a whopping 44 pounds of the drug. The British dancer was picked up by police at the airport in Rio de Janeiro, where she was scheduled to take an Air France flight to Paris. She was nabbed with Jennifer Salgnac, each of whom carried three bags transporting the drugs, according to authorities. X-ray machines detected the coke, wrapped in packages hidden in the luggage under false bottoms, police say. I wonder if the suitcases (hint, hint) were Versace. Blame it on Rio Despite the fact that Brazilians are arguably the most attractive people on the face of the earth, it seems they have unusual taste in models. Brazilian clothing line TNG has just signed a $100,000 contract with New York resident Wafah Dufour, the pop singer whose uncle is Osama Bin Laden. "That includes a billboard campaign and a fashion show down there," her rep told me. If her luggage comes back 44 pounds overweight, we'll let Cecilia know her delivery is here. Sienna the rebound champion You really have to hate Sienna Miller (l.). Who else could dump Jude Law and then end up with someone even cuter? The London Mirror reports she has been dating Argentinean-born DKNY model (and, reportedly, hotel owner) Nico Malleville for the last three weeks. The pair met several years ago when Nico (short for Nicolas), 31, appeared in a Burberry campaign. Miller has recently been out and about in New York, and was spotted on Saturday at the weekly MisShapes party. It must be going well for the new couple, because they have apparently already enjoyed a vacation to Mexico's Mayan Riviera. Let's hope for her sake this one doesn't have a nanny. DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER - Which husband and L.A. flack supposedly cut a -lucrative kickback deal with a photo agency over certain celebrity baby pics? Wonder if Mommy knows about it? NEW YORK MINUTE Split couple Kimora Lee and Russell Simmons arrived in separate but equal Bentleys (hers white, his gray) and posed together on the red carpet before watching Lionel Richie's performance at Cipriani Wall Street Wednesday, where each was with a female friend. ... Cyndi Lauper and Alan Cumming -retired to Hell's Kitchen lounge Vlada after a performance of "The Threepenny Opera" and had a competition to see who could keep their face pressed to the strip of ice that runs down the bar longest. Cyndi won. ... At the party for her book "The Joys of Much Too Much," tabloid queen Bonnie Fuller told me her 5-year-old was being "screened" by Hillside Elementary in their hometown of Hastings-on-Hudson. She joked that knowledge of celebrity trivia was not part of the screening process. ... The Rev. Al Sharpton chatted with Donald Trump at the opening of the midtown Megu in Trump World Tower on Wednesday. ... Jake Gyllenhaal (r.) was spotted yesterday "at -9:40 a.m., in a green T-shirt and sunglasses and riding on a skateboard, speeding by the Two Boots Pizzeria on Seventh Ave.," according to a tipster. Word to the wise, Jakey: Better stay off Eighth Ave. - in that part of town, you might not make it back alive.?HEM & AWE You should have heard what the guests at the Metropolitan Museum of Art were saying Monday night. The -talkative tastemakers, there to celebrate "AngloMania," the Costume Institute's new installation, included (clockwise from top) models Amber Valetta and Linda Evangelista, -Sienna Miller and Burberry designer Christopher Bailey, and Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. Far left, Karolina Kurkova and Selma Blair do "Your dress is fabulous!" ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS Guys, it's okay to be jealous of Frederic Fekkai. Not only does the scissors star rule over a hair empire, but when he throws a party, the hottest chicks in NYC show up. For the opening of his new state-of-the-art salon at Henri Bendel Tuesday, Brazilian models Alessandra Ambrosio and Izabel Goulart cuddled (l.), while Helena Christensen posed with Fekkai himself (below). TRENDY TRIOS Good photo ops come in threes, as celebs proved at the Met Monday: (clockwise from right) Donatella Versace sandwiched by Rupert Everett and Lenny Kravitz; Stuart Townsend got in the middle with girlfriend Charlize Theron and Drew Barrymore; photog Mario Testino posed with supes Kate Moss and Daria Werbowy and Liz Hurley hung with boyfriend Arun Nayer and Elton John's hubby David Furnish. MISSION: GLAM While Tom Cruise ran around town for "Mission: -Impossible III's" premiere Wednesday, other stars remained calm: Kanye West (left) got an eyeful as Keri Russell (center), Maggie Q and Michelle Mon-aghan (l. & r. above) walked red carpets at Harlem's Magic Johnson Theater and the Ziegfeld in midtown. RUN FOR IT! Wow, it looks like so much fun, being an Olsen twin out on the town. After leaving the Met gala and making a costume change, the tiny twosome were escorted into Bungalow 8 Monday, but felt they had to make a duck-and-run into the club.?It's hard to find a phone booth these days in . But for , the greenroom of 's studio will do. On Monday, the star of "Iron Man" ducked into the in a pair of Nikes, Spandex and a ponytail and - faster than a speeding bullet - emerged glam in a barely there sleeveless dress and sky-high Louboutins (with a razor-sharp heel) ready for the film's premiere. Between her costume changes she even managed to give an earnestly charming interview to Letterman that won over the world's toughest audience: bloggers. ("There was a lot less smug, and a lot more sincere coming from her corner," wrote on .) Call her Supermom. Nothing can stop this 35-year-old mother of , 3, and Moses, 2, during the whirlwind promotion of her new action movie in which she plays feisty secretary to 's metallic man in the Marvel comic adaptation out Friday. Over the past 10 days, the actress has paraded around major cities like , , , and New York, in stilettos, Givenchy double-buckle boots, Pacchini platforms and 7-inch boots as if they were Easy Spirits. "She has single-handedly been the ultimate model for every hot shoe you need to be buying," says , celebrity stylist and fashion commentator. "I always say my kind of girls can play basketball in a 5-inch heel and make it look easy," says fashion designer , one of Gwyn's many fashion fans. "Girls like Gwyneth have busy lives and make it all look easy." Busy doesn't cover it. After a three-year, self-imposed hiatus playing mom, Paltrow has suddenly harnessed her super-power potential. And just like Superman, she has taken it upon herself to be all things to all people: mom of two, rock star 's wife, Madonna's workout partner, Oscar-winning actress, yoga goddess. She even managed to plug , the brand she represents, during her Letterman appearance. But her greatest feat of impossibility: being a one-woman runway show. "She's giving us the ultimate fashion show of clothes that are important for the fall," says Stephenson of her "Iron Man" tour of duty. In particular, Paltrow has used her super style to make a pair of stilettos and minidress not seem trashy. "She's wearing fashion-forward, outragous dresses and taking huge chances. But she still looks elegant, and the fashion industry respects her," says Stephenson of Paltrow's leggy looks by , Balmain and . Maybe the key to her fashion success lies in her -style duality. "In the Estee Lauder campaign, she's holding puppies and sleeping in a field. You never thought of as supersexy, but there's an edge to the look she's created for this premiere. She's really owning her sexiness," says Stephenson. Paltrow's body is in peak condition. "She works out with me six days a week. She's not a complainer," says Gwyneth's personal trainer, . Unlike other moms, she isn't afraid of a little mothering. "I've been on flights with her when she was with Apple. There was no nanny; she's a great mom," says Anderson. But perhaps her biggest super- power is fighting the evils of Hollywood typecasting. Says Stephenson: "She's proving that 35 and older is just as sexy, if not sexier, as girls in their 20s." ??Emma Watson is taking the next step in her fairy-tale career. The actress is taking on another role based on a story for young people as the lead in a new film version of "Cinderella," Perez Hilton reports. Lest anyone think Watson's all sugar and spice, the consummate good girl in the "Harry Potter" movies is teaming up with an extremely naughty boy for the project - though sometimes it's hard to tell whether he's a boy or a girl. Watson will be working with Goth shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, British paper The Sun first reported on Tuesday. Manson is producing the film, though it's unclear if he will also direct or write songs for the as-yet-untitled project, Hilton reports. Watson will sing as well as act in?her first major non-Harry Potter role (she previously?leant her voice to the animated "Tales of Despereaux," and appeared in the TV film "Ballet Shoes")?. The actress, who's already showed off her more sophisticated side in British Elle and as a spokesmodel for Burberry, clearly isn't afraid to take a few risks.?These may be her twilight years, but this star has never shined brighter. is a -based actress and model who has posed for high-end , and ads, stolen scenes in TV hits "" and "Law & Order" and appeared in the films "Across the Universe," "Hitch" and "The Purple Rose of ." She's also the focus of "Hats Off," a feature-length documentary profiling the prolific performer - who happens to be 93. "I don't think of them as jobs," Weddell says. "I just think of it as going along day to day and doing what I have to do." Weddell didn't begin acting full time until she was 65, following the death of her husband, Dick. "I suddenly decided that I wanted to go a different route, not just having ordinary jobs and things like that," she says. For "Hats Off," which opens Friday, director spent 10 years capturing Weddell's life on film. A true New Yorker, Weddell takes the bus or burns old-fashioned shoe leather to her weekly Pilates and dance workouts, cattle-call auditions and photo shoots. And the dignified dame never steps out of her East Side apartment without her gloves, signature cigarette holder - and hat. "Oh, I probably have about 300 hats," she says. "I think they make a lovely frame, particularly for a woman. You can put on a simple housedress, but when you put on a hat, by golly, you've got a whole different look. As long as you hold your neck up." Holding her head high is the key to her strength and vigor. Her personal mantra, "Rise above it," is painted on her kitchen floor. "Whatever comes along, try to think above it," she says. "I came to New York in 1941, and you have no idea how much fun it was then, even with the war. There was a vibrancy and a lightness of just being alive, and we sang all the time. It's different now, of course, but just don't take it too seriously." She also recommends a home remedy for lifting your spirits. "If I feel a little spacey or weary," she says, "I take a teaspoon full of brandy - one of the best things in the world to make my brain come back. Not much, just a teaspoon, and it works!" ?A "heartbroken and angry" has yet to speak publicly on the betrayal of gal pal , but a friend close to the actor says he has lost more than a girlfriend in the cheating scandal, he has lost the woman he wanted to marry. The "Twilight" actor, 26, had been making plans to propose to Stewart, 22, his partner of three years, and wanted to "spend the rest of his life with her," a friend told . The magazine also reports that the lovestruck heartthrob had urged the media-shy Stewart to talk more openly about their relationship and that she was then heard gushing at a June 23 wedding in New Jersey that she was ready to have a baby with Pattinson.Stewart issued a pleading public apology to Pattinson for her "indiscretion" with "Snow White and the Huntsman" director Rupert Sanders, who is 41 and a married father of two. The repentant Stewart was photographed just two days after her steamy fling with Sanders, and appeared to be brushing tears from her face. Dressed casually in a pair of ratty gym shorts and a white T-shirt, the 22-year-old actress was spotted looking somber with dark circles forming under her eyes while out in Los Angeles on July 19.At one point, the attention-loathing star was seen pleading with photographers to leave her in peace ? something that will most likely not happen now that details from her brief tryst with Sanders have surfaced.In a groveling public apology issued Wednesday, Stewart took responsibility for breaking Pattinson’s heart and coming in between Sanders’ marriage to British model-actress Liberty Ross, with whom he has two children. "I'm deeply sorry for the hurt and embarrassment I've caused to those close to me and everyone this has affected,” the “Twilight” actress said in a statement. “This momentary indiscretion has jeopardized the most important thing in my life, the person I love and respect the most, Rob. I love him, I love him, I'm so sorry." Despite Stewart's public pleading for forgiveness, Pattinson has reportedly packed his bags and left the Los Angeles home the couple of three years shared. A source told People that Pattinson, 26, is "heartbroken and angry" by the betrayal and has not been in contact with Stewart since news of the affair broke. "Kristen really loves Rob more than anything," the insider said. "He's all that matters to her right now."The mushy apology came as photos taken on July 17 of Sanders embracing the former child star emerged on the cover of Inside the magazine, one shot shows Stewart and Sanders necking inside her car. In another, Sanders is pressed against the back of his much-younger lover, his arms wrapped around her waist and his mouth nuzzling her ear.In yet another, the young actress is locked in a tight embrace with Stewart, smiling wide as she clutches the back of his head.Stewart is also reportedly planning to send a separate mea culpa to Ross, who coincidentally played her mother in "Huntsman.”“Kristen didn’t feel it was appropriate to issue a public apology to Liberty once the story of her affair with Rupert broke,” a source told ?Two unsuspecting customers were held hostage in Thursday as cops broke up a counterfeit handbag ring.Cops swooped down on six vans packed with bogus bags in Chinatown - and as they closed in on the seventh, the seller panicked, police said. He quickly shut the doors, effectively taking his shocked lunchtime customers captive until police rescued them. The bargain-hunters, a man and a woman, were not hurt. The seller was arrested and charges including unlawful imprisonment were pending. He was one of 21 people snared by the 's trademark infringement unit. The seven vans contained some 2,000 knockoffs of bags from top brands - , Coach and - with a street value of about $125,000. The vans operated every week, setting up around Lafayette St. as early as 5:30 a.m. Inside, they were stripped of seats to make room for shelves and displays, cops said. "These vans acted as their storefronts," said , commanding officer of the trademark unit. "It was actually like a little showroom." Police said the fakes were selling for $25 to $50 apiece - the prices holding firm even in the economic slowdown. "I don't think the recession is affecting it at all," Santos said. Some of the sellers busted yesterday had prior counterfeit arrests. Santos said the hawkers might be stubborn, but cops aren't giving up on getting rid of them. "We're not just going to let this go by every day," he added. "We're actively pursuing these crimes."?After styling rock stars and hip-hop artists like Beck, Eve and Erykah Badu, it's not surprising that Natalie Din and Denise Williams would choose to stock their hip boutique with cutting-edge clothes that you'd expect to see in MTV videos. "It's a one-stop shop for East Coast and West Coast designers," says Din, who opened Believe It N.Y.C. with her friend and buyer Williams last month. The posh mahogany bar and cushy leather bar stools make this clothing and accessories shop look more like a martini lounge, which is intentional, according to Din and Williams. They say they modeled the boutique after the Manhattan celebrity hangout Bungalow 8. "It's supposed to be like a nightclub for the day," explains Din. Young hobnobbers and SoHo day-trippers flock to the amiable outpost for its hard-to-find casual staples like Von Dutch jeans ($125 for women and $145-$155 for men, depending on style) and velour track suits ($163) also by Von Dutch. Silk-screened T's and matching briefs flaunting girl-power anthems like "hustler squad" ($70 for the set) from Scanty are a hot item among clubgoers, while the hip-hop crowd prefers the custom-made sneakers ($225-$400) and two-way pager holders ($125) by Game Face made from knockoff designer prints like Burberry and Gucci. Believe It N.Y.C. also sells a line of beauty and skin-care products created by Din's mother, who formerly owned a beauty salon on the upper East Side. The line includes makeup like lip gloss ($8), mascara ($10) and dual active powder ($15). The large jar of scented sea salt scrub ($35) is a favorite among friends. Believe It N.Y.C., 529 Broome St. (between Thompson and Sullivan Sts.); (212) 334-7223. Hours: Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sun., noon- 6 p.m.?This week is Fashion Week, the biannual city ritual that has wafer-thin models with pouty faces converging on . Celebrities and their entourages will party-hop around town trying to score top-shelf designer goodies while hangers-on and wanna-bes jockey to be close to the action.But the glare of the klieg lights and the pretty, fashion-filled tents mask a world where talented inner-city youths are not welcome. These young people are the aspiring designers who lack the financial means to develop the fashion portfolios needed to get into FIT or foster the connections to meet . Many do not have GEDs, nor can they afford a simple sewing machine, but they dream of one day becoming their generation's or . Take Elias, a young Brooklynite with a passion for design. Since he couldn't afford fabric or the sewing machine to help with his creations, he started his own line by working with ratty old T-shirts. Rene, another budding design talent from , discovered her skills with a box of old leather pieces. With a little guidance, she was able to create an amazing collection of chic belts and skirts. As founder of a nonprofit whose mission is to give young designers from low-income backgrounds a chance to gain experience in the fashion world (think -meets-), I see countless young people who lack the financial means to get their creations off the ground. Still, they are never in short supply when it comes to the ingenuity and resourcefulness that serve as the foundation to a successful career. This summer, my team produced a small fashion show of local children. Antoine, an ambitious 7-year-old, already knows that he wants to be a designer. He shared 12 pages of his sketches. His mother told me how difficult it is just to keep him in school, yet she sees a career in fashion as his best chance "to get out of the ghetto." On one hand, the popularity of shows like "" has swung open the door for upstart designers. But, as anyone who strolls past Bryant Park during Fashion Week can tell you, the fashion industry still remains a business of stretch limos and high-profile celebrities. Young designers are often not welcome, nor could they afford the steep $40,000 entrance fees even if they wanted to be included in the show. Not helping the industry's reputation of being elitist and out of touch are recent reports of fashion shoots with Indian peasants making less than $1.25 a day for clutching $200 umbrellas. , editor for the Indian edition of Vogue, defended the photo shoot. "As with any other creative pursuit, fashion feeds and thrives on fantasy, aspirations and, above all, fun," shesaid, adding that it was a shoot "that we are extremely proud of and consider to be one ofour most beautiful editorial executions." It's clearly time for a change. Young people struggling to make a career can no longer wait until elite labels decide to have an interest in supporting up-and-coming designers from low-income neighborhoods. So, my team and I have launched our own fashion week in Brooklyn to showcase the talent of local designers without the means to hobnob among the A-list fashionistas in Bryant Park. The Oct. 3-5 weekend will feature a Young Designers Initiative for inner-city youth. There will also be a Fashion Run early next year to support models and young girls with eating disorders. It's a start, but until talent trumps pedigree, the fashion world will continue to send inner-city designers a message that they'll never be good enough for the big time. The Brooklyn catwalk will showcase innovative design, and it is my hope that a broader audience will learn to appreciate that superb design can be borne of modest means. ?THE YSL LOOK If you love the look of the sexy black tops and pencil skirts from Tom Ford's Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche collection but can't afford them, head to Zara. The Spanish chain has a big rack of YSL knockoffs. The quality obviously isn't the same, but you'll find affordable versions of the tight lace-up skirts and beribboned blouses for well under $100. Why spend thousands on pieces that will look out of date in six months, anyway? TOLL OF SEX ABUSE New research shows that women who have suffered sexual abuse are more likely than other women to have medical problems. A study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health shows that women who have been raped or threatened with rape have a higher chance of becoming obese and suffering from high blood pressure or high cholesterol. They are also more likely to smoke. In addition, the study shows that the subjects were more likely to judge their overall health as only fair or poor. This research backs up the idea that sexual trauma can have broad and long-lasting physiological effects. Other research has suggested an association between a history of sexual assault and ailments including irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pain and headaches, as well as a tendency toward substance abuse and eating disorders. KRT MEN'S TREND Low-rise jeans look great skimming the bottoms of Britney Spears and Gisele Bundchen, but how will they look on your boyfriend? Just a few months ago, Levi's introduced its 7-inch-rise "Offender" jean, and this fall Diesel is unveiling two super-lows, the Rotuck and the Star-Ko, also 7 inches. Fans say the new silhouette looks hot on hard bodies, citing Lenny Kravitz and Calvin Klein model Travis as proof. Still not convinced you should coax your man into a pair? Just think, the new super-low style may encourage him to do a few more situps and toss those baggy, crotch-down-at-his-knees jeans once and for all. DESIGNER SALE If you lust after designer shades but can't stand the guilt of spending a third of your rent on them, QVC can help. On Saturday, June 1, the cable channel is broadcasting its fifth annual "Cure by the Shore" fund-raiser to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. What this means for you is hundreds of designer sunglasses at half their retail price. The sale includes frames from Burberry, Dior, Gucci, and Carrera, to name a few. Designer accessories, jewelry and beauty items will also be half-price. Tune in from 1-4 p.m. to catch the sale. HAUNTING HOPPER Notice how everywhere you look these days, it seems as though actor Dennis Hopper is staring back at you? He's playing chess with Christina Ricci in Gap commercials, walking the red carpet in a Lincoln car ad and faking a Russian accent as Kiefer Sutherland's nemesis on "24." Now, New York will see the artsy side of the actor at the Hugo Boss flagship store, in an installation of Hopper's pop-style art. It's surprising that the busy guy had time to let the paint dry. At 717 Fifth Ave.?Designer Paul Costelloe kicked off London Fashion Week on Friday by breaking with his old-school traditions, offering a brash, eye-catching show filled with short, flouncy dresses in soft colors. Abstract checks and some diamond-shaped art deco styles completed the look. Costelloe was the first to offer his vision for the spring and summer 2011 collections as fashionistas descended on Somerset House next to the River Thames for London's five-day, champagne-fueled extravaganza. Costelloe usually opens fashion week with a somewhat sedate show emphasizing cut and quality, but he kicked it up Friday with a display described as "Tinkerbell-turned-party girl." The short dresses included metallic weaves and twills that indeed twinkled in the spotlights, many featuring high waists and subtle pleats. A handful of floor-length dresses were topped by silvery metallic-style jackets with a space age look. His playful mood was highlighted by his own outfit - Costelloe wore a jacket and tie with dark slacks, accented by white Converse sneakers. His menswear was fanciful - few will opt for the sports jackets, pressed shorts and black patent leather shoes with dark socks a few models were wearing - but the crowd enjoyed the six young men in well-cut suits who strutted out near the end of the show. Maria Grachvogel's spring and summer collection was a minimalist celebration of female beauty, with long, unadorned dresses and models wearing naturally styled hair and very little makeup. The pared-down silhouette had a fresh look as Grachvogel experimented with silver crepe catsuits and vivid prints. Some dresses in unusual colors like canary yellow and pale silver gave the collection a faraway feel set off by the jungle drums prominent on the soundtrack. Many of the evening wear pieces were cut from a single piece of fabric that draped naturally over the body with a minimum of seams and decoration for deceptively simple, sensual look. Caroline Charles turned back the clock when she unveiled her spring and summer collection. Her 1950s-style floral prints in silk and other fabrics were worn by models with their hair in tight buns and lips in bright red lipstick to capture the glamour of that era. Some of the evening wear used sequins and beads to dazzling effect. The final long, swirling dress she presented was the most dramatic, suggesting cocktail parties and late night soirees. A pale leopard skin print dress with black gloves and a narrow black belt also caught the eye. Many of the outfits included matching or contrasting gloves, some extending above the elbow, others cut very short. There was a floral dress with aqua colored gloves, and a retro black jacket offset by long red gloves. The collection also included Capri pants and boxy jackets. Hats were prominent, most solid black but a few in bright colors. Friday's schedule also included a last-minute addition dealing with environmentally friendly "sustainable" fashions to be shown at one of Prince Charles' residences. Still ahead in the coming days are a host of London favorites including Vivienne Westwood, who usually uses her Red Label show to push her environmental concerns; Christopher Bailey of Burberry, Stella McCartney, Paul Smith and others as the fashion focus shifts from New York to London. The weekend will be marked by late-night parties for the fashion faithful, but the mood will turn solemn Monday when a memorial service will be held for Alexander McQueen, the celebrated designer who took his own life earlier this year. The gatherings reflect the importance of fashion here. A recent report by Oxford Economics, commissioned by the British Fashion Council, said fashion is Britain's 15th largest industry, employing more than 800,000 people and contributing 21 billion pounds ($33 billion) a year to the economy London Fashion Week, according to the council, generates orders worth around 100 million pounds ($156 million).?Has Sienna Miller lost Jude Law's baby? The "Alfie" actress looked glum at her sister Savannah's nuptials last weekend in England, spies say. Sienna couldn't help but feel wistful as she remembered her own wedding plans - which were dashed when Law admitted he'd had an affair with his children's nanny. But Miller's heart may have been heavier than most guests knew. According to a family friend, the 23-year-old beauty recently suffered a miscarriage. "She's only told her family and closest friends," the source tells us. "Naturally, everyone feels terrible for her." Reps for Miller and Law have never confirmed that she was with child. But yesterday, Sienna's rep called talk of a miscarriage "complete and utter balderdash!" The troubled star couple is trying to reconcile. But Law was not at the wedding - possibly because he didn't want to distract from the bride and groom, or he didn't feel like enduring the glares and stares of his would-be in-laws. Miller seems to be soldiering on. Earlier this week, she was in Milan for the fashion shows. Yesterday, she was due to be in L.A. to talk with director George Hickenlooper about "Factory Girl." The role should give us a different Sienna: She's having her golden locks chopped off and dyed silver to look the part of tragic Warhol "superstar" Edie Sedgwick. Moss may be planting self in clinic Kate Moss is said to be taking another stab at rehab. The supermodel plans to spend a month in the Meadows clinic in Wickenburg, Ariz., two British newspapers reported yesterday. A nurse at the facility said she could neither confirm nor deny any patient's presence. Moss' agency didn't return calls for comment. Moss lost millions of dollars in contracts with H&M, Burberry and Chanel after the Daily Mirror splashed photos of her apparently snorting cocaine. Last week, she issued an apology, taking "full responsibility for my actions." The 31-year-old mannequin, who checked into Britain's Priory clinic in 1998, admitted there are "personal issues that I need to address." Meanwhile, her runway sister -Naomi Campbell told reporters in Bogota, -Colombia, "Kate Moss is my friend. ... I think it's like everybody is being bad to her." Campbell, who has admitted her own past coke use, added, "It's not the first time it has happened in the world. ... It's really like a vendetta." Campbell went to Colombia for a UN campaign against sex slavery. But the Mirror reported that she threatened to get on the next plane home after her airline misplaced her luggage, including 70 designer dresses and 20 pairs of shoes. Bare Claire Devotees of the dance got more than they bargained for Wednesday night when Claire Danes' breast escaped. For months now, the actress has been rehearsing for Tamar Rogoff's piece "Christina Olson: American Model" - inspired by Andrew Wyeth's painting "Christina's World.?JEAN STRAHAN spent a bittersweet seventh wedding anniversary yesterday on the witness stand in her nasty divorce case - later declaring, "I don't love him anymore." After the court session, she choked back tears when asked about her ruined marriage to Giants star Michael Strahan. "It's all so hurtful," said the 41-year-old mother of two, who wore a gray Burberry dress with a plunging neckline. "I don't love him anymore, but it's like a death. It makes me sad." The willowy wife of the Big Blue sack man said it was "heartbreaking" to realize that her storybook marriage was over. "I just feel so sad. Normally I would be getting ready to go out to dinner with this man who was so crazy in love with me," Jean Strahan said. "There I was on the witness stand being cross-examined by his lawyer." Jean Strahan wrapped up her testimony with hours of sparring about the arcane details of bank balances and financial statements. The ice seemed to melt a bit between the warring pair as Michael Strahan gazed at his wife for minutes at a time as she answered questions from his lawyer. At one point, Jean Strahan lit up when the lawyer, Robert Penza, grilled her about spending $27,000 on clothes for their twin toddlers, Sophie and Isabella. "They like to be accessorized," she said with a smile. "Isabella doesn't like to leave the house without a purse. Mike knows that." Michael Strahan, 34, cracked his trademark gap-toothed smile. Jean Strahan contends she is entitled to about $14 million under the terms of a prenuptial agreement signed before they wed in 1999. Michael Strahan asserts she agreed to void that deal, and should get no more than $7 million. The bitter trial will wrap up tomorrow when Jean Strahan's sister, Denise Muggli, takes the stand. Michael Strahan will also testify. After that, the two sides will make written final arguments to Essex County Family Court Judge James Convey. Michael Strahan was polite inside the courtroom, but lost his cool with photographers outside the men's room during a break. "The great thing is that when this thing is all over," Strahan said, "you guys are still trash." afenner@nydailynews.com?Jellies are the new flip-flops. Colorful, comfortable and cheap - not to mention waterproof -they're one of the summer season's hottest trends. And not just in shoes. The pliable translucent plastic is also made into totes, belts, watches, wallets and even a funky take on the classic Dr. Scholl's sandal. From Dior to DKNY, there have never been more incarnations of the gelatinous medium. "You just can't kill it," says Scott Tepper, fashion director at trendy Henri Bendel, of the panic for plastic. "First, it was the Kelly. Now it comes with grommets." Jelly made its slippery comeback last summer with the Jelly Kelly, a plastic knockoff of the already much-imitated Hermes Birkin bag (a roomy satchel created in 1984 for the English singer and actress Jane Birkin after she complained to Hermes chief Jean Louis Dumas Hermes that his totes didn't fit her needs). While the hand-stitched-in-France original costs upward of $5,000 depending on the leather or skin (just ask Martha Stewart, who was widely criticized for carrying a $6,000 Hermes purse to court), made-in-Italy copies go for a mere $145 or so. The French leather-goods company, which pursues counterfeiters of its famous bags, sent cease-and-desist letters to retailers around the United States who were selling the bag. The company even alerted U.S. Customs agents about arrivals of the rubber wanna-bes. According to fashion historians, the first accessory made of the pliable plastic was a clear water shoe, which turned up on Mediterranean beaches after World War II. The shoe was an instant hit with swimmers who enjoyed the protection it offers from rocks, shells and marine life. Jelly strolled into the U.S. market in 1982, when a Brazilian shoe manufacturer introduced the sandal at the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tenn. Grendha Shoes continues to tout its product in every shape from sneakers to ballet slippers to platform sandals. And why are jelly sales still so strong? Tepper credits its longevity to the nature of the translucent rubber. "It's such a big season for color and brights, and the jelly material holds color very, very well," he says. Case in point, there are jelly accessories available in every hue from glow-in-the-dark turquoise to vibrant fuchsia. Not to mention, it's a better jelly than the fisherman sandals of yesteryear. This high-quality plastic doesn't rip, melt or become dry and brittle. "Jelly accessories are really hot right now because they add a fun, playful element to any outfit. The material is durable, water-resistant and easy to clean," says Erica Archambault, public-relations manager at Gap, where jelly comes in floral patterned totes and molded thongs. The good news is that this season, jelly is as easy to find as well, jelly. Purses at Payless, belts at Old Navy and plaid flip-flops at Burberry are just a few of the tempting options. At Urban Outfitters, retail mecca of all things cool, shoppers can scoop up miniskirts in one arm and jellies to match in the other. The retro shoe styles have twists like high heels or pointed toes. "We just can't keep enough of them on the table," says a salesclerk. "The thing is that they look just as cool on the beach as on Broadway."?When it comes to red carpet style, could take a few pointers from . The former "Friends" star gave Jolie's infamous right leg a run for its money at the 40th AFI Life Achievement Awards Thursday night when she attended the event wearing a show-stopping white Burberry gown with a plunging neckline, cut-out back and daring thigh-high slit. Aniston, 43, finished off her leggy look with strappy silver sandals and an ivory Valentino clutch. It was a welcome change for Aniston, whose red carpet style tends to favor the safe black dress option. The "Horrible Bosses" actress, who was at the event honoring Life Achievement Award winner Shirley MacLaine, toned down the white-hot dress by wearing her hair loose and her makeup simple. But while Aniston turned heads in her stunning ensemble, it's not the first time a sexy slit has caused a stir on the red carpet. Jolie's show-stealing right leg created its own mini-controversy -- and a few copycat poses -- after the actress showed off her toned gams in a dramatic high-slit Atelier Versace gown at the Academy Awards in Feburary. But while Jolie's now infamous pose continues to live on in Internet infamy, the 37-year-old actress doesn't seem to mind. "I heard something, but I didn't pay any attention," Jolie told the Huffington Post in March. "It's as simple as being a woman picking a dress you like and having a night, and not really thinking about anything else."?The ending of 's upcoming movie, "Who is ?" may have to be reworked. The 79-year-old international jewel thief she portrays in the film has struck again.This time, though, the septuagenarian Payne allegedly stole a coat rather than a sparkler, according to the .Doris Payne was arrested Friday for removing tags from a $1,300 trench coat and walking out of in , without stopping at the cash register, the Los Angeles Times reported.A native of Slab Fork, a coal-mining town, Payne once told the paper she had no idea how many jewels she's lifted over the decades, but that she had stolen from stores in and as well as , Monte Carlo and . After one arrest she listed her occupation simply as "jewel thief."She last landed in jail in 2005 for pawning a S31,500 ring she'd lifted and stealing another bauble.? After being released in 2008, Payne was on parole at the time of this arrest. She is currently being remanded without bail for parole violation.?At least she had good taste.An Elmont woman was arraigned yesterday on charges that she swindled 18 members of a prominent Jewish center in East Hills out of nearly $20,000 to lavish herself with designer duds and handbags.Elizabeth Young, 22, was working as a receptionist at the Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Center last fall when she allegedly stole credit-card information from clients who had charged their membership dues or fees for classes ranging from fitness and yoga to dance and menorah-making.In some cases, Young sold the information to friends, but often she used it herself to order pricey items online from stores such as Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue, prosecutors said."She was purchasing very high-end luxury goods from some of the world's most expensive stores, which is a lot easier when you are spending someone else's money," said Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice.Young allegedly used her ill-gotten means to buy items such as a Burberry sweatsuit and jacket, a Prada belt and shoes, a Gucci handbag, sneakers and five belts, and Juicy Couture childrens' clothes.Rice said the case against Young began after one of the center's members noticed an unauthorized charge on her credit card and contacted authorities.The district attorney said she personally went to the Jewish center in January and spoke to members to alert them to check their credit card statements for any discrepancies.Many did, and the list of victims expanded to include another 17 members who found illegal purchases made on their credit cards from Sept. 15 to Nov. 30, Rice said.Young, first arrested on Dec. 18, was indicted this week after the more sweeping case against her was brought to a grand jury.Appearing in Nassau County Court with her boyfriend and baby boy, Young was released on her own recognizance at her arraignment yesterday on a host of new charges, including grand larceny, identity theft and eight counts of falsifying business records."I have no comment," Young told a reporter when asked why she allegedly pilfered the credit card information.A co-defendant, Brigitte Thompson, 21, of Stewart Manor, who allegedly bought three stolen credit card numbers from Young and used them to buy products, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in April to identity theft and fraud charges, prosecutors said.?Jimmy Choo has teamed up with top fashion photographer to launch new site Choo 24:7 Stylemakers, where both amateur snappers and professionals can upload their street style pictures.Responding to the growing interest in street style photography and the social aspect of sharing fashion via blogs such as Lookbook.nu, 24:7 Stylemakers invites visitors to submit images of themselves wearing Jimmy Choo shoes and accessories in a way that illustrates their personal style.It has echoes of British label Burberry's successful The Art of the Trench site, which launched back in 2009, inviting photographers (including of street style site The Sartorialist) and trench coat owners to submit images of the classic springtime staple being worn by everyday people with panache.A selection of the best Choo pictures will appear at , where they can also be shared via social networks including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Instagram pictures tagged "#choo247" will also feature.There's a consumer element too, as visitors can click on a link to shop similar styles via the Jimmy Choo site.Brand ambassadors for major international fashion destinations including Paris, Milan and Tokyo will be revealed within due course, while street style photographer Eddie Newton, of mrnewton.net has launched proceedings as the London ambassador.See him capture , the executive fashion director and publisher of Tank magazine, in aid of the project at .?It's official - is "Better With" new hubby, outfielder . The duo tied the knot with much love Saturday at a resort in front of 375 friends and family."I think for the first time in my life, I have a woman who I could not be more proud of," Swisher, 30, told in November.With and Garcia's "" costar as bridesmaids and former member rounding out the , the newlyweds celebrated their love for one another in style, with a guest list that merged the celebrity and sports realms.? and ex - who is Swisher's Yankees teammate - were both spotted at the ceremony, in addition to Garcia's onscreen "Better with You" sister, , who excitedly on the big day: "Can't wait to celebrate this amazing couple with you!!xx"Garcia, 31, donned a strapless, drop-waist ball gown and veil by , while Swisher cleaned up in a Burberry London tux, according to People."I'm impressed and awed by him every single day when I wake up," Garcia told last year. "He's a really happy person and he's just really nice."The pair, who have survived a cross-country relationship - Swisher spends most of his time in playing for the Yankees, and Garcia films her sitcom in - say that the distance has "actually been strangely easy.""It works out because we both have crazy schedules for a certain period of time in our lives, but for some reason it doesn't conflict as much as one would think," the bubbly actress last year. "Life's good right now. We're enjoying it."The new husband and wife duo were engaged just last May.??Fashion critic created the in 1940 to promote American fashion and in the 1960s, my glamorous Aunt Dree ? a prominent society figure and former fashion editor ? made that list for her stylish tailored dresses, matching hats and kid gloves. In 2002, I landed on a famed fashion roster myself, albeit one with less cache ? . I admit I was pushing it the night I was photographed wearing a denim trench coat over denim jeans, topped with an enormous blue Trilby hat. I was carrying two red bags, one was mine and the other I was holding for a friend. With one quick snap, a photographer captured the unflattering image that would haunt me for years. I could have gone into hiding, but instead I used my moment on the Worst Dressed list to develop my style and formulate a failsafe fashion checklist so women everywhere could learn from my denim disaster. Step 1: Know your uniform I have perfected a simple method for getting dressed that divides into two signature looks which my husband has dubbed my "home and away uniforms." For summer, my "home uniform" is a simple, flowing maxi dress. I can't stand anything tight, as in, I don't want to feel like I am wearing Chinese finger handcuffs around my midsection. These dresses look great with ballet flats or sandals. Added bonus: this low-maintenance but high-style look is ideal for hectic mornings. It's a lot easier to poke my head through the neck of a comfy dress than to plan an outfit when I'm trying ship my kid off to school at 7a.m. A great tip for bargain shoppers: has a great collection of long cotton dresses for about $20. My "away uniform" consists of tailored sheath dresses. I've accumulated several of these dresses in similar cuts from various designers and stores, including , and . For me, it's a flattering, blank canvas which is easily accessorized with a leather jacket, a blazer, a cardigan or a bolero and jewelry. Which brings me to my next tip …Step 2: Accessories are your friends. My friend, the fashion and jewelry designer , has a theory that women should dress from the shoulders up. She devised this theory after noticing that at dinners, theater events or business meetings, we are usually seated and therefore seen only from the rib cage up. She assured me what I need is NOT one more little black dress, but instead a bold necklace that will change the look and tone of my favorite sheaths. I can alter the attitude of my "away uniform" with ropes of pearls, a bold leather biker chain or an ornate jeweled bib necklace. Experimenting with accessories is a great way to keep your personal style from feeling dull and predictable. Step 3: Slow down! Never dress in a hurry, even if you are in a hurry. I still wear trench coats but unlike the 2002 matchy-matchy blue jean bonanza that branded me a fashion untouchable, now I consider what I'm wearing underneath. Personal note: I still have the offending trench coat in my closet, although I have not worn it. My husband, who is very stylish, bought me a lovely trench. Perhaps he was staging a subtle fashion intervention. Step 4: Know your style, save time! I hate to shop for clothes. Frankly, I would rather read a book. But since I now know what I like and what looks good, I rarely depart from my established uniforms and can shop online with ease. Finally, I'll end with this great fashion rule of thumb from a stylist friend, "Don't go out of the house in an outfit you would not want to be wearing if you ran into an ex-boyfriend."? is trading her palace digs for a spot around the campfire. The Duchess of Cambridge wasn't afraid to rough it in the wilderness on Sunday when she paid a visit to camping school children participating in a charity program backed by Prince William and Prince Harry. The program, which arranges trips for inner-city kids to explore countryside, is coordinated by ARK, a group supported by the charitable Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry.Britain's newest royal was put to work during her day outdoors as she mingled with the group of eight and nine-year-olds participating in the program, helping the young adventurers to pitch tents from tarps and roast food over the campfire. And as always, Middleton dressed the part. The royal, known for both her red carpet glamour and high-street style, opted for a pair of simple skinny jeans, wellington boots and tan Burberry sweater. She kept her dark hair in her trademark loose waves.But rather than sing songs or tell ghost stories around the campfire, the Duchess used the opportunity to open up about life as a princess. "It's very busy and great fun but I am very well looked after," she said when asked about being a royal.While Middleton appeared to be one happy camper, there was one person noticeably missing from her side -- husband Prince William. Following her jaunt through the woods, Kate joined her hubby and Prince Harry at a charity polo event in Gloucester later in the afternoon.?'s chic trench coat has caused yet another shopping frenzy. The very-British brand's lightweight, wool coat with the frilled hem she wore to various events in , this week has sold out in nearly every size on the version of the Burberry website. stepped out with , her groom to be, in the double-breasted, slim fit coat in the color 'nude'.? There are a few larger sizes left on the website in a darker gray color. shoppers who are anxious to get their hands on the royal trench are likely to be disappointed. Sales associates at the Burberry locations in midtown and Soho identified the $995 trench coat as being from a previous season's collection. They regretfully told the News that as of midday Thursday, there were none to be found in stores. Middleton has often stymied shoppers by choosing frocks from collections past.? She wore a dress from the clothing company Reiss's 2009 collection in her .? The company was thrilled when people began calling for the white frock.The brand soon released the dress due to the popular demand.?Kate Middleton will doubtless become one of the world’s most-photographed women, showing off a sleek style that has been years in the making. The bride-to-be has cultivated a chic yet effortless appearance since she was romantically linked to Prince William while they were students at the University of St. Andrews. Middleton favors British designers and fashionable chain stores like Topshop, Reiss and Burberry, where items have been known to sell out within days ? or even hours ? once she is pictured in them. During a visit to Belfast with the prince last month, Middleton sported a beige double-breasted Burberry trench coat that cost about $1,060. It was sold out across the United Kingdom within a day. In January, Middleton was photographed in a black velvet Dulwich coat by UK-label Libelula. It sold out within hours, the company website was flooded with hits, and hundreds of would-be buyers were waitlisted. In her early days, the future queen of England was less fashion diva and more fashion casual, sporting pashminas, knee-high boots and cardigans. Now, she shows off her ever-thinner physique in fitted jackets, figure-hugging dresses and color-coordinated outfits.One of Middleton’s favorite labels is Issa, a brand she has been photographed in since 2005. When she stepped in front of the cameras for the first time as Prince William's fiancee, Middleton opted for one of the brand’s stunning blue silk dresses ? which just happened to match her diamond-and-sapphire engagement ring. Issa was inundated with requests for the frock. The original cost more than $600, and several chain stores produced knockoffs that flew off the hangers. Shoppers have been known to get into fights over some items. At a New York Links jewelry store, two women brawled over a pair of white topaz earrings like the ones Middleton wore in her official engagement picture. New York designer Michael Kors, who has helped First Lady Michelle Obama achieve her style, believes Middleton is bringing a breath of fresh air to the formal royal family. "When I look at Kate, I see a changing of the guard in what is considered elegant," he told Vogue magazine. "She likes to look easy but chic. "I would liken her to Obama and (French First Lady) Carla Bruni in that way. All these women are in situations where they are shaking off the formal suits of their predecessors." ?'s private life just went very public.Five months after quietly splitting from husband , the actress stepped out in with?her new?boyfriend, model .The giddy couple hit the town hand-in-hand on Saturday night, dining at the Groucho Club before partying at celebrity hot spot Mahiki until the wee hours of the morning, .Winslet stunned in a tight black dress while Dowler, who has modeled for , kept it casual in a cardigan over jeans.The pair have become inseparable, sources say, since they were introduced to each other by mutual friends at a party."They've been on lots of dates and really enjoy each other's company," News of the World reported. "Louis has a good sense of humor and is a lovely guy. He gets lots of attention when he's out and about - but he's not your typical model. Not at all big-headed."Winslet, 34, parted ways with director Mendes earlier this year after almost seven years of marriage. They have a son, Joe, 6, and Winslet also has a daughter, Mia, from a previous marriage.After announcing their plans to divorce, Winslet and Mendes , which has largely stayed out of the press despite their A-list status.But rumors of Winslet's relationships with the 6-foot-tall model , when they were photographed exercising together on the streets of .And if the pictures are any indication, this rebound romance is a model relationship."Kate certainly seems smitten. Who wouldn't be?" a friend said, . "They've really got something special."?'Tis midsummer and the mags are mixed. Angelina has new babies. has glamorous new tresses. Britney has newly discovered sanity - apparently evidenced by nicer extensions and clearer skin. But fear not, there are plenty of shockers lurking in the 'zines this week...The "" writers are plotting their revenge on , says , after the star criticized the "material" written for her character. On the next season, says a source, gets a potentially-fatal brain tumor. After all, there's no better material than a dramatic exit., adorable when dating , has been spotted buying one of his rebound ladies $13,000 worth of handbags, says Star. Some might call that trashe.Us Weekly has the story behind 's split from . Drew went to see a spiritual advisor, says a source, who convinced her to take immediate action: 'So she broke up with him over the phone. Then she went to see him and broke up with him a second time in person." It's loopy, sure, but unexpectedly... thorough. has expanded her roster of questionable boy toys to include motorcross star, . Star adds that Hart's ex, buff songstress , isn't pleased. Audrina, run for "The Hills!" is determined to shed her last 20 pounds of baby weight, says Star, and so she sits in the sauna for three hours a day. If this is true, sits in the sauna for six.Life & Style points out that 's new girlfriend, , looks a whole lot like his daughter, Brooke. Headline: 'He's dating a Brooke-alike!" Claps for the pun. Queasiness for the concept. tossed back a jumbo cocktail in , , and the mags have the pix. "So much for her three-week vegan cleanse!" chirps Star. Says Oprah, "Forget veganism, I'm on the Portofino diet!" is being taught French, says In Touch. And so begins the countdown to when she is inevitably cast as Madeline. PS, a sample from her phrase book: "J'adore aller a ! Allons-y vite." Translation: "I love to go to Burberry. Take me there fast!"On the next season of "The ," the polite, soft-spoken supermodel will actually be moving in with the cast, says OK! So it will be like "" but with hungrier contestants. may be nine years older than , but Life & Style wonders if he can keep up with her. The musician has "taken to his blog to complain about back problems." This seems like the kind of thing that would have kept to himself.?There was no Kourtney baby mama drama, no blind dates for Kim with not-too-hairy Armenian men, and no alcohol-fueled rampages from Scott - but there was a lost $850,000 ring.The show starts off with Mom Kris unveiling her new, at-least-six-car "dream? garage" to hubby and daughters Kylie and Kendall.? Bruce is thrilled because he'll now have a? man "cave" to put all of his important belongings--like his motorcycle, golf clubs and model helicopters, which he refers to as his "helis."A normally composed Bruce is furious at his wife (who he refers to as "the snake, Kris") after he realizes the renovated garage doesn't include space for him. He conspires with for the best way to seek revenge...Meanwhile, in Lamar and Khloe's home, Khloe realizes she has lost Lamar's $850,000, 12.5 karat engagement ring. But she knows it's in the house somewhere because she remembers taking it off before washing her face. The 26-year-old tells mom "I'm going to die" and begins a frantic search in the house.At the advice of Kim, Khloe refrains from telling Lamar about the ring because the playoff season has started and he's already stressed.Back at the house, Bruce decides to teach Kris a lesson and? scatter all of his belongings - that would have gone in the garage - inside the house. A cackling Bruce is seen strategically dumping his golf balls, magazines and 'helis' in Kris' office. He puts the motorcycle in the house's foyer.When Kris realizes what's going on, she loses it, calling her husband a "psycho" and? a "little boy." Kris, who says she doesn't want to negotiate for space in the garage that she designed, tells Bruce to take his "toys and go home."An infuriated Bruce screams back, lamenting that he had to get rid of his and home in Tahoe at Kris' demands. "I'm just getting sick and tired of all of this. I live here too," he exclaims. Kris responds by telling him that if he loves the garage so much he can "live and sleep in it."Later, a pouting Bruce is seen in his pjs bringing pillows out to the garage and setting up his air mattress next to his motorcycle.At Khloe's, brother Rob finds the ring in the laundry and conspires with Lamar to not tell Khloe about it. The charade doesn't last as Lamar decides to spill the beans. A formerly-freaked-out Khloe (sigh) vows never to lose the ring again.Meanwhile, Kris? feels guilty that she lashed out at Bruce - especially after Kendall tells her mom that she's afraid her parents will get divorced. Tail between her legs, Kris makes her way into the garage and apologizes. The two decide to camp out in the garage overnight, and all is seemingly back to normal the Jenner house.While this week's episode was a bit predictable and not nearly as dramatic (Kim and Kourtney were barely seen), episode four shows promise.Next week: Lamar learns how to swim and Kim starts to fall for her new bodyguard. But is he Armenian? Guess we'll have to wait to find out...?BE LIKE NACHO If you loved the Jack Black flick "Nacho -Libre," now in theaters, head down to -Oaxaca, Mexico, where it was filmed. But if you want to learn the art of lucha -libre, the Mexican version of professional wrestling that Black's character -attempts in the film, choose -Mexico City instead. This beloved sport is taught year-round at the Consejo -Mundial de -Lucha Libre by experienced professionals. For $30 a month you can develop your own moves and your own masked character. For more information, visit www.cmll.com or call 011-5255-5588-1569. CLASSIC WAYS TO GO FOURTH Searching for an old-fashioned way to celebrate July 4? There are still plenty of options within driving distance of the city. In the -Poconos, the 15th annual American -Freedom Festival at Dansbury Park in East Stroudsburg takes place on the Fourth. Along with live -music, food, rides, crafts, jugglers, magicians, prize giveaways and a 5K run, an "American Freedom Fireworks Spectacular," is set for the evening. 2-10 p.m. For more, visit www.800poconos.com. In upstate New York, Doral -Arrowwood, a resort nestled on 114 wooded acres in the Westchester town of Rye Brook, is offering a July 4 weekend getaway. For $189 per night for a family of four, it includes accommodations, a breakfast buffet and family-friendly fun like arts and crafts, magicians, a live band, family movies, barbecues, pool parties and a family photographer. Visit www.doralarrowwood.com or call (914) 939-5500 for more. For a historic weekend, journey back to 1806 at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson (above) or to 1856 at Washington Irving's Sunnyside in Tarrytown. Admission is $10 for adults, $9 for seniors, $6 for children ages 5-17 and free for children under 5. For more, visit www.hudsonvalley.org. Also, Bucks County, Pa., is reenacting the nation's birthday on July 4, 1776, at Washington Crossing Historic Park. There's an early-20th-century July 4 celebration at Fonthill Museum and a fireworks show during the Celebration of Freedom at Peddler's Village. Contact the Bucks County Conference and Visitors Bureau at (215) 639-0300 or go to www.ExperienceBucksCounty.com. - Lauren Coyne COFFEE THAT ROCKS If you want to rock and roll all night and party every day, you're going to need some coffee. So head on down to the KISS Coffeehouse in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where you can get your share of caffeine and the legendary costumed rock band. You can't miss the one-of-a-kind cafe - just look for the 20-foot-tall smoking KISS platform boots lining the storefront. Inside, the -venue serves a mean Demon Dark Roast, French Kiss Vanilla and eight flavors of the heavily caffeinated KISS Frozen Rockuccino. Band members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons will be on hand for the grand opening this Tuesday. For more information, visit www.?A stage manager was busted Friday for allegedly stealing designer loot off the set of the television show "" and hawking it on , authorities said.'s plan was foiled when agents from designer spotted one of her $1,400 Swarovski-encrusted clutch purses for sale on the online auction site. The purse - which bears the word "LOVE" spelled out in crystals - had been loaned to 's "Lipstick Jungle" set, a common practice. The show's producers had thought the bag was simply lost and had paid Toledano for it. But when agents from the fashion house saw the bag on eBay, they called NBC execs, who called . Hynes' investigators posed as eager handbag buyers. Moreira allegedly told the undercover officers he could sell the bags so cheap "because they fell off the back of a truck," sources said. Moreira, 27, was arrested Friday after investigators, armed with a search warrant, removed a dozen high-end items from his Brooklyn apartment - all had disappeared from the "Lipstick" set. In all, Moreira looted the set of 16 items, valued at $29,555, a spokesman for Hynes said. He was charged with 13 counts of grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and petty larceny. Among the hot stash were suits, coats and bags by , , , and Toledano and coats. ??Good breeding only goes so far. Even the purest pedigree can use a little pampering from time to time. Luckily, the city boasts a growing number of doggie spas and day-care centers that offer everything from aromatherapy and oatmeal baths to roomy fitness centers and play groups. But before you book an appointment for your pup, you may want to consider which place will suit him best. Some spots are designed for the more active, social pooch while others are better for dogs that prefer to lounge around and lap up the luxury. Here are four of the finest, guaranteed to make your pup howl with delight: WOOF WORKOUT Biscuits and Bath Calling all gym rats: Biscuits and Bath is for you. -Although it offers many of the same services as the other dog spas - grooming, day-care ($31-$36) and boarding ($60/night for members) - B&B is known as the doggy gym (think more Equinox than New York Sports Club) and it caters to mutts of all sizes and shapes. For a membership fee of $250 per year, dogs get access to the premiere hound health club in New York. So don't let your pouchy pooch feel intimidated by that robust Rottweiler: all dogs are welcome. B&B offers pickup and dropoff service to/from any of their three locations ($10/day round trip) so Fido never has to miss a workout. After their morning walk, pups are led to one of the two gym areas or playing fields - huge airy rooms with high ceilings, soft green mats and hip-hop music -playing. The dogs are separated either by size or temperament so rest -assured they're playing with the appropriate pals. The -canines can cavort for hours, enjoying a safe and fun environment - happy as a dog. After playtime, pups can relax or enjoy pedis ($15), grooming with all-natural shampoos and conditioners (prices vary) or a hot oil treatment ($25) - gleaming (and exhausted) just in time for pickup. Biscuits and Bath, 41 W. 13th St. (212) 419-2500, www.biscuitsandbath.com GOOD DOGMA PupCulture It's the age of the dog and nowhere is that clearer than at PupCulture. This New Age dog haven offers man's best friends everything they need to become one with their petaphysical side, including oatmeal treatments (free with baths), breathing alignments and muscle relaxation. The recently expanded dog shop employs the unique services of BodyWorks with Veronica, which specializes in working with the pup's breathing and muscle tension (essentially, yoga for dogs). Veronica works one-on-one with your pooch in the first session ($60) and gives you a tutorial in the second session to keep the healing and growth going at home. Eventually, Fido learns the technique for himself, so don't be surprised to find him in a lotus position. PupCulture, 529 Broome St. (212) 925-2090, www.?Fireworks explode at twilight over The Strip in , and another high-end, ber-luxury hotel opens its doors on Sin City's main drag.Standing 50 stories tall, and with 3,000 rooms, all of them suites ranging from 700 to 1,500 square feet, the Palazzo lives up to its name. It's a $1.8 billion palace that's all about luxury, Vegas-style. The suites, which go from $199 to $1,700 per night, boast sunken living rooms, sculpted carpets and plenty of velour. Larger suites feature foyers made entirely of Italian marble and semiformal dining areas. There are tons of fun amenities, including remote-controlled Roman shades and curtains for those who don't want to get out of their king-size beds for such a menial chore. I was a guest at the Palazzo's recent opening celebration, and during my three days there I discovered something new in my room each night of my stay - from the flat-screen, hi-def television I watched from my spacious tub in the all-marble bathroom (the suite had two other large-screen TVs), to the color copier/printer/fax machine in the living room workspace. Amenities aside, Vegas hotels want you to get out of your room and spend your money - and of course they want you to do it in their respective place. You can try your luck in the Palazzo's soon-to-be smoke-free casino, or indulge your shopping jones in one of the more than 60 boutiques and luxury-brand stores at The Shoppes in The Palazzo. High rollers can spend some of their newly won cash at such stores as , , Van Cleef & Arpels, , and . If you're famished from your all-day and night gambling and shopping outing, you can also ease your hunger without leaving the hotel. The Palazzo's restaurant lineup seems straight out of the . A must-stop is Morel's French Steakhouse and Bistro, where hand-shucked oysters and clams complement the cold lobster and jumbo shrimp on the seafood platter. Morel's offers a five-cheese or a five-meat, charcuterie-style munchies plate that you order by checking your choice from a list, similar to ordering sushi from a list at a Japanese restaurant. Opening this month are Emeril's Table 10, 's CUT, 's Carnevino and a Vegas branch of 's Dos Caminos. The Palazzo is also bringing a taste of to Sin City in April, when the Tony-winning musical "Jersey Boys" opens in a spanking-new theater. Clubgoers can dance the night away in a Vegas version of rapper 's 4-0/40 Club, complete with floor tiles made of gold and platinum, 85 plasma TV screens, five bars and five private VIP rooms. Back in your suite, you can always rest on your king- or queen-size bed between sheets made of high-thread, 100% cotton, and keep the morning sun out with your remote-controlled curtains. But really, who sleeps in Vegas? You can always rest on the plane ride home.?Burberry's back. The familiar tan, red and black plaid has been popping up again, but this time around, the once-staid British status symbol has moved beyond raincoats and umbrellas. We've spotted the stylish set wearing the pattern at fashion shows, parties and on the street. You can pin it on the fashion pack's new love of logos, or the revival of the trench coat, but Burberry's age-old signature is suddenly decorating the chicest tote bags, ties, scarves and hats. These big-brand accessories can be pricey, but clearly this look will never be gone for good. 1. "It's hip and English, and so am I," boasts Philip Scurrah, market editor for the swanky urban lifestyle magazine Wallpaper*. 2. Mademoiselle magazine editor Nancy Laboz looks cool carrying a Burberry tote bag. 3. The classic scarf is one of Burberry's most popular pieces. Fashion student Assia Grazoli gives it a mod appeal. 4. "It's an easy way to go classic and always looks right," according to Jacqueline Demontravel, an editor at Self magazine. 5. Konstantin Alexopoulos, who works for event designer Anthony Todd, goes all out with a matching shirt and tie.?Mariah Carey wishes Eminem could get over her. The pop goddess is revving up for a six-month world tour. So she finds it slightly pathetic that the Oscar-winning rap star is said to be saving phone messages she once left him. "I don't know what the hell he's doing," Carey told us yesterday. "It's a little excessive. Doesn't it seem a little bit girly? Like we're in a catfight?" According to one report, Slim Shady has been cherishing "weird and graphic" answering-machine tapes on which Carey talked in "a baby voice." "Graphic?" laughed Carey, speaking from the Caribbean, where she was relaxing on a catamaran. "I'm like Mary Poppins when it comes to that type of thing. I'm a jokester. I have little voices. I do little things like that that are fun and games. If somebody has nothing better to do than sit around listening to old phone messages, I'm a little concerned about that." Eminem's rep has denied that Slim may use Mariah's message in a rap. But Carey says: "Let him do whatever the hell he wants. If that makes him happy, yea for him." She added slyly, "All I know is, we all have a lot of messages, don't we? And we all should remember that." What about rumors that ex-boyfriend Luis Miguel may dish about her in an interview? "That I don't believe," she said. "He's a class act. It's not his style to be exploitative. At least, that's not the person that I knew. He wouldn't even talk to me about past girlfriends." The singer is clearly in a good frame of mind to begin a tour that she says will be unlike anything else she's done. She's letting her fans, with whom she communicates constantly on the Internet, help her choose her song list. She's also determined to perform in much smaller theaters - where the set will have a comfy decor reminiscent of Barbra Streisand's final shows. "I'm passionate about doing something more intimate," she said. The tour is due to begin in Seoul on June 21 and may hit 113 cities. As of yesterday, word was that Madison Square Garden and the Nassau Coliseum were on the schedule for September. But insiders said Carey firmly ruled them out. "I'm not doing any arenas," she told us. "It's too stressful to worry about the sound. I'm not doing this for the money. If I need to add more nights to get in more fans, I'll do it." And just so her fans can look forward to her famous bod, she had to hang up. "I'm about to do my little water aerobics," she laughed. "I have a trainer here. If you have to be abused by working out, I might as well work out in the ocean.?If Michael Phelps felt paranoid when he took a hit off that bong last November, it wasn't the pot. Somebody the Olympian felt comfortable enough to chill with snapped him with their cell phone. The traitor then made, er, pots of money selling it to The News of the World, where we're sure editors have never, ever toked up. Ashton Kutcher, who advanced his career by punking people with hidden cameras, Monday Twittered, "Whoever put the pic out is an a--!" Execs at Omega, one of Phelps' sponsors, weighed his achievement against the bong, and Phelps' 14 gold medals tipped the scale. They decided, "It's a nonissue." Kate Moss was not so lucky. When a 45-minute video of her snorting five lines of cocaine came out in 2005, the model lost her H&M, Chanel and Burberry contracts. Maybe if she wasn't so high, she'd've noticed someone was filming her for nearly an hour. Be warned. Big Brothers Are Watching You. And it's not just celebrities. Citizens armed with only their iPhones have helped police catch everyone from scratchiti artists to flashers on the subway. That's millions of eyes - a lot more than the 4,468 security cameras the New York Civil Liberties Union says are peering down at us from buildings. We're being bombarded with images of plain people who happen to be fat or unfashionable or drunk being put up on the Internet faster than you can say, "Hey, what are you doin'?" The cell images don't have as many megapixels as a Nikon D90, "But we love grainy," said Buzzfoto Agency head Brad Elterman. "It's more exciting, like we're voyeurs." But, of course, it's the celebs who get all the attention. Amy Winehouse was snapped all bloody after a fight with her equally drug-addled husband. When Seinfeld's Michael Richards went on his racial tirade, it all went down on videotape. After Heath Ledger died, photos of him doing coke leaked out. Last month, Patti LuPone went all diva at "Gypsy" when an audience member took her picture just as she was belting out "Rose's Turn." She stopped midbelt to yell, "Who do you think you are?! How dare you! Get him out! Out!" Little did she know somebody else was recording the audio. The Patti LuPone Audience Freakout Remix has been viewed some 160,000 times on YouTube. And of course, there's a drag queen version. Gone is the time when someone famous could don a pair of sunglasses and have an acolyte say, "No pictures please." It's as if Jackie O is walking down Fifth Avenue, and everybody on the street is Ron Galella. Lord knows the vox pop-arazzi are providing a service to humanity whenever they capture a celebrity without makeup, or displaying shocking amounts of cellulite on the beach. And then there's Erykah Badu, who New York magazine says gave birth to a baby girl live on the Web on Sunday. Badu's partner, Jay Electronica, Twittered, "She's dilated to 8-1/2 centimeters now." They haven't posted those images. Yet.?, both fashion titans in their home countries, wore their spring best upon their first meeting in this morning. For the meeting with the fashion sensation from across the pond, the First Lady dressed as though spring was in full bloom ? despite the prediction of showers. The First Lady wore a pale green, floral, a-line dress from 's 2011 resort collection, according to style site .? She paired the dress with silver high heels, a short metallic pink jacket with three quarter sleeves and a decorative brooch. Middleton chose a more muted route: A beige, short-sleeved, Shola "bandage" dress from Reiss, one her favorite designers. Double date: The First Lady Michelle Obama and stand next to and Prince Phillip in London (Toby Melville/Pool).Middleton, now the , wore a cream-colored dress by Reiss for one of her engagement photos.? Queen Elizabeth II seemed to take a page from the First Lady's book ? she wore a white dress with blue and green flowers by her , Her Majesty's tailor for the last 20 years, according to the . Fashion critics have long compared Michelle Obama and Kate Middleton: The two women like to wear what looks best on them, price be damned. In February, Michelle Obama caused a splash when she wore for an interview on the .? In early April, Middleton caused a buzz when she reportedly bought fun, floral dresses for her honeymoon at . Kate knows that she looks smashing in dresses and coats that define her waist and come right above the knee.? Her with the ruffled hem sold out all over the and was impossible to find in , since it was from a past season. Both ladies can agree on one designer: .? But wearing the designer brought them very different reviews from the press. Middleton's royal wedding gown, handmade by and her team, garnered raves from the international press for its subtly sexy take on the Victorian silhouette and influence. Back in January, Michelle Obama wore a to an official state dinner with Chinese president .? Critics, including and excoriated the First Lady for not wearing an American designer to the event. Von Furstenberg .?Move over , there's a new "It" girl in town. And she's about to launch the biggest bra in history. , who replaced Fox in the "" franchise, will debut the Incredible by Victoria's Secret, a bra that boasts "seamless memory fit." "It's the most comfortable bra I've ever worn," Huntington-Whiteley told . "It smooths and shapes without pinching your back." The blue-eyed beauty will be featured in all of the print and television ads for the line. But this isn't the only opportunity Huntington-Whiteley has snagged. The model is the new face of fashion brand - replacing "" star and sophomore . This decision came as a shock, as sales have increased since Watson modeled for the brand. "Emma was a huge success. Everyone expected her to be used again," a source told .? With a new movie, a huge bra launch and another fashion brand to front, Huntington-Whiteley is becoming a hot commodity in Tinseltown. The Incredible by Victoria's Secret hits stores on August 10. "" is set to be released on July 1, 2011.?It's hard to find a gift for the man who has everything, but by Sunday consumers will have spent $8 billion this year trying - 20% less than they did for Mom last month. Data entry clerk Jennis Thedison, 34, is tight with his father, so he's going to take him out shopping, to feel out what his dad wants. Thedison expects to spend $200 to $300. But it was a totally different story for his mother, who he says has been emotionally supportive through thick and thin. He gave her $2,000 cash for Mother's Day last year, and a $599 32-inch TV this year. "Mom sticks up for us. Even if we're wrong, she's always there. It's not because she's female and he's male (that we spend more)," Thedison said. The traditional drop-off for Father's Day may not be so much about how people feel about dads vs. moms, but who is doing the feeling, and therefore, the spending. "Women do a lot better planning, less money is spent instead of buying the most expensive thing already wrapped. They [men] don't shop, they buy - often at the last minute, because they feel guilty," said Faith Popcorn, of marketing and consulting firm BrainReserve. There are also more women running single-parent households, Popcorn added. Women are largely responsible for the drop in Father's Day spending this year. Their average gifts will fall to $89.77 from $101.38 last year, according to the National Retail Federation. More women are also shopping online, finding bargains that way, said Cheryl Bridges, of the Center for Retailing Studies at Texas A&M University. Men, however, are reportedly spending more, averaging $82.19, up from last year's $70.89. Still, more people will shop for Father's Day this year than last, though spending per person will shrink, according to the NRF. "Consumers still appear a little cautious when it comes to discretionary spending. Spending for Father's Day could be reflecting the impact of higher gas prices and the situation in Iraq," said Tracy Mullin, the federation's CEO. As usual, stores are pushing a lot of electronic items. DVD recorders, which just fell through the $300 barrier, and were "barely out last year for Christmas," are the hottest must-haves, said Richard Doherty, research director for Envisioneering. Digital cameras are still popular. The Casio Exilim slim cameras, which retail for $249.99 to $399.99 and Sony digital cameras with a small display are both in short supply, Doherty added. To capture this market, Amazon.com is advertising a sale on all electronic equipment in the lead-up to Father's Day. Retailers Macy's and Bloomingdale's said Lacoste polo shirts are enjoying a comeback as gifts for dad, as are similar styles from Burberry, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. Grooming supplies are also being promoted - like "Everyday Thickening" shampoo from Frederic Fekkai, which doubles as body wash and sells for $20. Grooming, gardening, and overall gender-bending feminization is a growing theme this year, especially as more and more women bring home the bacon, and men spend more time participating in household matters, says Popcorn. But in case dad hasn't become too domesticated, Nautica is offering a stain-resistant polo shirt for $39.50.?The Burberry check is turning up everywhere even on Barbie dolls. Mattel's new limited-edition Burberry Barbie, priced at $79, is dressed for the elements in a short plaid kilt, fringed scarf and, of course, a plaid-lined tan trench coat. Label lovers can preorder one now by calling 1-800-491-7514 or shop online at barbiecollectiblesstore.com. Available in early July.?For a larger-than-life shopping experience, head to LoftWorks @ Lafayette, which offers designer clothing from the likes of Prada, Burberry, Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis at discounted prices. The three-level, 20,000-square-foot store opened this week at 100 Lafayette St., just south of Canal.?A man arrested in connection with a suspicious van that caused a bomb scare was released Friday as his lawyer denied any link to the vehicle., 36, said nothing as he left with his son and a friend.Defense lawyer , who successfully argued for Freyre's release without bail, insisted his client was innocent."My client is denying the charges," Wenger said at a morning hearing for the , N.J., man.The street peddler was charged with a felony for allegedly forging the expiration date on the van's temporary registration.He also faces a violation of the city administrative code for unlawful use or possession of an official city parking card. asked for $10,000 bail, noting Freyre has two prior disorderly conduct charges and an arrest for pushing an lieutenant."The bomb squad and ESU were called in," Cliver said. "The van had peddler property inside and Times Square was effectively shut down for the day. The defendant did admit that the van was his."Freyre, who works at a used car dealership, does not own the van, Wenger insisted. He only surrendered to police Thursday evening because "they were looking for him, they said he was wanted," the attorney said.The 1997 Dodge triggered a bomb scare Wednesday because it had no license plates and a bogus parking placard on the dashboard. Its windows were covered on the inside with garbage bags.It prompted to order a review of how the vehicle was allowed to sit illegally parked for two days.After a 911 call about the van, cops shut down parts of Times Square, evacuated buildings and used a remote-controlled robot to check for explosives in the van, parked on Broadway near 42nd St.A folding table and some imitation scarves were the van's only contents.Freyre apparently chickened out when he saw the massive police response, sources said. He gave his keys to a man who let the cops into the vehicle.The parking card was issued by , Metropolitan New Jersey and .Kelly directed the 's Legal Bureau to pursue possible civil action against the Bronx-based nonprofit for issuing the placard, which one source said was "manufactured for the purpose of escaping parking tickets."?'" judge is famous for her spot-on fashion critiques. Send a poorly made cocktail frock down the reality show's catwalk, and Garcia will pinpoint the problem with the precision of a stylish sharpshooter.It's no wonder, then, that Garcia applies the same critical eye to her own closet. In "The One Hundred," the -born fashion-mag veteran breaks down the essential items (to exactly that number) she believes every woman should own, from an A-line dress to a zippered hoodie. They're inspired by her own collection of clothing, a carefully curated assortment of classic pieces that have stood fickle fashion's test of time. Though she believes great versions can be found at stores like H&M (the book offers high and low designer picks, along with illustrations from ), she suggests avoiding fads and short-lived trends in your own closet. "Always splurge for quality and unique pieces that have longevity," says Garcia, who emphasizes that readers of her book must tailor her recommendations to their personal style. "Shop for value, keeping in mind you want to build on your wardobe, as opposed to indulging in disposable fashion that only lasts one season." The trick to building a wardrobe this fall, in other words, is making it work - to borrow a "Runway" catch phrase - for you, and for your budget. It's Garcia's mantra, too. Along with the wide-legged trousers she's dying to put on this fall ("They give the illusion that I am long and lean and superslim. I call them 'magical' pants") and a well-worn tweed jacket, an Army-Navy store blue peacoat is among her favorites. "It's one of the pieces that has been in my closet for a long time," she says. Case in point: Garcia's modern-day style icon, . "She truly embodies the 21st-century style," she says. "It's personal and effortless, with a mix of high and low." ?NOKIA IS DIALING INTO a posh, new retail space in one of the most expensive areas of the city. Nokia's going to be offering customers a handmade mobile phone finished in 18-carat gold for $20,000 when it opens the doors of its New York flagship next week. The 1,300-square-foot shop, set on E. 57th St. just off Fifth Avenue, was designed by one of the architects behind Apple's sleek, minimalist SoHo store. It will be lined with LED-lit, color-changing walls and strung with video displays. Opening Sept. 9, it will be Nokia's second retail store in the U.S. The first is in Chicago. While Nokia's phones are offered in wireless stores throughout the city, the new spot will be a showcase for the handset giant, said Winston Wright, senior manager of Nokia's Americas flagship retail operations. Nestled between the storefronts of Yves Saint Laurent and Burberry, the new Nokia store is just off one of the highest-priced shopping strips in the world. It's also only a few blocks away from the new Apple store on 59th and Fifth. "We want to talk to people about our brand and our designs unfiltered, and in the way we want to talk about them," he told the Daily News. The store will stock Nokia's full line of mobile phones, but don't look for boring brochures. The video wall displays will be interactive, popping up with information about each phone as the customer picks it up and checks it out. At other times, words and pictures will stream across the screens and around the room. Nokia also will offer a number where people can send text, picture and video messages that will be floated around the screens. That helps make the store "extremely interactive from a technological perspective," Wright said. On the second floor of its new midtown store, the Finnish phone maker will let customers try out its "Nseries" multimedia phones. They boast devices like cameras and MP3 players and can be wirelessly paired with photo printers, stereo speakers and laptop computers. At the store, customers can sign up for phone service with Sprint or T-Mobile. Nokia also plans to appeal to Fifth Avenue's well-heeled crowd by making room on the third floor for its luxury Vertu line. The phones cost upwards of $4,000, and are individually made and hand-crafted. The Vertu phones include sapphire crystals, fine leather, polished ceramic, ruby bearings and housings of gold, stainless steel and other fine metals. Vertu has already sold more than a handful of its products out of its Chicago store, which has been open for eight weeks, Wright said. Later this year, the high-end gadget maker plans to launch an 18-carat gold diamond-studded phone that will retail for nearly $100,000. That doesn't even include free night and weekend calls. Each phone comes with a special button that immediately connects you with its "concierge service," which the company boasts can get you a reservation at the hippest restaurant in town or a ticket to the hottest show at a moment's notice. Vertu customers get a year's subscription to this concierge service with the purchase of a phone. After that, it's $100 a month. With high-tech products gaining a reputation as more "chic" than "geek," electronics companies are creeping into neighborhoods once largely reserved for shops selling haute couture and high-end jewelry. Nokia, which has retail stores in Moscow, Helsinki and Hong Kong, in addition to the Chicago and New York stores, plans to open another location in Central America this fall, and has its eye on other U.S. spots, Wright said. elazarowitz@nydailynews.com?There's no NYC yet, but Nordstrom Rack has arrived.The national retailer's budget-friendly outlet opened in Union Square (E. 14th St. and Broadway) this week, and the selection is promising.It's stocked with 25,000 pairs of discounted shoes, 2,000 pairs of designer denim, and 2,400 handbags.Discounts include $275 Theory floral sun dress for $89 and a $495 wool coat for $187.There's an impressive collection of colorful designer bags (from brands like and L.A.M.B.), while sunglasses, shoes and jewelry are between 30% and 70% off retail. Another competitive edge in this deal-heavy town: an on-site tailor and a men's department to keep the boys busy.The racks are divided by designer but there are also speciality zones for quick picks, like a row of dresses by varied brands organized by size.And to speed up checkout, Nordstrom Rack president has said he took a note from his Union Square neighbor , instituting an automated director to send you to an open register.The store hopes to take on New Yorkers' other favorite outlets: With two locations in (2222 Broadway and 4 Union Square South), this long-standing store is a City staple for discounted designer brands: from classics like Armani and to edgy Theory and Rock & Republic. TANGER OUTLET Worth a day trip, this outlet in , (1770 West Main St.) has over 165 major brand name outlets, from Gap to . About a 90 minute trip, there's daily roundtrip bus service from , Queens and Manhattan via the North Fork Service Line (see for times and pick up locations.) GABAY'S Selling overstock from biggies like and Bendel, this institution (225 First Ave.) offers %50 to %80 off. Designer line-up: , , , , just to name a few. CENTURY 21 Tourists are known to ravage the selection at the Financial District store (22 Cortlandt St.), so the borough locations remain a city girl's best friend. , Brooklyn (472 86th St.), Queens (61-01 Junction Blvd.), and , Long Island (1085 Country Rd.). LOEHMANN'S Whether you shop at the Chelsea store (101 Seventh Ave.) or the (2101 Broadway), the Insider Club gives a slew of perks, like 15% off on your birthday and advanced notices on sales. 'S With a dozen locations in the metro area including Brooklyn (625 Atlantic Ave.) and the (610 Exterior St.), the most selection is a short drive away at the store in , (400 Mill Creek Dr.), which also features discounted designer home goods. WOODBURY COMMONS The will take you to the Woodbury Common station or catch a bus (Gray Line or Short Line) from Port Authority to this shopping mecca (498 Red Apple Court) in Central Valley that features 222 outlet shops, from sporty to high-end to . SYMS This store has a convenient location at 400 Park Ave. in Manhattan but also has stores around the metro area. Tip: check out the website for locations and see the user ratings to help decide which store is right for you. ?Milky skinned model has worn some of the world's most glamorous clothes in ad campaigns for and , so she may have felt especially underdressed at a recent shoot. Very, very underdressed.Deyn posed completely in the buff? - outside, in the middle of the city - for downtown art photographer . Pictures of the British-born catwalker completely au naturel appeared on the Web site of? tabloid The Sun, with a tiny graphic of a Burberry purse preserving a tiny vestige of her modesty.Deyn, who is considered one of the top models in the world, just signed a contract to replace as the face of the Burberry brand.In case she wasn't exposed enough, the premise of this shoot required the apparently fearless model to leap from a building. One spectator was quoted by The Sun as saying, "Some of the positions naked Agyness got into left nothing to the imagination. A few people got a real eyeful." The shoot, for the artsy British fashion magazine Pop, was meant to recreate a famous photo of a couple leaping from a burning building.The 25-year-old platinum blond, whose real name is , has been romantically linked and is known for her quirky personal style off the runway. Growing up in she used to work in a chip shop, and her favorite food, she told New York magazine, is thin-crust pizza. If there was any room for doubt about whether such foods might have a whit of impact on her willowy figure, now we all know the naked truth.? Use of this website signifies your agreement to the and . © Copyright 2012 NYDailyNews.com. All rights reserved.?With all the fabulous fashion wear available for your precious doggie or kitty, perhaps it’s time to strut your furry fashionista down their own personal cat-walk or dog-walk.Read on to discover your animal’s fashion style by the stars and promptly make room in your closet for your new fashionable clothes, for your pet that is!ARIES: Fashion Model ? You are the leader of the pack with an attitude to match. A bright orange alligator polo would fit your over the top personality, paired with a fire engine red collar. Vanity ? You have an enormous amount of energy and challenge other pets to keep up, showing them that you are number one.TAURUS: Fashion Model ? Extravagant and sophisticated, only the finest pieces will do for your lavish taste. Spoil them with a cashmere sweater; diamond encrusted collar or a new pair of hip shoes. Vanity ? You come off as a tad snobby without realizing it, maybe because you’re too preoccupied checking yourself out in the mirror.GEMINI: Fashion Model ? You adore the stage and love your freedom; a stylish hoodie with a chic platinum neck piece would please you. After all, you don’t want to be fussed with too much. Vanity ? Your curious and mischievous nature leads you to learn new tricks quickly but your constant barks or meows drive your owner bonkers.CANCER: Fashion Model ? You have expensive taste and prefer the comforts of your carry bag or collar than strolling down the runway. A singlet that fits just right with a matching bow will do the trick. Vanity ? Excuse me, can you change my bedding please? And if you don’t mind, can you iron the sheets!LEO: Fashion Model ? You need to be noticed so outfits that are electric or flamboyant are your style. A red velvet dress or a lightweight tuxedo paired, or a silk bow on your collar will turn heads the moment you walk into a room. Vanity ? Your hair is your number one priority, if it’s not styled then you might even refuse to go outside.VIRGO: Fashion Model ? Immaculate pieces that you can wear all year long is what you desire, try on a got treats tank top or show your love for colors with a crazy cat bandana. Vanity ? Your breathe must be fresh and you adore it when your owner brushes your teeth, leaving you to give nothing but fresh kisses daily.LIBRA: Fashion Model ? You worship dreamy and heavenly posh attire. A black comfy suede coat with rhinestones and fur collar would leave you feeling fabulous all day long. A soft white jump suit would be ideal for your angel-like presence. Vanity ? Color coordinating your wardrobe is your signature trait, everything must match.?The 7 line cuts through the heart of New York, starting with Broadway and heading out toward Flushing. Not surprisingly, there just happens to be some choice shopping along the way. Pick up some glamorous gifts for the boys and girls in your life, covering everything from shea butter to Shea Stadium. VICTORIA'S SECRET. Pink Patch hoodie, $42.00. and PINK PATCH sweats, $36.50 at Victoria's Secret, 90-15 Queeens Blvd (90th St. Elmhurst Ave stop) Banana Republic Glasgow boots, $68. Grand Central Terminal. (42nd St./Grand Central Station stop) LORD & TAYLOR Burberry fragrances, $34-$76 at 424 Fifth Ave. (Fifth Ave. stop) Borders John Grisham's "The Innocent Man," $28.95 at 576 Second Ave. (42nd St./Grand Central Station stop) Gap Leather bracelets, $10 each at 1466 Broadway. (42nd St./Times Square stop) Nine West Voniza heel, $79 at 425 Lexington Ave. (42nd St./ Grand Central Station stop) InMotion Entertainment Snoop Dogg CD "The Blue Carpet Treatment," $13.99 at Grand Central Terminal. (42nd St./Grand Central Station stop) Circuit City "Sopranos Season Six, Part 1" DVD, $99.98 at 96-05 Queens Blvd. (Junction Blvd. stop) Godiva Limited Edition Cocktail Truffles (infused with the taste of Truffletini, Cosmopolitan and Strawberry Daiquiri), $45 at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. (Fifth Ave. stop) Saks Fifth Avenue Hanky Panky knit boxies, $16; long-sleeved henley, $24.50, at 611 Fifth Ave. (Fifth Ave. stop) Old Navy Men's flannel pajama set, $24.50 at 136-02 Roosevelt Ave. (74th St./Broadway stop) Junior's Christmas cheesecake, $34.95 at 1515 Broadway. (42nd St./Times Square stop) Ann Taylor Loft Sequined peep toe heel, $69; velvet and sequined clutch, $29; gray stone necklace, $30; sequined mirror, $15, at 7 Times Square. (42nd St./Times Square stop)?Kate Moss is finding out that hell hath no fury like a tabloid fined. Back in July, lawyers for the supermodel proudly announced that London's Sunday Mirror would pay her "substantial" libel damages for claiming that she once fell into a cocaine-induced coma. Yesterday, the Mirror had its vengeance - publishing photos that show Moss allegedly snorting coke with her boyfriend, Pete Doherty. The pictures show the proto-waif laying down about 20 lines of white powder from a "mammoth stash kept safely wrapped in her handbag," then "hoovering up every last grain of the Class A drug," the Mirror claimed. The paper said the damning pictures were taken last week in a recording studio as part of "an undercover investigation" while Doherty laid down guitar tracks for a new Babyshambles album. Moss spent six weeks in rehab in 1998 for an undisclosed addiction. Calls to a rep for the catwalk princess, who has a 2-year-old daughter, Lila, were not returned yesterday. Moss and Doherty got wind of the Mirror counterattack Tuesday, when a reporter and photographer buttonholed them as they came out of the restaurant Balthazar in New York. Moss and Doherty "tried to make a run for it," lenswoman Jennifer Gonzales tells us. She says Doherty threatened the reporter and "shoved me to the ground," breaking her camera. With the Mirror preparing another installment for today, executives at Burberry, Chanel, Dior and Rimmel, for which Moss models, have to be concerned. A Burberry spokesman told us yesterday: "Going forward when it comes to the next ad campaign, Burberry will look to choose the most relevant model for [print campaign] shoots. Beyond that, we can't comment." It remains to be seen whether Moss will turn up at the Hurricane Katrina benefit show that is planned by her friends Naomi Campbell, Iman and Linda Evangelista to close Fashion Week tonight. Tickets are available at ticketmaster.com. PITT & JOLIE HAVE NUPTIALS IN SITE Brad Pitt hasn't quite wrapped up his first marriage, but he's already said to be planning his second. Italian papers are bruiting that Pitt has asked George Clooney if he and Angelina Jolie can wed at his "Ocean's Eleven" co-star's villa on Lake Como. Pitt's divorce from Jennifer Aniston is due to become final next month. His rep was unavailable, but it's unlikely that a wedding could happen before next year. Brad is now in Canada filming "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.?By its own account, the 304-page book that shook the presidency was born at the close of a funeral three years ago, when the coffin containing a New York bon vivant was escorted past a balding Washington bureaucrat. The bon vivant was John O'Neill, a dapper fixture at Elaine's, also the head of national security at the FBI's New York office until a few weeks before his death at the World Trade Center. The bureaucrat was Richard Clarke, the national coordinator for counterterrorism in the White House through four administrations and now the author of "Against All Enemies." "As the Mass ended and John's coffin rolled by, the bagpipes played, and, finally, I wept from my gut," Clarke writes in the first chapter. "There was so much to grieve about. How did all this happen? Why couldn't we stop it? How do we prevent it from happening again and rid the world of the horror. Sometime I would find the time to think through it all and answer those questions. The time is now." Now was not 10 months after the funeral, when Clarke gave a background briefing to the press at the behest of his latest masters at the White House. He made no suggestion that President Bush had been slow to act either prior or after the Sept. 11 attacks. He did not even hint that the confrontation with Iraq was distracting us from the main battle at hand. "I was a special assistant to the President. And I made the case I was asked to make," Clarke explained to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States last week. One of the commissioners inquired why Clarke was now so hypercritical of Bush's decision to invade Iraq but had said nothing during his earlier, closed-door appearance before the 9/11 commission. "In the 15 hours of testimony, no one asked me what I thought about the President's invasion of Iraq," Clarke said. Clarke then repeated the allegation he had made on a "60 Minutes" appearance timed to the release of his book. This is the charge that takes the book beyond what already has been said. "By invading Iraq, the President of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism," Clarke declared. The commissioners answered with silence, as if none of them were prepared to address immediately so direct an accusation. Clarke was saying that our finest young people are fighting and dying in a war that actually hampered the battle with the true threat to the homeland. Much of the rest of what Clarke says was already reported in the 2002 book "The Cell," which rightly portrays O'Neill as the one senior figure in the FBI who truly understood the danger posed by Al Qaeda. "The Cell," as well as numerous articles about O'Neill, recounts how his warnings were repeatedly ignored. He was hounded from the FBI by disciplinary inanities even as the danger seemed to become most dire. "There's a big one coming," O'Neill said up at Elaine's. "I can feel it. We're due." On Aug. 23, 2001, O'Neill went to work as director of security at the World Trade Center. He was seen just before his death in the lobby of the north tower, a smudge of concrete on the back of his dapper Burberry suit jacket. The funeral was held 17 days later at St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church in his native Atlantic City. Clarke did indeed break down into tears as bagpipes played and the coffin was carried past him. The tune the bagpipes played was "God Bless America," which was often heard in those months of seemingly endless funerals. We told ourselves that at least we were united as a nation, that we had rediscovered what did indeed make us blessed. Three years later, O'Neill's friend, Clarke, contends in a book that the White House used our patriotism to rouse us to war with a dictator who was not in truth a threat. Clarke further charges that this undermined the truly righteous war against those who continue to spend every waking hour plotting to murder us. E-mail: mdaly@edit.nydailynews.com?The drop-dead-gorgeous blond heiress who is Prince Harry’s latest girlfriend knew the rowdy royal redhead was headed to Las Vegas for a “blowout” weekend ? and stood by her man after he cavorted naked with bikini babes.The photos of an undraped prince playing “strip billiards” in Sin City mortified Buckingham Palace ? but willowy model Cressida Bonas never considered dumping him and was “not too fazed about events,” the Daily Mail is reporting.The 23-year-old aristocrat, the daughter of the four-times divorced 1960s cover girl Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon, has jetted with Harry to a Caribbean island, partied with him in a swank London nightclub and took in the latest Batman movie by his side.Trained in contemporary dance and ballet, Bonas has worked as an actress, ski instructor and Burberry model ? and is said to adore Jane Austen novels.Bonas, who was introduced to the prince in May by his cousin Princess Eugenie, has had her tolerance for royal shenanigans tested again as new details surface about his boozy performance in Vegas: A British-born blond says she was alone with the drunken and randy nude prince, 27, during the wild VIP-suite soiree at the Wynn Hotel in August.Beyond a “drunken fumble” in his boudoir, however, not much happened. “He was a gentleman, but he was so wasted,” Carrie Reichert, 32, told The People, a British down-market tabloid, about her 15 minutes as a royal consort. “The alcohol affected him. We kissed, he was naked at the time, and pretty open. It wasn’t romantic, just fun.”After one smooch, she said, the drunken prince gushed, “That was great!” Then he and Reichert “returned to the party and kept drinking.” But a royal source told the Sunday Mirror that Reichert wasn’t at the soiree, and the paper called her a “pole-dancing addict.”According to The People account, Reichert was one of 10 beauties invited up to the swinging party by a member of Harry’s entourage. “Harry was already undressed,” she said.“He looked delirious. There was a pool table and he was playing air guitar with pool sticks.” The music was pounding and the alcohol was flowing freely as the nude prince “would just randomly walk up to you and hug you,” she added. “It was funny.”Some girls frolicked naked around the suite, but Reichert stressed that “it was not like an orgy going on.” “It was just sexy naked. It was like almost a game. He was trying to get everybody to get naked,” she said.The madcap scene produced the salacious shots of the prince embracing an as-yet-unidentified girl from behind.Harry hasn’t made a public appearance since the scandal, but he’s expected at an awards ceremony Monday in London.?Checking out all the after-Christmas sales at department and specialty stores can be exhausting. Take a break - for coffee, a snack or even a meal - at these on-premises cafes, and you'll have the energy to hit the bargain racks again. . Cafe SFA, Saks Fifth Avenue, eighth floor, 611 Fifth Ave., between 49th and 50th Sts., (212) 753-4000 Get refreshed in elegant surroundings at this tablecloth restaurant or have a cocktail at the granite-topped bar. There's a wide selection, from Champagne and caviar to steamed dumplings. Choose the low-fat Swiss cheese omelet ($13.50) and you'll still fit into those new clothes you found. . The Tea Box Cafe at Takashimaya, lower level, 693 Fifth Ave., between 54 and 55th Sts., (212) 350-0179 Soothing sand-colored linen drapes the ceiling and the chairs, creating a calm setting. The East-West Tea Sampler ($18) includes a pot of tea from an extensive selection, finger sandwiches, cookies, pastry and fruit. . Mad Cup Tea Cafe, Burberry, third floor, 9 E. 57th St., between Fifth and Madison Aves., (212) 407-7100 At this long communal tea bar, with its high white leather chairs and "Alice in Wonderland" accents, have a lapsang souchong smoked chicken breast sandwich ($12), white rabbit dark chocolate mousse or Trafalgar Square blend tea. . Le Train Bleu, Bloomingdale's, seventh floor, 1000 Third Ave., between 59th and 60th Sts., (212) 705-2000 Pretend you're on the Orient Express in this marvelous reproduction of a classic railway car and decide whether to have the smoked salmon and bagel platter ($12.50), the grilled chicken or to indulge with Belgian waffles and strawberries. . Cafe Americanstyle, Lord & Taylor, fifth floor, 424 Fifth Ave., between 38th and 39th Sts., (212) 391-3344 You can still have a bowl of the famous Scotch broth at the soup bar on the sixth floor, but for more of a restaurant setting, try the cafe one floor down where the offerings include vegetable lasagna, Yankee pot roast ($8.95), quiche and chicken potpie. E-mail: iforgang@edit.nydailynews.com?This thief was trapped like a rat.A burly gas station manager outmuscled a bumbling robber Tuesday - and then hit the store's panic button, locking the crook inside, police said.Nick Ali was inside a glass-enclosed cashier's counter at a Gulf station on Utica Ave. in about 2 p.m. when he saw , 48, stuffing cell phone chargers into a bag."I came out of the booth. Usually that's a bad idea," said , 38, of Brooklyn.But Ali's bad idea was bad news for Syldorthy, who got a tongue-lashing - and then a beating - from the courageous clerk."I'm busting my a-- here 18 hours a day so you can rob me?" Ali recalled barking at the bandit.Ali said he pounced on Syldorthy as he reached into his pocket, fearing he was packing heat.A wild struggle ensued. Syldorthy tried to get at the cash register, but the 6-foot-3 Ali gave him a run for his money."He tried to get into the booth," Ali said. "I pushed him back."Ali eventually got the upper hand and beat Syldorthy to the cashier's-booth entrance. Ali said he shoved Syldorthy back and quickly entered the booth and slammed the door shut.He then hit the panic button - which locked all entrances to the convenience store - and called 911."I hit a button and locked him in," Ali said. "That's why it's called a trapdoor!"Syldorthy frantically tried to break free."He started kicking the [front] door," Ali recalled. "He shattered it, but it held - thank God."Cops soon arrived and collared Syldorthy. He was charged with robbery and criminal mischief, a police source said.Ali, a father of 2-year-old twin boys, said he's no hero - just a dedicated worker."I wish I had gotten famous some other way," he joked.?Has David Chase started going all Woody Allen on the cast of "The Sopranos"? We hear the creator of the HBO series has teed off his faithful actors by releasing only small sections of the script to them at a time, following in the footsteps of the eccentric movie director. "The cast is very upset," a spy tells us. "They got whole scripts before, and now, David Chase no longer does that. They get the few pages where they have lines. It shows mistrust." An HBO spokeswoman told us all the actors do have a chance to get their hands on a script early on. "The whole cast comes to table reads, where they can hear the whole script," the rep tells us. "After that, it is true that some people get whole scripts and some people get just the parts they appear in." Of course, as Tony and Co. well know, where there's a law, there's always a way around it. "[The actors are] going to the Teamsters so they can see the whole story," our spy says. The union, which is responsible for all the set changes and handiwork on the show, requires a full copy of the script. So as long as the stars make nice with the Teamsters, they have no problem getting a complete copy of the lines. Director goes for 'Broke' "Brokeback Mountain" director Ang Lee sees his gay cowboy flick rounding up mainstream success, despite its controversial subject. "It's a lot warmer than I expected, how people respond to it," Lee told us. The movie, in which Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger play lovers in the lonely American West, has picked up critical praise and won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. "The material is quite challenging, but somehow it made some sort of vibe and has a lot of goodwill!" Despite rumors of tension on the set between "Brokeback" screenwriter Larry McMurtry and Lee, the "Ice Storm" director assured us that McMurtry and novelist Annie Proulx, who wrote the original story, "both loved the movie." "It's a special relief," Lee sighed. "Brokeback" will debut in limited release, which is also a relief to the director. "It's more natural to me. Every movie I did, except 'The Hulk,' I did with that kind of platform," Lee said, admitting he was "uncomfortable" with the release of "Hulk," which he thought "was really shoved out into the market." Choosing Rachel makes scents Looks like Burberry thinks "Constant Gardener" star Rachel Weisz is a safer bet than Kate Moss. The staid fashion house declined to use Kate for its spring campaign after revelations of her cocaine use appeared in the London Mirror. But sources say the beautiful Weisz (l.), who stars in the upcoming epic "The Fountain," is on deck. "Burberry wanted to use an elegant and sophisticated British beauty for their fragrance, and Rachel fit the bill," a source told the Mail on Sunday. Meanwhile, as far as acting gigs go, Weisz has particular demands for her next role. "I very much need to do a comedy," she told us. "I'm not going back to work after 'The Fountain' unless it's a comedy." Got that, Hollywood? SIDE DISH ELIZABETH HURLEY and Evelyn Lauder unveiled Song Airline's Pink Plane Friday morning at JFK to support the Breast Cancer Research Foundation ... "DEVIL WEARS Prada" author Lauren Weisberger tried to downplay her role in the book's film adaptation at a party for her new tome, "Everyone Worth Knowing," at the W Times Square, describing it as "limited." But Wendy Finerman, who's producing the Meryl Streep vehicle, piped up to disagree. "We got her a director's chair," she insisted of the film-obsessed Weisberger ... DENZEL WASHINGTON and Queen Latifah celebrated the comeback of Salt-N-Pepa with the ladies at Taj ... KATE HUDSON and Chris Robinson ignored oglers at A.O.C Bedford ... MANHATTAN GOT a little redneck last week, when Lee Ann Womack did some tequila shooters onstage and sang "Twenty Years and Two Husbands Ago" at Cipriani.?FAKE KATE SPADE bags, Burberry scarves and Timberland boots, among a host of other items, are costing the city and its businesses billions. Indeed, counterfeiting cost city businesses $23 billion last year and at the same time deprived the city's own coffers of $1 billion in tax revenue, according to a new report from controller William Thompson. And the pace doesn't appear to have eased up this year. That's enough money to fund one nurse for every school, 12,000 police officers and 10 million schoolbooks for a year. "Shoppers will be hard-pressed to resist" some of the imitators, Thompson said, but "everyone in the city suffers." Bootleg goods, which are often sold on street corners from Chinatown to Fifth Avenue, cost a fraction of the original - and shoppers pay no taxes when they buy them. The city accounts for about 8% of all counterfeit goods sold in the U.S. Thompson, and execs from a host of luxury goods makers, said the imitations are made from material that typically doesn't hold up as well over time - and that can be dangerous. Counterfeit Christmas lights, electric fans and extension cords, for example, have fake power strips made with undersized wires that can cause fires. Many fake items look like their more costly originals, but a closer inspection can often reveal defects. An imitation Burberry bag had a host of problems that made it easy to spot as a fraud. Unlike the original, it sported a label that's easily removable, displaying both the company's logo and the Burberry name. The bag also had a light blue lining, instead of the black lining of the real thing. And, the bag also had a hanging tag, which Coach uses, but Burberry doesn't. In addition to taking money out of the city's coffers, counterfeiting also lifts money from the pockets of business owners in the city who are selling the more expensive originals. Vincent Barreiro, the owner of the Casa Latina Music Shop in Manhattan, said pirated CDs have taken about 40% of his family owned music store's business away in the last few years. Barreiro said he's considering trying to sell the store, which has cut its employees to just two from six. "It's tough to be there 12 hours and not see any [merchandise] move," he said. Thompson recommended several measures to combat the effect of counterfeiting, including creating an industry task force from the state, city and federal government, and seeking dedicated funding from the city and state. "This is something we should all be concerned about," Thompson said. Ddunaief@nydailynews.com?'s "" transformation has shocked Hollywood, but if the photos in W are any indication, it pales in comparison to the original big screen , Swedish actress .In recently released photos from February issue -- an exclusive first look from the set --?the version of Lisbeth Salander appears as haute couture's answer to a punk-rock hacker with virtually none of the grit of Swedish cinema's feminist take on the heroine from 's best-selling novel.While Mara is decked out with perfectly bleached skin, stylized hair, flawless black eye makeup and and threads, Rapace's Lisbeth? always appeared as though she subverted her beauty with smeared eyeliner and a?DIY mohawk.'s Lisbeth hid her feminine curves beneath masculine leather duds while Hollywood's Lisbeth debuts on the cover of W pulling open her leather jacket to reveal her cleavage, with artfully applied blood on her fingers.Within the pages of the magazine, Hollywood Lisbeth's sexiness is ramped up further. One photo shows a shirtless Mara looking off into the distance, her hands covering her chest; another image has her leaning over a bike -- al-la in "" -- to get her a rear end tattooed as a cigarette dangles from her mouth.Though author Stieg Larsson has been criticized for fetishising the abuse his heroine undergoes, Rapace made up for it on screen by creating a Lisbeth who takes no prisoners, sleeps with whoever she wants and never allows herself to be objectified.It's a far cry from the tutu-wearing -underwear flashing sex bot that appears in W's February issue.Hollywood should realize that it takes more than bleaching eyebrows, chopping hair and piercing various body parts to catch the spirit of Salander. Though Rapace's wish has apparently come true as she told Deadline in November that she hoped "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's" U.S. director would "do something far away from our films."Fincher told the magazine he made Lisbeth more aggressive for the American version of story, but that doesn't quite mesh with his rather precious description of the character as a "goth Pippi."Hopefully the Hollywood version of the Swedish thriller will not turn out to be another "Point of No Return," in which transformed 's French butt-kicking?"La Femme Nikita"?into a flimsy clothes horse.? is going nude for . The British beauty and poses in the brand's iconic beige trench coat ? and nothing else --? in her debut ads for the new fragrance Body, reports . The sexy ad campaign was shot by famed shooter . posed for the British brand last year, showing off the line's leather jackets and coats. "It's a huge honor to be working with Burberry again, a brand that put my career on the map and helped launch me," Huntington-Whitely said in a statement. “To be asked to be the first ‘Burberry Body' is an amazing compliment." The scent will hit shelves on Sept. 1.?There's something familiar about - and it's not just because she's been on the arm of for eight years.It's because the beautiful brunette, who announced her engagement to William Tuesday, is strikingly similar to his late mother, ."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."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.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.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."Kate's demure and ladylike style would most definitely make Princess Di proud," says Cohen.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."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."? Though their trips were 19 years apart, Diana and Kate wore similar ski outfits on the slopes in Klosters, (Graham/Getty).FIRST GOWN, THEN CROWN?For the designer tapped to create Kate Middleton's dress, it's the opportunity of a lifetime.Like 's inaugural gown or 's wedding confection, it'll be the dress seen 'round the world.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 ).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: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.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. FOR 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.New creative director could craft something extraordinary in a touching homage to the late McQueen, who tragically took his own life.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."With SEE MORE PHOTOS OF AND CHECK OUT OUR GALLERY OF ?Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and Beck are among the celebs promoted as the cheerful face of the Church of Scientology. But one die-hard critic of the sect claims it's more sinister than anyone suspects. Keith Henson is eager to talk to Cruise biographer Andrew Morton about his battles with Scientology, but it might have to be a quick conversation - considering that Henson is on the lam. Four years ago, Henson, an electrical engineer, was convicted in Riverside County (Calif.) Superior Court of harassing members of the church. Prosecutors pointed to his picketing a Scientology fi lm studio, and a Web chat in which he talked about aiming a "Cruise" missile at the studio. Henson insists he was joking. But after being sentenced to a year in Riverside County's jail, he says he wasn't laughing when a law enforcement offi cer "said I was not likely to come out of jail alive." Henson fl ed to Canada. Last April, he tells us, a private eye working for the church tracked him down in Brantford, Ontario, and nearly plowed him down in an alley - just as he claims other private eyes have tried to run him off the road. Denied asylum in Canada, he's now on the run. This week, he blew through New York. For protection, he has hired his own private eye, Paul Barresi, who tangled with the Scientologists after he told a tabloid he'd had an intimate relationship with Travolta (a claim Barresi later recanted). Scientology spokesman Ed Parkin calls Henson's claims "absurd," adding, "he uses the media to create controversy and defl ect attention from his own crimes." For now, says Henson, he's looking for a state "where it's legal to kill bounty hunters." Kate's re-modeling plans Kate Moss is out of rehab. The supermodel checked out of an Arizona clinic where she has spent a month tying to kick drugs and booze. "Kate is in excellent spirits and looking forward to getting back to work," a rep for her modeling agency said, adding that she most looked forward to being reunited with her 3-year-old daughter, Lila. Moss, who lost contracts with H&M, Burberry and Chanel after the London Mirror ran photos of the millionaire model "Hoovering" cocaine, has already landed assignments in L.A., Paris and New York, her reps said. Among those pulling for her is ex-boyfriend Johnny Dep. The actor is said to have given her the curious gift of a mirror. It's not meant as a piece of drug paraphernalia, according to the London Sun. Rather, Depp, who's part Cherokee, is said to have given it as a shamanic device to help Moss "face herself without fear.? had just outpitched his veteran counterpart for his first win of the season following six winless outings. But he and other Mariners couldn’t help but be impressed by Yankees lefty in his first start since the 2010 playoffs. “It’s cool to see him coming back. Obviously, he has a lot left in the tank,” Millwood said Sunday after the Mariners’ 6-2 win at the Stadium, including four runs against Pettitte in 6-1/3 innings. “To see a guy that well-respected who has had as much success as he’s had, to come back and be able to compete like that, it’s pretty cool. “I was watching him (from the dugout). I think everybody was kind of curious. But it was pretty much what everyone expected. He’s pretty much the same guy he was two years ago. He’s going to get a lot of people out, and he’s going to win a lot of games. It’s just Andy Pettitte. That’s who he is.” Mariners outfielder , who belted the second of Seattle’s two two-run homers off Pettitte, grew up “a big Yankees fan” in Schenectady. In some respects, it didn’t matter to Wells that he, like several other Mariners hitters, had never faced Pettitte before. “It’s not like he was going to invent some crazy pitch. He’s the same pitcher he’s always been,” Wells said. “I’ve seen him on TV so many times, I’ve been scouting him since I was a little kid. “He’s like my sister’s favorite pitcher, too, and she tweeted the other day, ‘Andy Pettitte’s back!’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I have to face him Sunday, who are you rooting for?’ But it’s always been sort of a dream of mine to hit a home run in Yankee Stadium, and facing Andy Pettitte, it’s a lot of things coming true today. It was pretty special.” Wells said his parents and other relatives were in attendance, and that his mother had asked him for a home run for Mother’s Day, “like that’s some easy thing” to do. “I got her a Burberry bag last year,” Wells joked, “So this year I got her a home run at Yankee Stadium.” Seattle manager said he was immediately “impressed with how sharp” Pettitte’s stuff was and with his ability to keep the ball down. “I didn’t know what to expect,” he said, “but it was evident early on that he was relatively his old self.” Unlike many of his younger teammates, had faced Pettitte often. “It’s not like we play in the same division, so we don’t face him as much as some of the other pitchers, but you look at him as a great pitcher,” Ichiro, who went 0-for-3 against Pettitte, said through an interpreter. “I’ve faced him for many years. I didn’t see any big change in him. The biggest thing is seeing him here pitching in a Yankees jersey.”? got shot down by at the recent Killers concert on the lower East Side. The "" bad boy turned on the charm for Lewis, but she wasn't impressed. "Who is this guy?" the actress/musician asked a pal. Guess she has better things to do Mondays at 8 p.m. will be honored by the Wednesday night at Cipriani's. On tap to toast the actor: , , , , and Stiller's wife, .? , bracing herself for winter, bought three coats and a sweater yesterday at 's on E. 57th St. and of "" kept their new romance hot by snuggling next to the fire pit at the Stone Rose in Big tipper: left $1,000 for her waitress at Country Club after dining with her "" cohorts and . Which proud new papa isn't much of a family guy? The handsome actor, notorious for having a roving eye, was spotted leaving a downtown hot spot with the beautiful bartender. will play the Apollo on Thursday when Safe Horizon celebrates 30 years of helping victims of abuse. , , and promise to amuse.?As a matter of habit, residents of and , head to DeKalb Ave. or Fulton St. to shop. So the merchants of nearby Myrtle Ave. use a "think globally, shop locally" marketing campaign to vie for attention and dollars.It's a weapon in their fight against recession, too."When business is bad, you are supermotivated to bring in customers," said one of the participants, Salvo Scalia.From central Queens to the , small business owners citywide are banding together and waging similar campaigns to urge customers to remember them. Even small operators in upscale SoHo, home to corporate powerhouse retailers like , and , are getting into the act.About 60 merchants in SoHo's Shop Small Stores program are handing out flyers and postcards touting participating stores, said organizer Fern Penn."Anyone who tells you business isn't down is lying," said Penn, 53, who owns Rosebud, a Thompson St. clothing shop. "The campaign is definitely helping get more foot traffic in the stores."* * *With customers spending less, it's vital to keep regulars loyal.In , Queens, a soon-to-launch loyalty card called Go JH! rewards shoppers for supporting local businesses., co-owner of the restaurant and lounge Novo, hopes the card - offering 10% off brunch or lunch at his place - will get his regulars to come in a little more often. He also hopes it will draw new diners and give other Jackson Heights entrepreneurs a boost, too."Businesses are struggling," said Martinez, 29, who laid off a bartender and two waiters at his 37th Ave. eatery because of the downturn. "We need more of the neighborhood to come out and spend more money with us."The Go JH! card has a modest fee for consumers: $10 a year. There's no charge for businesses to participate.The card is the brainchild of the Community Journal, a nonprofit that publishes a free English-Spanish quarterly newspaper and stages the annual Jackson Heights Film and Food Festival as a means of promoting the neighborhood.The card's creators hope it will encourage shoppers to feel a sense of solidarity."We have a stake in the survival of our local businesses," said Community Journal board member . "Business owners are our neighbors."* * *Have you seen this man?A lot more people recognize Salvo Scalia these days because his face is being used to help fight the recession.The Clinton Hill restaurateur is appearing in a new marketing campaign by the . His face is on postcards that are passed around, and he may show up on bus shelters and billboards, too.?A sleazy Oscar-winning songwriter accused of preying on wanna-be starlets is suing his 22-year-old ex-fiancee, claiming she was a married woman., who penned the '70s ballad "You Light Up My Life," charges that lied about her status as he lavished her with gifts that included a $60,000 Tiffany engagement ring, a , a and $1 million. "If Mr. Brooks had known that Ms. Gomez was married, he never would have proposed marriage on May 11, 2009," says the suit filed in . In June, prosecutors charged the 70-year-old with forcing himself on 11 beauties lured to his upper East Side pad with promises of film parts. A month earlier, Brooks had proposed to Gomez and talked of a January 2010 wedding after buying her a 1.38-carat diamond platinum engagement ring. The unlikely romance bloomed last year, just before Brooks suffered a stroke that has left him barely able to walk. As Brooks recovered, court papers say, he charmed Gomez with a trip to and high-end buys from , and . He says he also transferred $1 million into her bank account before a June 2009 trip to and bought her a sleek new car. The relationship survived Brooks' sex-abuse charges, but crumbled this month when, to his "complete shock," he found in her purse a letter in Spanish and the certificate from her 2007 wedding to . Gomez couldn't be reached for comment.?It was a beautiful wedding. The bride was blushing, the groom was nervous, the flower girls were barking. But was it really true love? Charley, the groom, resplendent in a tuxedo and top hat, is a Shih Tzu, while his bride, Carley, magnificent in an eyelet wedding gown and lace veil, is a toy poodle. The ceremony Thursday afternoon at the Zitomer Z Spot Three Dog Bakery on Madison Ave. was staged to raise money for an animal charity, but also to give the month-old store a chance to show off this season's latest in canine couture. And, yes, there is such a thing as canine couture. With trench coats from Burberry, red leather bomber jackets from Neiman-Marcus and leather dog accessories from Coach, dog style is now as chic as the master's wardrobes. "It's definitely a trend," said Michael Macko, director of publicity for Saks Fifth Avenue, of the designer dog clothing market, which includes Kate Spade dog carriers, cashmere sweaters from Fifi and Romeo and Gucci dog bowls. According to one manufacturer's figures, New Yorkers spend approximately $720 million annually on their pets. "I love to choose beautiful things to make her look beautiful in," said NancyJane Loewy, a Manhattan resident whose Toy Maltese, Tiffy, owns several coats, including a Chinese-style silk emperor sold at Zitomer. The dog fashion market has charged so hard in the past few years that both high and low-end designers are running to keep up. Chanel sells $195 dog collars, Gucci's rubber dog bones go for $14, and Old Navy has stocked its shelves for Valentine's Day with heart-stamped collars and leashes for $6. "There is such an emphasis on everything dogs right now," said Beth Shepherd. Along with Sarah Hales, Shepherd owns the avant-garde SoHo boutique Kirna Zabete, which sold out all its dog items almost immediately after opening in August. "If people don't have kids, they like to spoil their dogs rotten," said Shepherd, whose store sells cheetah-print felt collars and leashes by Lamberston Truex for $180, fur coats by Corey for $450, Evil T-shirts for both dog and owner that boast "Little Miss Perfect" or "Little Miss Bitch" across the front and leashes with zipped-in raincoats by Wagwear for $69. "It's an urban phenomenon," Shepherd added. Indeed, Manhattan resident Alex Cohen says nothing's too good for her Shih-Tzu, Lulu. "She's a member of my family," Cohen explains. When Coach launched an advertising campaign a few years ago featuring the dog Eddie from "Frasier," the response was so immense that the leather company created its own line of clothing, including wool blanket coats and dog collars. Christina Juarez, fashion director for Loving & Weintraub, whose client Burberry carries an extensive dog line including $210 trench coats and $135 check sweaters, added that people "are treating their dogs as part of their family and want them to be as well dressed as they are.?The owner of a suspicious van that triggered a bomb scare in surrendered to police Thursday night as the city's top cop ordered a review of why the vehicle was allowed to sit illegally parked for two days.Street peddler , 36, turned himself in at the 's Midtown South stationhouse about 6 p.m. and was hit with a felony rap for allegedly forging the expiration date on the van's temporary registration. demanded that NYPD Assistant Chief of Transportation James Tuller learn how cops allowed the shady-looking van to stay undisturbed for two days, sources said.The 1997 Dodge had no license plates and a bogus parking placard on the dashboard. Its windows were covered on the inside with garbage bags.Several hours before a 911 call set off a two-hour drama Wednesday morning, an officer was sent to check out the van."He saw the placard and apparently thought it was legit - that maybe the guy was with the department," one source said. "He reported back that there was no problem."After the 911 call, cops shut down parts of Times Square, evacuated buildings and used a remote-controlled robot to check for explosives in the van, parked on Broadway near 42nd St.A folding table and some imitation scarves were the van's only contents.Freyre apparently chickened out when he saw the massive police response, sources said. He gave his keys to a man who let the cops into the vehicle.Freyre, of , , was also hit with an unspecified summons - possibly for the bogus parking placard. He said nothing as he was led off to Central Booking Thursday night.The card was issued by , Metropolitan New Jersey and , which did not return calls for comment Thursday.Kelly directed the NYPD's Legal Bureau to pursue possible civil action against the Bronx-based nonprofit for issuing the placard, which one source said was "manufactured for the purpose of escaping parking tickets."With ?A younger woman has edged out style mavens Sarah Jessica Parker, Cate Blanchett, Lady Gaga and Nicole Richie, according to Glamour magazine's UK readers. It's Suri Cruise.? . The daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, came in at No. 21 of . She may not be quite but still, she has been spotted sporting a $850 Salvatore Ferragamo purse, Ray Ban sunglasses, Marc Jacobs shoes and a Burberry coat. Holmes has often spoken of her precocious princess's love of style ? and Anna Wintour-esque eye for fashion flaws. "She'll really tell me [what she thinks]," Holmes, 32, says in the February issue of . "Like today I'm wearing brown suede pants, and she said, 'I don't like your pants.'" But sometimes, ? when her fashion choices merit it. "She'll say, 'You've got to wear these shoes. Or 'That's so pretty, Mom. Wear that.' She's got a great eye," said Holmes. The sartorial tyke even likes to design her own clothes, according to her mother. "She says, 'I want this sleeve cut,' and it's like, 'Okay, we'll cut it.' She picks out all of her own clothes and has since she was one-and-a-half," Holmes told New York magazine. While Suri may be chic, she's got one accessory that she may want to give up if she wants to crack the top 10 list next year - her pacifier. According to photos taken early this spring, .? And unfashionable, at least somewhat of an age appropriate accessory choice, to say the least.?Don't recognize that stylish brunette? It's none other than ? the breakout star of "" who has been dubbed a "hairy angel" by the British press for her formerly frizzy and gray-streaked cloud of hair. But she's grizzly no more! The singing phenomenon was photographed Friday outside her home in with newly dyed hair in a more stylish cut and even some make-up to even out her ruddy skin tone. She also had her eyebrows thinned and shaped in recent days and stepped out in chic high heels. Friday, Boyle was again wearing her new fitted leather jacket ? a huge leap from the dowdy mustard-hued lace dress she wore on her initial television appearance ? and added flair with a -print scarf. The producers at "Britain's Got Talent" are "frantic" over the changes, according to the . They apparently hoped she would maintain her unpolished appearance for the program's live finals as Boyle's dowdy looks paired with her angelic voice seem to be the secret ingredient to her astronomical success. Fans and media alike have buzzed over whether the frumpy "everywoman" with the huge voice should pay a bit more attention to personal grooming. The surprise star, 47, had vowed in several interviews to stay true to her "plain Jane" looks adding, "I wouldn't want to change myself too much because that would really make things a bit false. I want to receive people as the real me, a real person," in an interview with last week. , one of three judges on the reality show that catapulted Boyle to international fame, has said the Scottish songbird should stick to her look if she hopes to maintain mass appeal. "She needs to stay exactly as she is because that's the reason we love her. She just looks like anybody who could live on your street," Holden said in an interview with the Daily Mail. "The minute we turn her into a glamourpuss is when it's spoilt," she said. ?A suspicious white van in triggered a scare Wednesday - but what's really frightening is that the vehicle sat there for two days before drawing attention.After subway service was shut down, three office buildings were evacuated and an robot was deployed, it turned out the 1997 white Dodge van contained only knockoff scarfs.But cops initially feared it could contain a bomb meant to disrupt New Year's Eve.The van had no license plate and its windows were covered from the inside with garbage bags. A placard in the windshield was from a phony police organization.Yet the van was illegally parked at 42ndSt. and Broadway at least since Monday morning. Cops gather at the spot for anti-terror drills, sources said. "Someone should have seen the van," one source said.The van first raised concern at 9 a.m. yesterday when someone called 911. Cops deployed a 500-pound high-tech robot that takes pictures and can fire weapons.Suddenly, a man, , 26, approached and said he was holding the van's keys for its owner, a street vendor from named .Cops used the keys to open the van and found no evidence of explosives - only a collapsible table and the counterfeit scarfs, the apparent trappings of a street vendor."That's what we think is going on here," said of the street-vendor hypothesis, although cops have not determined if Fryer exists.Colon - who has a lengthy rap sheet - was questioned and released. A temporary registration found in thecar - which had a forged, handwritten expiration date - was issued from a dealership and identified the owner asMustafa Sam B.Investigators are trying to find him and think he may be from .?Want fries (or should we say chips) with that?Supermodel , 25, may have just knocked reigning model queen off the top of Tatler's famous best-dressed list, but she's no diva.The leggy blonde with the signature boyish mop was born of humble beginnings in in where she served up fish and chips to earn extra cash on the weekends. Deyn's old boss at the "chippy," , told how she remembers Deyn, then known simply as , as having "a really nice manner." And Deyn squashes another model stereotype: she eats! Kershaw says Deyn would finish off her shifts at the chip shop with a big cheeseburger. Deyn's mother Loarraine confirms to the , "She has wonderful curves and a bit of meat on her. When she's home, she eats everything." While Deyn, called "Agy" by friends and family, did a bit of modeling as a teen (her grandmother sent in her photo to a teen mag holding a talent competition and surprise, surprise, Deyn won) her rise to fame since signing with a agency in 2005 has been meteoric. She has been featured in campaigns for , and to name a few.But "Agy" stays true to her roots. "People always say when they meet me, ‘I didn't know you were common!" she tells the Daily Mail. How refreshing!?*Beck Street Capital's belief in Bleecker St. has paid off. Six years ago, the real estate investment firm started picking up three and five-story buildings on the West Village thoroughfare when there were still self-service laundries and quilt shops there. The strategy was to renovate the residences upstairs, resell them as high-end condos, and rent out the retail space.It worked. Two weeks after the six-retail store portfolio at 382-384, 367-369 and 387 Bleecker St. went on the market as one bulk purchase, the contracts are already out to be signed. The lineup of stores, all with long-term leases, includes Little Marc Jacobs, and, most recently, , who signed a 12-year lease at the corner of Perry and Bleecker."We have a very tightly focused strategy," says company founder . "We only buy in top neighborhoods with a strong retail and residential component. We really like what retail can offer as a neighborhood continues to grow."So why sell?"We made a deal with our partners to liquidate the assets at a set time. That time is up."No price was disclosed, but we hear the price was around $33 million and that Kors paid $500 to $600 per square foot for his space. Those are not recession prices, I'll tell you that. *The border of and will see some action this weekend, in a first. An all-green block party, The NEW New York GreenHomeNYC's DIY Green Street Festival, will take place tomorrow. GreenHomeNYC will throw the event, sponsored by local businesses and developments.The focus will be on teaching New Yorkers how to build eco-conscious environments inside and outside their homes. The fair is from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Third St. between Hoyt and Bond. One lesson will be how to build and install a green roof. Another is how to assemble a compost kit.Real estate developer Hudson will give tours of Third+Bond, its potentially LEED-certified Gold condominium, where 677-square-foot one-bedrooms are available for $463,500. In addition to real estate tours and food vendors (including the Lobster Pound), Jerko, the motorless houseboat, will be christened.Equipped with a built-in rainwater harvesting system, solar photovoltaic power and a composting toilet, this salvaged houseboat has been turned into a working laboratory for all things sustainable. Jerko will be stationed at the Second St. dock from 1-3 p.m. for tours. Captain and builder will be on hand to answer questions. Take the F train to Carroll St.; the fair is two blocks away. *The return of the local real estate market hasn't come back nearly as fast as the game of mah-jongg. The Chinese versions of dominos, popularized in the 1950s by Jewish moms in , is hot right now, so hot there was a waiting list for it at a recent event held by event planner Divalysscious Moms. The affair was held at a $25,000-a-month rental apartment at 20 Park Ave., offered by .Divalysscious Moms founder Lyss Stern has a specialty of matching events with top local real estate. On one occasion, an attendee even bought an apartment. This time, 20 women paid $40 to learn mah-jonng from top local player and teacher . They also toured the apartment with the leasing team."There is no better way for wealthy moms to come see an apartment than a great event," says Stern. "Building owners are calling me to have these events in their apartments." Go to for info.?From long and stately to schoolgirl-short, plaid skirts are warming the legs of ladies on both coasts. Burberry has even added a splash of sexy lace to its wrapped kilt, proving that plaid is anything but prim. * 1 Celine, a public-relations rep, found her orange plaid skirt at a flea market and her scarf in her mom's closet. 2 Fran Drescher pauses in a Burberry skirt at a Hollywood film premiere. 3 Former MTV veejay Kennedy wears a pleated kilt at the premiere of "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." 4 Frances McDormand keeps it simple in a long wrapped skirt and boat-neck top. 5 Model Cash Casia pairs a Burberry skirt with a Christian Dior sweater and Miu Miu shoes at the Agent Provocateur boutique opening.?With trendy togs in sleek new digs, Burberry proved it's much more than plaid. Chic VIPs showed up in style for the preview of the newly expanded E. 57th St. store, sporting traditional trench coats and scarves as well as updated leather and shearling. * 1 Tina, a makeup artist, wears a Burberry leather jacket and skirt. 2 Viscountess Serena Linley in a Burberry trench coat. 3 Model Sophie Dahl makes an entrance in a Burberry shearling jacket over her own "ancient jeans." 4 Christine, a student from Manhattan, drapes a Burberry plaid scarf over a Gucci top and vintage skirt. 5 Kirsten, an editor from Manhattan, preserved her grandmother's coat from 1976. 6 Juli, a columnist from Manhattan, wears head-to-toe Burberry.?With the summer in full swing, the verdict is in on the season's best-selling swimsuits. Shoshanna Lonstein's teeny-weeny cherry bikini is one of the juiciest picks at New York department stores. That, according to retailers, and Burberry's preppie string bikini - the one Kate Moss modeled in the company's ads before she got pregnant. Burberry's selling point is its status beige-and-black plaid; Lonstein's is fit. The tops and bottoms of her flirty two-pieces are sold separately so women can buy different sizes. Lonstein introduced the mix-and-match pieces last year after having trouble finding a suit that accommodated her voluptuous bosom and hugged her narrow hips. "I used to have all my suits custom-made, which is a huge pain and really expensive and a bummer," said the designer, whose bikinis cost about $110. "So we introduced suits that go from an A cup up to a DD, and this year we added DDD, which is doing just as well. "The cherry suit really hit a nerve with people, because it's visually appealing and kind of has that naughty-nice thing," she added. "It's sexy without being over the top." Colleen Sherin, fashion market director at Saks Fifth Avenue, said shoppers of Lonstein's suits are feeling free to combine solids and patterns. "The customer can mix a red halter-top bikini top with a cherry-print bottom if she wants, which looks new." Bikini fever Though Lonstein's figure-friendly line is particularly popular, buyers said bikinis of all types are flying out of stores. "Every year, we sell more and more two-pieces," said Megan Mitchell, swimwear buyer at Barneys New York. "About 70% or 80% [of our bathing-suit business] is in two-pieces." At Bloomingdale's, the best-selling shape is a triangle bikini with a side-tie bottom, said Jeffrey Binder, vice president and divisional merchandise manager for swimwear. "It's all about the attitude," Binder said. "We have 50-year-old women who want to look young and are in shape. We have seen a gradual change that way: The mature customer doesn't necessarily buy a mature suit." On the athletic front, Ralph Lauren's striped rugby tankini with a white collar scored big at Saks Fifth Avenue and at Bloomingdale's. The same suit sold out in less than a month on Polo.com. "The rugby look in particular has been hugely successful in swim and apparel," said Sarah Gallagher, president of Polo.com. As for practical swimwear, Calvin Klein's underwire maillots and two-pieces are a big part of the business at Bloomingdale's.?Besides Star's claim that Angelina is pregnant (whoa!) and In Touch's story about how the Obamas keep their romance alive (aww!), the mags are full of naughty "Twilight" news this week. Even when 's face isn't plastered on the cover, he's lurking inside. Dare ye turn these glossy pages? On to the 'zines!The Martian princess of Madeo Drive, , has a new boyfriend. Star tells us his name is Chris, he's an "entrepreneur," and they met at a party at the . It also stands to reason that he has a tolerant sense of humor and the attention span of a yogi. has been shuttling the kids to school in the morning on while is busy filming "Salt," says . The result: Local carpool moms are fighting over who gets dropoff duty. Don't be surprised if you spot an enterprising in a goatee, cap and shades headed east on the L.I.E.Star speculates that Gretchen from "" will dump Slade if he turns out to be broke, because she "wants to keep up with the other housewives," says a source, "with the mansion and diamonds, but she doesn't want to work." Things came to a head when producers finally explained to her that she wouldn't be winning $1 million because she wasn't on "Survivor." took to brunch with his parents, who were visiting from , says Star. It went well. That light fall of rain you just heard was 15- to 35-year-old women in head scarves crying into their .For a second, I thought had been cast in 's frightening "Alice in Wonderland" remake. Then I realized that picture of her in Life & Style was taken at some terrifying Easter event with a gaunt, murderous-looking rabbit. No, it wasn't . and ? are threatening to leave "" unless producers cut them a share of the show's overall profits, says Us Weekly. So far, producers aren't budging. Cue a tragic elbow injury suffered by Stabler in the course of brusquely rolling up his sleeves, and a cameo by as the Cougar-bait defendant who gets Benson banned from the force. and ? who have lbeen dating only since November ? are house hunting together, says Star. Krasinski has hooked her with his wholesome good-boy charm, which the mag insists is the exact "opposite" of Emily's ex, the tortured, hard-partying rock star known as .? is hiring a nanny, says Star. To be eligible, you must speak Spanish, enjoy music, know how to get around both Long Island and , work six days a week, sleep in a room attached to the twins' every night and call Jennifer every half hour during the day with baby updates. Salary is $78,000 ? with a $10 bonus for every script you pilfer from the mail room of 's agent.?I'm just fine! That's what is saying to critics who claim she is too skinny and unhealthy, according to .The former turned up at in a strapless silk dress earlier this week, revealing gaunt collarbones and protruding shoulder blades that lead to a barrage of harsh words from critics, who wondered if she was starving herself.But the outspoken fashionista wasn't about to let her detractors have the final say."I am fine - happy and healthy. It's irresponsible when people obsess about my shape and size," Beckham, 35, told reporters. The budding fashion designer went on to say that she recognizes many young women look to her as a role model and that it's "untrue" to say she doesn't eat and is unhealthy, according to 's ."I have a healthy diet, a healthy lifestyle and plenty of energy to run after my three energetic boys and travel the world managing my fashion business," Beckham told the Daily Mirror. The former pop star hopped a flight back to to be with her husband, soccer star , and three young sons, , Romeo and Cruz, on Wednesday after a two-day stint at London Fashion Week.While in , Posh Spice maintained a hectic schedule, attending several shows, including the star-studded show on Tuesday night, and dropping by hotspots like Le Caprice restaurant where she rubbed elbows with supermodels and . Spotted on the way to the airport on Wednesday, the tight-lipped celeb wore a black and white dress with a black cardigan, according to the Daily Mail.Meanwhile, a new Internet game is taking another approach to Beckham's teeny-tiny figure, reports Britain's Telegraph. "Nosh for Posh" () allows gamers to throw plates of sushi, fruit and hamburgers at a gaunt looking cartoon version of Beckham who pleads "Help me!!! I need to put on weight!" at the game's outset. As the game progresses, Beckham becomes more elusive and the player must react faster, hurling more meals in her direction.The game's creator, , said it's "proving to be a big hit with our players." However, Jacquart told the Telegraph that the game is simply to "poke fun" and insisted Beckham is still a "style icon."?With Fashion Week upon us, many of today's top designers are showing off their latest collections. Stephen DiGeronimo is no exception. The models will hit the runway in DiGeronimo's latest spring creations just as his fall collection arrives in stores. The line is sold at Neiman-Marcus, Henri Bendel and Saks Fifth Avenue. "I twisted suits and used them in very feminine shapes, very curvy suits," says the designer of his autumn looks. He also put a feminine spin on men's wear tweeds and plaids, and sent out lots of suedes and leathers, including an ultrasuede wrap skirt with a buckle, his favorite. "I like clothes with a little bit of humor in them," he says. "Clothes can be fun in the way they're designed, not just suity and serious." Growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania, DiGeronimo's first creations were miniature clothes he sewed on his mom's machine. After graduating from F.I.T. and working for top designers like Calvin Klein, Perry Ellis and Michael Kors, he opened his own company in the early '90s. "Personally, I was ready," he says. "But business-wise, I opened when the economy was horrendous. Stores were closing, no one was paying their bills. It was really a tough time to start." He supplemented his income by doing consulting work for Burberry Japan. He has designed the Burberry Blue Label collection, targeted to younger Japanese women, for the last four years. Although he produces all sorts of separates, dresses are his strength. "The stores tell me mothers and daughters buy my clothes," he notes. "Many 40-year-old women will buy a very clean, sophisticated dress or suit for everyday life. Their daughters will buy the party dresses." The key to looking good is staying true to yourself, he says. "It's important to keep with the trends, but many women go for it without examining to see if it looks right on them, if it fits their age group," DiGeronimo observes. "Women should go with their first instinct and with what they love. If you always stand by that, then you'll always be comfortable."?Boycott the Brits: Now that the British government has found it "in the overwhelming interest of the " to release convicted terrorist , who blew up , we citizens of the - and of every other country that is repulsed by this deal - should stay away from England and . I realize the United States government cannot abandon ties with these nations, but we, as private citizens, do not have to spend our money in countries that caved in to a demand for release of a terrorist to seal an oil deal. If we stay away from England and Scotland in droves, they will have more oil for themselves and perhaps will not have to make deals with the Devil in the future. We should also think twice before buying or Glenlivet. Born and breadRosedale: Any truth to the rumor Jet 's full first name is Litoast? I think he got beat again while I was typing this. Limited sympathy Island Park, L.I.: held a vigil for people killed by the , and I send my condolences to the families. I would like to attend the rally for the victims of black-on-black crime, which continues to take innocent lives throughout this city. Please, Rev. Sharpton, let us know when and where it will be, because the violence must stop. No sympathy , : The headline on 's ridiculous, slobbering tribute to 's drunken murderer, "Life of looking out for others," has got to rank among the top 5 unintentionally hilarious headlines of all time. I am now convinced beyond any doubt that liberalism is indeed a mental disease. Read all about it Whitestone: To Voicer Ralph Valente: It's called Voice of the People, not Voice of the Parties. More letters are accepted and printed that lean to the left because that is the majority of the demographic readership of the Daily News, and the tristate area. Failing our kids Sunnyside: Thank you for the Op-Ed by former city teacher ("Get kids on track," Aug. 30). As a retired teacher, I know that although many students graduate from our schools, they are not prepared to matriculate at institutions of higher learning or to enter the job market. Special-needs students are especially neglected. So many of the supposed accomplishments of this administration are merely a compilation of myths, and $100 million in ads can't obliterate the facts. Noise machine , N.Y.: Am I the only one tired of hearing rant every Sunday about his hot topic of the day? And how each rant seems to fade away, without followup, until his next one the following Sunday? Ken McGuire Pay to play : To Voicer Jon Raymond: As a former manager of the , I can tell you the reason there are no minorities in some leagues is finance, not race. Registration can cost $350 to $500, which some people cannot afford. The money goes toward umpires, equipment, uniforms and field maintenance. Coaches and managers are volunteers. If you wish to sponsor a child in the , I can give you numbers to call. Throwing the game Garwood, : At the 12-year-olds pitched six-inning complete games, throwing the maximum 85 pitches allowed. Yankee pitcher is taken out after throwing 35 pitches on Sunday. What's wrong with this picture? Where there's smoke ... Staten Island: Voicer says Congress should outlaw tobacco products to save lives and minimize hospital costs. Has it occurred to him that the tobacco industry invests heavily in political outcomes and that our government really isn't interested in saving lives? They earned it I : To Voicer Brendan Loud: How dare you tell Voicer Josie Rodriguez your generation is paying for her retirement. Many seniors pay into Social Security for their whole lives, only to die before they reap any benefits. You sound like a spoiled "Me Generation" punk with a warped sense of entitlement who needs a good kick in the rear. I'm only 40, but I have enough respect for those who came before to wish them everything they are entitled to. They earned it II Brooklyn: To Voicer Brendan Loud: I must ask you and your generation to forgive me for living long enough to collect Social Security. As for not contributing enough, by simple math, I should be able to collect Social Security until I am 89 years old before I reach the amount I put into the system. If Social Security payments had been kept in a separate fund instead of lumped in with the federal budget, we all might be better off. Freedom of speech Rockaway: It's marvelous to live in a country where you can say, "The President is a fool!" and not get executed for it. Serving the city well : Graffiti removed from walls and overpasses along the Grand Central Parkway. Broken streetlights and illuminated signs fixed. Potholes filled. Overgrown grass and trees trimmed. Missing traffic signs replaced. Yes, the U.S. Open is back in town. ?Hot Fun. Last year: Frisbee in the Sheep Meadow. Dude! This year: Boccie at Staten Island's South Beach. Tutto bene! Hot Cocktail. Last year: Mojitos. Like Havana, they've seen better days. This year: Caipirinhas. Made with sugarcane liquor, they're joys from Brazil. Hot Boat Ride. Last year:The Circle Line, crawling with picture-snapping tourists. This year:The Ventura, a 72-foot antique yacht, sets sail from the World Financial Center at 6:15 p.m. on Fridays, returning at 8:30. HOT PATTERN. Last year: Burberry plaid. Bags,bibs,bikinis,brollies - it's enough to make you dotty. This year: Pola dots. Donna Karan's dotted dresses have fashionistas abandoning their checkered pasts. Hot Free Entertainment. Last year: Free Shakespeare in Central Park. Think of this season as one life to Liev. The only offering is "Henry V," starring Liev Shreiber. This year: Free Shakespeare in the Parking Lot. A triple play of "Hamlet," "Comedy of Errors" and "Love's Labour's Lost" turns the performing space at 85 Ludlow St. into a paved paradise. Hot BBQ. Last year: Beer-can chicken: Grilling for people who can't get fired up about recycling. This year:> Plank-smoked salmon: Grilling for people who are into the woods. "Both use indirect grilling," says Steven Raichlin, author of "The New BBQ USA." "It's been around for years, but it's finally getting attention in a big way." Hot Central Park wheels. Last year:Rollerblading on Saturdays around the 72nd Street Transverse. This year: Segwaying on Sundays around the 72nd Street Transverse. Hot Pants. Last year: Cool capris: Harkened back to an era when life was still a breeze. This year: Cargo pants: Military chic with enough pockets for your Orange Alert flashlight and MAC Pink Lemonade lip gloss. Hot Produce. Last year: The Union Square Farmer's Market, so packed you'll risk squashing your tomatoes. This year: Fresh Direct, supplying urban shoppers with fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, dairy and more, all shipped to customers directly from veteran New York City vendors . Hot Shoes. Last year: Gap flip-flops. Flat flips go flop. This year: Sigerson Morrison kitten-heel flip-flops. A day at the beach for a day in the office Hot Outdoor Movie Spot. Last year: Bryant Park. Once romantic, it's now so jam-packed that blanket neighbors can pass for kissing cousins. This year: Hudson River Park. Even if the free flicks don't float your boat, the gorgeous water views make it worth the trip. Hot Beach Trip. Last year:The Long Island Rail Road to Long Beach and Jones Beach is cheap but crowded with city folk. This year: Hop aboard a breezy ferry. New York Waterways just launched weekend service between Manhattan and Jacob Riis Park, and their boats to Sandy Hook, N.J., depart on weekends from Pier 78 and the World Financial Center. Seastreak's fast ferry service to Sandy Hook departs from E. 34th St. and Pier 11 downtown. Hot Body Part. Last year: Katie Couric's legs. Maybe the best damn gams on TV - and she wants you to know they're great. This year: Katie's boobs. Maybe not the best damn pair, but she wants you to know they're hers. Hot Hoofing. Last year: Lincoln Center's Midsummer Night Swing. This year: Get some elbow room (and a river breeze) at Tango Poteno's free Sunday evening (7 p.m. -10 p.m.) tango sessions, one block below South Street Seaport at Pier 16. On Saturdays, free Argentinian tango nights are scheduled in Central Park from 6 p.m.- 9 p.m. at the Shakespeare statue near the Great Lawn. Hot Look.. Last year: H&M. Sometimes cheap-chic is just cheap. This year: Zara. Get Euro-chic looks at non-Euro prices.?It's no surprise that lefty filmmaker Mark Levin wants publicity for his latest documentary, "The Protocols of Zion," an unflinching look at modern-day anti-Semitism and the notorious conspiracy text that's enjoying a revival. And it's no surprise that vocal anti-Semite and attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz wants publicity for his latest projects - the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense (of which he's national chairman) and the Million Man March's 10th anniversary celebration next month in the nation's capital. But for me, it's a big shock that Levin has invited Shabazz to tomorrow night's screening at HBO headquarters. And an even bigger shock that Shabazz has accepted. "He'll be there, sir," a Shabazz assistant told me yesterday when I called his Washington office. But why? "Sir, you're going to have to speak to the attorney at the event when he's there," came the response. "I have not been authorized to make any such statements." But Shabazz's authorized statements, compiled by the ADL, include: . "If 3,000 people perished in the World Trade Center attacks and the Jewish population is 10%, you show me records of 300 Jewish people dying in the World Trade Center. ... We're daring anyone to dispute its truth. They got their people out" (July 3, 2003). . "Kill every goddamn Zionist in Israel! Goddamn little babies, goddamn old ladies! Blow up Zionist supermarkets!" (April 20, 2002). . "We will never bow down to the white, Jewish, Zionist onslaught" (September 1994). Yesterday, Levin acknowledged his bid for attention, and added: "I hope Malik Shabazz revisits and revises his comments. That's my honest hope." But ADL Executive Director Abraham Foxman told me: "The subject of the film is too serious for show business. There's enough anti-Semitism in the movie without bringing in a live example." GAMING WEB SITE HAS GOT A LINE ON A JOB FOR MOSS Waif-in-distress Kate Moss is still a wanted woman after all. The 31-year-old supermodel - stripped of millions of dollars in contracts with Chanel, Burberry and H&M after a British tab published pictures of her allegedly hoovering lines of cocaine - has been offered a five-year, $5 million spokesmodel contract with online gaming site Nine.com. "We believe in giving people who have been affected by both seen and unforeseen circumstances a second chance," Nine. com spokesman Jack Abrams told Lowdown. "Our demographic clientele is males, ages 21 to 45. We did a real quick focus group with some of our customers to see if they'd be offended in any way, and the response was an overwhelming, 'Yes, please, get Kate Moss as your spokesperson.?December 23 12:01 P.M. Cashmere Sportcoat by Thom Brown, $2,950 745 Fifth Ave., at 58th St.; 212-753-7300 Hours: 12/23, 10?9; 12/24, 10?6 Commando Tip: Make sure to go to the men’s store, not the women’s store across the street. 1:15 P.M. George Nelson ?Desk Clock? From Vitra, $325 660 Madison Ave., at 61st St.; 212-833-2060 Hours: 12/23, 10?9; 12/24, 10?6 Commando Tip: Use the 60th Street side entrance, then hit the escalator to the ninth floor. 2:45 P.M. Stretch Satin and Lace Chemise, $168 712 Fifth Ave., nr. 56th St. 212-247-1100 Hours: 12/23, 10?9; 12/24, 10?6 Commando Tip: Use the Fifth Avenue door, dash past the beauty counters, and take the stairs to the third floor. 4:15 P.M. Burberry watch, $425 59th St. and Lexington Ave.212-705-2000 Hours: 12/23, 9?11; 12/24, 9?6:30 Commando Tip: Enter via the Lexington Avenue doors and proceed directly to the escalator; it drops you in front of the Burberry counter on the second ﬂoor. 5:20 P.M. AKC Pug by Steiff, $45 767 Fifth Ave., at 58th St. 212-644-9400 Hours: 12/23, 9?9; 12/24, 9?9 Commando Tip: On crowded days (and, yes, December 23 will be crowded), the 58th Street entrance turns into an exit only. Leave that way. 6:25 P.M. Versace Throw Pillow, $236 647 Fifth Ave., nr. 52nd St. 212-317-0224 Hours: 12/23, 10?6:30; 12/24, 10?6:30 Commando Tip: This shop gets a lot of tourist trafﬁc; serious hunters might try the 815 Madison Avenue store. 7:10 P.M. William Yeoward Gold Painted Trays, from $95 611 Fifth Ave., at 50th St. 212-753-4000 Hours: 12/23, 10?8:30; 12/24, 10?6 Commando Tip: Use the side entrance on 49th Street, bypassing the crowds in cosmetics. Skip the elevator, and take the central escalator to the eighth floor. ? Carnegie Hall looks like the aftermath of a yak-shearing convention. Dyed wool-knit caps and frizzy gray hair pour into the lobby at the end of the Tibet House U.S. benefit concert?along with some sweater-vested Vampire Weekend fans and one anomalous gazellelike blonde, model Agyness Deyn, in head-to-toe black leather and lace. An arctic gust rips through the doors, practically flooring her. ?I’m literally wearing nothing!? she says, laughing and clutching her legs for warmth. ?This isn’t a dress; it’s just underwear and tights. So I’m a bit gutted by the cold.? Deyn hadn’t meant to walk out of her East Village apartment (where she lives alone, incidentally, not with musician boyfriend Albert Hammond Jr., whom she is very happily dating, but to whom she is not affianced) wearing lingerie and a jacket. But she’s been on this tear of watching old movies and, after an afternoon of shopping for Brigitte Bardot and Audrey Hepburn boxed sets, had settled in to watch the Ed Wood tranny classic Glen or Glenda, whose main character spends a lot of time in lingerie. So Deyn decided to get in costume, too, and was prancing around her apartment in a vintage negligée when her friend rang to tell her to hurry up. ?Then when I arrived, I was like, ?Oh shit, I don’t really have any clothes on.’ ? Being inappropriately clothed isn’t unusual for Deyn, a muse for Christopher Bailey of Burberry who stands out among fashion’s angular Eastern European beauties for her distinct downtown style. That style certainly got her noticed in November, when she was strip-searched in the Dubai airport while wearing a men’s Marc Jacobs tracksuit en route to the opening of the Atlantis hotel. ?I was traumatized and really angry at Albert, who got strip-searched as well. I was like, ?It’s all your fault! It’s because you look dodgy!’ ? A TV panel on the BBC (shockingly) voted her ?the most annoying person of 2008,? though this seems to have been mostly due to a controversial singing debut with the Five O’Clock Heroes and her seeming ubiquity. The British tabs document her every move, particularly when it involves snogging Hammond. By now, Deyn knows all the photographers camped outside her apartment. ?Every morning I’m like, ?Hello! Want a coffee?’ ? When Fashion Week descends on Bryant Park next week, Deyn?who also turns 26 then?won’t be the freshest face on the runway, but she is perhaps the biggest name. She and Hammond star in a ten-page Valentine’s Day story in Vogue, featuring them doing ?datey things,? like Hammond playing guitar for her under a tree. (?It’s nice to have those pictures, because you only get older, don’t you??) In fact, Fashion Week has become so old hat that until her manager called, ?I actually forgot it was on. I was like, ?Fashion Week? Oh shit!’ I do like doing it. But you know when you kind of have it figured out in your head that you don’t want to do this forever?? It’s not surprising that years of ?constantly working? have Deyn dreaming of Caribbean vacations and bike rides. Tonight, at the benefit’s buffet dinner over at Roseland, she’s content to scarf down an entire plate of ?chocolatey deliciousness? away from photographers and catch up with old friend Adam Green, the musician, who came by to show off iPhone pictures of him sledding with Weird Al Yankovic. And she plans on adhering to her new early bedtime (11 p.m., optimally), which, she’s discovered, has allowed her to do ?lots of getting to know myself.? To that end, she’s barely had a drink in months. ?I wanted to be present when I was out, rather than not remembering. Now I can’t drink more than a glass. Albert and I shared a bottle of wine on ?date night’ and I was so wasted.? The one vice she hasn’t manage to kick, however, is smoking. ?I wish we could smoke in here,? she says, surveying perhaps the least cigarette-friendly room in history. A group of Tibetan monks, draped in red and yellow silk, are sitting a table away. ?You think we should say hi?? she asks. ?They probably don’t speak English, do they?? Tomorrow, Deyn plans to see a hypnotist. ?I feel like I’m playing mind games with nicotine. It’s like being in a bad relationship. English people say, ?Treat you mean to keep you keen.’ Cigarettes treat you like shit. But you want them anyway. ?I don’t know,? she goes on. ?Maybe I shouldn’t get hypnotized. I feel like it might be like The Wizard of Oz, where they get courage and a heart. He’s going to give me the ability not to smoke. But what if I don’t want it? What if I’m like, ?Take it back!’ ? Deyn grabs her jacket. ?Let’s leave, eh? I want to smoke.? ?• Kristen Stewart was stalked by paparazzi when she left a photo shoot in Paris (rumored to be for Vanity Fair), where she found herself right behind Karl Lagerfeld. She was photographed giving either the back of his head or someone else (catering staff?) the finger. []• Barbara Walters says ABC won't pay Pippa Middleton for an interview. This makes our offer to take Pippa for more alluring, no? []• Emma Watson told French Elle, "My problem is that I am a little bit boring. I don't wear designer bags or big sunglasses. When I don't have to play Emma Watson in public, I'd rather not put myself 'out there'. I have to be more careful with my look in my everyday life." []• Elle style director Kate Lanphear put some outfits together for Theory. []• British label will revive its men’s line for fall. []?Fashion shows are overwhelming. The music is loud, the camera flashes are bright, and even once you get squared away with your seat, you're not sure which way to cross your legs. And then there's the clothes: They're always on the weirder end of the spectrum, and when they come sweeping down the runway on a glamorous-looking stick insect— well, the whole thing can be terribly perplexing, even distressing. Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul expressed all of these emotions quite astutely when he sat front row at Burberry earlier this week. Throughout the show, his facial expressions seem to vacillate between bewilderment and downright horror. Journey with us through this feelings in our slideshow.Related:?The October issue of British Vogue stars singer Adele, shot by Solve Sundsbo. She's wearing a made-to-order lace dress, not that it really matters because you can't see any part of her body anyway (even her jawline is obscured by a piece of hair). In the accompanying interview, she says that if she were to be the face of anything, "it should be full-fat Coke!" And in other news, her makeup looks quite nice. []?? had a baby girl, Valentina Lima Jaric, with husband Marko Jaric on Sunday. []? 's profits dropped 24 percent in the first half of the year. []? Whitney Thompson, winner of America's Next Top Model, is launching a line of jewelry and candles. []? Renaud Dutreil, U.S. chairman of LVMH, cycles to work every day and locks his bike at the Bergdorf Goodman bike rack. []? Rihanna now wears sheer blindfolds onstage. []? Blonde waif Agyness Deyn?no longer the face of Burberry?seems to be shoring up her post-modeling options now that she’s reportedly all of 25. In recent weeks she started a band called Gene Jacket, and now she’s accepted a lead role in a short film by her friend and bandmate Alanna Masterson, the 19-year-old sister of actor Danny Masterson. Deyn plays the imaginary turned real friend of a teenager grieving the death of his sister. ?I have had a few friends that have lost people, and you do remember that stuff,? says Deyn. The film (working title: The Right Side of My Exultant Brain) also stars another Masterson sibling, Jordan, as the teenager, and features a cameo by Dustin Hoffman’s son Jake. Deyn, who studied drama in college before moving on to Vogue covers, says she’s ?not necessarily? ready to trade the runway for a soundstage. ?It’s the first time I’ve actually had to speak,? she says. ?? After a lengthy absence from modeling work, is back in an editorial in May’s issue of British Vogue. []? A shopping center in England held a promotion over the weekend where the first 100 female shoppers to arrive wearing only underwear received a ￡100 gift certificate (about $165) for use in any of the mall’s stores. Of course people participated. []? Victoria’s Secret has a new collection of bridal-themed lingerie. []? Lea Michele, Amber Riley, and Dianna Agron share the cover of this month’s Marie Claire. All three also have alternate solo cover shots. []? Apparently you can now buy underwear from a vending machine. []?Yesterday we told you was starring in the campaign for 's new fragrance, Ma Dame. Today, we bring you the commercial. But it's not just any commercial &#8212 it's a French commercial. A badass French commercial at that. Yes, badass! You probably haven't heard that adjective in eight years, but this really does warrant bringing it back. Agyness explodes into view in black-and-white wearing a suit and tie and long blonde wig, wielding a pair of scissors. Then she hacks her hair off, casts a few drunk gazes into the camera, and continues the slash-fest, de-sleeving her shirt and de-legging her pants. Now we know what commercial envy feels like, and if the folks at don't understand how special that is and right now, then something's just not right with the world. ?? Angelina Jolie was reportedly spotted in Cambodia earlier this week, fueling rumors that she's starring in’s next “core values” campaign, shot by Annie Leibovitz. []? Liv Tyler is on the cover of this month’s Vogue Turkey. []? Alistair Carr is developing accessories lines at as part of an overhaul to refocus the brand. []? Hearst has signed a deal with Apple so that digital subscriptions for its magazines can be bought on the iPad. []? The Italian judge who ruled in the tax-fraud case recently has said that the country’s Revenue Office brought charges “with a carelessness that was frankly excessive.” []?? After recent rumors that Stefano Tonchi is courting Anna Dello Russo to become W’s fashion editor, Dello Russo was spotted at the magazine’s offices. []? 's fall campaign, starring model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, actor Douglas Booth, and musicians Gwilym Gold, Rory Cottam, and Samuel Fry, launches on Burberry.com today with neat interactive features. []? launched a children’s line yesterday at the Pitti Bimbo trade fair in Florence. The company also pledged $1 million to UNICEF’s Schools for Africa program. []? David Yurman’s chief executive officer, Paul Blum, is resigning and plans to stay on until a replacement is found. []?London Fashion Week is the fourth-most-important Fashion Week each season. Of the four major fashion capitals, it's the one Fashion Week Anna Wintour doesn't attend, even though she was born and raised in London. When retailers cut traveling budgets, trips to London are easily expendable. When New York wanted to move its Fashion Week dates up, London Fashion Week was forced to cut back to a mere five days. But next season a number of big labels are returning to London, after having shown in other, more important cities for seasons. , , and are all going back to their home city to show in September. (Burberry and Pringle of Scotland have been showing in Milan, while Williamson has been showing in New York.) ?Anna Wintour attended the London premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 with her niece, Ellie Wintour, who wore a dress from the (probably not by coincidence, she accompanied Anna to last September). Anna wore the that she wore at the Webby Awards a few weeks ago. []?The gorgeous young Ellie Wintour previously to attend the Harry Potter premiere with Aunt Anna. Aunt Anna. Can you imagine? #jealous []?If fall 2010 was the season of the curvy (by fashion standards) model, is spring 2011 the season of the pregnant model? Has the embrace of full breasts given way to an embrace of bellies full of life? is the second officially pregnant woman to appear on a major European runway this season, after with her pronounced baby bump. Kerr and her growing fetus landed on 's spring 2011 runway today, along with supermodels like and and random cool-looking people with spikey hair whom Nicolas Ghesquiere plucked from the street. The street casting fit with the punk collection, which included studded leather belts, houndstooth prints, backless tops, fringed rubber-soled sandals, layering, and Balenciaga's signature futurism.?So the rumors were true ? Emma Watson is the fall 2009 face of . The campaign, shot by Mario Testino in central London with a view of the River Thames, could not be more British if they used clotted cream as hair gel. A celebrity face represents a shift for the brand, who cast a plethora of models ? , , Alexina Graham, and Richard Wyndham ? for the spring 2009 campaign. For the fall campaign before that, the label cast model alongside actor Sam Riley. And and starred in the spring campaign before that. This is Emma's first major campaign, and considering she's just 19 years old, it's not a bad start to her modeling career. Indeed, she looks more grown-up than usual (oh, the powers of the hair wisp!). But what's up with her male friends? Tom Guinness Taylor looks to be about 12 in the shot above. And Emma's other co-model, Charlie France, looks 14 at best.?For a fashion label, Burberry does beauty right. The brand’s Lip Glows are enough to convert those who typically shun glosses, providing lasting color and a slight sheen without being gloppy or sticky. This month, Burberry introduces three new shades in anticipation of the upcoming holiday season: Ruby, a festive berry-red; Bright Plum, a glossy mauve; and Nude Gold, the perfect complement to a bold eye. (The latter can also be slicked on over lipstick for a warm, gold-tinged finish.) Though they have a dewy look, they won’t rub off with your morning coffee or your first glass of wine.Burberry holiday Lip Glows, $27 at or .?Though not everyone can shell out for a Burberry trench, the Brit brand's foray into beauty is accessible to the masses. With nail polish and eye shadow trending toward the this season, this collection is refreshingly natural, offering high-quality basics in ageless shades. The lip cover is a standout: creamy, richly pigmented, and packed with moisture ? no Burt's Bees or gloss required. Try Nutmeg, a spiced-up rose, for everyday, or the wine-red Burgundy for after-hours. And though you can't judge a product by its packaging, these Haymarket-checked gunmetal cases are particularly lovely. They snap shut with magnetic closures, so your makeup won't wreak havoc on the lining of your handbag.Burberry Lip Cover, $30 at ?The latest goodies-in-a-box membership program to come Stateside is the Germany-based line GlossyBox. Already available in eighteen other countries, GlossyBox sends clients five travel-size (not sample-size) beauty products from luxe lines (think NARS, Kiehl's, SK-II, and Burberry Beauty). And each delivery comes with a mini-magazine devoted to monthly beauty tips and products you should have, if you don't already. Memberships start at $21 a month, with six- and twelve-month-long commitments available for the true believer that all good things come in small packages.GlossyBox, $21–$220, .?Warmth and style don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Epaulets and buttoned cuffs add an understated military feel to Spiewak’s Beekman peacoat; the cut and color hint at . The cropped length and strong shoulders have a slimming effect, and the wool fabric will hold up on chilly fall days. Spiewak Beekman peacoat, $185 at or .? Posted November 22, 2006 One of my favorite holiday catalogues comes from God’s Love We Deliver, a charity bringing nutritious meals to those with AIDS, cancer, and other serious illnesses. To help the cause, the team at Burberry designed this exclusive apron, with pocket details matching their famous trench coat and familiar plaid piping. With all proceeds going to the charity, it’s a great gift for an amateur chef and a coup for anyone on kitchen duty this Thanksgiving?just because you’re stuck basting a turkey doesn’t mean you can’t look more chic than your guests. $70 at Godslovewedeliver.org. ? Posted January 12, 2007 Henry Holland started making tees for his London friends last year. Then suddenly, everyone from Lindsay Lohan to Lady Sovereign sported his designs, which can be worn as oversize tops or minidresses. The secret of his sassy shirts is simple: Pick a name from fashion or pop culture (in this case, Christopher Bailey, the handsome head designer for Burberry) and think of an appropriate, or completely inappropriate, rhyme. Holland’s first full collection debuts at London Fashion Week in February. Until then, feast on his famous shirts, which are finally available in the States. $95 at Seven New York, 110 Mercer St., nr. Spring St.; 646-654-0156. ?Where can a person find the perfect pair of tangerine-colored jeans? A reliable reupholstery shop? A good cup of chawanmushi? Those are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves every year when we set out on the grand quest to identify the finest of just about everything this sprawling, ADD-inducing city has to offer, also known as our annual ?Best of New York? issue. ?Planned byMSWand Martha acolyte, it took place in a barn on a plantation outside. Lively and bridesmaids wore customgowns — perhaps Gucci and Chanel, for whom she is a spokeswoman, provided too much of a Sophie's Choice — with customheels. Reynolds and groomsmen worewith "custom leather suspenders designed by the groom's friend, Christopher Bailey." They exchangedrings. It was carnival themed. We can practically feel the bridal Pinterest boards throbbing in anticipation.?SKIN ? The Body Shop partnered with ZoomShops to launch a vending machine that will stock the company's line of skin-care products at airports, supermarkets, and chains like Stop & Shop. []? Plastic surgeon Dr. Ivo Pitanguy, who has reportedly worked on Brigitte Bardot, Joan Crawford, and the King of Morocco, launched a new product named the Restoring Formula for his skin-care line PreVious. Just 1.7 ounces cost $300. []?• The Wall Street Journal analyzes man-bags. [] • Simon Spurr’s current CEO, Tommy Fazio, on how he got his job with in the eighties: "She screened me with a handwriting test. I had to write answers to questions like 'what inspires me?' or 'what drives me?' — while she was watching." (This beats a cover letter any day.) [] • Us Weekly named Jessica Simpson "Style Icon of the Year." (Even though it’s only late April.) [] • In a special Mother’s Day promotion at Saks, purchase one of the Paradise “Vera” bags and receive a free Nars lip color palette along with an equally free Marc Jacobs cosmetics case. []?Brief EncountersAre you man enough to carry a tote bag? Of course you are! Lose that ratty messenger bag you've been carting since college and get carried away.?&#8226 We're lusting after this black lip gloss from Lancôme created by the company's new director, Aaron de Mey. It costs $48, and it's just so dark and dreamy we need it right now. The wait list for its November rollout begins today so our name will see yours on it. []?Profile Once the staid uniform of starchy upper-crust Brits, Burberry is riding a second wave of mass success thanks to creative director Christopher Bailey and his uber-cool design team. While vintage-inspired rain and trench coats still abound, the signature Burberry check now graces bikinis, tight jean pockets and even nifty skateboards. The Burberry flagship store, in Midtown East, embodies this idea of old becoming new, with gleaming hardwood panels and brass fixtures set off by glass display cases, bright skylights and giant wooly sheep dolls?yes, sheep dolls?dotting both the men's and women's floors. (And although the merchandise is still full of plaid patterns, the store décor is mercifully free of Burberry's trademark black, tan, and red check.) Accessories like solid leather handbags, slick aviator sunglasses and plaid address books find their home on the first floor, while men's and women's casual and outerwear and an entire section of formalwear, featuring couture gowns and hand-tailored tuxedos, occupy separate spaces in the store. For tykes of privilege, children's coats, jumpers and shoes are also available. The smaller SoHo store stocks an edited version of the flagship's collection. — Faran Alexis Krentcil SalesPost Thanksgiving, Post Christmas, Labor Day. Key Departments Men's Formalwear Husbands-to-be on the hunt for formal attire can pick up a classic black suit for around $1,295. Those in search of a more upscale look should check out the Burberry Prorsum collection. Related StoriesBest of New York Awards?? Three Canadian companies have been ordered to pay a total of $2.5 million to and after being charged with trademark infringement for selling knockoff versions of the labels’ handbags. []? Emma Watson is on the cover of the August issue of British Harper’s Bazaar and tells the magazine: “LA scares the crap out of me ? I feel if I have to work out four hours a day, and count the calories of everything I put in my mouth, and have Botox at 22, and obsess about how I look the whole time, I will go mad, I will absolutely lose it.” []? Anthony Vaccarello on winning this year’s prestigious ANDAM award for fashion design, which comes with a $290,000 cash prize: “I was totally shocked to win ? I didn’t expect it because all the other contenders had better texts and speeches to explain what they wanted to do. But I think people liked the three dresses I presented for the next collection.” []? Toronto-based financial consultant and accountant David Danziger has been named to the board of directors of American Apparel. Two seats on the board remain open. []?Burberry beach towels . . .. . . the perfect gift for a bird-watcher, and more.?&#8226 's sales rose 30 percent in the third quarter, but the company could still cut 500 jobs. []&#8226 Guy Trebay on Christopher Bailey's new men's collection for : "Now it’s clear that Burberry is ready to reclaim its brand-genetic heritage, and thus there was an abundance of [signature plaid] scarves for licensed merchants to hawk until the money starts flowing and Mr. Bailey can indulge his less commercial instincts again." []&#8226 showed sequins while showed glitter shirts and metallic trousers in their men's shows. Shine on, men. []&#8226 Vogue's January issue, with Jennifer Aniston on the cover, sold 465,000 copies, outselling the December issue by about 65,000 copies. So that cover quote about Angelina Jolie being "uncool" worked out well. []&#8226 Rumor: will perform a duet with her boyfriend, Kills guitarist Jamie Hince. He gave her a ￡26,000 Steinway grand piano for her birthday on Friday, and she wants to learn how to play. []?We've learned from way too many cycles of America's Next Top Model that models are generally encouraged to avoid talking back (Nigel Barker has delicate feelings, after all), voicing their opinions, displaying their personalities, or doing anything that would cause you to actually remember their names. Perhaps because it makes them a bit more disposable? The industry may prefer faces without names, but the public likes being on a first-name basis with supermodels. We hope Burberry didn't pull an Elle (too soon after Nina-gate?) on this one and let a good one go. Also, let's not forget that Testino is an avid supporter, reportedly calling her his .?This season is moving its fashion show to London, after showing in Milan for seasons. Shortly after its announcement, , , , , and announced they'd move to London, too. It's unclear what exactly is prompting the great migration back to the U.K., but Burberry designer Christopher Bailey tells the Telegraph money had nothing to do with it: "It's actually costing us a lot more to show here. It was a gut instinct," he says. "It's the 25th anniversary, films are being made, art, theater, and design are buzzing, they're planning the Olympics. London is the place to be right now. Am I nervous? No! It's pure adrenalin. It's my first London fashion show. The only other time my designs have been on the catwalk was when I graduated from the Royal College of Art, in 1994." Or, as the Telegraph reiterates, "Bailey's lean, boyish frame masks the strength of an ox, and his head buzzes with ideas as hot as a furnace." So how do they explain the return of the other designers? More animal metaphors, please. [Telegraph UK] ?This news is a little near and dear to our hearts. Our former home, 444 Madison, has finally found a new tenant: is moving its U.S. headquarters to our old stomping grounds in March. And with said move comes new signage. Yes, the famous New York logo atop the building will be replaced with three Burberry signs. The Times helpfully offers up a rendering of the new signage. In even more exciting news, the label may also open a retail store in the building, though the details aren't finalized. To which we say: Damn! We had to hoof it through throngs of slow-moving tourists to get to Saks and now tenants will just be able to go downstairs? Hmph. We'll console ourselves by hoping that stays on our side of Houston. [NYT]?FRAGRANCE ? Fans of on Facebook will have access to exclusive samples of the label's new scent, "Burberry Body." The fragrance, billed as "a new step in the brand" for Burberry, won't be released until next month. []? French actress Lea Seydoux is dancing the Apache, a set of moves popularized in 1930s Paris, in the video ad for 's new "Candy" fragrance. []? Here's a behind-the-scenes video from the latest fragrance ad. []SKIN ? After a Nivea ad was , the brand posted an apology on their Facebook page acknowledging it was "inappropriate and offensive." They've removed the ad from all circulation channels and say it'll never be used again. []? A nasal tanning spray (ew!) called "Ubertan" has been banned in the U.K. after it was found to include melanotan, a chemical that stimulates the production of melanin in skin and has scary side effects like dizziness, migraines, and bizarrely, an increased libido. []?Thomas Burberry (then a tailor’s apprentice) founded the brand in 1856. What began as a collection of sturdy outerwear sold out of a shop in Hampshire, evolved to include jackets in airy, water-resistant gabardine by 1880. Ten years later, Thomas Burberry & Sons debuted in London’s West End. In 1911, the house outfitted the first explorers to reach the South Pole, and by 1914, adapted its coats for WWI soldiers fighting in the trenches (hence the trench coat). Its trademark check pattern lined its trench coats by 1920, and rose to national ubiquity by 1955, when Queen Elizabeth II awarded the house a Royal Warrant (its first of two). In 1961, the house dressed Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, introducing its branch of accessories by the mid-sixties. Aggressive retail expansion in the seventies and eighties spun Burberry into a household name, with stores in every major U.S. city. Embracing another image shift in the late nineties, Burberry furthered its hold on the luxury market through high fashion, debuting its first ready-to-wear collection under Roberto Menichetti, and launching major advertising campaigns. By 2001, Burberry became cool, thanks to then-CEO Rose Marie Bravo, who tagged Kate Moss as muse and Christopher Bailey as designer. Bailey cut his teeth under Tom Ford at Gucci, and he has brought that same sexy edge to the revered heritage brand. He unites punk with luxury, and edge with opulence. And while the house’s legendary coats (and sometimes tartans) still dominate, they serve as a canvas for Bailey’s covetable?and profitable?art.StatusEstablished, Household NameClientsKate Bosworth, Mena Suvari, Blake Lively, Kate BeckinsaleOther Product LinesBeauty, Eyewear, Fragrances, Home, Handbags, Lingerie, Shoes, UnderwearOwned ByJohn Peace, Burberry Group PLCAddress18-22 Haymarket London, United Kingdom SW14DQ 44-20-7968-0000Where To Buy, , , , , Related Websites?Burberry didn't roll out the red carpet for the huge crowd of celebrities and fashion folk attending its in London's Kensington Park this afternoon — there was a cream one instead, so soft and luxurious underfoot that I was tempted to feign tripping over just to make snow carpet angels on it. Not a wise option though, as there were far too many photographers in the roped-off pit outside.The show's guest list certainly called for a congregation of (well-behaved) paparazzi — celebrities sitting front row inside included Dita von Teese, a very fine-looking Dev Patel, Aaron Paul, Maggie Cheung, One Direction's Harry Styles, Olivia Palermo, various members of the U.S.'s and U.K.'s Olympic teams, models Gabriella Wilde and Tali Lennox, and tennis man-of-the-moment Andy Murray. Murray bagged the coveted seat next to Anna Wintour; meanwhile, poorRoger Federer cried alone, whispering softly to a copy of September Vogue, "Oh, Anna, my dear, where did I go wrong?" Joe Dempsie, otherwise known as Gendry in HBO'sGame of Thrones, was for some reason relegated to the second row, but I'm sure he was fine with it because he has a much more legitimate claim to the Iron Throne than anyone else in attendance.Along with Wintour, some of the other top fashion names spotted: Alexandra Shulman, Emmanuelle Alt, Mario Testino, Stefano Tonchi, Suzy Menkes (clacking away on her trusty Dell laptop throughout), Joe Zee, Kate Lanphear, Hamish Bowles, Linda Fargo, and BritishElle's Lorraine Candy.?• This season, Marc Jacobs might have paid his models for the first time.[]• Burberry is experiencing a sales "deceleration," and said that adjusted pre-tax profits for the full year would be "around the lower end" of market expectations. []• Kati Nescher covers Vogue Germany's October issue, photographed by Camilla Akrans. []• Chinese model Sui He is now the face of Shiseido makeup. []• Advanced Style held a flash fashion show at Lincoln Center yesterday. []• A former Gucci network engineer was sentenced to jail time after admitting that he hacked into the brand's servers, resulting in more than $200,000 of damage. []? has slapped upscale boutique chain Variazoni with a $2 million lawsuit for selling counterfeit copies of their merchandise, including trench coats, shirts, and quilted jackets. This is the second time the store has been accused of peddling fakes: In June 2009, they were caught selling 86 Burberry knockoffs and "promised" in a signed contract to never do it again. You would think boutiques would be selling you the real thing when it comes to designer merch. []?announced today that it will launch a line of makeup in July. While the brand has launched fragrances in the past, this will be the first foray into color cosmetics for the label. Burberry's creative director, Christopher Bailey, said he wanted to launch the line after being frustrated with caked-on makeup in the wrong colors for his fashion shows, a beauty struggle that happens at Fashion Week and in real life, too. So, in order to fix makeup wrongdoings, he created his own line for the luxury brand. The collection will contain 96 pieces and is inspired by the iconic Burberry trenchcoat. “Like the trenchcoat, it can be worn anywhere and at any time,” he told WWD. ?MAKEUP ? is launching makeup in July 2010 at Nordstrom in the U.S. Who wants to paint their face plaid?! []? If you want to know what Camilla Belle's makeup artist did to her face last night, find the full rundown at the link. []?• With over 10 million fans on Facebook, Burberry is the site's most popular label. Christopher Bailey even posted a message thanking Facebookers for their support. []• Five rising Australian designers will present their fall collections at the Crosby Hotel in NYC later this month as part of an initiative to better showcase the country's design prospects and fashion business capabilities. [] • See model on a beautiful Venetian balcony in an editorial from the winter edition of TAR magazine. And perhaps that's in the background? []• This appears to be the editorial accompanying , including cameos from Michelle Harper and a Bryanboy-inspired character, too. []• Cowboy fans, take note: Ariat is the official boot sponsor of this weekend's Professional Bull Riders performance in Madison Square Garden. []?We hope they sent Burberry baby Suri Cruise a cookie bouquet. The new London space will carry "everything [visitors] need for their 4- to 10-year-olds, as well as a baby section catering from new born to four years." We took a look at the Burberry kids' collection , and we must confess it's pretty damn cute. And a girl's onesie is a steal at just $75. A classic kilt is a mere $110, and the wool duffel coat is $350. But please, if your kids wears that this winter, try to refrain from zipping them up in a plastic stroller bag. You never know how much therapy they'll need if they subconsciously think you're trying to keep everyone from seeing how fabulous they are.?Bailey was mum on Burberry's menswear show walking next month. "I couldn’t possibly talk about it right now, but it’s going back to the roots of what Burberry is about," he said. Ooh, might that mean plaid? Bailey added that the company isn't scaling back on the show, despite the economy. "But we’re being very thoughtful about the way that we use the funds that we have." Though the CEO of Versace reportedly wanted to cut back on advertising budgets by, say, , Bailey thinks it's worth it. "You’re buying talent. And I think talent never goes away with the changing economy, and talent is something we all need to keep nurturing." Also: giant electric logo signs! Below, watch a video of the new sign going up.?The creative director and his partner Simon Woods gave notice for their forthcoming nuptials at a London registry office earlier this week. Their "small civil ceremony" will be next month, the — presumably after Fashion Week madness has subsided. Congratulations to the happy couple!? The growth over the three months ending June 30 is thanks to Asian markets, of course, and, perhaps more surprisingly, wholesale sales. And just this week, the Times was about how unexciting retail was — so unexciting, in fact, that it was forcing high-fashion companies to take drastic measures like sell their wares on their own websites. (It should be noted that Burberry has been on the Internet train for a while, riding the cars of innovation that result in ideas like streaming playing songs while wearing Burberry. E-commerce is old news to them.) ?'s fall ads are out! Where once posed, Rosie Huntington-Whitley and actor Sam Riley now stand. Huntington-Whitley isn't really a surprise, since the model attended the Met gala with Burberry designer Christopher Bailey. And Riley caught the designer's eye in the 2007 movie Control, in which he played Joy Division's Ian Curtis. Bailey thought the actor felt right for the mood of this campaign. ?&#8226 Defying downward trends, saw a 20 percent upturn in revenue in the six months leading up to October. []&#8226 In Paris, a massive retrospective dedicated to the late is being prepared for 2010. It will include 300 couture garments, accessories, sketches, and more. []&#8226 Expert hat designer Stephen Jones will win the Outstanding Achievement award at the British Fashion Awards later this month. []&#8226 's latest collaboration with Ksubi was "inspired by the French Revolution and is parallel to today's social, economic and political climate." That means pink sunglasses decked with black hearts. [] &#8226 Victoria's Secret model wore flip-flops and an ankle bandage to the after-party for the fashion show in Miami. She reportedly had to go to the hospital after injuring herself on a photo shoot while wearing dangerous heels. []?&#8226 Richard Prince's new handbags for have jokes from mid-century comedians on them, like this one: "Every time I meet a woman who can cook like my Mother … She looks like my Father." How … progressive. [] ?? 's retail sales in the three months ending June 30 rose 28.7 percent. Revenue rose 8.5 percent. []? Meanwhile, H&M's same-store sales dipped 5 percent in June, which is worse than projected. []? Giuseppe Zanotti is considering branching into men's footwear after designing a few pairs for 's spring menswear collection. []? The ten models who walked in 's couture show last week were supposedly paid 50 euros each. New faces usually gets 1,300 euros for a couture show. [, ]? An industry source close to Simon Cowell and Sir Philip Green says isn't joining their new business venture, and dismissed reports as the tabloids "making mischief." []? Models have wolf heads and other head ornamentation in 's new fall 2009 look book. [] ?'s third-quarter revenues increased 26.3 percent compared to the same period last year, the company reported today. According to the , the upswing was "partly due" to the demand for men's satchels in Asia, which "made a popular gift choice in the run up to Christmas." Burberry CFO Stacey Cartwright confirmed, "In China and the rest of Asia ? where Burberry has a big fan base ? men’s accessories are a huge market." []?&#8226 's sales surged 14 percent in the first half of the year, but they "expect trading conditions in the all-important third quarter to remain volatile and uncertain." Sounds about right. []&#8226 Ashley Olsen, Kate Bosworth, Tim Gunn, and will present at the Fashion Group International's annual Night of Stars next month in New York. BRING IT. []&#8226 Madonna wore a pair of 's stacked "Miami Vice" shoes with miniature gun heels to the premiere of Filth and Wisdom (her directorial debut!) last night. [] &#8226 Jeanne 's art collection, including Impressionist and Modernist works by Renoir, Boudin, and Vuillard, and one Picasso, could fetch $40.3 million at Christie's in Paris. []&#8226 Italian lingerie brand Yamamay cast for the new campaign because "she isn’t built like a typical model, but has just the right curves to emphasize feminine sensuality." []?? Shot by Mario Testino, 's new campaign features British models and Jacob Young rolling about on a beach of pebbles. These are the first of several spring ads that will be released between now and May. []? Some sketches from Lindsay Lohan's forthcoming shoe line are out. []? Lourdes confirms that the Material Girl label is indeed shopping for a new face, although keeping Taylor Momsen isn't entirely out of the question. []? Jonathan and Lizzie Tisch donated $10 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to revamp its Costume Institute. []? Zara’s founder, Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega, retired this week by sending a brief note to his 98,000 employees. [ broke her arm snowboarding in Montana and is wearing a sling for the next few weeks. []?MAKEUP ? features in the new ad campaigns for 's beauty products, including blushes, lipsticks, lip glosses, and eye shadows. [] ? British makeup artist Alex Box will create looks using MAC Cosmetics as part of a live performance called "The Evolution of Surface" tonight at the . [] ? Makeup artist Emily Kate Warren breaks down the best of this season's products for creating nude lips. [] ?• Now that she'll have some free time, Carla Bruni plans to release a new album this fall, according to her rep. []• Elle.com taps Amina Akhtar, former editor of FashionEtc.com (and editor of this very blog before that), to be their new executive editor. She succeeds Keith Pollock, who , Du Jour. []• Arizona Muse and Agyness Deyn made winky faces fori-D's summer issue, as photographed by Kayt Jones and Scott Trindle. [,]• Someone got fancy with the spray paint outside Marc Jacobs's Soho store and graffitied the word ART across the front in huge, pink letters. []• Brad Pitt is said to be filming a commercial for Chanel No. 5. []• Christopher Bailey, Burberry CEO and chair of the U.K.'s Fashion Fringe, named the ten semifinalists for this year's competition. Later this month, three finalists will be selected to show at London's fall Fashion Week, where the winner will be chosen. []?MAKEUP ? stars in the new ad campaign for 's Le Blanc makeup line. []? Here are some new lipsticks. []? MAC's Prep+Prime line has a new addition: a beauty balm foundation that includes SPF 35. []SKIN ? Here are shots of Gwen Stefani filming a commercial for L'Oreal in Cannes over the weekend. []?You can see tons of menswear shows up close and personal, right down to the sequins on the belts at , the (undone) buttons on the jackets at , and the stitching on the bags at , in our latest details galleries. Also, watch the clothes move in our runway videos. DETAILS ? ? ? ?Don't miss our latest slideshows of the 2010 resort collections. New today: and .?Consultants at McKinsey, who have somewhat famously in three phases over the past couple of years, project that within four years, China will become the world's largest luxury market. The country does seem to be on track with that projection, with planning to open an additional 43 stores over the next five years, an estimated 960,000 millionaires residing in the country, and having launched a sub-brand just for China called Shang Xia. So many moneyed (and even not-so-moneyed) folks who are hungry for luxury goods have created quite a lovely problem for Chinese Vogue: Angelica Cheung, the Chanel-frocked editor of Vogue China, has a problem her counterparts would sell their designer wardrobes for: too much advertising to fit in the glossy."I have to sit down at a desk to flip through it," she says. "It is going to get very difficult to read. It's too heavy. Maybe it will have to be two magazines in future."?HAIR • Michael Phelps says despite having chlorine-damaged hair he'll never shave his head. “If it falls out then it falls out," he says. In other news, as part of a new Head & Shoulders campaign, his face gets printed on the brand's shampoo bottles. []• Chloe Moretz debuted pink-streaked hair at last night’s Costume Designers Guild Awards. []• Gayle Giacomo, star of Style Network'sJerseyliciousand owner of the Gatsby Salon, is starting her own hair care line, called “GATSBY." []?? The mystery of who for the Costume Institute gala on Monday night has been solved! Melania Trump will attend the event wearing a dress by the . []? The documentary about , Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston, premieres tomorrow at the Tribeca Film Festival. []? Gywneth Paltrow altered the dress she wore last night to an event celebrating Chopard's 150th anniversary. She added a nude layer underneath so it wasn't completely see-through. []?&#8226 Here's a long essay about the clothes in the Sex and the City movie. The only part that comes close to surprising is that Miranda reportedly looks quite polished, better than she did in the series. Perhaps Charlotte's the frumpy one this time around. []?Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey will chair Britain's Fashion Fringe initiative for young designers, WWD reports. His two year-long role will see him choose the competition's three annual finalists and work with them as a mentor. He'll also pick the contest's winner, after that will take place during each London Fashion Week in September. Prizes for each year's winner include two more years of mentoring, financial support and business advice, and a studio space in Central London.Bailey remarked that he's "very proud to be partnering with [Fashion Fringe] to unearth the next generation of exciting designers." Colin McDowell, renowned fashion writer and Fashion Fringe's founder, said of the appointment, "I believe that Christopher and Burberry will offer great inspiration to our candidates in Fashion Fringe for the next two years whilst encouraging them to boldly step out and create their own vision and originality." Previous Fringe chairs include Tom Ford and John Galliano.?Mini versions of anything— shoes, clothes, dogs, purses, furniture— are always irresistible, so it makes sense that people with money to burn would want baby-sized duplicates of their own designer clothing. But according to theTimes, a lot of these pieces aren't even made very well. According tochildren's wear designer Rachel Riley,“Some of their fabrics are mediocre," and the clothes aren't tailored properly for kids' proportions. Also, is it even ethical to treat a child like a designer doll? TheTimesreports:?The latest monthly survey by e-marketing brand Stylophone reveals Converse tops the fashion-brand pack on Facebook, with nearly 21 million "likes" ? 20,985,796 to be exact. That's over 9 million more than its closest competitor, Adidas; the three high-fashion brands to crack the ranking's top ten for November were , (which is also the ), and . ( just missed out, at the No. 11 spot.) So what does this say about Facebook users' fashion cred?? The critics disagreed on the success of Jonathan Saunders's muted fall collection. The designer "," noted The Wall Street Journal, deeming the effect "modern, sporty, and stark." WWD called it a "," one that "let the artsy details do the talking," like hand-painted prints. (Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal admired the bustier tops, which added ".") And though British Vogue asserted that the collection was "," other critics were left wanting more. "," noted Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune, resulting in a collection that "missed the 'oomph!' that has come in the past." Likewise, Style.com mourned his subdued color palette. "" it asked. While many felt the geographic prints were fresh and modern, others came to Style.com's conclusion: "[I]t was a disappointment that he passed up the chance to further develop a look he's so good at." ?THE HITS: •"[Bailey] turned his substantial talents to that most conservative and reassuring forms of soft armor, the suit ... with confident reassurance. [T]he collection sent a message of competence, quietly skillful craftsmanship and of hunkering down ... [Bailey] exhibited a comfortable understanding of what it means to be endowed with more testosterone than estrogen." [] •"[A] tellingly clever and cool visual discourse on a new sort of gentile chic ... Bailey wowed with a excellent set of Alpine apres-ski sweaters, whose erratic patterns and crafty twisting necklines made them that rare thing in menswear— truly original garments ... [a] thoroughly accomplished show." [] •"The collection, with its quirky charms, hit the spot ... Bailey peppered the collection with light touches, in the form of beaded appliqué fox heads on knits, leather gloves sprouting punky gold studs, and jaunty polka-dot neckties that would put a smile on the lips of even the most dour Englishman." [] •"[I]t was all very Downton Abbey drivers [and] quirky details ... Gone was last season’s bohemian boy." [] "[A] kaleidoscopic shake-up of town and country ... There was a military swagger, an urban sharpness, and a yearning for country ... [Bailey] got the balance just right this season." [] •"[Bailey drew] on Burberry's military heritage [and] the seam of eccentricity that runs through the company's history ... to great effect. [The clothes were] an appealing advertisement for a new kind of gentlemanliness." []?THE HITS: • "Nothing highlighted more the new power and energy of London fashion than the launch on the runway this week of the McQ collection ... an enchantment .... [Burton's] ability to distil the essence of the late designer is touching and impressive." []• "[I]t was beautiful — and slightly creepy...The polished, elegant clothes popped with McQueen signatures ... There was a powerful military feel, too...The evening dresses were dramatic." []• "A sensational McQ show created a true fashion high ... It was almost menacing but not quite ... It’s just as inspiring but somehow carries a more feminised allure." []• "The clothes on the leafy runway were indeed beautiful; Burton shook out the key elements of the McQueen aesthetic — the romance, the dark glamour, the mind-blowing tailoring — and, rather than dumbing them down, expressed them in an accessible way." []• "Burton has moved McQueen on a great deal, but this recalled the mood of McQueen's London shows 11 or 12 years ago ... I interpreted the rope as a McQueen-finding-its-way-home story. His early London shows are the stuff of fashion legend, after all." []?From Giles Deacon's 'fierce and worldly' dominatrices to Aquascutum's bulky, droopy dresses, catch up on the critics' highlights and quibbles from London. THE HITS: ? "To fine tailoring and a deep understanding of couture fabrics, Giles brought his predominantly black collection to life, with tufts of fur, surface sheen and with just the right touches of color and pattern from teal blue to Art Nouveau flowers. A subtle historical reference seemed to be woven into each piece ? but it was history with a twist." []? "Deacon delivered his most accomplished collection to date? He populated that picture with women as fierce and worldly as dominatrices?Do such creatures even exist? For perhaps the first time in Deacon's career, it just about seemed possible." []? "This collection marked a volte-face? Giles Deacon returned to sharply executed, intricately crafted clothing ? to spectacular effect? The collection was a sophisticated example of Deacon’s ever-inventive take on design ? and his clothes wouldn’t look out of place on the Paris couture." []? "[Deacon’s] autumn/winter 2011-12 collection was seriously strong? this was a beautiful show befitting of its serious venue and it left us on a high despite being late in the very long penultimate day of womenswear shows in London." []?In the other categories, beat out , among others, for the Best Designer Brand award, and was posthumously honored with an award for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design. The list of winners:?• David Beckham on his Super Bowl ad: "When we were watching the Super Bowl yesterday in a room of about 20 people and it came on and I actually didn't know where to look," he said. "I'm very shy. It was kind of embarrassing. The kids loved it but they were also embarrassed as well because there were other people in the room." []• Made Fashion Week unveils a new app that broadcasts live images of runway shows and presentations. Users can review and take notes on individual looks, e-mail favorite looks, and tweet about shows. []• One of the models in Wilhelmina's new show package is "named" Fashionette. How fitting? []• When she was asked which shows she wants to do this season, says, "I’d love to walk in Burberry this season; it’s one show I’ve never done! I also haven’t done London Fashion Week in a while, would love to get back there soon." []• has been named the creative director of outdoorsy menswear brand Filson. []• In other Chai news, he'scollaborated with Palladium on a capsule collection of boots that will feature his fall 2012 runway show this Thursday. []?The , along with Jourdan Dunn and Cara Delevingne, is in the running for the title, to be named at the British Fashion Awards ceremony on November 27. Christopher Kane, Mary Katrantzou, and Stella McCartney made the short list for Designer of the Year, while J.W. Anderson, Michael van der Ham, and Simone Rocha are candidates for the Emerging Talent Award — Ready-to-Wear. , Harold Tillman, chairman of the British Fashion Council remarked, "2012 has been a momentous year and seen a nationwide celebration of British talent ... [the] Awards recognise and celebrate the exceptional individuals and brands who've defined out fashion industry over the past year." Such as David Gandy.?? Photographer David Sims shot ’s spring ad campaign, which features models and and will drop in February. []? Sebastien Faena shot Paz de la Huerta sucking her thumb for the winter cover of Muse magazine. [] ? Neiman Marcus has named Ann Paolini senior vice-president and managing director of the retailer's Last Call division. []? The schedule for London Fashion Week in is, and launched a new iPad app, and highlights include backstage footage of McCartney's latest spring/summer 2011 show and a performance by Pharrell Williams and N*E*R*D at the after-party. []?Lam's online voting scheme is actually quite similar to what did this past Fashion Week when they (the orders are to be delivered several months post-show). Ironically, Lam was actually asked about Burberry's immediate-gratification strategy when he took part in a panel at Parsons last week, and started stuttering when he tried to answer ("You can tell already I’m hyperventilating,” he explained at the time). this as anxiety over the idea that fashion could have such a quick turnaround, but now we know that he was probably just trying to restrain himself from climbing on top of his chair and yelling that he's doing the exact same thing! Which is too bad, really, because that would have been a much cooler way to announce it.?? Two ads from Diesel's "Be Stupid" campaign ? one depicting a girl flashing a surveillance camera, and another of a girl taking a picture of her naughty bits ? have been banned by the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority for being indecent. []? is now a face of Victoria’s Secret’s Pink line. So go ahead and speculate about whether she'll enjoy a moment on a glitter runway with wings strapped to her shoulders come holiday time. []? A whopping 8,600 $80 flammable bathrobes were recalled from Bloomingdale’s. []? menswear is taking off. The company plans to shoot its first menswear-only ad campaign soon, and new watches, stores, and men’s fragrances are in the works. [] ?This is all quite tragic, because it sounds like the two were serious about getting their celeb-styling factory off the ground. Style.com reports Avery and Flynn had registered the company name AveryFlynn and scoured the West Village for office space with plans to get a Website up by Fashion Week. Where will New York's famous people be without the styling expertise of these two at the ready? Who will show men in this city that with dress shoes and no socks is a stylishly shrewd choice? What will Paris Hilton do when she lands in New York needing clothes and no one wants to help her? Go around nude?! See, this is what happens when people choose sports over fashion &#8212 everything starts falling apart!?? and Arthur Levine have completed a deal to invest in 's financially troubled label. []? Rachel Zoe says baby Skyler is the reason she brought thirteen pieces of luggage to Paris Fashion Week, because “he changes two or three times a day. I mean, there’s spit up involved. You have to have changes on hand.” []? is styled like Marilyn Monroe in a new editorial from Lovecat magazine. []? To celebrate naming Rihanna the sexiest woman alive, Esquire threw dirt and wet seaweed at her during a photo shoot, it would seem. []? In other Rihanna news, she's wearing an Opening Ceremony dress on the cover of her new album, Talk That Talk. []?Emma Watson returns as the face of for the spring 2010 season. She stars in the ads alongside her adorable brother, Alex Watson. George Craig, Matt Gilmour, and Max Hurd also appear in the campaign, shot by Mario Testino. Everyone looks terrific but also terrifically young. Not that that’s a bad thing or terribly surprising for a fashion ad, but most people we know who wear Burberry have, you know, facial hair or bank accounts independent of their parents. See the entire campaign and a behind-the-scenes video of the shoot in the slideshow. Update: We failed to note that there's something disturbingly "off" with . Either she's been horribly disfigured in a tragic ski accident, or someone on Burberry's Photoshop team is in trouble.?Fall 2009 campaign casting is in full swing. Harry Potter star Emma Watson is rumored to be the fall 2009 face of . The house would not confirm the rumor, but at least they know from her film work that she looks great in a misty forest setting, which they used in their . In other campaign news, Frida Giannini has cast , , , and for the fall ads, shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. We wonder what will become of for the label. []?? Emma Watson was given the first likes girls who eat carbs. “The idea of women being free is completely neglected at the moment. All the women I know are worried about what people think and how others think they should dress. They don't want to eat carbs because they're worried about how other people will see them. We're quite uncomfortable with the way fashion sometimes promotes that sort of attitude, but hopefully our clothes are a bit more irreverent. We want to make clothes that empower instead of demean." []?Let's all take a moment to refocus our attention from Twilight and Kristen Stewart to the 19-year-old that matters much more to the fashion community: Harry Potter's Emma Watson. The and rising style star was spotted at Saturday's New York Rangers game with Spanish rock star Rafael Cebrian and creative director Stefano Pilati. According to "Page Six"'s source, she looked like she was on a date with Rafael, which would make Pilati the third wheel. But what were they all doing at a hockey game? If Emma really did just start dating this fellow, was she screening him with her friend Stefano? Or did Pilati tag along to woo one or the other for a YSL campaign? And does chief creative officer Christopher Bailey know about this? And if he does, is he okay with it? Then again, maybe the three of them just enjoy watching live sports. Though a formal announcement hasn't been made about Burberry's spring 2010 face, a member of the Fashion Spot who claims to have spoken to Bailey "about two months ago" posts that Emma is indeed returning for the spring ads. [Page Six/NYP] [Fashion Spot]?In the ten years she's occupied the Harry Potter spotlight, Emma Watson has undergone a transformation of magical proportions. Gone is the frizzy-haired Hermione with a penchant for elfish pointy flats, and in her place is a with contracts with and . While she's made many notable fashion choices of late, her most exciting style moments can be seen on the Harry Potter red carpets over the years. See Emma evolve from a camera-shy preteen to a bewitching twentysomething in our slideshow.?Kate Middleton in Northern Ireland today, where she did things for the public, with the public as part of the U.K. tour she and her fiance, the prince, are doing prior to their April 29 wedding. The trench is one of the more fashion forward pieces the future princess has worn publicly as she and William go forth in their shared life of photo ops. Just today in Ireland, she had so many! And he was also ... around! While people adored her! View Kate Middleton ? doing things ? in the slideshow.?Subscribe to Email Fashion AlertsDaily Fashion & Runway News?Subscribe to Email Fashion AlertsDaily Fashion & Runway News?Rachel Weisz: In The Fountain, a ?psychedelic adult fairy tale? of a film that comes out in November, Rachel Weisz plays two different characters inhabiting three different centuries in three radically different looks, ranging from period-drama corsets and skirts to a white Narciso Rodriguez coat. In her own life, Weisz likes what she calls ?mysterious, sexy clothes? that are neither too revealing nor restricting. ?If I?m not comfortable, I kind of just want to lie down and go to sleep. I can?t shine in any way.? At the moment, Weisz is in Memphis with her newborn son and husband, Darren Aronofsky (who wrote and directed The Fountain), to shoot a small part in a new movie by Wong Kar Wei. ?I?ll be playing a good-time girl from Memphis who?s not having such a good time. Dare I say I?ll be a bit like Britney Spears?? Justin Theroux: In his first star turn, as a crabby and battered Hollywood director in David Lynch?s Mulholland Drive, Justin Theroux sported a head-to-toe black pompadour and a golf club. Right now, his style consists of the ?full-on-the-skin mohawk? he recently sported, and ?what my girlfriend calls my uniform?three pairs of pants and three shirts.? A similarly spare, downtown aesthetic should prevail in the actor?s directorial debut, a recently completed movie called Dedication, shot on location in New York. He may call it ?a love letter to New York or whatever,? but don?t expect a Woody Allen patina. ?I?m not particularly impressed with brownstones,? says Theroux, who?s lived downtown for fifteen years. Features: Handed Gianni?s crown after he was brutally murdered, a traumatized Donatella Versace spent years partying and struggling to uphold her brother?s legacy. Now she?s clean, in control, and proving that more than one Versace can be a celebrated designer. By Ariel Levy A sartorial war of the roses. Photomontages by Caroline Shepard Slide Show: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders catches celebs looking their best. Women's Fall Fashion By Harriet Mays Powell Slide Shows: Scenes from a marriage on a split screen, starring Rachel Weisz and Justin Theroux. Photographs by Serge Leblon Raiding his closet. Photographs by Sam Haskins Bring out the rings and things. Photographs by Marilyn Minter A walk in the park. Photographs by Jock Sturges How to turn heads. Photographs by Oliviero Toscani Men's Fall Fashion By Harriet Mays Powell In a business-casual world, the man in a straitlaced suit is a revolutionary. By Amy Larocca Slide Shows: Scenes from a marriage on a split screen, starring Justin Theroux and Rachel Weisz. Photographs by Serge Leblon Knock ?em dead. Photographs by Oliviero Toscani Dudes on the town. Photographs by Larry Fink Cultivating the casually uncultivated coif. Photographs by Ann Weathersby ?Story/Art: Jim Rugg; Story: Brian Maruca; Market Editor: Doria Santlofer 1:1 Cardigan, $265, polo, $90, tie, $98, and trousers, $175, at , 608 Fifth Ave., at 49th St. (212-459-2300). Dress, $2,495, and leggings, $745, at , 803 Greenwich St., at 12th St. (212-989-7612). Maison Martin Margiela boots, $1,295 at , 660 Madison Ave., at 61st St. (212-826-8900). Gilded Age jacket, $798 at . Henley, $218 at , 473 Broadway, nr. Grand St. (212-925-3539). Felt hat, price upon request at , 691 Madison Ave., at 62nd St. (212-751-3181). 1:2 Tee, $230, blazer, $550, scarf, $295, and skirt, $275, at 3.1 , 115 Mercer St., nr. Prince St. (212-334-1160).?Sometimes Together, Sometimes ApartOne photographer, a group of friends, and three weeks to play with a pile of fall fashion.?If you're willing to wear fur, you can find some to attach to nearly every body zone on this fall's runways. At , Miuccia Prada made fur waist wraps that, while interesting looking, might not be the most flattering accessory. did a snazzy little scarf that wraps under the shoulders. and did fur sleeves in case your forearms feel chilly, and there were about a zillion ways to wear it around your neck, from 's grape-colored pom-pom scarf to 's plush gray parka collar. ?Like , plaid spoke many languages this fall. There were big, bold lumberjacky patterns at and collegiate-sporty-preppy mixes at and , whose natural showplace would seem to be a football game on a chilly afternoon, or maybe a stylish tree-chopping party. Other plaids have a more serious, indoor vibe, like the dark patterns at and , which very clearly say, "I'm going to work. Please do not mess with me." ?Anna might be upset that many labels are being so cheap this year, but that's where her designer co-chair comes in! That person has no choice but to do what they're supposed to do, economic downturn or not. is this year's co-chair, so LVMH (which owns 96 percent of Jacobs's company) will probably buy tables for some of its labels, like , , , , , and . A rep for told Fashion Week Daily they'll surely support the event, but they're not sure "at what level." , Tod's, and Puig Fashion Group will also sponsor a table. It's curious about Puig &#8212 Anna was upset they let Olivier Theyskens go from , so will they use this as an opportunity to win back her favor? Nothing says "we care" like lots of money! We wonder if the gala will cut back in other ways. Like trade a waitstaff and silver for a buffet and plastic cutlery. ? The stodgy, Sherlock-in-the-fog coat is loosening up. And that’s before you tack on the shocking-bright tights and pumps.See Also: • • • ?Incredible BulkThis winter, you’re not a pedestrian?you’re a snowplow.? Colorless Spectrum Pants without pigment, at every price point. From left: , $95 at , 1000 Third Ave. , $98 at 484 Broadway , $260 at , 660 Madison Ave. , $275 at 115 Mercer St. , $98 at 681 Fifth Ave. , $129.50 at 160 Fifth Ave. , $89 at 575 Fifth Ave. See Also: • • ? knows just what you need this fall: a tiny handbag with spikes all over it! The "Spike Clutch" is all the rage for cold-weather wardrobes. When we first looked at this picture, we thought the bag would make a fantastic self-defense mechanism. Then we perused on the Burberry Website and realized the spikes actually dangle like oblong beads, which won't help us injure muggers but will prevent us from cutting ourselves (we hope). The waiting list for the Spike Clutch just went up . We registered because we bet that if we wish hard enough in between now and the time ours is ready for pickup, an extra $1,995 will blossom in our bank account (especially with the economy being such a champ these days). Burberry stores are also keeping wait lists for the bag; the 57th Street location told us "quite a few" people have signed up already. So if you want to carry fierce in the palm of your hand this fall, register now.?Now that we're in the home stretch of fashion month, it looks like people have given themselves permission to relax just a tiny bit. The models, for one, are ready for some more comfortable shoes: We foundElsa Sylvan in her Doc Martens and several other girls in those Isabel Marant wedge sneakers that refuse to die. Meanwhile, nearly everyone's adopted the Parisian tradition of sexy, mussed-up hair. Although the last few days have brought intermittent rain showers (never good for street style!), the tireless Susie Bubble came prepared in a cute beige hat and patent skirt. Others used their clutches, sweaters, Burberry trenches, or rainbow umbrellas to avoid getting soaked. Click through our slideshow for Carine Roitfeld in a skirt that looks to be made of a whole crocodile, and the ageless Ines De La Fressange, who proves that a well-cut blazer and long legs never go out of style.?If you were watching the live stream of Burberry's spring 2011 show, which just walked in London, you would have witnessed firsthand the dangers and tragedies runway models face. The show's finale model fell, according to . Cathy Horyn suggests the shoes were the problem, , "Tough going for models, casting off heels," with a shot of the finale, the models fortunately standing upright. Showstudio calls the shoes "," while Nylon's Faran Krentcil that when a model lost a shoe, Sarah Jessica Parker clapped from her front-row seat. Stay tuned for more news on the fall ? at one of the season's biggest shows! ? as it breaks. And if you're wearing heels today, remember, ladies: You can never be too careful walking.?So it’s almost like you’re with your grandmother again. What do you look for in your subjects? Right, except now I have like 50 grandmas. It's hard to explain; it can be the way that someone's tied a scarf around their neck or the way that they did their hair in the morning. It's really about the way they carry themselves and their spirit, more than anything. But, obviously, colors; I always look out for gray hair, you know, there are just certain things that stick out in a crowd. You see so many older women in New York, and you might not be paying attention, but if you really look, she really took care to tie her scarf and match it to a hat she may be wearing— and that's important to me … [to show] people they should keep their eyes open to things they're usually not looking at. It's also nice to approach someone who might not usually have been approached on the street, and you start a conversation, and these women always say to me, "I'm not used to this, thank you so much, you made me feel better about myself."?The Frankenstein-print T-shirts at . The monster's face only appeared twice in the collection, but it made sense of all the plastic "bolt" fastenings that featured on just about every other look.The crown-shaped eyebrows drawn in thick eyeliner pencil (if not crayon) on models walking Not quite regal, but becoming for sure.Sharp, oversize peplums and shoulder pads? often emphasized by intricate beading and embroidery.The languid pleating at J.W. Anderson.Though we were taking blurry cell phone pics four rows back and across the aisle from heartthrob Harry Styles, Dita von Teese (seated next to him) could somehow sense a photo opportunity and posed for us .? 1. You’ll Rent Blade Runner for Wardrobe Guidance. Dolce & Gabbana looked to Judy Jetson for inspiration, while Balenciaga’s vibe was more Tron. Comme des Garçons played both sides (a plastic trench over a relatively old-fashioned suit), while Brit favorite Gareth Pugh’s fembots were dressed for Area 51. The future has arrived: Here’s what to wear. >> Browse the collections: • 2. You’ll Be Bold, Bright, and Brief. Short was so ubiquitous, it doesn’t even get its own category. There was an abundance of Technicolor minis in the same color schemes we saw here: yellow on a short, full dress at Giambattista Valli and cobalt at Jil Sander. Sharp-edged satins worked the trend for Prada and Lanvin. >> Browse the collections: • • 3. The Sporty Trend Doesn’t Stop With Your Leggings. Athletic touches are a sartorial perennial. They were back on Adidas-ish leggings at Marni, and a nearly nautical parka at Gianfranco Ferré. Gaultier spruced up a baseball jacket, and Lanvin went poolside, complete with racing backs. >> Browse the collections: • • 4. You’ll Yearn for a High Gloss. There was so much shine on display, the runways looked like a candy dish. It showed up in primary colors at Marni (red), Balenciaga (blue), and Burberry Prorsum (yellow), and in reliable, basic glossy black at Lanvin and Jil Sander. >> Browse the collections: 5. At the End of the Day, You’ll Always Have Romance. Soft, neutral evening dresses were an antidote to days of severe colors, shapes, and concepts, evoking words like sweet (the ruffles on a short dress at Louis Vuitton) and fresh (the milkmaid corsetry at Bottega Veneta). >> Browse the collections: • • • • ?Lots of fashion people probably hear "Internet" in the office and then put their fingers in their ears and start yelling gibberish in hopes that damn thing on the screen will go away. is the opposite of that kind of fashion establishment, having embraced all kinds of Internet technology over the years. They've broadcast their show for overseas audiences; they have a website devoted to the , which may be gimmicky but is kind of a neat marketing idea; they once had Elle's Joe Zee take over their Twitter feed so that a top fashion tweeter could bring the world live coverage of their show; and yesterday's spring 2011 show in London was live-streamed online, with many of clothes made available for purchase immediately afterward (they will be delivered in a couple months). Cathy Horyn blames this devotion to technology for some of what went wrong in the collection. I also kept thinking that the collection lacked feeling ? unless you count the pain of the models who cast off their raunchy heels on the runway. The last model toppled over a few yards from the backstage area and had to scramble back up. When I think of all the great collections that Mr. Bailey has done for Burberry, they’ve all been characterized by a sense of emotion that he was willing to put out there. It wasn’t all crass e-commerce.?U.K. Esquire asked eleven fashion designers to each re-create one of its covers from the sixties for its 75th-anniversary June issue. The lineup is impressive: , , , and all posed. Some stepped out of their comfort zones more than others for the pictorials, like 's Christopher Bailey, who posed nose to nose with a hairy pig lying on the floor. And others, like , didn't even show their faces. We've ranked all eleven from our least to most favorite, taking into account the boldness, quirkiness, effort, and coolness reflected in each shot.?British model Cara Delevingne walked in Monday night's , but before the show began, the current face of Burberry took some time backstage to show us exactly how her face was capable of contorting. Aren't you hypnotized??Following Hedi Slimane's , the Times of London'sLaura Craik has chimed in with an "open letter" of her own. Unlike Horyn, she was invited to the the Saint Laurent show, where she observed that members of the press were treated dismissively:I don’t know if it was intentional, but you didn’t make journalists feel very welcome at your show. Some, you didn’t invite at all. Others had to stand, or were given seats so bad they could only see the top half of the models, which made it tricky to report on the clothes. Nobody minded sitting behind Azzedine Alaïa, but that all those glum-looking indie kids in black drainpipes got to see the clothes from the front row seemed a little insulting. I respect that you value your friends so highly, but I don’t respect some of the people on the YSL payroll who were unnecessarily rude. Friends who have met you swear you are a lovely, laid-back bloke, so this seems weird.? is already in talks about writing her White House memoir, but George will have to wait several years to sell his because he's so unpopular. Eminem's new album may not be out next month after all because he's a perfectionist. 's son had a bad reaction to some food in Louisiana, but the Post puts "reaction" in quotes in a way that sort of suggests some crazy mom poisoned him. doesn't mind being mocked on SNL, says Cindy Adams, who then segues into her old beef about Wikipedia getting facts wrong about her. Let it go, Cin! Also from Cin: 's given Hillary only $300,000 of the $1 mil he promised her to pay off campaign debts. Also, bought three coats and a sweater at Burberry. Also, did Hillary at the Glamour Awards that she wants to be secretary of State??The Gift Giver’s ManifestoSixteen new rules of holiday shopping, guaranteed to keep you sane andmake everyone on your list very, very happy.?Rachel Bilson, Kate Bosworth, Douglas Booth, Stella Tennant, and Mario Testino looked on as the fur-laden collection walked at Kensington Gardens in London today.? Now: $99.97 Was: $465 and can lay claim to dresses, but they’re all from several seasons ago. This office-ready D&G wool dress was just in stores during the winter. Now: $49.97 Was: $135 Unlike at and Loehmann’s, you don’t have to paw through a pile of generic American brands to find a Hickey Freeman dress shirt. There are hundreds of them. Now: $299.90 Was: $575 A recent Loehmann’s trip yielded a fine pair of platforms. Still, the breadth of Nordstrom’s stock?, , suede Bruno Maglis?is unmatched. Now: $129.97 Was: $395 Every-dude jackets from London Fog and are easily found at Filene’s and Daffy’s. Here you get the A-list: a cotton-canvas jacket from Now: $219.97 Was: $428 All the rivals (in particular, Century 21) carry statement bags; it’s rare to stumble across one as memorable as this tote. Now: $69.97 Was: $210 Filene’s has sleeveless tops from Free People, and Loehmann’s stocks Marc by Marc, but this look-at-me top by See by is a still-current standout. Now: $159.97 Was: $395 Discounted biker jackets can too easily go from Village Cool to Village People. This Michael women’s bomber is a well-priced investment. Now: $124.97 Was: $395 Though flirty frocks are a staple of the discount chains, it’s hard to argue with an of-the-moment dress from last season. Now: $139.90 Was: $395 Florsheims are reliable but unimaginative?and found everywhere. These sleek Bally cap-toes are fit for a veritable fashion hound. Now: $29.97 Was: $76 Knit basics abound, yet they’re usually workwear basics?not cool layerables like this razor-thin Splendid sweater. Where Nordstrom Rack Doesn’t Quite Measure Up: Men’s Suits and Ties While the Rack is a ferocious competitor pretty much across the board, Century 21 remains the store to beat for discounted designer suits and ties. The chain’s financial-district flagship (22 Cortlandt St., nr. Church St.; 212-227-9092) is loaded with high-end Italian designers like , , and . At left, a Collection suit for $499.97 (was $1,180) and a Versace tie for $59.97 (was $120).? The first place I’d go is Popcorn Indiana for a large bag of chocolate-covered popcorn ($6). I love popcorn. When I was a kid I used to steal bags of it from the garbage behind Chicago Stadium, where the Bulls played. I used to live at 85th and Broadway. I love the grapes from the Broadway Farm market on the corner ($2.49 a pound) with Brie ($7.99 a pound) and Ritz crackers ($4.99). You know where I’d go? The restaurant for the corn bread with real corn ($4.95). I put honey on top of it. I’d go to for an omelette ($7.95). I’m an omelette guy. I’d get a bottle of Sauternes sweet dessert wine (Château d’Yquem 1923, $2,013.75). I have a real sweet tooth. I’d get Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ($2.69) and Häagen-Dazs honey vanilla ($3.19), which is sinful. When it comes to ice cream, I’m a pint guy. I don’t wear any jewelry. I don’t even wear a watch. With sunglasses, I’m old-fashioned. I’d do Ray-Bans ($250), and there’s a pair of Prada shades ($230). I’d get a Gucci pimp hat ($480). And I saw this super-nice Burberry-looking plaid hat at a street vendor ($5). I want all of Prince’s, Stevie Wonder’s, Michael Jackson’s, and Elton John’s CDs ($1,697). My son’s a D.J., so he keeps me current. I’m into hip-hop and old Motown. I’m killin’ Earth, Wind & Fire and Lil Scrappy right now. I want tickets to see Jay-Z and R. Kelly ($179). I’d get my mom front-row seats for B.B. King ($65) and rent a Marquis jet to fly her from Chicago ($200,000). I’d send my wife to the Four Seasons in Maui for a week for all the puff and polish ($6,965). She can go by herself because she’s probably sick of me. I make my son hustle, but he’s got it good enough. Now, my daughter?I’d treat her like the queen that she is. I’d get her a beauty day at ($393). Have her hair done by Q, who cuts my hair ($350). He does Naomi Campbell’s hair, so I figure he’s good enough for my daughter. I was playing golf with Allan Houston at Vin Baker’s in West Hartford. They were calling my clubs ?throwback clubs?! I’d get whatever Tiger uses (Nike club set, $2,609). The new Bentley GT ($170,000) in black or silver. I’ve never driven a Bentley?I promised myself I wouldn’t get one until I was 50. You don’t want to have everything at once. You want to save some. I’m 42, so I’ve got eight years. Lastly, I’d be Shaq for a day, so I could dunk on people. How much does that cost??Something's been brewing in the world of Burberry trench coats as of late. Did it begin with the publishing of , or is the current fascination with the old WWI invention a product of street-style trends going back a couple of years? Whatever it is, a season that has seen a completely trench-themed collection by Christopher Bailey at , and the launch of the brand's website featuring photos by Scott "Sartorialist" Schuman, is rounding off with the appearance of some very limited-edition coats at Parisian super-boutique . Again, Bailey has knotted, plumped, and pleated the familiar khaki material, adding curves and sex appeal to the usually straight-lined, all-weather icon. More decorative touches, like the spikes along the collar, suggest that the classic British staple might just be punk enough for more fashion-forward creatures like Roisin Murphy or Rihanna. With wet-weather protection like this, RiRi wouldn't always need her umbrella. [Highsnobette]? Indian Vogue editors probably thought they had a pretty clever idea when they asked real people instead of professional models to pose for its current issue. Average men and women on the street appear in a photo spread flaunting items like a $10,000 Birkin bag, a $100 bib, and a $200 umbrella. But the thing is, 456 million people in India &#8212 half the country's population &#8212 live on less than $1.25 a day. So a lot of people are finding the spread rather sickening. New Delhi newspaper columnist Kanika Gahlaut told the New York Times she found it "not just tacky but downright distasteful," calling it an "example of vulgarity." She added it's not "fun or funny" to put a poor man in a mud hut in clothes. How did Indian Vogue editor Priya Tanna respond??Welcome back to , The Cut's version ofthe great James Lipton's . Inthis episode, Women Management's Jourdan Dunn pontificates on her relationship with Burberry, the most overused phrase in fashion, running into her best friend, Karlie Kloss, at the airport, and her 2-year-old son, Riley ("He's such a boy, like, he loves his music, he loves to play rough, and then he loves fashion. He puts on a coat, and then he goes in front of the mirror and he checks himself out"). See what else the 22-year-old had to say in our video.?Twenty-year-old Australian model is the latest subject of the Cut's , in which she discusses the joys of "fat month" (that's the one following fashion month, obviously) and what it was like to (a girl broke her ankle on the stairs just before the show started).Nobis has starred in campaigns for Balenciaga, Burberry, Proenza Schouler, and Louis Vuitton, to name just a few, and, at the time this interview was conducted, had walked in more than 70 runway shows — now it's probably closer to 100. On top of all that, she's got a lovely voice, as you can see for yourself when she performs a few lines from"The House of the Rising Sun" in our video.?Being that it's about 20 degrees outside right now, heading outside presents quite the challenge — think several layers topped off by a big coat. While braving the arctic temps is never fun, there's a simple little pre-fall styling trick you can try right now to add a little pop to dreary winter dressing. Much has been said about the return to a this pre-fall; designers are even applying this belted aesthetic to outerwear. At a camel coat gets a whimsical and feminine touch with a bow belt; nips in at the waist by adding a slim brown belt to a muted orange cocoon coat; and at , a dark embossed leather coat gets tucked in with a hefty two-tone belt.?Jennifer Aniston wore a white dress by to the 2012 AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Shirley MacLaine at Sony Pictures Studios in California yesterday. She accessorized with a clutch.Doesn't this dress look like what would happen if Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow's Oscar dresses mated and had a baby? Happy Friday, everybody!?FRAGRANCE ? Rihanna asked fans for suggestions on what to name her fragrance, which is due out later this year. She initially wanted to call it Route 22, but now has second thoughts. She's still taking ideas, if you've got any. []MAKEUP ? Fact: Figure skater Johnny Weir doesn't go on the ice without makeup. His favorite products include three M.A.C. Cosmetics items (bronzer, powder, and a lip conditioner), Cle de Peau concealer, and Yves Saint Laurent concealer. []? made her first appearance this season closing gorgeous fall collection yesterday in a billowing red gown. Backstage is "a little chaotic," Dunn said. "You're pulled in a million directions by hair and make-up, backstage photographers, producers, and so on. The lace mask was fairly simple, though. They did it right before we went out on the runway. Quick and beautiful!" Though she's been a catwalk favorite since the fall 2007 season, the current face of still gets the pre-runway jitters: "I was excited to close the show in such a beautiful gown, but I was also really nervous because the runway was [made out of] glass. I was just praying that I wouldn't slip."?After giving birth to her first child a little over a year ago, Jourdan Dunn made a gradual return to fashion. She didn't start running around in a bikini five minutes after giving birth, like Gisele, but did a couple of , and not long after . Having appeared in every issue of American Vogue since September, and becoming a spring face of Burberry in a campaign shot by Mario Testino on the beach in Brighton ? the best place to wear your spring Burberry leather pants, you know ? is this season shaping up to be the spring of Jourdan? ?Nominees for the British Fashion Awards have been announced. Handed out by the British Fashion Council, these are like the U.K.'s version of our CFDA Awards. Except unlike the CFDAs, the BFAs include the always entertaining model category, which we're especially excited about this year since made the list! unsurprisingly accompanies her, but we're guessing she's just filler since she won last year and the BFC doesn't often award the same person two years in a row. (Besides, it gives her a reason to show up on the red carpet in a crazy outfit the tabloids will talk about for months.) They're also up against , who we'd say hasn't created as much buzz as Jourdan, aside from that fun short-lived rumor about her dating Michael Phelps. The Brits restrained themselves from putting on the list this year, which we don't mind since our tolerance for her is wearing thin with her newfound love for and all. In the designer categories, earned a nod for Red Carpet Designer, and 's Christopher Bailey nabbed one for menswear designer. For a full list of this year's nominees, click on. ?Last night the British Fashion Council handed out its annual awards. And didn't make the cut. Believe it. Perhaps the Brits don't like that she's living in Williamsburg? Eighteen-year-old won Model of the Year, beating out Agyness (who won last year) and . won Designer of the Year, which was perhaps not only a nod to her design skills but also a show of appreciation for moving her show back to London from New York for the spring 2009 season. Milliner Stephen Jones won for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design. And 's Christopher Bailey won Menswear Designer of the Year for the second year in a row, a rare occurrence for the BFAs. Click through for a full list of winners. ?At Monday's show, Julia Restoin-Roitfeld mentioned offhandedly to a reporter, "I'm mostly excited about the lingerie collection I’m working on." Since an announcement about her designing her own line would probably come via a splashy feature story or, at the very least, a self-important press release, it's unclear whether she's talking about creating her own lingerie or just buying lots of it. Her additional comments didn't offer much clarification. “I have a really great lingerie collection," she continued, "but it’s not for my boyfriend ? he doesn’t care ? it’s for myself. Next to shoes, it’s my favorite luxury." Now that we're thinking about it, she's got good taste in shoes, too. Well, one can always hope. [WWD]?? Justin Timberlake has a crush on Pippa Middleton. "We like the Middletons very much," he said. "I'm going to sound like a sleazeball. I'm going to stop right there!" []? Temperley is selling a pair of tan leather trousers online with “Latino” as part of the product name. So it could be a bit racially insensitive, or it could just be a typo. []? Tatiana Santo Domingo is launching a new online store called Muzungu Sisters. Its focus is handcrafted and ethically sourced clothing. []? Band-Aids can now be bought designer-branded ? see a set of Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Burberry plasters. []? Victoria Beckham saw a UFO and tweeted about it. []?Last night, the British Fashion Council handed out its annual awards. As these things go, the shenanigans that ensued at the ceremony are grabbing more headlines than the actual awards. Such as , who fell into the orchestra pit when she walked onstage to present the Fashion Creator Award. The Telegraph devoted an entire article to this: She walked straight into an ill-concealed “orchestra pit” and promptly disappeared from sight. All the audience of fashion luminaries, including Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham, saw was a flash of Elson’s red velvet, Alexander McQueen fishtail gown, as she tumbled four feet downwards into the darkness. Elson, you may recall, also , where Diddy rose from his front-row seat to help her back to her feet. Although Diddy may have been at her side in spirit, as he is for all of us, he wasn't physically there to drop a rope ladder down the hole and help her out.?? shot 19-year-old Harry Potter actress Emma Watson as a nun for French magazine Crash. She says of Karl, "This was a dream come true. We spent the whole day together and he can talk about anything ? literature, art, science, modern culture. I was totally seduced." []? will launch a line of jewelry under license with Damiani. It will debut on the spring runway this September and will retail for $700 to $14,000. []? is supposedly writing a novel about a young model who becomes an international superstar. Writer Louise Wener is helping. []? Mayor Bloomberg declared tomorrow Day in honor of the official lighting of the new Burberry sign atop 444 Madison Avenue (home of New York's former offices). Burberry is donating a bunch of money to charity in honor of its new digs. []? Porcupines, owls, and hawks joined models on the runway for designer Vladislav Aksyonov’s show at the Saint Petersburg zoo. [] ?FRAGRANCE ? is launching a new fragrance called "Karleidoscope," out next month. It even comes in packaging that functions as an actual kaleidoscope. [] ? Leighton Meester is sure her Gossip Girl character Blair would be a fan of the new fragrance Lovestruck, which she (Leighton that is, not Blair) is currently the face of. [] ? Here's a behind-the-scenes video from Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's shoot for 's new Burberry Body fragrance. [] ?Since Kate in her Burberry trench in Ireland this week, the style "has since sold out in Middleton-esque sizes (6, 8 and 10) on Burberry's website," according to the Independent. We did a light search on Burberry's site and for the jacket and didn't see it. But we did pick out lots of other things we'd love to have the money to buy instantly. (Did you know that just has video of the products that make you want everything so much more than you already do? Click over there with caution.) []?Kate Middleton's weekend started with a trip to the theater, where she wore a blue dress by Zara and a black jacket from Whistles. On Saturday, she took a carriage ride through London for the annual Trooping the Color ceremony — the official celebration of the Queen's birthday — in a gray dress by Erdem and a Jane Corbett hat. And on Sunday, Kate joined schoolchildren on a camping trip in Kent, wearing a Burberry blouse, skinny jeans from Zara, Le Chameau wellies, and an olive vest from the Really Wild Clothing Company to tackle the great outdoors. Later in the day, she threw on a brown jacket to watch her husband play polo in Tetbury, England, along with the couple's puppy, Lupo. See all four looks in our updated .?•Kate Middleton let it slip that her puppy is named Lupo, which means "wolf" in Italian. []•British Fashion Council young ambassador Poppy Delevingne says the British fashion industry now embraces a wider range of body shapes. "There is definitely less pressure to be skinny," she said. "We have gorgeous curvy girls on the catwalk and celebrities who aren't afraid of their big boobs and bums. It's all much more accepted now—anything goes." []•covers RussianHarper's Bazaarwearing the sametomato-print swimsuit thatwore on the cover of KoreanVogue. []•British manufacturers are experiencing a revival as designers pledge to produce more clothing locally. For example, has promised to keep at least 30 percent of production local, and runs an apprenticeship program to employ 3,000 people. []•Under Armour taps NFL Rookie of the Year Cam Newton for its new ads. []?• Being a puppy owner has changed Kate Moss's wardrobe: "I'm having to rethink everything. You can't walk a dog in a heel. You look ridiculous." []• Zuhair Murad released a sketch of one of Jennifer Lopez's gowns , and it's red and billowy and beaded— and everything we could hope for. []• Blake Lively covers Marie Claire's July issue, and inside, she chats with Nina Garcia about her dream wedding:"What I planned before I got into the business has changed ... Now I'm like, 'Hmm, I wonder what shoes Christian [Louboutin] is going to make me. And which couture house should I go to?'" []• Project Runway will put on the first fashion show in Times Square this Friday to fête the series's tenth season. []• Jessica Chastain on the Marios Schwab dress : "I could do aerobics in this thing, and I'm fine. That to me is a happy place that I think you need to be when you go on a red carpet ... I could really do aerobics right now." []?? 's summer line for Topshop launches tomorrow. Offerings the usual flouncy tops and booty shorts. But also, a sequined catsuit! And the pants pictured here! []? lost $8.8 million for the year that ended March 31, even though sales increased 20.7 percent. []? Ann Watson, the vice-president and fashion director of Henri Bendel, left her position after three years with the company. They probably don't need her anymore, since they'll soon only sell accessories. []? Look for Anna Wintour at the Columbia University graduation. Her daughter Bee Shaffer graduates today. []? American Idol judge Randy Jackson met with an agency in Los Angeles to discuss creating a line of women's handbags. []?• Kate Upton brought Old Hollywood glamour back tothe Beverly Hills Hotel in a spread styled by Andrew Richardson and shot by Terry Richardson. []•Of her son, Skyler, thus spoke Rachel Zoe: "He's everything ... He just started saying 'Mama,' and I died." []• Sixty-year-old Julian Schnabel is reportedly dating May Anderson and was spotted holding hands with the29-year-old Danish model at "Bowery hot spot Bantam" over the weekend. The May–December romance jokes really just write themselves, in this case. []• See Jonathan Saunders's capsule collection for Matches, which you can shop online. []• Tommy Hilfiger is set to design The Promise Collection, which will be produced in Africa from locally sourced cotton. Katie Holmes will be the project's ambassador. []?• The Times went to Paris to visit Nelly Saunier, a master plumassiere, or feather designer. She once made a parakeet bolero for that took 1,100 hours to complete. [] ?Kristen Stewart wore a gray from the spring collection to the in London today. She paired it with a gray top, black jacket, and black pumps.Do you own a lot of gray clothes??French tennis champion Rene Lacoste's nickname, "the Crocodile," inspired the logo choice when it came to branding his newly designed pique polo shirts in 1933. After merging with IZOD in the seventies, the little croc hit its popularity peak in the eighties when it became de rigueur for the rich-kid look. Today the label is still a preppy-chic sportswear staple, with plenty of tennis whites and collared casualwear for the country-club crowd. Over the past few seasons, the line has secured a more streetwise vibe, incorporating bolder colors and new silhouettes under the direction of Christophe Lemaire.StatusEstablished, Household NameClientsAndy Roddick, Julianne Moore, Kanye WestOther Product LinesBeauty, Eyewear, Fragrances, Handbags, ShoesAddress551 Madison Ave. New York, New York 10022 212-896-6343Where To Buy, Related Websites?At a Burberry party, the Misshapes’ Leigh Lezark and Nylon’s Dani Stahl talked to Meg Prossnitz about drinking too much. Then fashion writer Derek Blasberg walked by ? The British government wants to curb drinking by doubling the price of cheap beer and wine. Leigh, would that stop you? LL: I don’t like cheap wine or beer. If they put a tariff on Stoli, then we’ll have to talk! What was your best drunken night in the city? LL: Oh, the bunny man! It has to be the bunny man. Please explain. LL: It was at Bowery East? or . DS: There was this guy in fishnets and a bunny tail and a thong. He did this worm dance and was rolling on the floor in broken glass and writhing and bleeding! LL: And then he jumped in our laps. He was like pulling shards of glass out of his skin! I wanted to help him, so I went to the bar and asked if they had a first-aid kit, but they were like, ?All we have is water and napkins.? DB: [Approaches the two] They have the clap. LL & DS: No, we don’t! We don’t have the clap! Don’t write that!?The Emoji prints were a design collaboration between Perlman and Geoffrey J. Finch (Antipodium's creative director, pictured above with Lau) last year, and made it into the label's resort 2013 collection. Perlman was glad to see them in action: "They're outrageous prints, so it was good to see that they're wearable — they looked great." And Saturday's show, called "How to Affect Robots and Influence People," was equally rewarding. "The label is good every season, but this was a really nice collection with a tech-y influence — Geoffrey keeps pushing it further and further." Last night, Perlman headed to rag & bone and AnOther magazine's party at Annabel's nightclub. "I'm wearing Burberry black chunky platforms and a McQueen dress I got from Liberty — it's got a flared skirt and a nice baroque print." Which sounds anything but lax.?For established models, London is the fashion capital most likely to be skipped during show season — a week to get some much-needed foot massages between New York and the Milan and Paris legs. For up-and-coming girls, London is their best shot to gain some valuable runway experience and perhaps a piece of proper British Cadbury's chocolate — though the latter is unlikely.While plenty of new faces did hit the spring 2013 British runways, an analysis of 46 of LFW's top shows reveals that two slightly more established models booked the coveted opening and closing spots. and Renee van Seggern both fronted four shows. (To be precise: At David Koma, Emily both opened and closed; at Paul Smith, Renee did the same.) Five models, including newcomer Kayley Chabot and veteran Tilda Lindstam, booked three. As for bigger names, home-grown talent Charlotte Wiggins opened and closed , while fellow Brit opened . Oh, and Lady Gaga opened in a bright pink burqa. See all these models, and more, in our roundup of London's finest.?The Handbag Is, in Fact, in the Hand And you will want to hold on to these.?If London Fashion Week is spread all over this vast and troubled metropolis ? shows can be miles apart and woe betide the carless, luckless editor or buyer relying on the tube ? the clothes are all over the map as well. Which is why we have prepared this handy LFW primer for you, in the form of a fun, challenging pop quiz! Ready? Let’s start with an easy one: Q. What unlikely celeb occupies the front row at Vivienne Westwood, a show where we are handed a manifesto on Gaia and global warming, and treated to models made-up like crazy wood nymphs, including an upper-ear sprayed gold? A. Pam Anderson (with lobe unmolested.) ?At Burberry, the sound system, always impressive (the show is live-streamed, and no expense is spared) kicks off with Joan Armatrading singing “It’s coming on Christmas” a reminder in this eerily warm winter that these clothes are meant for colder climes. The suggestions here include tweeds, bellow pockets (cute in theory, at least on the front of garments, but sadly fatifying, as a friend of mine says, when placed directly on the hips.) For the final look, models wield umbrellas, and a great clap of thunder ensues, followed by a rush of water pouring down on the clear ceiling of the tent above our heads, though it’s a rare sunny day in London. This is joined by drifting glitter meant to impersonate rain, or maybe that scarce commodity, snow.?Who's that in the sparkle-helmet-slash-veil prancing out at the end of the show, gamboling between two models who have unfurled a banner that reads "Climate Revolution"? Why, just as you suspected, it is Vivienne herself, which is confirmed when she whips off the tulle and you see her pale mug, crudely painted with face paint. Certainly the lady has never lacked for conviction, and if the show, despite the grass-green faces of some of the models, is a rather tame affair (lose the Peggy Olsen flip wigs and you have perfectly acceptable little outfits for the office) the nuttiness in the audience makes up for it — where else would you find an ashen creature of indeterminate gender in a floor-length ebony velvet cloak, and a sultry over-endowed blond (male?) with a ring that spells out CUNT along four knuckles??? Bags designed by , , and , among others, were sold on eBay yesterday as part of the company’s “You Can’t Fake Fashion” campaign. The sale was supposed to start at 11 a.m., but a computer glitch reportedly made it start early, and so many e-shoppers planning to snap up the bags missed out. Sad times. []? Macy’s has been fined $750,000 for selling childrenswear with drawstrings at the neck ? a design feature that was made illegal in 2008 due to safety concerns. []? Here’s Freida Pinto on the cover of the August issue of Interview. []? will design the uniforms for all the Italian athletes taking part in next summer’s Olympic Games in London. []? : "It's really intimidating to go on the beach in a bikini. If someone is painting neon circles around parts of your body, like those pathetic tabloid magazines, it makes me so angry. I can't believe that humans have sunk to this level; it's so ingrained, people are brainwashed with it." []?Fashion-forward Cornell Neilly, 21, wore a plaid Burberry button-down and black cap to two of the fourteen banks he held up over the last few months, bringing home $8,500. According to the Post, Neilly "confessed after his arrest that he needed the cash to fuel his shopping addiction, law-enforcement sources" said. For his arraignment yesterday, he stuck to a baseball shirt and jeans. Nothing too fancy.? has opened its first Soho store with a new concept?Gap 1969, devoted to a hipper line of premium jeans (528 Broadway, at Spring St.; 212-431-2686). has unveiled a new ?prototype? store, a two-level boutique displaying the brand’s Monogram collection (552?554 Broadway, nr. Prince St.; 212-925-0308). ’s bright sixties-style fashion is now sold only at her eponymous new boutique (opens 11/23; 976 Madison Ave., nr. 76th St.; 212-431-7467). is opening two stores on November 24. The ?Brit? shop will have a warehouse feel, while the ?London? one gets a more sophisticated atmosphere (444 Madison Ave., nr. 50th St; no phone yet). Swedish outdoors brand Fjällräven has opened its first Stateside store, full of rugged parkas, backpacks, and boots (262 Mott St., nr. Prince St.; 212-226-7846). ’s newest is a behemoth: 25,000 square feet, with four lounge areas and a denim library (1551 Broadway, at 46th St.; 212-205-7260). The takeover continues with the company’s fourth NYC location, on the Upper West Side (1981 Broadway, at 67th St.; 212-209-3400). is a shrine to the food, wines (over 160 bottles and counting), and handicrafts of its namesake country (221 Centre St., at Grand St.; 212-925-7876). Sculptors?turned?cheese experts Matt Ross and Eric Finkelstein have opened Goods, a grocery and café in Prospect Heights (115 Underhill Ave., nr. Prospect Pl.). Kate Silver’s has décor and gifts, including silky blankets by In2Green (449 Seventh Ave., nr. 15th St., Park Slope; 718-369-8980). The British erotica chain Coco de Mer sells toys, books, and lingerie, plus suggestively patterned velvet wallpaper (opens 12/4; 236 Elizabeth St., nr. Prince St.; 212-966-9069).?? A capsule collection of plans to launch an online customization service for trench coats next year, and customers will have 12 million options to choose from. []? The Manolo Blahnik sample sale is apparently scheduled to take place on the same day as the Christian Louboutin sample sale. []? Alice Temperley is designing a higher-end capsule collection for Barbour, which will be titled Barbour Gold Label. []?He has a method to ensure his work for American Vogue is mass market. Most of my work is for American Vogue. I shoot for it almost every issue. This is a magazine that sells 1.2m copies and is probably read by 3m. Its reach is so wide you have to be quite easily understood. Whereas British Vogue's aesthetics are different. You can't give them work that's too bland. It's got to have a certain humour; a certain fun. And my photography is always about finding the common ground. Me, I'm a democrat. I like to believe that of the 10 people at a shoot, from the manicurist to the hairdresser to the make-up artist to the model … if everybody likes something I get the idea that by the time the photos come out everybody will like it. If only three people like it then by the time it gets to the press, the same percentage will like it: a very small number.?? American Eagle Outfitters finally decided to shut down its Martin + Osa division by this summer. [] ? J.Crew posted a $40.4 million profit in the fourth quarter ending on January 30. []? is suing the company that owns T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods for allegedly selling counterfeit goods and for trademark infringement. [] ? 's limited-edition talon heels for Payless, which models wore in his spring 2010 show, are now available online only for $79.99 a pair. []?? Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's line the Row will stage its first presentation at New York Fashion Week in February. will also stage his first-ever men's fashion show, after his successful first men's presentation last season. []? continues downsizing. After closing two New York stores abruptly last week, the label is also considering closing the flagship in Antwerp, Belgium ? its largest store in the world. Yamamoto is prolonging the suspension of its men's secondary line, Y's. []? will show another label in February, named N° 21. He lost the rights to his namesake brand in June. []? , , and Julia Restoin-Roitfeld hosted a fund-raising benefit for Haiti relief this weekend at Thom Bar to raise money for the American Red Cross. []? stars in the spring campaign, shot by . []?From the small British Isle of Wight comes rising star : Discovered at a music festival last summer, she debuted as a worldwide runway exclusive for only months later. Then none other than Steven Meisel — who blessed the likes of and with his lens and propelled them to stardom — requested Clark for a spread in Italian Vogue. When her second season of shows came around, she walked only for the best: , , Miu Miu, and, of course, Burberry (a girl doesn't forget her roots). Considering her campaigns for and Thomas Burberry now in rotation, we can confidently welcome Clark into the hallowed halls of Buzz. &#8212James Lim?Little does the modeling industry know, Julia Suszfalak would be its ideal spokesperson for dropout prevention. When the eighteen-year-old from Poznan, Poland, was scouted during a shopping trip in January, she put off calling the agency, instead focusing on her dream of becoming a legal prosecutor. That is, until she lost her high school's History Olympics ("and I'm really good in history," she adds), and decided to shake things up a bit. After signing with Gaga Models, who sent her to New York, she was added to Elite's register and booked a total of thirteen shows for the fall 2012 season, including a Burberry exclusive and the closing slot at Just Cavalli in Milan. "They had me on the list, but I didn’t know that my number was the last one," she remembers. "I was waiting for my number to be called, and they said, 'Okay, go,' and I walked, and it was the end, so I was like, I closed the show!" But what's most impressive is Julia managed to stay in school all along, and might even skip next spring's runways to study for her final exams. The Kate Moss lookalike recently stopped by our offices to talk about posing for German Vogue, listening to Pink Floyd, and weirding out Arizona Muse.?How did you get discovered? I was discovered in Paris when I was there on a school trip at the age of 13. After that, my mom came in contact with Elite Amsterdam; then I started modeling. What's the craziest thing you ever saw backstage? It's always crazy backstage, but it's hilarious when a model is very late for a show and [she has] six people doing her hair, makeup, and nails all at once. What's one thing you have in the Netherlands that you can't find in New York, Milan, or Paris? A kroket — it's a Dutch fried snack, and it's really good! What cool shoots have you done recently? I did, a few weeks ago, a shoot for Interview magazine in a supermarket. What's been playing on your iPod lately? New House Mix 2010 — it's a Dutch house remix. Favorite model? Kate Moss because she has a great sense of style and she has done a lot for the current fashion scene. What other aspirations do you have outside of modeling? I really would like to work with kids if I was not a model. Tell us a secret. Once I found a mouse under my bed in an apartment in Paris. I am terrified of mice! I couldn't sleep for days. ? , the British baby-face with pillow lips, has been modeling for several years now, and has already worked with Bruce Weber, and sashayed down the Victoria’s Secret runway alongside , , and co. Though for whatever reason she never broke out... yet. After showed a luxe fall collection for , the powers that be dropped the punkish (and seriously overexposed) in favor for Rosie’s softer, more romantic look to front the brand. And with the Testino-lensed images hitting stands now, it seems this new match could not have come at a better time. —James Lim?Art is a big passion. Recently I’ve been doing very detailed pencil sketches of faces and eyes, something so real and bare, yet mysterious. I like dark and strange art and photography, such as the works of Diane Arbus and Richard Bacon. In school I did things like sketch and paint self-portraits with my face distorted using ham and sellotape, a reference to how we view ourselves and plastic surgery. Tell us something we don't know about you. The family tale goes that I could be strangely related to royalty a few generations back but I shall never know! Most memorable experience from this past spring 2011 show season? Speeding through Milan on a motorcycle in heels and a minidress, trying to get from the Missoni show to the Versus show, being over four hours late. I rushed in and had four people doing my hair, two people doing my makeup, and another two on nails and toes all at the same time. I heard an Italian woman repeatedly calling “Tali, Tali! Where is Tali?” I finally make it to the backstage line where all the other girls are already lined up and see that the woman calling for me is Donatella Versace! The show set was like a playground, and I felt like the naughty girl at fashion school! Favorite thing about being a model? Playing different characters and being part of a collaborative and creative team. Finding yourself in the most fabulously random situations, from being in a field at two in the morning being brought tea and ice cream from Sir Paul Smith, to being on an airplane 90 percent filled with models. Each week brings a new experience, and most of them are absolutely bonkers! Worst thing about being a model? The instability of your schedule?U.S. Male, DeliveredEverybody's All-American -- aviator jackets to Western shirts ruled spring runways from New York to Milan.?After Miu Miu famously , animals (but mostly cats) kind of became a big deal.Though it sadly went largely unnoticed as a trend, animals became an "It" thing during the spring 2011 season when Louis Vuitton put and other animals on its clothes, Miu Miu had a and a ,and Giles Deacon showed, among other examples. Since that season, womenswear has happily exploded with cats (, ) and birds (, ). At the men's shows that just wrapped in Milan, animals also flourished,. Raf Simons put whales and dinosaurs on his collection; Etro had a scarf with an eagle on it worn on the shoulders of one model, like a cape (and when there wasn't a picture of an animal, there were animalistic elements to the clothes, like tails, as you see above); and Christopher Bailey showed umbrellas that had what looked like duck heads as handles and pictures of foxes on his tops. He didn't try to get too analytical about his motives, though:“I just bought a dog, so maybe I’m obsessed with animals right now,” Mr. Bailey said.? F or a laugh, Google ?Y2K panic.? It all seems so innocent now?really, anything before 9/11 seems like it happened a very long time ago. There was the Ohio family, chronicled in Time magazine in 1999, that had stored away a couple of rifles, a shotgun, and a handgun. Mom was learning basic dentistry and field medicine ? just in case. Dad was shutting off the power to see how many appliances could run on a portable generator. Then, in the early days of the World Wide Web, even postapocalyptic prophecies seemed more innocent. Tim LaHaye, who, along with a former sportswriter named Jerry Jenkins, was selling millions of copies of the Left Behind novels, which predicted a cataclysmic Second Coming, warned that Y2K could ?very well trigger a financial meltdown, leading to an international depression, which would make it possible for the Antichrist or his emissaries to establish a one-world currency or a one-world economic system, which will dominate the world commercially until it is destroyed.? Rationalists like us laughed at all this, and of course the world didn’t end. But now it’s ten years later, and we’ve had to tolerate the Bush presidency?born amid what was essentially a Supreme Court coup?9/11, the Iraq War, global jihad, the collapse (almost but not quite, but maybe still) of the global financial system (thanks, Dubai!), states dancing dangerously close to bankruptcy, and an ongoing global quasi depression whose ramifications we’re only now starting to glean. Even if you don’t believe Lloyd Blankfein is the Antichrist presaged in the Left Behind books, it’s hard to argue that there wasn’t at least some animating folk wisdom to the Y2K panic. Y2K may not literally have happened, but the fear that underlay the panic?that of a dangerously matrixed, overleveraged world, open to massive self-compounding error, vulnerable to manipulation by unseen forces?seems, given recent events, to be pretty spot-on. Most important, the nagging sense that the agents of chaos are now so diffuse and powerful that no central authority can counteract them is no longer something just kooks believe. The aughts were one of those decades that will be looked back on as transformational. Considered metaphorically, it was a big-bang decade; the center exploded (literally), shooting power, opportunity, and status to the margins, culturally, geographically, financially. Most of the promise, and peril, of the digital revolution, despite the naysaying in the wake of the 2000 dot-com bust, proved true by 2009, creating huge opportunities for people (mostly younger) who understood the potential of subcontracting their lives to the digital cloud and beginning to disenfranchise people (mostly older) who persisted in analog. In a decade when institutions failed us one after the other?Bush was arguably the worst president in history; Wall Street was revealed (again) largely as a semi-legal cabal?opportunities went to the self-reliant, the self-starters, the hustlers. Whether we wanted to, or had to, we all become ?brands of one.? Like a movie that doesn’t show you the monster until the last 30 minutes, the aughts kept the leviathan hidden until almost the end. Despite 9/11, despite the dot-com crash, despite Iraq, life in the aughts was pretty swinging, even in (or especially in) New York, which fully shed the baggage of urban fear that dogged it well into the nineties. Murder rates continued to drop as Harlem and even parts of the Bronx became gentrified. Restaurants grew glammier and ever more overproduced. The meatpacking district, a place where people used to get rolled by transvestite hookers on their way to Florent, made the world a safe place for hordes of international douchenozzles (indeed, the word douche came back into vogue, probably as a result of the proliferation of hellish clubs here and in the West Twenties, which filled the city with all manner of nightlife detritus). Wall Street players and hedge-funders splashed mad cash on bottle service before taking the after-party back to their ever more excessively outfitted eight-figure pads. Meanwhile, smug Brooklynites of a certain age turned a once down-at-the-heels borough into a stroller-jammed bobo paradise as Brooklynites of a certain other age grew significant facial hair and pursued parent-supported lifestyles in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and once-blighted Bushwick, creating art installations, digital mix tapes, and ostentatiously handcrafted somethings that they put up for sale on Etsy. For all of us, it felt a bit like a fool’s paradise, and that in the end is what it turned out to be. Elsewhere in the country, this paradise never really achieved full flower, and the aughts’ rapidly metastasizing cultural and economic order hit home much earlier. Those feeling left behind manifested their fear in increasingly noisy paranoia. Movement Republicans and conservative Christians were uncannily early in channeling this new undercurrent of fear. Their ping-ponging fifth-column attacks?Fox News to Drudge to Breitbart, drawing on daily talking points from the ?GOP Theme Team??on mainstream-media institutions like the New York Times and network news, combined with the Bush administration’s contempt for ?reality-based? analyses of world politics (to use an unnamed presidential senior adviser’s deathless 2004 coinage), were almost Stanley Fish?ian in their postmodern sophistication: The attacks were never on the facts. The attacks were on the idea of truth itself. Truthiness was Stephen Colbert’s word of the day on his debut broadcast in October 2005, at the height of Bush insanity. ?Fair & Balanced??Fox News’s tagline?was another brilliant joke. Only enraged liberals didn’t see the humor. Of course Fox News was not fair and balanced. But the subtext of the joke was: What is? The ?truther? movement argued that the real story behind 9/11 was being hidden from the public. A 2006 Zogby poll found that 42 percent of those polled believed the 9/11 Commission was covering something up. Sarah Palin’s 2008 vice-presidential candidacy was not so much filled with lies?all politicians lie. It lived in a separate universe of meaning (post-truth?) inhabited by voters who believed that facts, at least those recognized by the Establishment, were hopelessly compromised.?Models at today's Burberry show in London were sprinkled with plastic "rain" (or, well, confetti) during the finale.?? Moncler announced yesterday that they intend to make an initial public offering by June. They plan list 50 percent of the company on the Italian Stock Exchange. []? January Jones covers the May issue of British Marie Claire. []? Fashion Toast's Rumi Neely and her boyfriend-slash-photographer Colin Sokol star in a new video ad for Ralph Lauren's Big Pony #2 fragrance. []? A new edition of Fa-Fa-Fa Fashion debuted online; this time Tyra and Andre Leon Talley discuss the little black dress. []? released a short film about his brand's face, French model . []?&#8226 Speaking of Burberry, we JUST received a press release that revealed Mario Testino will also wear Burberry. Lily Donaldson will wear a "custom-made nude strapless, ruched-bust, chiffon floor-length gown, amber gem clutch, jewelry and shoes, all by Burberry." ?Who is she? To those in the fashion industry, she's a distinguished model who has enjoyed a long and successful career; to the general public, she's a vaguely recognizable face but a relatively unknown name. According to the bio on her website, 33-year-old Ross was born in the U.K. and spotted by photographerMario Testino when she was a teenager. She has since built a robust portfolio as a high-fashion model, posing for top publications likeVogue,Harper's Bazaar, i-D,Dazed & Confused, and others. She's also landed some lucrative campaign deals withlabels likeBurberry, Dior, Jimmy Choo, Ungaro, Jil Sander, H&M, Levi’s, and Solange Azagury’s jewelry. Other milestones include guest-editing British Vogue in 2004, being photographed for the Pirelli calendar by Nick Knight, and appearing on the twentieth-anniversary cover ofThe Facewith Kate Moss in 2000.?According to Spurlock, product placement goes back to Thomas Edison, who, after he invented the motion-picture camera, would shoot movies of people on a train with advertisements for his own products on the side of the train. It can also be seen with novels; in 1873, Jules Verne sold naming rights to shipping companies for Around the World in 80 Days. These days, product placement comes not only in the form of blatant paid plugs, such as the one for the Nissan Rogue in an episode of Heroes that inspired The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (see below), but in more subtle forms. , a human-horse crossover shampoo featured in The Greatest Movie, for example, insisted that Spurlock include a disclaimer stating that they hadn’t paid for product placement. But they still gave him enough product to make the bits featuring Mane n’ Tail possible. Apple, too, famously never pays for product placement — they’ve so successfully positioned themselves as the creative person’s brand that any musician or wacky ad exec must work on a Mac rather than a Dell just for character establishment — but that doesn’t mean Sex and the City had to buy a MacBook every time Carrie typed on one contemplatively by her window, or that Modern Family paid for the iPads they used in the . (Though we’re pretty sure 30 Rock paid for their own McFlurries .) Brands recognize the value of these passive endorsements, that if Brad Pitt wears Burberry sunglasses in a movie, someone who wants to be like Brad Pitt will see Burberry as an entry point for doing that. Interestingly, while Spurlock couldn’t get any A-list actors to appear in his movie, actors are increasingly asking for a cut of the product placement deals in their contracts.?HAIR ? The state of California is suing Brazilian Blowout for failing to inform customers that the treatment contains formaldehyde, which is a violation of California’s Safe Cosmetics Act. []? Emma Watson fielded more questions about her short haircut at the Harry Potter premiere, and she said she has no plans to dye it: “I’m very into looking natural so probably not but never say never,” she said. [] HOW-TO ? Here’s a DIY version of the half-up hairstyle that Natalie Portman wore to the Black Swan premiere last night. [] ?London's runways continued in fine form today, with many of the city's brightest design talents presenting their fall collections. kept to its signature style (in style) — tailored trenchcoats, owl-printed tees, and lots of cute bow belts, and created intricate floral prints in leather and lace. also came over a little bit floral, his line's blooms balanced with chunky knits and shiny woodgrain patterns. See these runways and more in our .RUNWAY• • • • • • • • • • • ?• The Uniqlo Innovation Project, a collaboration between Nicola Formichetti and design executives at Uniqlo, bowed its second collection yesterday. []• Terry Richardson styled some KIDS in this image, just for kicks. []• covers the new issue of L'Officiel Paris. []• British model Daisy Lowe made a special appearance during the Auslander show at Rio de Janeiro's fashion week, but the Daily Mail reports "the audience didn't seem to know or care who she was." []• The FLOTUS turns 48 today. Happy Birthday, Michelle Obama! []?No one can get over what Raf Simons did with fringe in his spring 2009 collection. On the other hand, 's crinkled fabrics and snakeskin were a take on "cave woman couture." But if you can't let go of florals for spring, 's got you covered. See these and more in our brand-new runway slideshows from Milan Fashion Week.?Men's Fashion Week kicked off in Milan on Saturday. The collections are being published in our fashion-show galleries as they're ready ? speaking of which, hello, . Hello, . Christopher Bailey turned out an impressive 43 looks, awash in of-the-moment neutrals and loaded with Burb's inimitable trenches, but toughened up with a run of studded leather vests and jackets. (Click to see a video of the Burberry boys struttin' it live to "House of the Rising Sun.") Though Bailey allowed his men to show a little skin by way of netted tanks and cropped trousers, Ennio Capasa went quarter-monty with flesh-colored, belly-button-baring mesh tops (sliced diagonally with a graphic slash) and high-sheen short shorts. Also worth a shout-out: Costume National's too-cool . ?It's all about men this week, with the spring 2010 men's shows in full swing in Milan. We have a slew of new runway slideshows for your perusal. Of note: Jesus Luz's major runway debut for Dolce & Gabbana. You see him here at right. He didn't open, but walked second after . Jesus is Brazilian, but do you think he got one for this gig? We're here all week, folks. Enjoy the men! ?? Philip Green's 19-year-old daughter, Chloe, confirmed rumors that she's talking to about a fashion line. "I saw Kate a few days ago, and we talked about doing something together in the spring, collaborating on a collection," she said. []? ’s menswear line for Macy’s, is "bursting out of clearance racks that were pushed into a corner." []? Threads & Heirs, ]? is designing a line for Opening Ceremony. []?Day four of London Fashion Week brought in bold stripes and frilly skirts at , delicate florals and lace at , and at . See them all, plus , , , and more in our .RUNWAY ? ? ? ?London Fashion Week is wrapping up, but it's not going quietly: put an enormous blue bow on one of his pantsuits, while adorned his garments with doll eyes and boob-patches. Even 's subdued gray florals had edgy cutouts.RUNWAY ? ? ?The Milan menswear shows kicked off today, and here's a big batch of runway galleries to show for it. Burberry's teal-colored newsboy caps are worth a look, as are Frankie Morello's sequined embellishments. Also, take a gander at Dolce & Gabbana's sumptuous gold embroidery, Ermenegildo Zegna's impeccably-cut slim pants, and Jil Sander's polished black leather coats. See the full collections, plus lots of details, below.RUNWAY • • •?Holy cow, did we get a lot of menswear shows up today (21, to be exact). Check out bright plaids at Burberry, crew-inspired onesies at Dirk Bikkembergs, and citrus-colored solids at Jil Sander, plus looks from Marni, Missoni, Roberto Cavalli, and many more. Click away!? ? ? ?Behold, new menswear shows, including blueberry-colored suits and leather trousers at , aprons and cowboy hats at , and fanny packs at . Also, we have details galleries for and , so you can eyeball those manly bags, shoes, and belts right down to each impeccable stitch.RUNWAY GALLERIES ? ? ?The spring 2012 menswear shows kicked off in Milan this weekend, bestowing us with images of male models in gorgeous suits, flamboyant pants, and color combinations that very few dudes will ever attempt in the real world. Check out 's straw pom-pom hats, 's slim-cut tailoring, 's mesh paneling, and much more in our .? ? ? ?Two more pre-fall collections for you: 's Christopher Bailey turned out lots of floor-grazing dresses with wrapped leather waist belts, as well as leg-lengthening boot-cut wool pants. Meanwhile, showed cute, girlish dresses with various fluttering hemlines. See them all, plus hundreds more, in our pre-fall runway galleries. ?You can now peruse every look from , in all its hot-pink glory, in our runway galleries. Also worth checking out: and .?Resort is in full swing! In addition to and , we've got fresh collections from, , and more than a dozen others. Michael Kors turned out sporty silhouettes with gold accents, while Marc Jacobs showed loud, mismatched prints. Meanwhile, Hervé Léger produced more of their signature bandage dresses and swimsuits in sweet pastels and flashy metallics. See these collections and more in our .• • • • • • • • • ?Resort season officially starts today, and it looks to be a bright one: punched up their trademark neutrals with neon trim and chunky beaded platform heels, while turned out watermelon-hued palazzo pants nipped at the waist with wide woven belts. Meanwhile, amped up its urban fare with scarf-inspired blouses. See the full collections, plus more resort looks, in our .?The London shows just keep coming: We saw vibrantly dyed wool coats and Dalmatian hats at , as well as tweeds splashed with graphic patterns at . turned out stripey ponchos and fur-fringed coats, while pushed futuristic color-blocking and fluid layers.?HAIR ? Oribe’s new Dry Texturizing Spray may look like a dry shampoo, but it’s designed to make hair look dirtier. []? Taylor Swift walked the red carpet with a giant flower sprouting from her bun. []? This summer, Avon will introduce premium hair-care products designed to mimic salon frizz-smoothing treatments. []?On the penultimate day of London Fashion Week, Burberry showed classic trench coats mixed with metallic separates, while Erdem wowed with sheer, floral dresses, despite a . Critics were on the fence about Peter Pilotto's — decide what you think about that show and many more in our updated .• • • ?My Week With Marilyn star Eddie Redmayne returns as a Burberry model for spring 2012 (he previously appeared in the label's spring 2008 ads). who has fronted Burberry's ads since spring 2011, appears with Redmayne. Meanwhile, photographer Russell James traveled to Haiti with for Donna Karan's spring campaign.See those images, and Louis Vuitton's delightfully candy-colored spring ads, in our rapidly expanding campaign . ?More spring collections from Londontown are here, including , , , , and many more. The collection featured intricate, almost armadillo-like quilting and brief hemlines. accented simple belted silhouettes with splashes and stripes of fresh lime, orange, and robin's egg blue. Meanwhile, models for wore jewel-toned turbans that contrasted their full skirts and loose, flowy pants. Browse all of those shows and more in our comprehensive runway galleries. ? ? ?Men Will Mix It Up Maybe not every guy will rush to add a fluffy fur coat to the closet, but the option is there (and looks pretty comfortable). The suit prevailed?cut slim and in fabrics more typical of the dandies (velvet, plaid) than the bankers?although classic topcoats and bowlers will give them some dash too.? During the summer of 2006, I went through a reinvention phase. I was tired of being slouchy and skinny, with forearms that looked like a pair of wooden drumsticks. So I started lifting weights. One night, in a crowded basement club, a fashion editor friend noticed me adjusting my posture. ?What are you doing?? he asked. ?I’ve been trying to stand up straight lately. I hate my schlumpy shoulders.? ?Don’t do that,? he said. ?And stop lifting weights. Your look is what everybody wants, trust me. Keep sucking in your cheeks.? It was one of those observations that kind of felt like an insult, like when someone sees you and says, ?Oh, you got a haircut!? But my cultured friend was right: Scrawny and pale is the look in snooty fashion circles, as a result of a growing trend among designers over the past decade. Chicken legs, unite! During the menswear shows in Milan, Paris, and New York this year, the size of male models took a drastic plunge. Hedi Slimane has cast waifs for his Dior Homme shows for years, and Raf Simons practically invented the look nearly a decade ago, but this year, we saw gaunt men coming down the runway for huge familiar labels like Gucci, Burberry, Thom Browne, Hermès, and Fendi. Those sunken cheeks! Those girlish calves! That space between the thighs! (Perfect for your iPhone!) Are these boy-men really the wave of the future? Will the world soon be populated only by men in tight pants wobbling around looking for a pint of beer and a rice cake? (In this scenario, everyone dies out because there’s no way crotches so snug are good for the mechanics of reproduction.) If so, it would be a great advantage for those of us who are naturally skinny and already enjoy eating celery. But it’s not going to happen. This particular look is a reflection of the product that the designers (Miuccia Prada and Simons particularly) are trying to sell. It’s not how most men want to look?American men, at least. This iteration of the little boy motif has existed for a decade or two. It came from a mix of German street culture, British rock and roll, and American hipsterism. If you walk around at night on Rivington Street, for example, it does indeed look like someone had a Halloween party and everybody’s costume was ?skinny.? Sprite-like boys skip from bar to bar, pouting and clutching cigarettes like they are sour candies. People call this carefully crafted elfin look ?androgynous,? but it’s really more prepubescent. The guys on Delancey Street with their cuffs at mid-calf don’t look womanly like Scarlett Johansson. They look like Natalie Portman, duh. As vibrant as it may be downtown, the trend hasn’t spread outside of a small social sector of big urban centers. These men?and the stylish European ones who actually buy expensive designer clothes?are directly influenced by fashion. They look at the models on the runway and in ads and think, ?Oh, cheekbones. Why didn’t I think of that!?? But the truth is, most other men don’t care about models or want to be like them. They probably can’t even name one. (Not unless you count ?Skinny McNoButt.?) Their effect on mainstream body image and apparel is minimal. Although high fashion will probably be caught in this rut for a while, clothes for the ultrathin won’t necessarily be in mainstream stores. American menswear is generous, it’s healthy, and it’s comfortable. It’s Phat Farm and Ralph Lauren’s ?American Living? collection at JCPenney. Nonetheless, am I going to use this trend as an excuse to keep slouching and skip the gym? You bet I am. Just as soon as I figure out how to walk in these pants.?FRAGRANCE ? After Twilight released a perfume that looked to 's, Nina Ricci (owned by Puig) announced today that the label is taking legal action against the Twilight makers. So vampires can get away with bloodsucking, but not trademark infringement? Got it. []? The campaign for 's new unisex fragrance The Beat features boys frolicking in skinny pants. []? Cintra Wilson visits the Soho Sephora for this week's Critical Shopper column. One sales girl tells her she can't live without dry shampoo because you "never know where you might wake up." Speak for yourself, sister. []MAKEUP ? A new study says that people in Denmark, Brazil, and Malaysia are more inclined to spend money on beauty products than people in Great Britain and the United States. That must mean our societies aren't superficial at all, right? []NAILS ? If you've been waiting for the next Blue Satin from , it's here: Vendetta, a deep, shimmery purple. []?After much anticipation, Nordstrom Rack opens tomorrow at 9 a.m. We joined a small throng of shoppers for the press preview this morning to scope out Union Square's latest addition. Though this is the chain's first foray into Manhattan, don't be expecting a full-price department store to be launching anytime soon. (Asked about the progress toward a Nordstrom store, the company's president replied, "There is no progress." And we all heaved a collective sigh ... ) The basement-level store is fully stocked with 25,000 pairs of shoes, 2,000 pairs of denim, 2,400 handbags, and 1,000 watches, all for 30 to 70 percent off original Nordstrom prices. Accessories, beauty products, and lingerie fill the space to the left of the escalator, womenswear and juniors' racks take up the central floor, tall shelves of shoes flank the cash registers, and menswear wraps around the back wall. Each rack is labeled with the brand and its price range: "Michael Kors, $19.97 to $69.97; compare at $69.50 to $179.50." The checkout area was a lovely sight: Nineteen cashiers will regularly be churning through customers, and there will be 28 working for the opening. ?The model turned Transformers actress and typically sits pretty in the front row at Burberry, but she returned to the catwalk yesterday at São Paulo Fashion Week, wearing two summer 2013 looks for Animale — a zebra-print top and leather skirt, and a beige tee and perforated pants. Rosie seemed pretty psyched about the gig, , "It's showtime....!!" along with photos of her prepping.She also turned up in the brand's fall 2012 show back in January ... so guess we'll see her on the runway again next year.?• Manolo Blahnik on platform soles: “These are so vulgar — especially the ones with the perspex platforms like you see in 1970s porno films. So shocking! To friends I can say anything, so I might say: ‘Those shoes are vile!’ (I like to tell the truth in a funny way if I can), while to someone I don't know, I might say: ‘My God you look wonderful! Your dress is divine but the volume of your leg is wrong in those shoes.’” []?Every wardrobe needs one complete, go-to look. Each week we invent a new one (and tell you exactly how to get it). Click on the image for a more detailed view. Burberry's pebbled forest green leather shoulder bag, with its dark brown leather trim and gold hardware, speaks to the city girl who'd rather be on horseback or hiking in the woods. Yet for a day downtown she'd pair it with natural touches like a shearling motorcycle jacket, tortoise-shell sunglasses, a cozy knit beanie, and these River Island Ombro Heeled High Top Boots. Peter Jensen's Oversized shirt dress, belted with Warehouse's dark belt, keeps the look elegant but relaxed. Of course, for the most natural touch of all, don't forget to carry a well-thumbed copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.?HAIR•Maryna Linchuk has back-swept blonde barrel curls on the new cover of SpanishVogue. []•Here are some ways to cure hair static, which becomes a serious problem this time of year. []•Look, the best ponytails from 2011! []MAKEUP•Pat McGrath on Rooney Mara's makeup inThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: "It had to look like Lisbeth did the makeup herself. Not like a makeup artist did it for her. If you’re this ultra-tomboy, you’re not comfortable getting the perfect face in the mirror, right? Instead, we kept the skin really clean and raw and focused on shaping the eyes ... There was no foundation. I wanted her skin to be translucent and for it to change color in the cold." []?? In the last fiscal year, ’s profits more than doubled. []? But Polo Ralph Lauren’s profits dropped by 31 percent. []? Justin Bieber reportedly spent $25,000 on a jeweled pendant of Stewie from Family Guy. []? Tyra has a new Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashion, this time with a discussion on shapewear. []? Simon Doonan told the graduating class of FIT to make sure they have at least one drag queen friend at all times, as “they’re very life-affirming.” []?The French luxury conglomerate is reportedly interested in buying the label, which it might be able to do with the money from the sale of its furniture company Conforma. A PPR spokesperson, however, says PPR chief Francois-Henri Pinault is more interested in a luxury watchmaker that would not "cannibalize" the company's other brands. A luxury and retail analyst says that even with the funds from dumping Conforma, Burberry would be too expensive for Pinault. If true, this would mark that rare instance in which Pinault feels the same pain we do about most things Burberry. []?Prince Charles will kick off in June— also known as London Collections: Men — with a special reception at St. James palace. With BritishGQeditor Dylan Jones, , and 's Christopher Bailey already backing the new initiative to support British menswear, Charles's "" presence should provide extra gravitas.Related: ?Really tiny T-shirts . . . . . . comfy cushions; Burberry camouflage?After helping launch the Marc by Marc Jacobs line and revamping a tired TSE, Richard Chai introduced his eponymous line of highly tailored, quietly feminine pieces to industry raves in 2004. An Ecco Domani Award followed a year later, but it wasn’t until 2008 that Chai’s work reached new heights?he launched a menswear line, designed a capsule collection for Target, and made it into the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund’s top ten finalists. Referenced as one of the “new Asian” influences on modern design (alongside fellow up-and-comers Derek Lam and Peter Som), Chai creates casual clothes that pair surprising fabrics?like silks mixed with wools and twill with georgette?reined in with architectural touches like French seams and origami folds, earning his work a reputation for minimalist, menswear-inspired touches.StatusEstablishedClientsKate Hudson, Blake Lively, Sarah Jessica Parker, Christina RicciCollaborationsRichard Chai for Target Go International (August 2008), Richard Chai for Alternative Apparel (April 2010)Owned ByRichard ChaiAddress107 Grand St., seventh fl. New York, New York 10013 212-966-4633Where To Buy, , , Related Websites?HAIR • Luxury hair-care line Frederic Fekkai is going mass-market. The brand's original products, called Fekkai Classic (including the Glossing, Full Volume, and Technician Color lines), will hit stores like Target and Walgreens. The company will continue to sell its "upgraded" line, Fekkai Advanced, at high-end stores, including Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. While the company hopes the decision will generate more sales, the move prompted Sephora to drop Fekkai from its shelves. []? would neither confirm nor deny that they tried to sign him to replace label face Emma Watson. But a source says, "As far as Robert sees things he's an actor by trade and that's his art. He doesn't want to start becoming a brand or anything." []?Profile Size 48 or larger? Here you can finally find suits that fit, from makers like Zegna, Burberry, and Hickey Freeman, and casual things from Polo and Paul & Shark. Finicky big guys can special-order suits in any size and fabric. SalesThe After Christmas sale clears their warehouse stock with offerings from 20%-70% off. ?Rumor has it has been dropped from the campaign. She supposedly thought she would do two or three seasons for the house, but wasn't approached to do the new campaign. Sources say and Alex Pettyfer shot the new ads last week. Images of Rosie with a drug pipe were published in the Daily Mail in July. We wonder if that had anything to do with it. []?MAKEUP • Pat McGrath explains how she did the makeup for Scarlett Johansson's ads: "I blended the Animalier bronzer all over her face, paying particular attention to Scarlett’s cheeks, nose and brow bone. I then applied a light dusting of Luminous Cheek Colour in Sole upwards at the very height of the cheekbone, just where the light would hit the highest point of her face.” []?Adele is reportedly in talks to partner up with Burberry on a plus-size collection, . The singer seems to have been angling for a deal with the label for quite some time now, having worn their garments on many red carpets and gushing,"I've always loved Burberry. I remember saving for three years to get my first bag before I got signed." As an international star who's landed several top fashion magazine covers, it would make sense for her to hold out for a big-fish campaign; notably, she has yet to partner with any other luxury fashion brand. (A year ago, she that if she were to be the face of anything, "it should be full-fat Coke!"Times have hopefully changed.)?So you would think labels would be angling to dress Bullock for the Oscars. They probably are, but she might not be as hot a commodity as Carey Mulligan, whose red-carpet style fashion people adore. Yet Mulligan doesn't motivate sales, according to StyleSpot. Bullock may not have the best red carpet fashion sense (she may have skinned and waxed Barney for ), but she's relatable on top of being pretty, and this is what matters to the masses. It seems that if you can you hold up an InStyle cover, you can probably generate sales. Case in point: A lot of people tried to buy the spring 2010 shoes Jessica Alba wore to the People's Choice Awards (they couldn't because they're not available yet, so they bought similar styles, which kind of screwed , but then again not, because the label is rolling in it anyway). Kate Hudson, Drew Barrymore, and Penélope Cruz are also top sellers, according to StyleSpot.com.?? Sarah Ferguson talks to Harper’s Bazaar about not being invited to the Royal Wedding. []? covered the scaffolding outside its Shanghai boutique in an oversize mock-trunk design. But Chinese authorities felt it constituted advertising, and said it should be taken down. []? Niki Taylor is pregnant with her fourth child. []? wears , , and Stephane Rolland on the summer cover of Viva Moda. []? Grazia reports that Yasmin le Bon has convinced , , and a bunch of other supermodels to be in a new Duran Duran music video. []? hasn't held a runway show for two seasons, but this season they'll return to the catwalk. Note use of "catwalk" instead of "runway": The spring 2010 show will take place in London ? not New York, where the designers had shown for seasons. Perhaps their PR firm, People's Revolution, which London Fashion Week, orchestrated the move? We had previously wondered what prompted the cancellation of the past two shows. The economy might not have had anything to do with it, after all. British Elle reports the shows were canceled while designer Heidi Middleton was treated for breast cancer. It's terrific to hear Middleton's well enough to stage another show, but we are starting to get jealous of London, the land of vinegar fish, spotted dick, and now , , Sass & Bide, and 's spring 2010 shows. With the exception of Burberry, all of those labels used to show here. recently announced he'll return to London, too, after showing in Paris since 2005. Good for London. Good for the British Fashion Council. It shan't sap our appreciation for New York's fine gridded street system and 24-hour subways, even though we seldom ride them past 11 p.m.; at least we have them and London doesn't.[Elle UK]?Confident designers in London, New York, and now Milan are combining two major trends: saturated color and In seasons past, the combination might have come off as clashing, but for spring 2013, the pairing looked fresh and arresting. Metallic silver accessories and rich blues and greens walked the runways at . Burberry did the same, but went so far as to metallicize jewel-toned and . And at popping canary yellow was presented with gold metallic embellishments. We predict we'll be seeing this styling move in fashion editorials for months to come. ? My friends and I were watching Laguna Beach, and I said, ?I could totally do this. My life is so much more interesting.? I mean, good for MTV, they made really successful reality shows, but I think people get tired of hating characters. It’s all, ?Cami, your shoes are so ugly.’ My friends are trying to follow their passion and get through the day. I think people relate to that. So I rented equipment and made a seven-minute demo pilot of my college friends in a New York version called Under the Arch. (This is way before MTV started filming The City!) All I did was put it on Facebook, and suddenly it got press from all the gossip blogs, and NYU kids starting writing about it. We’ve put a beta version of seven episodes online, and we’ll open it to the public next month. It’ll include these things we call ?webverts,? where the characters talk about brands like Burberry or DKNY, which I think can remold the advertising system and make it a positive thing. Now that I’ve graduated, I work in an insurance company. It’s fascinating: When you’re in a suit and tie, you’re wearing a completely different costume. I’m very serious about the job, but when 5:15 hits, I’m constantly out meeting people and spreading the word about the show. My friends call me Hannah Montana. ?Boldly patterned textiles with vaguely global origins, more commonly referred to as "tribal," have long been a recurring summer trend. But this year, the goods reemerge by way of Venice Beach, resulting in a visual explosion of color and texture— think puka shells mixed with ornate beading, raffia plus neons, and animal prints in sporty shapes. Pick up a pair of mirrored sunglasses to experiment with the craze, or embrace it entirely with a patterned dress from or Opening Ceremony. Click ahead to see these items, and more, in our slideshow.?Houses are slowly releasing images of the fancy things you're supposed to wear on your cruise next winter. Now, enjoy a gander at the unstoppable Burberry's complete spring 2011 resort collection, including trenches, leopard-print jackets, and serious snakeskin bags. []?? From March 5 to March 21, the Fifth Avenue store will open an exhibition featuring some of Armani's red-carpet looks, including ! []? Fashion Delivers for Haiti has raised $20 million in donated apparel and home goods for Haitians. The team's goal is to raise $25 million. []? Dresses worn over pants was a big trend for fall 2010. Thoughts? []? You can buy some of 's fall 2010 collection pieces, which debuted on the runway yesterday, early for a limited time. []?Scanned from the latest issue of Interview, it's Kiernan Shipka (Sally Draper) and Chloe Grace Moretz (Hit Girl) looking very grown-up and lovely in Burberry and Chanel. []?You've probably just updated your summer wardrobe and gotten into the warm-weather mood, but the forward-thinking fashion world has already moved on to September and beyond. Hence, we bring you the ad campaigns of fall 2012. So far, has brought back the stars of its fall menswear show — Gary Oldman, Jamie Bell, Garrett Hedlund, and Willem Dafoe— and set his ads in Tokyo. Meanwhile, selected for its campaign, shot in the brand's signature Polaroid-style layout. Click ahead to see Mario Testino's ads and 's eerie black-and-whiteimages, and check back daily for updates as new campaigns break.?Last night while you were sleeping, the fashion fanatics who keep the Fashion Spot alive posted a slew of brand new spring campaigns from labels like , , and . What you need to know for your personal fashion scorecards: Both and renewed their contracts with and respectively, for the third season in a row. And after a two-season run, lost the campaign to Polish veteran . Wixson did, however, get booked elsewhere, shooting with the inimitable Tim Walker for . Meanwhile, continued their tradition of hiring unconventional fine-art photographers for their spring campaign. Following Robert Longo, Nan Goldin, and Larry Sultan, Alex Prager shot for Bottega this season in her classic Hitchcock-esque style. See these and more campaigns by Prada, Gucci, and others in the slideshow. []?? J.Crew plans to expand its online store to cater to U.K. customers later this year. []? Here’s a video of the special Burberry fashion event in China. []? Dita Von Teese is launching a line of lingerie in Australia this year. []? While inevitably not as exciting as Beyonce’s new video, Jennifer Lopez wore while she filmed the video to accompany her new single. []? Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of once met an editor for the first time in their underwear. They’d been working on last-minute adjustments to the collection in their “pajamas,” prepping for the early-morning meeting previewing their line, but had forgotten DST meant that clocks had gone forward. []? Is it wrong that we often find PETA protests — like this one yesterday against the Burberry store on 57th Street, where it seems they're selling things made of fur — to be entertaining and amusing? Because we do.?The spring 2011 menswear showings in Milan and Paris were handsome as all get-out ? and that's to say nothing of the clothes (which in some cases, were ). On the trends front, there were a host of split necks and slit sleeves (, ), more than a few chunky-cozy knits (, ), and oodles of Angus Young suit-and-short getups (, ). But sans a few wild cards ? , we're looking at you ? it was a relatively commercial season. You could actually see your boyfriend or next-door neighbor or at least someone at pulling the looks off. Click ahead to see the Cut's top 21 picks for spring 2011, then start making a must-buy list for you and yours. ?Thank you, Scotland. Among your many contributions to menswear (Argyle patterns, Aran sweaters, Harris tweed, skirts for men) is that pattern that thrives even as it's constantly reinvented. What other weave has so much history to play with? This season, it was dandy-ish (, ), punk (), professorial (), Western (the beefy check at ) and, in the hands of Sarah Burton at , clannish. Click to see all the patterns.?FRAGRANCE ? Snooki says her new fragrance will convey that the wearer is "DTF." If you're not sure what that means, you're definitely not her customer. []? Taylor Swift's new perfume, Wonderstruck, is being marketed as "the beginning of something magical." (For Taylor's bank account, surely.) []? 's new Burberry Body fragrance is released today, along with a video campaign filmed by Mario Testino and starring an underdressed Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. []?FRAGRANCE &#8226 When were in town to shoot an ad for Samsonite luggage, they divulged a juicy beauty tidbit: They've almost completed a new women's scent that will "add a new edge" to their line. We're intrigued. []?Earning comparisons to Avatar, will stream its fall 2010 fashion show live from London on February 23 in 3-D. However, only people special enough to be invited to viewing parties in various fashionable cities around the world will be able to see it. The rest of us will have to watch it in 2-D at live.burberry.com. []?Subscribe to Email Fashion AlertsDaily Fashion & Runway News?Subscribe to Email Fashion AlertsDaily Fashion & Runway News?Subscribe to Email Fashion AlertsDaily Fashion & Runway News?Subscribe to Email Fashion AlertsDaily Fashion & Runway News?Subscribe to Email Fashion AlertsDaily Fashion & Runway News?Subscribe to Email Fashion AlertsDaily Fashion & Runway News?Menswear has begun in Milan! At yesterday's Burberry Prorsum show, models walked in bright metallic trench coats, geometric-patterned shirts, and tailored suits. Meanwhile, Versace showed floral pants, lace-up undies, and gilded gladiator belts. And at Dolce & Gabbana, the models — mostly Sicilian locals — wore mismatched stripes, cropped pants, and bright prints down the runway. See these collections and more in our .• • • ?The Trench AdaptsIn its current iteration, the classic coat is cropped at Dior, ruched at Burberry, and is the whole outfit at Céline.?Did Somebody Say Mudd Club?Because there’s a major punk revival going on.? Scott Schuman () and Garance Doré () are fashion bloggers, and they are very much in love. Last fall, they moved into a big, long apartment in the Village, the kind with one wall of exposed brick and two adjacent bedrooms in the back, one of which is for Schuman’s two young daughters from the marriage that ended not long before Doré began to appear on his website. The first big thing the couple bought together was a Chesterfield sofa?brown leather, with lots of buttons?and they were sitting on it one afternoon, describing how they met at Paris Fashion Week. It was, Schuman says, four years ago. ?Can I tell the story?? Doré says. She is wearing a denim work shirt (his), navy-blue pants (?We bought them at in Rome,? he says. ?They look really great?), and ballet flats with a leopard print. ?Go ahead,? says Schuman. He is short and stocky, and he looks exactly like the former midwestern football player that he is. Something about him calls to mind the word leatherhead. ?I was a big fan,? says Doré. ?Sometimes when I was looking at Scott’s pictures, I wanted to be with him. I wanted to be on his shoulder.? Doré looks at Schuman with a bit of a blush. ?I don’t know if I ever said that to you. But it’s because of the light.? She reluctantly tears her eyes away from her boyfriend. ?I didn’t know his face or anything, but a friend of mine introduced me. She was like, ?You’re going to meet Scott, but don’t bother, you know. He comes to Paris, and he wants to drink Starbucks.’ I was like, ?Oh, yes. Bad American.’ ? Schuman: ?In the beginning it wasn’t a love thing.? Doré: ?Scott started having a crush on me. For me, it wasn’t a question: He was American! But very fast he changed my mind.? Schuman: ?Garance is very beautiful. And she has a great body. Which I had no idea at the time, by the way. She was very covered up.? ?In the beginning, I never thought my blog would be a success,? Doré continues. ?I didn’t want other bloggers to be mad at me if I got too popular. It was my fake French modest side. Scott was the opposite of that. He helped me become more myself.? ?I hate to say it, but it wasn’t even super-sexual in the beginning,? Schuman says. ?I was going through a divorce and stuff, but I just kept thinking, You’re going to be so great when you’re old. Here’s this beautiful young French girl, and I’m going, She’s going to be really great when she’s old. I grew up reading designers’ ideas about women, like: She’s so strong, she rules the world, whatever. I wouldn’t want to be with a girl like that, who’s type A. Garance is smart, driven, all these great Corsican qualities of self-determination, but she’s totally fragile. Totally insecure. That’s a real human. That’s the whole package.? ?I am very lucky,? says Doré. The couple beams. The world of who, exactly, makes the images that become our idea of ?fashion? has, for a very long time, remained shockingly small. There are a few photographers who are on contract with several magazines, and they produce not only those magazines’ covers and editorials but also, more lucratively, the slick and shiny ads that appear between these pages. It’s been very close and very cozy for years. But the Internet changed all of that, or some of it, and Schuman, 43, and Doré, 35, were there at the right moment, lingering outside (and, as time progressed, inside) fashion shows with their cameras around their necks. It’s not that the concept of street style was invented by these two?Bill Cunningham’s been at it forever?but they introduced the world to its latest commercial possibilities. If once upon a time the idea of ?street? fashion suggested looks that were somewhat off the fashion grid, either in opposition to or in advance of the runway, Doré and Schuman are the opposite of that. ?The thing that is really different from street style that came before is that it always seemed like they were trying to find the really different thing, find the crazy people and take a picture,? says Schuman. ?I’d take a picture of a guy in a suit, and people would say, ?That’s not street style,’ and I say, ?But he was on the street!’ There’s much more subtlety on my blog than on other blogs.? What Schuman and Doré do, in effect, is to remove one layer of fantasy from a typical editorial shoot. Their subjects still radiate glamour, but they are very rarely models. They are on Sixth Avenue or the Rue de Rivoli rather than in a stark-white studio. ?• The Guardian seems to think that natural beauty is back, and the paper quoted Grazia’s beauty director, Liz Hambleton, as saying, "I think we're maxed out on perfection and looking for something a little more real at the moment. A gappy tooth, tons of freckles, huge geek chic glasses all give someone so much more personality than a glossy blow-out and a fake tan. I'm more interested in looking at the s and s of this world than Cheryl Cole." []?Great heavens, Susan Boyle's gone designer. After getting her eyebrows plucked this week, she was spotted walking around Blackburn, West Lothian, with a new hair color and cut, lovely new slacks, makeup, and (gasp) a scarf. Britain's Got Talent producers are "frantic" over the changes, because her dowdy appearance seemed to be the reason for her enormous success. Boyle said herself that she , but she must have caught a bug after those eyebrows. One trip to the salon and it's all uphill from there. []?? are considering a reincorporation of their D&G line into their primary label. []? Tali Lennox and Tara Ferry are the latest subjects of 's gradually released spring campaign, shot by Mario Testino. []? In the interview that accompanies her new , Snooki says she’d like to turn out like "" Jessica Simpson. []? Kelly Cutrone’s new line of clothing, the Electric Love Army, was inspired by the character Phoebe in eighties film Fast Times at Ridgemont High. []? presented his fall 2011 collection with a film. []?? Target has come under fire for selling a T-shirt printed with the Spanish flag as it was during Francisco Franco's “reign of terror.” []? CEO Angela Ahrendts made ￡3.2 million last year after receiving her bonus. []? Later this month, will act as editor-in-chief of Liberation for a day, while in September he'll guest edit an issue of Figaro Madame. []? appears on the August cover of Japanese Vogue wearing a red flamenco dress. []?Tennis totes . . .. . . Kate Spade sneaks, and Burberry bikinis for your baby? Humidifier At , this Air-O-Swiss air purifier and humidifier is $100, down from $395, through 2/3. 766 Sixth Ave., at 25th St.; 212-414-5710. Cell Phone At , the Palm Treo 700WX is $10, down from $400 (with purchase of a two-year Verizon contract). 2232 Broadway, at 80th St.; 212-362-9850. Shot Glass At , the Dart shot glasses are 50 cents each, down from $1.45. 611 Broadway, at Houston St.; 212-780-0004. Super-Warm Parka At Geox, this women’s satin and nylon quilted down jacket with a fur collar is $105, down from $350, through 1/31. 575 Madison Ave., nr. 56th St.; 212-319-3310. Hot-Chocolate Machine At , the Bialetti Hot Chocolate Pot is $30, down from $99. Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Cir., at 60th St.; 212-823-9750. Baby Crib At , the Nurseryworks Aerial Crib is $620, down from $1,240. 53 Pearl St., nr. Water St., Dumbo; 718-488-8293. Closet System At the , the Elfa freestanding décor walk-in closet is $844, down from $1,312, through 2/9. 629 Sixth Ave., at 18th St.; 212-366-4200. Leather Jacket At , the cropped, hand-dyed silver leather jacket is $406, down from $1,625, through 1/31. 888 Broadway, at 19th St.; 212-473-3000, ext. 746. Tote Bag At , the Hold All tote is $167, down from $495, through 1/31. 520 Madison Ave., nr. 54th St.; 212-813-0545. Watch At , a stainless-steel gold-tone bracelet watch with Swarovski crystals is $99, down from $205. 420 W. Broadway, nr. Prince St.; 646-613-1100. Camera This Sony DSC-W150 Cyber-shot 8.1 MP at is $130, down from $230, through 1/31. 23 Park Row, nr. Broadway; 212-238-9000. Gourmet Lunches At , a two-course prix fixe lunch is now $28, down from $52 à la carte. 11 Madison Ave., at 24th St.; 212-889-0905. ’s bento-box lunch is now $24, down from $35. 241 Church St., at Leonard St.; 212-925-0202. At , the three-course lunch is now $24, down from $40. 20 E. 76th St., nr. Madison Ave.; 212-772-2600. Speakers At Wizard Electroland, a Jamo five-piece speaker set is $500, down from $900, through 1/31. 863 Manhattan Ave., nr. Milton St., Greenpoint; 718-349-6889. Down Quilt At Down & Quilt Shop, a full/queen down quilt is $199, down from $300, through 2/1. 518 Columbus Ave., at 85th St.; 212-496-8980. Luggage At , this Briggs & Riley 26-inch Superlight Upright is $265, down from $379. 134 Fifth Ave., nr. 18th St.; 212-924-0141. House Upstate In Rosendale, the quietly hip little town between New Paltz and Woodstock, a three-bedroom farmhouse (walkable from the bus station and the main street’s cafés and music venues) is $180,000, down from $225,000. Patty Curry, Realtor; 845-687-0232, ext. 108. Trench Coat At , an olive trench coat is $549, down from $1,395, through early February. 9 E. 57th St., nr. Fifth Ave.; 212-407-7100. Snowboard At , the Option Mirror snowboard is $210, down from $420, through 1/31. 659 Broadway, nr. Bleecker St.; 212-477-7350. Couch At , a Gabriel sleeper sofa in white suede is $2,595, down from $3,470, through spring. 210 Lafayette St., at Kenmare Pl.; 212-431-2575. Pots and Pans At the , this 2.75-quart Le Creuset French oven is $110, down from $160. 616 Lorimer St., at Skillman Ave., Williamsburg; 718-389-2982. At , a nine-piece triple-ply stainless-steel cookware set is $270, down from $350, through 2/1. 75 Spring St., nr. Crosby St.; 212-966-3375. Tennis Racquet At , the Head Liquidmetal 8 tennis racquet is $80, down from $250, through 2/1. 867 Broadway, nr. 18th St.; 212-255-8889. Art Book At , El Sonido del Color (The Sound of Color), by Leonardo Nierman (Editorial Oceano de Mexico; 2003), is $15, down from $75, through 1/31. 31 W. 57th St., nr. Fifth Ave.; 212-759-2424. Boots At , these mid-calf leather Bestla boots are $248, down from $495, through 1/31. 275 Mott St., nr. Houston St.; 212-965-5462. Kids’ Clothes At , the girls’ wool-and-alpaca turtleneck Cash sweater is $40.80, down from $136, through 2/1. 382 Bleecker St., at Perry St.; 212-206-6644. Blowout Dinner ’s nine-course Grand Tasting Menu is now $125, down from $175. 85 Tenth Ave., nr. 16th St.; 212-497-8090. Manicure-Pedicure At Eve Salon, the Classic European manicure and pedicure is $26, down from $39, through 2/28 (mention the discount when booking). 55 W. 8th St., nr. Sixth Ave.; 212-807-8054. Holiday Cards At , a set of ten French Horn holiday cards is $10, down from $50, through 1/31. 1049 Lexington Ave., nr. 74th St.; 212-570-4800.? , $1,200 Chic wool pack comes with a drawstring closure, which reduces storage space up top. Best for show and light-homework days (9 E. 57th St., nr. Fifth Ave.; 212-407-7100). , $395 Woven cotton twill with leather trim for the prep-school sophisticate. Rather small?when cramming for finals, expect to carry some books in hand (683 Madison Ave., nr. 62nd St.; 212-826-8300). , $298 Black nylon can easily be wiped down, and leather bottom dresses it up. Subtle style is complemented by top handle, back support, and ample pockets. (At Coach stores; .) Go Go Gear, $125 If weight is a concern, this pack has luggage-style wheels. They’re not detachable, but there’s a shoulder strap, and the canvas is light. (At , 1116 Madison Ave., at 83rd St.; 212-517-4232.) Viv Pickle, $70 Let the kids design their own pack from fifteen styles, 150 fabrics and linings, then add pockets, zippers, and trim. Five-week turnaround (238 W. 10th St., nr. Hudson St.; 212-924-0444). Jansport, $65 The Airlift 1.1 has comfy jelly inserts in the shoulder straps and an interior flap that holds in overspill books. (At , 2322 Broadway, at 84th St.; 212-724-9000.) Victorinox, $59.95 The most comfortable pack, with squishy rubber shoulder straps and a flexible yet sturdy foam back. (, 867 Broadway, at 18th St.; 212-255-8036.) L.L. Bean, $49 If the loud Hawaiian print isn’t visible enough, there’s a reflective stripe and piping that glows under battery power. A cord port gives easy headphone access (). Athletech, $14.99 Generic style jazzed up with a water bottle, detachable cell-phone case, CD holder, and school I.D. tag. (At , 770 Broadway, at Astor Pl.; 212-673-1540.) ? Warm weather is imminent, fueling a desire to shed winter coats for something lighter. In recent years, the hoodie has been the dominant choice, but a new, more stylish top piece is making its presence felt this season: the poncho (and its more formal sibling, the cape). This cozy Red Riding Hood poncho with its dramatic flare (California-fleece cape, $65 at , 121 Spring St., at Greene St.; 212-226-4880) is but one of many versions now in stores from the Gap to Steven Alan to Burberry.?The Confetti at Burberry Was Just Peachy Tags: , , , , , , Photo: Samir Hussein/Getty Images? Jonathan Saunders's textured, patterned spring collection earned mainly positive reviews, with a few dissenters. WWD asserted that he "," creating a modern, romantic feel. Style.com was similarly inspired, admiring Saunders's "." Godfrey Deeny of Fashion Wire Daily was most impressed by Saunders's artful collage prints, declaring them "" in the London season. Likewise, British Vogue noted "," like flashes of neon yellow from beneath a white chiffon dress. But a few critics saw elements in the clothes that felt overdone. The Wall Street Journal was reminded of "," as well as more bandlike bustiers, which it labeled the "Proenza Schouler effect." "," ventured Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune. "But the filmy layers of fabric ... seemed familiar."?Mure et Musc $85 to $125 Ever since I wore Baby Soft from CVS, I've been obsessed with perfume. Fortunately, my nose has become more discerning. At L'Artisan Parfumeur, I smelled every single scent in the store before finding Mure et Musc. This was so sensual and rich, with subtle notes of blackberry, that I had to try it on. The scent was very lush, but I'm not a musk woman; it's a perfume aimed at a more mature lady. 1100 Madison Ave., nr. 82nd St.; 212-794-3600.?Calvin Klein $110 Bargain Find With a trip to Turks and Caicos coming up, I needed a new bikini. had an enormous selection. My favorite was this sleek, white Calvin Klein suit with a silver buckled closure. The color was a dangerous choice—when wet, it would become transparent. But the lining, I was assured by the salesman, would prevent any embarrassing slips and peeks. Even though my gym membership was just two weeks old, the halter top and low-rise bottom made me look more like a Bond Girl than a butterball. 1136 Third Ave., nr. 66th St.; 917-432-0732.?Kenneth Cole $248 This season, I’m ditching the heavy layers of fleece and sporting cropped jackets instead. My first stop: . The salesman recommended the Stand Up charcoal sweater jacket (named for its rigid collar). It looked completely shapeless on the hanger, but once on, it had a very roomy and slightly less sloppy fit. The black stretch silk lining added some much-needed glam but not enough for me to shell out $248. 597 Broadway, at Houston St.; 212-965-0283. ?Today saw the first outing for British Vogue's "Vogue Festival," the brainchild of Alexandra Shulman, designed as a platform for fashion industry names to speak and debate in front of the general public (or at least in front of those who could afford the $120 entry charge per half-day). Burberry chief creative officer Christopher Bailey was the first to take to the stage with the editor-in-chief, where he proved himself quite the adorable conversationalist. His 40-minute interview included plenty of modest jokes at his own expense, plus some musings on his brand, bad weather, and dry-stone walling (the ancient art of building a wall without any mortar to bind the stones, of course). Click ahead to read some highlights.?The -designed, see-and-be-seen dining room at led us to expect big things from the facilities maybe a wall of bull horns like the ones behind the bar, or a private, key-access restroom like the one at basement club . Alas, it was not to be: When we climbed upstairs, we were greeted by a bathroom attendant and a bowl of Breathsavers. 26 Little W. 12th St., nr. Ninth Ave.; 646-624-2444Concept: A small, office-type restroom lit like a mortuary, with a touch of Zen via a sunken marble sink, incense sticks, and a tray of stones.Privacy: Bathroom attendants watch over the aluminum stalls. At least the ones in the women's room dish compliments. Amenities: Gentlemen get cologne (D&G, Polo Sport, etc.) and FX Studio hair gel (yes, this is the meatpacking district), while ladies get perfume (Burberry, etc.) and makeup. Both sexes enjoy Listerine served in a plastic shot glass, Lubriderm, floss, toothpicks, plastic-wrapped Breathsavers, and thick, hand-delivered paper towels. Flaws: If somebody goes to town on the gel and cologne, you're stuck waiting for one of the two faucets. Then there's the discomfort factor of hovering attendants.Strategy: Pity the poor attendants. At least they're not the type to admonish, "No hope without soap." Put a dollar in the tip jar.Rating: — Daniel Maurer ?Things We Learned About Fashion: • Styling is like farming. Brad: "I’m going to be harvesting Oscar gowns while I’m in Milan." • When begging for a dress, even for a celebrity for the Oscars, you must suck up to the label. Brad peppers his pleading voice mails with phrases like, "Rachel is obsessed with it." Obsessed ? • If stylists can't find gowns for their clients for the Oscars, they'll be forced to go naked, Brad reminds us. • If you're rich and famous, you can get away with wearing $35 furs. Kate Hudson arrives in Rachel's London hotel room wearing a very chubby fur chubby, which she says she bought for $35 in a vintage store without knowing if it was real or fake. Rachel hides how grossed out she is by this, and touches it anyway, because Kate's super-famous and has such a great complexion. In this day and age of bedbugs we'd have shooed Kate away in that thing. • Celebrities don't always understand normal people. Kate and Rachel discuss how fashion isn't as frivolous as everyone thinks it is because "it's an expression of one’s self." Kate adds, "When you wake up in the morning, what do you choose to put on to make you happy?" Well, not our fantasy runway looks, like they might. It's more like what we can afford on the sale rack that also happens to be cute. • “I think there’s nothing sexier than a man in a turtleneck and a shearling," says Rachel. What, she doesn't want to see Rodger's thick tangle of man necklaces spilling into his chest hair? Later, when she meets Brad in Milan, he has a turtleneck on, and Rachel says he looks sexy. "Is that weird to call Brad sexy?" she wonders. Is it? • Shopping should be as dramatic as possible, like a play or suspense thriller. Instead of saying something normal like, "OMG this is so cute, look!" to her shopping companion, Rachel turns stone-cold serious, puts on a fur coat, and says, "Brad, something else just happened," like she just found out about a friend's divorce. • Wearing boots with an evening gown makes you look cool, says Rachel. • is "like a gay icon," Brad says. "She's like the Madonna of fashion." We thought Madonna was the Madonna of fashion, and Madonna was like the Donatella of pop music, but whatevs. • The Oscars aren't about looking sexy. Rachel often puts her clients in Versace, but doesn't find anything at the Versace show because Cameron Diaz and Demi Moore probably won't want to be in super-sexy cutout dresses with thigh-high slits for this event. • Dresses disappear every day. Pretty much all of the dresses Rachel has wanted for her clients have gone to other people. Including, funnily enough, the Rachel was obsessed with, which we now know , sans shoulder bow.? signed Scott Schuman of to shoot images for its new social networking site, his latest fashion campaign after and Saba Denim. The site itself shows on-the-street style pictures of various Burberry trenches and allows you to vote for ones you like (203 people liked this green army trench on the left). And the interactivity continues: You can also leave comments, which is helpful if you want to point out that this coat is the same one Emma Watson wore in the . []?It's a short one, but still packed with news. Tom Ford staging a tiny little show for an elite few "somewhere in London," was the invisible center of much drama as she began , but also got a politely chilly style slap from . And , recently declared by Fast Company to be one of the world's most innovative brands, brought traffic ? well, at least a large number of passersby ? to a standstill during its live show-cast in Piccadilly Circus, proving that fashion doesn't have to be elite to get people excited.?Amid all the well-cut suits and cheerfully bright sportswear, the menswear shows wrapped up with their signature tongue-in-cheek humor. This season, Band of Outsiders staged a show , Versace sent down the runway, and Galliano featured an . And it wasn't just the lobster that was surreal — headwear was straight out of a bedtime story with oversize top hats, Magritte-inspired bowlers, and a fireman-inspired hood. Jumpsuits, , popped up among the mens' designers as well, proving to be the ultimate in easy his-and-hers dressing. Burberry, Lanvin, and Roberto Cavalli experimented with metallic fabrics, putting new meaning behind man candy. And, really, what would this slideshow be without a Magic Mike reference? Daks, Pierre Cardin, and Rynshu showed looks that beg to be worn (and then promptly discarded) by the likes of Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, et al. Click ahead to see all of these and more in our menswear wrap-up.?DAY THREE 9 a.m.: Up bright and early for Bikram yoga. I've been avoiding this class because of my creepy instructor and his hands-on modifications, but nothing is better after a weekend of sin. 9:50 a.m.: Yogi reminds me of his private lessons on the weekends. Try not to visibly grimace as I walk out as quickly as I can. 12 p.m.: Check my e-mail. I'm supposed to interview a writer who wrote a piece on my thesis subject. He wants to meet late after work at a bar on the Upper West Side. Really? Google him for sketch factor, note he's surprisingly cute. 7:45 p.m.: Getting ready to leave. Change into lacy underwear just in case. 8:30 p.m.: The Journalist walks into the bar. He looks older than his LinkedIn but is easy on the eyes all the same. Order drinks and food. It's dark, the music is loud, and no one else can even pretend to be doing academic research. Why is this beginning to feel like a date? Vodka tonic with lime, please. 1 a.m.: Fourth round of drinks, decide to head to a beer bar down the street. There's only two other people, and they quickly leave. Awk. 1:30 a.m.: Return from the bathroom and see the bartender has poured me a new drink. Take a sip. What the fuck is this? 1:31 a.m.: Barleywine? I might be a skinny materialist, but I happen to be a beer geek and know this has an ABV higher than wine. Wonder if this is a conspiracy to get me drunk. I decided to go home with this guy a few hours ago, it's just unnecessary. 2:30 a.m.: Back at my apartment, fairly sloshed. The Journalist finally makes the first move and takes my face in his hand and starts making out with me. 2:35 a.m.: Take his shirt off, find a stereotypically nineties tribal arm band. He notices my look and explains he grew up in Jersey. Right. 2:48 a.m.: Moan as he pushes into me. The first thrust is always the most satisfying. We're tipsily clumsy, I'm not really sure what is going on. My body seems to register though, because my orgasm creeps up nicely, and he blows his load on my stomach. 3 a.m.: He gets hard again, and I orgasm a second time. Pleasantly surprised by his stamina for being in his thirties. 3:20 a.m.: Fucking barleywine. I'm getting dry, and I reach for the lube. Inadvertently slop half the bottle over his dick. It feels like I'm kneading bread dough covered in olive oil. This needs to end. 3:33 a.m.: He goes down on me, and it's the perfect lulling pleasure that makes me want to fall asleep. Dig my fingernails into my hands so I won't be that rude. 5 a.m.: Kiss goodnight, manage to shower and even change my sheets before going to bed. I am always so impressed by my drunken capabilities.?• The New York Times launched an iPad app, The Collection, which will bring together all the fashion stories from the paper’s Styles desk, the On the Runway blog, T Magazine, The Moment blog, and fashion coverage from The International Herald Tribune. []• Speaking at WWD's CEO Summit, Barneys CEO Mark Lee said the department store is "not for everyone," dismissing claims that they should broaden their appeal and merchandise scope to capture more traffic. • Lea Michele covers Allure's December issue. []• More of the same news at Kensington Palace: Princess Kate "hopes to be pregnant soon." []• Though sales at Saks rose 5.1 percent in the third quarter, it's less of a gain than the store reported for the same period last year. []?&#8226 Theory laid off about 50 employees late last week. []&#8226 's spring ad campaign shot by Mario Testino is out, starring models , , Alexina Graham, and Richard Wyndham. []&#8226 APC and Nike are collaborating on a capsule collection of tennis shoes. The canvas shoes, based on Nike's All Court model from the seventies, will be released in the spring and come with red, white, or blue swooshes. []&#8226 , surrounded by art at a party at Tom Sachs's Soho studio: "I'm so nervous I'm going to touch something I'm not supposed to. Like over there it says ashtray. But is it really? Am I going to burn down a million-dollar piece of art?" []&#8226 London obsession and TV presenter Alexa Chung wants to return to modeling. [] ?And child models: released their cute new kids campaign, which includes these two wee ones with ice cream on their noses. The kid on the right looks understandably impatient — his cone is melting, dammit!?EVENTS ? Get beauty and skin-care advice from Nars makeup artist Lucinda Baretto during a private consultation. Shoppers will receive gifts with a Nars purchase of more than $75. Bloomingdale’s, 504 Broadway, nr. Broome St. (212-729-5900); noon-6. Call 212-729-5124 to schedule an appointment.? Join World Yacht for the annual Beauty Brunch for the Cure to benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Sip champagne while you enjoy the brunch buffet on the main deck, then receive beauty treatments from participants like Bliss 57, Vincent Longo, and John Barrett Salon. There will also be a raffle, gift bags, and desserts from Sugar Flower Cake shop. World Yacht, Pier 81, nr. 41st St.; boarding 11:30, sailing noon-2. Tickets ($59) can be purchased at .? Celebrate fifteen years of at Sephora locations around the city with free facials, lip treatments, skin consultations, and other goodies each remaining Saturday in October. Sephora Times Square, 1500 Broadway #304; 10/15 (1-7). Sephora Flatiron, 119 Fifth Ave.; 10/22 (1-7). Sephora SoHo, 555 Broadway; 10/29 (1-7).?Urban Outfitters may roll out the most collaborations of any chain, but they never receive the buzz of, say, H&M's collaborations because they work with lesser known, up-and-coming designers, like Samantha Pleet and Corpus. But across the pond, things are quite different. Urban in the U.K. caters more to designer labels. They've just unveiled collaborations with Thomas Burberry and Pistol Panties on a bathing suits. Up next at Urban for our British friends: collaborations with ’s Anglomania and See by . At least we have Michelle Obama. []?The British Fashion Council announced yesterday that London will get its own menswear week — well, more like weekend— this summer. Running from Friday, June 15 to Sunday, June 17, it'll immediately precede the Milan and Paris spring 2013 menswear shows; this hopefully means it'll have better attendance than London's previous arrangement, which involved squeezing all the menswear collections into the day after London Fashion Week (when most editors have already jetted off to Milan). The BFC states that they'll stick to a similar schedule moving forward, showing their menswear collections each January and June.?When received a "Designer Brand of the Year" nomination for last year's British Fashion Awards, industry veterans got huffy that such a relative newcomer ? and a celebrity designer at that ? be put in the same category as titans like , , and . Mulberry won in the end, but Victoria Beckham is back in the nominee pool this year for the same category, this time competing against , , and Burberry again.Meanwhile, royal wedding hero Sarah Burton is an obvious front-runner for "Designer of the Year," and 19-year-old Georgia Jagger will duke it out with seasoned pros Stella Tennant and Kristen McMenamy for the title of best model.See the complete list of nominees:DESIGNER OF THE YEAR Sarah Burton for Last year's winner: Pheobe Philo for ?EVENTS ? Receive complimentary spa and salon services, sample beauty products, and enjoy cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at the annual Beauty Sample Sale, hosted by prettycity.com and Shape magazine. Discover the latest trends in the industry from beauty experts, who will be on hand during the event to give out makeup and styling tips. Attendees will take home a goodie bag filled with full-size products from top beauty brands. Tickets ($29) can be purchased at . , 289 Tenth Ave., nr. 26th St. (646-473-0202); 6:30-9.? Meet designer Rachel Roy and check out her new designs when she unveils her fall collection at . Call 212-705-3290 to RSVP. Bloomingdale’s, 1000 Third Ave., nr. 59th St. (212-705-2000); 6-8.SALES STARTING TOMORROW ? Merchandise from the Maryam Nassir Zadeh boutique, Robert Clergerie, Edith A. Miller, Sea NY, and Court is half-off at the MNZ + Mode Showroom sample sale. Robert Clergerie shoes are $150 (originally $500). 273 Grand St., nr. Forsyth St., Ste. 5W; W-Th (10-6). ?EVENTS TOMORROW ? Get your hair done at Drybar, shop their products, and get tips from experts at this private event. Guests will also enjoy margaritas and sangria courtesy of Skinnygirl. Drybar, 4 W. 16th St., nr. Fifth Ave. (212-561-5392); 7-9. Tickets ($35) are available at .SALES ENDING TOMORROW ? Last chance to find discounted fashion, furniture, and artwork at the Housing Works "Best Of" shopping event. See schedule, locations, and hours . ?SALES STARTING TOMORROW ? Visit the Judith Leiber sample sale and save up to 70 percent off a selection of crystal minaudieres, exotic skin handbags, belts, pillboxes, key fobs, and more. 225 Fifth Ave., nr. 26th St. (212-725-5400); W-F (9-7), S (10-4).? Get up to 80 percent off womenswear labels like , , and and menswear from labels like and at Elite Bargain's monthlong designer sale. 381 Fifth Ave., nr. 36th St. (212-290-2915); M-F (10-6), Su (noon-6)ENDING TOMORROW ? Save up to 70 percent at the first ever Jacob & Co. sample sale at Soiffer Haskin, including a large selection of Five Timezone watches and many one-of-a-kind fine jewelry collectibles. 317 W. 33rd St., nr. Eighth Ave. (212-223-2999); S-W (9-6:30)?EVENTS TOMORROW ? Stop by the styling event and meet Man Repeller blogger Leandra Medine at . Medine will unveil her window installation and showcase the latest collection from Tibi. 1000 Third Ave., nr. 59th St. (212-705-2000); 5?8.? Preview Doyle Mueser’s spring and summer collections during the Rites of Spring party at Fig 19. Guests can enjoy a two-hour open bar while browsing. 131 Chrystie St., nr. Broome St. (212-421-6485); 7?9. Call or e-mail to RSVP.? Get a personalized color consultation and makeover by La Prairie at . Customers will receive a complimentary color kit with any La Prairie purchase. Through 5/14. 1000 Third Ave., nr. 59th St. (212-705-2000); noon?7. Call 212-705-3133 to make an appointment.?EVENTS ? Shop the Brides magazine White Hot Hope pop-up shop, where shoppers can buy clothing, accessories, dishware, and more, with all proceeds benefiting Operation Smile and Dress for Success. Guests will see fashion shows and demonstrations by Brides editors, get complimentary makeovers, hairstyling, mini-facials, manicures, and more. You can also meet Randy Fenoli of Say Yes to the Dress and get signed copies of his soon-to-be-released book from noon to 2 p.m. 477 Broome St., nr. Wooster St.; Th-S (11-7), Su (11-6). Admission is free, but advance fitting reservations are available with a VIP pass ($35), available at .SALES STARTING TOMORROW ? Furniture, lighting, and other showroom floor samples are up to 60 percent off at 's first-ever sample sale. 199 Lafayette St., nr. Broome St., Ste. 5D; F (9-5), S (10-6), Su (noon-5).?EVENTS TOMORROW ? Celebrate the opening of two new Burberry shops with a multilevel party at . Enjoy music by D.J. Chelsea Leyland in the women’s Burberry Brit shop, get styling tips from Harper’s Bazaar’s Joanna Hillman in Burberry London, and learn from GQ’s Brett Fahlgren while listening to Zen Freeman at men’s Burberry Brit. Bloomingdale’s, 1000 Third Ave., nr. 59th St. (212-705-2000); 6-8.? Meet Ivanka Trump as you browse her fall 2011 footwear collection. The first 50 shoppers to purchase a pair of shoes from Ivanka’s fall line will receive a signed copy of her bestselling book, The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life. Bloomingdale’s, 1000 Third Ave., nr. 59th St. (212-705-2000); 6-8.SALES ENDING TOMORROW ? Womenswear and accessories are up to 80 percent off at the sample sale. 19 W. 36th St., nr. Fifth Ave., fourth fl.; T-W, 9-6:30.?EVENTS ? Meet and get your photo snapped with as she debuts her new fragrance, Too Too, at . Purchase any Betsey Johnson perfume beginning at 10 a.m. to receive a wristband for entrance to the event, which will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Sephora, 597 Fifth Ave., nr. 48th St. (212-980-6534); 6pm.SALES STARTING TOMORROW ? Eighteen-karat gold and sterling silver jewelry is 50 to 70 percent off at the Judith Ripka sample sale. , 569 Lexington Ave., nr. 51st St.; Th (10-8), F (10-6), S (10-5). ? Handbags start at $50 and small leather goods start at $20 at the Tusk fall sample sale. 242 W. 26th St., nr. Seventh Ave.; Th (5-8). ?5 X 5Now that all the fashion shows are finished, next fall’s trends are official. Color is out, capes are in?yes, for real?and hemlines are on the rise. Also on the horizon: emphatic shapes (like the masculine suits at Comme des Garçons), bold combinations (black with white, strong fur trims), and a view of fashion that leaves little room for sweet.?Taipei native Wenlan Chia launched Twinkle's first collection of playful, brightly colored hand-knit sweaters and accessories in the fall of 2000. A complete ready-to-wear line quickly followed, and Twinkle's runway debut, at the February 2002 Gen Art Fresh Faces Fashion Show, was a critical success. Multiple fashion-week appearances and a handful of accolades later (Tokyo's Onward Kashiyama New Design Prize and an induction into the prestigious CFDA), the sweetly offbeat label continues to showcase Chia’s whimsical, vibrant knits and of-the-moment pieces like tuxedo jackets, rompers, and tapered trousers. Twinkle by Wenlan has also come to include quirky costume jewelry, housewares, and books on the art of knitting. StatusEstablishedClientsLauren Conrad, Jessica Simpson, Mischa Barton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kate Hudson, Molly SimsOther Product LinesHomeOwned ByWenlan ChiaAddress545 Eighth Ave., seventeenth fl. New York, New York 10018 212-625-8710Where To Buy, , , Related Websites?• W's ad pages , but T: The New York Times Style Magazine dropped ad pages in five of the year's first seven issues. []• shot a video for Target's Tumblr called "The Making of a Cover Shot." She's currently one of the site's "guest editors." [ via ]• Eniko Mihalik wears Paco Rabanne and carries what looks like a tire she probably found in the sea (pollution, people!) for the June cover of Harper's Bazaar Spain. []• Yoox's shares closed up 11.67 percent on the Milan Stock Exchange yesterday amid renewed speculation that PPR is investing in the Italian online retailer. Both companies said they are "currently holding commercial discussions ... to examine the possibility of working together on an e-commerce project. [But] no definitive agreement has been signed to date." []• won a $100 million judgement in Manhattan federal court yesterday as the result of a lawsuit against a network of Chinese Internet counterfeiters. []?? Fast Retailing, which owns Uniqlo, announce its first-half profits for the six months ending February 28 rose 55.7 percent. []? LVMH hotels are on the horizon. Two new ones named Cheval Blanc, after the LVMH vineyard, are slated to open in 2010 in Oman and Egypt. []? The ten designers selected to be a part of Mayor Bloomberg's Fashion Incubator have moved into their offices at 209 West 38th Street. The Times says the offices look like a mall. []? On April 12, Daniel Magnussen will launch Intermission magazine, which will be sold at Opening Ceremony, with Julia Restoin Roitfeld on the cover. []? Gia Coppola shot a teaser video for 's Target collection featuring girl group the Like. []?• dismisses the possibility of rivalries between this year’s CFDA nominees: “It’s a fashion prize but many of us are from the same generation so it’s less about competition. A lot of these people are people we hang out with. It’s not aggressive or hostile — it’s really fun.” []?Did you get lost in all that black at Milan? Then perhaps you missed the comeback of a material best suited for the Chuck Basses of our lives: velvet, and its even softer cousin, velour. and showed fuzzy jackets and blazers in brighter-than-bright colors. and did just the opposite, showcasing head-to-toe velvet in natural hues. And went for a velvet revolution: Both his collections had velour on just about everything, from green pants to gray vests to tracksuits. For more velvet and velour looks, click ahead for the slideshow.?London's runways are typically a launch pad for newbies. In seasons past, , , and all made their catwalk breakthrough via the Big Smoke's innovative shows. This season proved to be another story. New Jersey's had a strong showing, opening for and and closing for . Runway fixture hit it big this week when she opened for , while Burberry Beauty face Nina Porter closed out the show . Good ol' opened for , but it was the show's closer, the legendary 71-year-old Veruschka von Lehndorff, who takes the crown. Giles Deacon has a habit of dragging out some of fashion's most iconic faces for his shows, but booking Veruschka was easily his most impressive casting coup to date. See all of London's top openers and closers in the slideshow ahead.?After a launching denim and sunglasses to mixed reception, Victoria Beckham took the plunge into the high-end dress business. Some speculated the line was the work of one of her favorite designers, Roland Mouret, but with this line, Beckham ? like the Olsens ? has managed to eschew stigma associated with celebrity designers. Her dresses are worn by celebrities and the cast of Gossip Girl with none of the chintzy flair or stifled laughter associated with so many other celebrity-"designed" clothes. Her status as a style icon undoubtedly has something to do with that, but whatever magic is behind the venture, it's landed her a nomination for a British Fashion Award in the Designer Brand category, along with Burberry, Mulberry, and Pringle of Scotland. So Posh Spice ? ? is now viewed in the same design caliber as Burberry. ?? Ines de la Fressange on shooting ’s spring-summer advertising campaign, which happened on a rare cold, cloudy day in Saint-Tropez last month: “Suddenly ? and this must be the power of Chanel ? the sun came out,” she said. []? ’s ex-boyfriend Pete Doherty launched a jewelry line called Albion Trinketry, which consists of fifteen pieces of unisex rings, pendants, necklaces, and bracelets that he created with Hannah Martin, who formerly worked for Cartier. [] ? appointed Paul O’Regan as director of marketing and communications for Europe. O’Regan was previously executive vice-president of global communications for . []?SKIN• A transgender contestant was disqualified from the Miss Universe beauty pageant in Canada. []• There are, on average, 42 tanning salons in every American city, compared to only nineteen Starbucks and 30 McDonald’s locations. []FRAGRANCE• Beyoncé will debut her second fragrance, Beyoncé Pulse Summer Edition, this spring. []HAIR• In Turkey, a men's shampoo called Biomen ran a commercial featuring Adolf Hitler, who delivers a speech telling customers to buy the product that is "a 100 percent male shampoo." He says: "If you are not wearing a woman's dress, you should not use her shampoo either." Jewish groups are not pleased. []?? There’s a new video series at Vogue’s website charting the journey of CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winners. It's called "The Fund." []? Gap Inc. reportedly plans to fight that Kim Kardashian brought against them for using a "look-alike" model in an Old Navy ad. []? has been named the most “digitally competent” fashion brand currently in the market by an NYU think tank. , , Coach, and Kate Spade were also credited with having solid tech awareness. []? shot Elizabeth Olsen for a new coffee table book he's working on. [] ?The Burberry menswear show is set to commence at 11 a.m. ET (that's 5 p.m. in Italy), and you can watch it live right here on the blog. Enjoy!?'s spring 2013 menswear show walked earlier today, but you can still catch the entire thing right here. Enjoy!?Thirteen-year-old actress Chloe Moretz attended the premiere of Justin Bieber: Never Say Never in L.A. yesterday, wearing from Burberry's 2011 resort collection. Equally enviable is her noticeable lack of tights, sleeves, a coat, and scarf, while we freeze our asses off on this coast. But she's such a button it's hard to get mad at her for enjoying these luxuries.How do you like the turquoise belt on this look??“Is that literally Boy George?” a breathless voice asks at , held in the Royal Court, where you have to put your purse through a scanner and enter under a metal detector though at least you’re allowed to keep your Louboutins on. Westwood is in her typical form, which means multifarious plaids, kilts attached to trousers, and other wonderful ideas that haven’t lost their glitter even after all these years. And, yes, it is George, in full makeup and sporting a hot pink Trilby hat embellished with studded skull and crossbones, keeping the spirit of louche London alive, as if Lee McQueen is lurking just behind the runway and George is off to a night of dirty glamour at Heaven and the Ministry of Sound.?Architect Zaha Hadid attended a summer garden party hosted by at the Serpentine Gallery in London yesterday, wearing a big black and sleeveless sculptural coat with a jagged geometric gold print. Under it she wore a simple long-sleeved strappy black blouse, black leggings, and black boots. (And she carried a black clutch too, to keep the color theme going strong.)Though it's a great piece regardless, is this more of a coat, a shrug, or a poncho? And would it have worked better with another slightly contrasting color somewhere else in the look? ?Cathy Horyn thought 's rush to sell the items in their spring 2011 show immediately after walking the runway gave the collection . But, no matter, will do it, too ? but only for select people. The label has figured out a way to use the fashion world's new favorite Internet technologies while stripping them of the things that many think make them so great. Like, making the masses feel included? Turning the snooty aura of runway shows into something that feels much more democratic? That's not Bottega's "thing" this season. Their show will livestream online on Saturday, but only select people invited by Bottega will be able to watch it and then buy the clothes afterward. ?‘Twas the night before the Golden Globes and all the stars showed up looking charitably chic in gorgeous gowns straight off the runways!At the 3rd Annual Art of Elysium Black Tie Charity Gala “Heaven” held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, all of our favorite glam guys and gals were dressed to the nines in everything from romantic vintage gowns to space age styles from Spring Summer 2010 Collections. Glam. Glam. Glam. Starlets really brought Old Hollywood back, wearing dramatically classic gowns with modern twists.Amber Heard, who RadarOnline has predicted as a 2010 trendsetter, looked smoldering in a shockingly red Christian Dior, which featured a sheer bodice exposing a black bralet and a belted satin skirt. Newly engaged Minka Kelly reinvented herself, wearing a sexy siren black sweetheart floorlength, looking tres Angelina Jolie, while One Tree Hill’s Sophia Bush, also in a sweetheart (red Reem Acra) channeled Catherine Zeta-Jones. Demurely feminine stars also flooded the red carpet. Jaime King looked lovely in a Burberry lavender mini, while Olivia Wilde was flowered in a pink Marchesa strapless. Futuristic looks made an appearance by the usually subtly styled Anna Paquin, who rocked a Viktor & Rolf from the spaceage Spring Summer 2010 collection, and Camilla Belle who was oddly constructed in a grey Valentino mini. How did another recently engaged star par up with the rest of the ladies at the Gala? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.?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.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.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!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.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.?The Burberry trench never goes out of style, so it is the perfect coat for a vampire who never ages! Hunky True Blood star Alexander Skarsgard is the latest celeb to sport the classically styled coat from the Brit brand, and doesn’t it suit him well?Alexander was spotted in the stylish coat at LAX airport last week. Paired with blue jeans, a black t-shirt and untied combat boots, it wasn’t hard to figure out how he managed to score himself a sexy leading lady.We love Alexander’s classically GQ style!?It was time for some mommy-and-me fun in the sun Friday as Grammy-winning singer Alicia Keys went swimming with baby Egypt at their hotel in Miami Beach.The 30-year-old star, who gave birth to her son last October, showed off her toned post baby body in a stunning blue string bikini with gold embellishment.The nine-month-old tot was also fashionably attired in a cool pair of Burberry print swimming trunks.Alicia is in town to perform songs off her new album at tonight's Zo's Summer Groove's Benefit gala at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida.Next week she will also celebrate her one year wedding anniversary to music producer Swizz Beatz who she married on the French island of Corsica on July 31.RELATED STORIES:? &lt;a href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" mce_href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" target="_top"&gt; &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"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt; ?Despite recently announcing that she will not undergo a makeover, Susan Boyle, the household name and singing sensation from Britain's Got Talent, stepped out last week with a new-do and new fashions. Art Conn, a celebrity stylist that performs style makeovers on American Idol, tells RadarOnline.com, "the hair color makes her look thinner and younger."Noting that, hair color aside, the style transformation is very minimal, Conn comments, "they are taking her a bit gradual.? You have a lot to work with!"On what he would recommend for the big-voiced diva, Conn says, " [she] would be great in classic tailored suits.? Dresses and gowns could make her very dramatic, her look should match her voice - very over the top."Acknowledging Boyle's attempt at accessorizing with a Burberry Scarf, Conn says, "She's starting with zero, you can only go up from there." Belt that one Boyle!?Angelina Jolie made special one-on-one time for one of her six kids Friday, taking adorable twin daughter Vivienne, 3, out shopping for flowers. The Oscar-winning actress and her youngest daughter browsed Streets Florist in London where the doting mother let Vivienne pick out her own bouquets, which included yellow Calle lilies and red roses.Angelina, 36, was dressed in her usual head-to-toe black ensemble while Vivienne looked summery in a Burberry shift dress and pretty red cardigan.Later that day Angelina was spotted heading into the Dorchester Hotel alongside her partner and Vivienne's dad Brad Pitt, who is currently shooting his new movie World War Z in the British capital.RELATED STORIES:?At The Orange British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) Sunday night, our favorite Oscar contenders got gowned in crave worthy couture.? Burberry had a huge influence on the red carpet, with designer Christopher Bailey scoring three starlets on the red carpet.? Claire Danes, Saoirse Ronan and Uma Thurman all looked divine in Burberry gowns, which were custom-made to absolute perfection to show off their individual beauty. Kristen Stewart ditched her Runaway rock look, charming in Chanel, while Gabourey Sidibe looked Precious in pink, showing off in a custom-made Tadashi Shoji.What trendsetting starlet gave another Education in style, looking startlingly chic in a custom-made Vionnet gown?? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.?Emma Watson has scored herself a coveted cosmetics contract with beauty brand Lancome.The Harry Potter star released a statement on Tuesday, confirming rumors of her reported six figure deal with the cosmetics giant. "It's so exciting," the former Burberry model exclaimed in her statement. "I can't wait to start shooting.? Although I don1t wear much makeup, I'm a big fan of Lancome products, especially their mascara." The 20-year-old star, who is currently enrolled at Brown University, will be photographed by Mario Testino for the new advertising campaign.Congrats on the new gig, Emma!?2009 was filled with many magnificently memorable moments on the red carpet. From Gisele Bundchen's Versace vixen cutout number at the Met Costume Gala in May to Emma Watson's sparkling Burberry Prorsum mini at London Fashion Week, images of these A-listers in their haute couture have been reprinted over and over again!Who can forget Angelina Jolie at the premiere of boyfriend Brad Pitt's Inglourious Basterds?? The hot mamma kicked the leather trend up a notch, looking simply fierce in a strapless Michael Kors.What Spice Girl turned designer got her Posh paws on a stunning Gossip Girl? Check out the gallery in Style to find out!?The occasion of a celebrities' fetching offspring being cast to shill for a fashion line is rarely noteworthy, but Lord & Taylor's newest campaign seems to be a unique sort of pandering. In October, the 181-year-old company will unveil its new ad campaign, plastering the likeness of a Hearst, a McEnroe, and an Eastwood throughout the major fashion rags in hopes of revamping its staid image.Lord & Taylor spent $10 million on the spreads, which is headed up by David Lipman, famous for his work with Burberry and Zegna. The employment of Lydia Hearst (Patty Hearst's daughter), Sean McEnroe (child of John McEnroe and Tatum O'Neal), and Scott Reeves (son of Clint Eastwood) as models gives the distinct whiff of desperation from a brand in the awkward position of wanting to shed its title of the country's oldest department store in hopes of reinvigorating sales. After store closings and slumping sales, Lord & Taylor was bought by NDRC Equity Partners LLC last year, and has since quietly changed 85 percent of the merchandise to new labels. Finally ready to make the renovations public, the company is going all out with new ads, a glorified logo, and modernized store d?cor. ?Heidi Montag is pulling a Lindsay Lohan. The Hills star is capitalizing on her Twitter addiction.While Lohan hawks Burberry on her Twitter, Montag is tweeting for companies like the discount websites Living Social and Haute Look.On June 18, she tweeted: "You had me at “90% off”… h**tp://bit.ly/bS**** Sign-up and RT if you love a great deal! (Ad)".The link goes to Living Social, a website that gives subscribers discounts at restaurants, hair salons and such in Los Angeles and other cities..On June 22, Montag tweeted a link to a dating website that only features men called Shop4Guys.com, which calls itself "a playground for women."Montag tweeted, "Maybe being single wasn't such a bad idea after all... h**tp://bit.ly/9z**** (Ad)."It looks as if Montag’s attempts to cash in on her supposed affair with Spencer's friend Cougar Zank didn't work out.Zank previously told RadarOnline.com that he and Heidi had been dating for the past three weeks and he had video of them picnicking together.The pair was asking some media outlets up to $30,000 for the footage and juicy details on their relationship.Lohan has been tweeting ads for a while now, leading to speculation that she resorted to being paid to social market as a way to stay afloat financially.While Montag doesn't have her own SCRAM bracelet, yet, it sure looks like she and another troubled star have a lot in common.? &lt;a href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" mce_href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" target="_top"&gt; &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"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt; ?Iconic lifestyle brand Burberry is keeping up with technology, and will live stream its upcoming Fall/Winter 2010/11 Collection runway show from London Fashion Week in 3D, to locations in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Dubai And Los Angeles.Using innovative 3D technology, a group of lucky celebs and style editors will get to see the pre-show, backstage, red carpet and runway show in real time, which will enable them to? "experience the energy and atmosphere of this show from around the world," explains Christopher Bailey, Chief Creative Officer of Burberry. "3D technology will bring our global audience into the London show space allowing them to see the colours and fabrics, to hear the music and to be a part of that moment when it all finally comes together.''For those of you at home, the show will also be live streamed on Thedailybeast.com and in 2D at live.burberry.com.? POLITICAL HOCK Rove, Crow and David (inset) • : Robert Kennedy, Jr., offers his version of the Karl Rove vs. Sheryl Crow/Laurie David scuffle, saying Rove "literally started spitting at them." Presumably, Sheryl used no more than one square of TP to clean off the Karl spew. • : Add another one to the list of Simon Cowell : he doesn't listen to the American Idol contestants sing. He's too busy thinking up Ryan Seacrest gay jokes. • : Four Harvard students are arrested for heckling FBI Director Robert Mueller.• : Scotland Yard has enlisted the help of the London College of Fashion to redesign the bobby uniform. Coming soon, chav CHiPs. Photo; Getty Images? - Radar Style & Beauty EditorKate Middleton has been jet-setting all over Canada this week, dazzling with her flawless fashion, but the ravishing royal has been spotted wearing one item three days in a row ? her J Brand skinny jeans!The Duchess of Cambridge first stepped out in the on July 4th, pairing the jeans with a Nike Windproof jacket and Sebago during an outing on Prince Edward Island.The next afternoon she paired the pants with a beige Burberry blouse and Sebago Bala shoes, for a day of traveling.And on July 6th, Kate recycled the figure-flattering jeans with a ruffled blouse, her Smythe blazer (which she rocked for the second time this trip) and her Nine West wedges.Talk about a blue jean crush!?Who’s who in fashion flocked to London for the Elle Style Awards, which took place during London Fashion Week on Monday.? It Girls, models and starlets hit the red carpet in their favorite creations from the haute-ist collections of this year, making good…and bad couture choices.Alexa Chung looked lady-like and lovely in a baby blue, floral appliqued Chanel Spring 2010 dress, while Naomi Campbell paid homage to the late Alexander McQueen in a nightmare-instilling mini from his Spring 2010 Collection.Is Carey Mulligan a fan of the Olsen Twins?? The Educated actress modeled a snaky, blue jacket and black skirt from Mary-Kate and Ashley’s The Row collection, while the uber-famous twins looked gaudily goth in Lanvin and Christian Lacroix, respectively.Claire Danes opted to wear Burberry….for the second day in a row!? Do we see an advertising campaign in her future?? Which one of her So Called costars rocked a skirt over jeans?? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.?Harry Potter star Emma Watson is quickly emerging as a fashionista to follow, and has a Burberry campaign to prove it!? The Brit actress was snapped and recorded by famed photographer Mario Testino as the face of the Burberry Spring Summer 2010 advertising campaign. Chicly dressed by Christopher Bailey, the Creative Director of Burberry,? Emma looked sultry surrounded by a bevy of handsome lads, including her brother Alex! Stay tuned for the Burberry Autumn Winter 2010 Runway Show, which will return to London Fashion Week in February, where Emma is sure to be sitting front row.?Steven Slater- the JetBlue flight attendant who was arrested on Monday after cursing at passengers and sliding down the emergency exit slide- had taken a five-year break from the airline industry before joining JetBlue, has learned. “Back flying after five years off the job and having a ball,” he wrote cheerfully on one of his Myspace page. “If I am on the ground, I am probably in my humble home in the 'burbs doing something domestic and trite like vacuuming. Or dining, as I just love to dine. Which leads to the gym, to offset the dining. Big fan of sand and sun, I am often found on the beach or in a park, anywhere I can catch some exercise and a few rays. My airline affiliation allows me amazing travel privileges, and I love to max it out with trips around the world, sometimes on a moment's notice! Let's go!” Prior to his JetBlue job which he began in January 2008, Slater was a flight attendant for Delta from 1997 to 2002.? He has also worked for TWA. According to a resume he posted , Slater spent his hiatus from flying by working in the retail industry. For two years from May 2003 to 2005, he was a Burberry Accessories Shop Manager at Bloomingdale’s/Burberry. He does not account for the other years he spent away from the airline industry. Slater seemed to enjoy his time back in the skies despite the not always exotic destinations he was sent to:“Well howdy friends and loved ones! Thanks for stopping by my little piece 'o the web! Chances are I am flying 35, 000 feet somewhere over the rainbow on my way to some semi-fabulous JetBlue Airways destination! Truly, some are better than others. But I am enjoying being back in the skies and seeing them all.”Slater was arrested after the incident and a judge set his bail at $2,500 on Tuesday.? He faces up to seven years behind bars after was he was charged with reckless endangerment and other offenses. He is due back in court on September 7.?Rumors have been swirling for years about whether Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts are married or not. But it seems that any speculation surrounding their relationship could soon be moot, as a source tells exclusively that the New York based couple, who have two sons together, are going through a rough patch."Liev is kind of arrogant and snobby," a source close to the situation tells RadarOnline.com. "And it grates on him that Naomi has the higher profile, bigger, better career and higher earnings."Despite the rumors that are out there, they are not married, and they haven't talked marriage plans in a good two years."They’ve already been through two real relationship crisis's,? in January 2008 when Heath Ledger died and then last Spring/Summer time, and they came extremely close to splitting but they decided to go to couples’ counseling and work it out for the sake of the kids. When Heath died it really rocked Naomi’s world and she totally withdrew. Liev just isn’t the kind of guy who will hold Naomi’s hand to get her through a tough period. Instead he acts like he doesn’t need the relationship and can walk out at anytime. But he better be careful because if he keeps it up he could lose Naomi and I do think that would devastate him."But, it looks like they're slowly deteriorating, and finding themselves back in a bad place once again."Basically, it's a total clash of the egos between the two of them. It's always tough to make a relationship work when it's between an actor and actress. Both tend to be self-obsessed to a degree, and Naomi and Liev fit that description to a T."Liev would like Naomi to take more of a back seat when it comes to her career, he wants to be the major star and breadwinner and he would like her to be more of a stay at home mom. But Naomi knows that her movie making days are running out fast and she wants to capitalize on her looks and fame while she still can - while she's still young enough."Plus she loves being an actress, and loves the validation she gets from the fans and the critics."They're kind of in a no win situation and basically at a stalemate, neither side wants to budge or compromise. I really don't see how they are going to work this one out and reach a resolution that keeps both sides happy."I know for a fact that if they didn't have the kids they would of split a long time ago. It seems that now, the only thing holding them together is their two sons, who they both love very dearly. Unfortunately, it seems that they no longer love each other very dearly though."RELATED STORIES:??The ‘delusional’ husband of a Beverly Hills mom -- who denied having a steamy affair with David Beckham -- has submitted emails as evidence in the couple’s bitter court battle, has exclusively learned.Shery Shabani, a Victoria Beckham look-a-like, faced questions from her soon-to-be ex-husband’s lawyer about six secret emails.As RadarOnline.com first , Shery claimed her millionaire husband Kambiz, also known as Joseph, had “falsely” accused her of an affair with the former British soccer captain, who is married to Spice Girl Victoria.According to a court filing obtained by RadarOnline.com, Joseph tendered to Los Angeles Superior Court the emails, the contents of which have not been disclosed publicly and were removed from the court file.During a hearing last Wednesday, while Shery was on the witness stand being cross examined, Joseph’s counsel, Manley Freid, presented four emails to the court.Two days later, on Friday, Freid submitted two more emails and a copy of bank checks, as evidence for the judge to consider in the divorce case.Again, at that time, Shery was in the witness box being quizzed.It’s a further twist in the couple’s divorce, after Shery had emphatically denied in anwith RadarOnline.com, the existence of any emails between her and Becks.She insisted, "There are no emails, nothing!" and declared it was “so sad and unfortunate” that “lies” were “being told”.Yet on Tuesday, when pressed about the matter, a rep for Shery was forced to admit to RadarOnline.com emails indeed existed between the jewelry designer-to-the-stars and Beckham, who she had previously designed pieces for.But the spokesperson said the correspondence was “purely business” related.“We have no comment on this matter,” the rep added.Shery, married to Joseph for 12 years, also submitted her own evidence: four text message conversations and six of her own emails, RadarOnline.com has learned.Alleged text messages between Shery and Becks had been at the centre of the couple’s feud, according to an earlier declaration to the court.“I know why you're upset, it's your birthday and you didn't get a text from David Beckham!” Shery claimed Joseph, 42, yeller at her on her birthday.He added, “Why don't you ask him to send you a picture of his c**k for your birthday, you whore?”As RadarOnline.com was first to report, Shery -- who counts Becks and Victoria among her pals -- claimed Joseph had tried to run Beckham off the road, wrongly believing they were having an affair.Shery, 33, said Becks told her about the incident, which happened outside the school attended by her children and the soccer star’s three sons.Shery also alleged Joseph had shoved her, in August, at their $12 million 13000 square feet mansion.When police arrived to the scene, Joseph told the officers that his wife had "f*cked David Beckham" and "inexplicably demanded that the officers include his statement in their report" so that he could in turn leak it to the media, Shery alleged in the court file.The couple's divorce battle over custody of their two children, 10-year-old Taylor and seven-year-old Tye, was suddenly settled Monday, "freely and voluntarily", according to a file, after a series of closed-door hearings before Los Angeles judge Amy M. Pellman.In a minute order, it was revealed the evidence has now been returned to Shery and Joseph’s counsels."Pursuant to stipulation of the parties the Court orders all exhibits returned and held by counsel," the order read.RadarOnline.com can also reveal Shery had successfully asked the court to seal sensitive material about the case, the equivalent of a gag order, preventing both parties from discussing it and the evidence, including the emails.Becks, already suing over lies that he romped with a hooker, has said any suggestion of a relationship with Shery was "total fantasy".The slur is the latest blow to embattled Posh and Becks, who are already fighting allegations of a seedy threesome involving Bosnian hooker Irma Nici.Becks, who plays for the LA Galaxy, wore beaded bracelets designed by Shery to a Jonas Brothers concert with his three boys, who go to the same private school as the designer's children.At the time, Shery wrote on her website: "David Beckham rocks Shery Shabani's onyx stackable bracelets at the Grove!"RELATED STORIES:??Super stylist Ted Gibson was busy on Monday night getting celeb clients Emma Watson and Anne Hathaway ready for the glammest fashion event of the year, the Costume Institute "Met" Gala. Anne, who looked gorgeous in a shimmery Valentino strapless, donned a simply sleek hairstyle, while Emma Watson, who rocked an edgy Burberry look, opted for a sexy, wavy style. Kate Gosselin’s dished to RadarOnline.com how he achieved Emma and Anne’s sexy hairdo’s, and getting the look is not as difficult as you may think!How Ted Achieved Anne Hathway’s Look: Ted started by blow-drying her hair using his Hair Sheet styling product, which tames frizz and has UV protectors. He then used a small barrel curling iron to give Anne some body and finished the look off with Beautiful Hold hairspray.? Because her dress was so embellished, it was important to keep her hair looking simple and chic.How Ted Achieved Emma Watson’s Look: Ted started by blow drying her hair using Build It blow dry spray and Tame It shine lotion, to give the hair texture and shine.? He then used a medium barrel curling iron to create soft waves and finished off the look with beautiful hold hairspray.The famed hairdresser also gave RadarOnline.com his picks for the top 5 hair-do’s of the evening. Who had the hautest heads at the Gala? Check out the gallery in Beauty to find out!?Rehabbed starlet Lindsay Lohan took some time out of her Thursday afternoon to get her eyes checked out, and has all the details.The fashion forward star looked casually chic wearing a wrap sweater and skinny jeans, while carrying a studded Burberry bag on her arm, as she headed into near her Venice Beach pad.After completing her checkup with Dr. Hoff, Lindsay browsed their selection of luxe sunglasses, and even tried a few pairs on before leaving with her assistant. Lindsay recently relocated to the swanky beachside community after completing her rehab stint at Betty Ford, and has been quickly adapting to the low-key lifestyle.RELATED STORIES:?David Beckham is continuing his legal attack on Irma Nici, the former prostitute who claimed he'd paid her for sex on several occasions.In legal declarations obtained exclusively by , two members of Beckham's high-powered security team insist the soccer superstar was nowhere near the locations where Nici said they were having sex.Beckham is a client of the famed Gavin de Becker & Associates security firm; the guards are with Beckham almost 24/7, especially when he travels, and logs are filed at the end of each shift.Nici, in an interview with InTouch Magazine, claimed she first had sex with the married Beckham on August 17, 2007.Not only did it not happen, it couldn't have happened, said Joshua Dessalines, a VP at de Becker.Craig Love was the personal bodyguard who was with Beckham that day. According to his log-- and Dessalines' declaration -- Beckham was traveling with the Los Angeles Galaxy and checked into his hotel at about 10:30 pm that night in August.As he always did when he was traveling and had a game the next day, a massage was ordered.Massage therapist Mi Lee, who was booked by the hotel's concierge, arrived at Beckham's suite at 11pm and was walked out by Beckham's bodyguard at 1:30am.At no time was Beckham at the hotel where Nici claimed they had their rendezvous.Nici also claimed she'd next had sex with Beckham September 27 at the Claridges Hotel in London.Again, didn't and couldn't have happened, said bodyguard Craig Love.He stated that on September 26, his bosses at de Becker told him he would be leaving Los Angeles immediately, flying to London with Beckham, because his father had suffered a heart attack and was in the hospital.Beckham arrived in London the morning of September 27 and spent the day at the hospital with his dad.He didn't get home until late that evening, the bodyguard states.His wife, Victoria Beckham, arrived at 7am the following morning from a business trip in Japan and together the pair spent most of the next several days with David's ailing dad.Love states in his declaration that at no time was he anywhere even near the Claridges Hotel where Nici claimed they'd had sex.The next hearing in the case is February 7 in Los Angeles.?RELATED STORIES:?At The 61st Annual Emmy Awards, it was the battle of the Comedies 30 Rock vs. The Office."We got a larger cast we can take them out definitely," Rainn Wilson from The Office told RadarOnline.com's Tina Malave.30 Rock star Tracy Morgan decked out in Burberry jokingly said he would make a call to President Obama.The Office's Mindy Kaling had something else in mind, her favorite drink a vodka and soda and castmate Oscar Nunez would "rather be home soaking in a tub of cold water with ice cubes"?The temperature was hot on the red carpet at the Nokia Theater in Downtown Los Angeles Sunday -- but the fashions for the 2009 Emmys were even hotter!Ghost Whisperer star Jennifer Love Hewitt, who travels light with Altoids and her house keys, came with boyfriend Jamie Kennedy. ?Parks and Recreation funny lady Amy Poehler admitted to RadarOnline.com ?reporter Tina Malave that she "freaks out" much more than hubby William Arnett when getting ready for the Emmys. And Chris O'Donnell and fellow NCIS LA co-star LL Cool J say the only thing they did to prepare for today's 98 degree temperatures? was "take two showers."90210's Jessica Lowndes only carries a cellphone and lip gloss in her purse while rockin' Dolce&Gabbana in what she calls the "rocker chic" look.Dexter's Julie Benz says when it comes to getting red carpet fashions for free, "it doesn't suck." Her dress is George Chakra her shoes: Jimmy Choo and her jewels from Chopard.Mindy Kailing who plays Kelly Kapoor on The Office, wore Alice Temperley, Damages' Anastasia Griffith looked radiant in a gown from her favorite designer "Tweed" from New York.And the men were stylin' too. Burberry was the favorite of 30 Rock's Tracy Morgan and House's Omar Epps.Madman's Bryan Batt went with vintage cufflinks from his father.And, True Blood's Ryan Kwanten was doing some serious name dropping: Hugo Boss suit, DKNY shirt, Calvin Klein tie and Kenneth Cole shoes.?The gorgeous Amanda Seyfried had some words of wisdom for her fans Tuesday night on the red carpet of the Los Angeles premiere of her romantic new film Letters to Juliet.Watch the video on !"Don't take any guy too seriously -- this is not the part of your life where you're gonna find your true love; it happens, but it's really rare,” the Big Love star told RadarOnline.com.? “You gotta keep your heart open and love yourself before you love someone else, cause that's important, but we don't ever do that."We always love people for a while, and then find ourselves later in life and that's fine," Seyfried said.With one theme of Letters to Juliet about romantic letter writing, we asked the film’s stars to give us their take on another somewhat romantic, albeit risque, form of communication: sexting.Seyfried called the practice "kinda lame," while her co-star Chris Egan told RadarOnline.com that it’s “cute.”"I think it's cute, definitely," he said. "We've all had them and written them, so what else can I say?"Letters to Juliet opens nationwide Friday , May 14.? FAT COWS Ana models When we read that model Gemma Ward had or two (or finally hit puberty at 19) and that Karl Lagerfeld ousted three pin-thin models from his Paris runway but cast Ward—in a bikini, no less—we cheered. Could the stiletto mafia have been impacted by that "" billboard in Milan? Despite that Ward was kicked off Burberry's runway last month for being too heavy, most style scribes agreed that her "curves" were a mark of progress for the industry. Now comes this recently unveiled Bergdorf Goodman ad for Vera Wang like a slap of reality. Those disappointed in Ward's healthy weight ... eat your black hearts out with this thinspiration! Hey, cute skirt.[Larger, NSFW pics after the jump!]?Alessandra Ambrosio and her Victoria’s Secret Angels hit new Hollywood hotspot Trousdale on Thursday night for the 15th Anniversary of the Swim Catalogue. The haute mamma showed off her bombshell bod in an Pre-Spring 2010 one-shouldered Watercolor-Beaded Bandage Dress, pairing the sexy mini with peep-toed heels. Want to steal Ale’s look? The wondrous red carpet number will set you back $3,800!The face of Burberry, young fashionista Emma Watson looked out of character at LONDON show ROOMS New York Cocktail Party, wearing a leather and lace embroidered mini, which featured a corseted top.? The Harry Potter actress paired the not-so-haute mini with Flame Pumps and a metallic clutch.Mischa Barton had yet another fashion flop, wearing a polka dot romper to a She and Him concert in Los Angeles, while Gwyneth Paltrow was a babe, looking smart in a classic trench and suede boots in LondonWhat Jersey Shore star had another style Situation?? Check out the gallery and find out.?Serena Williams hit a red carpet grand slam over the weekend, stepping out to the Wimbledon Gala Dinner in London in a shimmery Burberry mini dress from the Spring 2010 collection. The tennis champ paired the figure-flattering cap-sleeved mini with platform sandals, which elongated her toned and taut legs. Congrats to Serena for winning the coveted championship, and for scoring the RadarOnline.com Best Look of the Day!Kelis, on the other hand, scored herself two Worst looks over the weekend. First, the sassy singer hit the stage in London in truly funky fashion. Though we enjoyed her patriotic manicure and pedicure, we couldn’t get past her ace-bandage “boots” and not-so-haute headgear. A few days later, sans wig, Kelis was spotted at the airport, but wasn’t flying so high in our fashion book!Rihanna tried a new look, while performing onstage in Canada, rocking an inflatable bra (yes, really!) with matching sleeves, taking the shoulder pad look a little too far! Eva Longoria Parker, Heidi Klum and Gwen Stefani all sported casually chic looks this holiday weekend, while Jersey girl JWoWW brought her “Filthy Couture” to Las Vegas.What Posh fashion designer toned down her sophisticated style in a delightful way? Check out the gallery in Style to find out!?Green is the official St. Patrick’s day color, but that doesn’t stop celebs from wearing it year round!? Kate Hudson dropped jaws at the Burberry Prorsum Autumn Winter 2010 Runway Show during London Fashion Week, in a sequined BP mini, while Christina Hendricks made people green with envy, flaunted her curves in a green number at the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards.Phoebe Price had her own, little St. Pattie’s day photoshoot, even dressing up her defenseless pooch in the festive color!What former Calvin Klein model stays true to his part-Irish roots by wearing lots of green?? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.? &lt;a href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" mce_href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" target="_top"&gt; &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"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt; ?Who says ladies get to have all the fashion fun? Though David Beckham may not have a Birkin like his wife Victoria, the famed footballer has his own designer bag. Leaving the airport in Nice, France this week, David rocked a totally hip military-inspired backpack with his GQ threads, and we were dying to find out where he scooped it up.Turns out, the khaki and leather oversized backpack is from the collection, and has become the soccer stud’s travel essential. With a sleek leather jacket, dark jeans (with a grey Burberry scarf tied through a loophole!) and black kicks, David was flying high on our Radar!What do you think about David’s Posh new backpack? Check out the gallery in Style and let us know!?Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson showed up to the Los Angeles premiere of Iron Man 2 on Monday night, and both leading ladies were rocking white, Armani creations. Scarlett looked out of this world, wearing a strapless mini from the Spring 2010 Armani Prive “lunar” collection, which she paired with shimmery pumps from the same collection. Gwyneth, looked equally as fab, wearing a Giorgio Armani shimmery short suit from the Spring 2010 Collection, which was perfectly tailored to show off her lanky limbs. Adding peep-toed slingbacks, for an edgy effect, she finished the look off with a Christian Louboutin clutch.Robert Downey Jr. coordinated with his wife, Susan, wearing a navy Lanvin suit, red and navy tie with matching kicks and red-tinted shades, going for an altogether patriotic color scheme, while Mickey Rourke was feeling the wild, wild west, in a custom-made, leather-lapeled suit.Leslie Bibb and Sam Rockwell looked totally chic, both wearing Burberry. Leslie added a flash of color to her nude number, with gorgeous Neil Lane citrine jewels and metallic Brian Atwood pumps, while her beau looked totally dapper in grey and navy.What actress was in desperate need of a fashion intervention, fully exposing her lacy bra? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.?New York City is the quintessential style savvy city - and the Mayor has declared today (Thursday 28 May) "Burberry Day" in the fashion capital. How fab!The proclamation coincides with the official lighting of the new Burberry sign? that will be featured across the iconic Manhattan skyline (on top of the newest Burberry America Headquarters) at 444 Madison Avenue.The new sign is 50 feet long , 5 feet high, and will be appearing on 3 sides of the building at 400 feet over the city.? That is a whole lot of designer signage!Bloomberg says, “By placing its new headquarters for the Americas in midtown Manhattan and opening new stores here, Burberry is investing in the future of New York City, a worldwide hub for retail and fashion. Through its donation to the Robin Hood Foundation and the new Burberry billboard, one of the world’s great fashion houses is becoming more at home in the world’s greatest city.”Over 300 guests are expected to attend a Burberry sign lighting party at the Palace hotel in New York tonight - including Orlando Bloom, Chloe Sevigny, Penn Badgley, Molly Sims, Justin Long, and many more!Style may not save lives, but a few shopping sprees here and there can only help bolster this horrible economy. Buy your Burberry plaids today!?Harry Potter star Emma Watson is celebrating her new-found freedom from the franchise with a magical style transformation, and has details on her dramatic new look.With both her role as Hogwarts school-girl Hermione Granger completed and her modeling contract as the face of Burberry on hold, the 20-year-old English rose finally had the chance to take control of her looks and rebelled by chopping her long hair off into an extreme pixie cut. While the style is definitely shocking to some, the actress has no regrets about taking the plunge.? “Yes, I cut my hair off a few days ago! I love it- feels incredible. Hope you like it!” she wrote on her Twitter page.Currently in New York promoting the seventh film in the famous series, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Watson got her edgy new ‘do from celebrity stylist Rodney Cutler, who tipped his fans off about it on Facebook page, “Rodney cut Emma Watson's hair, stay tuned for the results... you will be amazed!!!”The child model’s obligations to fashion house Burberry have been put on hold but not stopped for good, despite her being replaced by Transformer’s 3 star Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in the fashion house’s autumn and winter commercials. "Emma is a big part of the Burberry family and is also a wonderful friend….I have huge admiration for her both personally and professionally and everything she's achieved. We've worked with Emma on various projects and campaigns and will continue to collaborate together,” Christopher Bailey, Burberry Chief Creative Officer told RadarOnline.com. Watson was catapulted to fame in 2001 when she won the role of the main non-magical Muggle in the wizard franchise and since then has had to stick to the same signature look. Currently attending Brown University, Emma is now enjoying acting like a typically normal college kid instead of a movie star by playing with different fashion statements.The film adaptation of the J.K. Rowling’s final book of the series has been split into two films, Harry Potter And the Deathly Hallows Parts I and II, to be released in November 2010 and July 2011.?Suri Cruise may only be three-years-old but she’s already experimenting with make-up!The world famous toddler was spotted in Boston with a smear of pink lipstick across her face as she strolled with her parents Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.And in what looked like an attempt to accessorize Suri also wore pink ballet shoes and a striped pink shirt too!Suri often pops up on the best dressed kids’ lists as she is photographed sporting a variety of designer outfits from Burberry to Ralph Lauren.Cruise and Holmes were also joined by his son adopted son Connor from his first marriage to Nicole Kidman.Holmes is back in the U.S. after wrapping Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark in Australia while her famous husband is filming Wichita in Boston with his Vanilla Sky co-star Cameron Diaz.?Jennifer Aniston, on the European leg of the Marley & Me promotional tour, has been paying homage to each host country as only an A-list actress can: through high-end fashion!In Paris, the first stop, Aniston broke from her usual little black dress red carpet tradition, turning heads in a floral-patterned mini-dress by Balenciaga and sky-high Christian Louboutin shoes. With both brands hailing from the French capital, it seems like Aniston is taking on the world one outfit at a time.For the London premiere, she expanded her global wardrobe, sending up a tribute to a Brit mainstay, wearing a grey-blue silk dress from Burberry (co-star Owen Wilson also joined in on the global garb, wearing a suit from the fashion house). "The biggest coup was dressing two of the biggest American film stars in England's biggest fashion label," says a Burberry rep. As they say, when in Rome do as the Romans do. Or the Parisians. Or the English. ?Jon and Kate Plus 8 star Jon Gosselin continued his daddy duties Thursday in Pennsylvania with a trip to Starbucks with twin daughters, Maddy and Cara.Looks like Jon settled for a flavored ice tea while the girls enjoyed an ice blended coffee drink each.Maddy and Cara looked pretty solemn as they walked to the waiting car, perhaps it's because they know their daddy won't be with them again for a while.Meanwhile Jon looked very dapper in his expensive designer Gucci sneakers.?by Radar StaffNow that's what we call a military uniform!The Duchess of Cambridge carried out her first official military role Saturday and she was dressed to thrill in a gorgeous navy colored Burberry military-style coat dress that showed off her super slim figure to it's best effect.Alongside her husband Prince William, Kate handed out medals to soldiers in the Irish guards, at the Victoria Barracks in London, honoring them for their recent tour of Afghanistan.Kate was joined by the in-laws, William's father, Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.William, who serves as the Irish Guards' first royal colonel said he was in "awe" of the soldiers' sacrifices: "I can only imagine what the campaign medals you receive today must mean to you," he said."Along with thousands of others back home, I followed your tour in Afghanistan with a mounting sense of awe."Over the years and decades ahead when you look at this medal, I'm sure it will bring back so many conflicting memories."Sadness for those who did not return, and thoughts of their families who received their Elizabeth Crosses today."RELATED STORIES:?Kate Moss has had a rough month. First, she lost the coveted (and lucrative) Burberry campaign to younger model Lily Donaldson; then Pete a South African shampoo model Lindi Hingston, who's four years Kate's junior and whose biggest campaign was for Timotei.So Lindi might not be stepping into Kate's Balenciaga boots anytime soon, but perhaps Pete's vision was just a little ... blurry? When he encountered the relative unknown at a London club called Crystal (classy!) he could be forgiven for thinking red-haired resembled a younger, less-in-need-of-retouching Kate. At least from a drug-fueled distance.But in the interest of exploring all of the evidence, see how Kate and Lindi stack up after the jump ... ? &lt;a href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" mce_href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" target="_top"&gt; &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"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt; ?Over the weekend stars were spotted around the world collecting awards and medals in the Best and Worst of fashions.? The Lovely Saoirse Ronan attended the Irish Film & Television Awards in her home country, impeccably styled in a brightly hued and zippered mini, rocking covet-worthy Burberry Twisted Band Platforms, while William Hung made an appearance at the World Tournament Poker Invitational, still Livin’ La Vida Loca in a horrid orange shirt. Sophie Monk looked like she was ready to go on Safari at La Vida restaurant in Los Angeles, while Olympian Johnny Weir showed up to a Winter Olympics bash wearing a back-baring sweater, which would have been gorgeous---on a woman!What Diva looked delightful at the Sanremo Music Festival?? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.? &lt;a href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" mce_href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" target="_top"&gt; &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"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt; ? &lt;a href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" mce_href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" target="_top"&gt; &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"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt; ?Though you will have to wait several months to see Brit babe Rosie Huntington-Whiteley steam up the big screen as Megan Fox's replacement in Transformers 3, you can watch the sultry supermodel right now, in a sizzling hot campaign for the Burberry Autumn Winter 2010 Collection.In their first digitally interactive global advertising campaign, Rosie is part of a sexy, all-Brit cast of characters, which includes actors, models and musicians. The campaign was shot over a month ago, before it was announced that she would be replacing Megan Fox in the successful action movie franchise.Big-lipped and luscious, the gorgeous supermodel grabs the spotlight in the groundbreaking campaign, which will launch globally in July 2010.The Victoria's Secret Angel, who recently took her relationship with actor Jason Statham public, has been spotted getting cozy to her Transformers costar Shia LaBeouf, RadarOnline has learned. Sources from the set say, that the pair has been hanging out in each other's trailers for hours on end and spotted holding hands in between takes, since shooting began three weeks ago.?Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama, who some people feel isn't qualified to be leader of the free world because he knows what arugula is, may have once been a , but he's no clotheshorse. He buys his suits off the rack! At, um, .Obama seemingly admitted as much to a Philadelphia Daily News reporter last month, adding that Chicago tailor Hart Schaffner Marx had offered to make him some suits, but he can never find time for fittings. Perhaps he should have found time: suits by Marx actually average around , which is about $200 less than a . (We assume he's not dropping $2k for a high-end model.)? FOOL'S GOLD Paris • : Celebutwit Paris Hilton wears nothing but gold body paint in a photo shoot for her new line of champagne, Rich Prosecco. (The secret ingredient is Valtrex ... shhh!)• : Merriam-Webster picks 'W00t' as its 2007 Word of the Year. "It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language. It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other," says M-W pres John Morse. It also shows that some of us are way too into gaming.• : Having trouble figuring out what to get that special man in your life for Christmas? The London Times reports that Tony Blair gave George Bush a blue Burberry jumper last year, while former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi gifted Bushie an electric-assisted bicycle and some Elvis Presley CDs. • : President Bush tells a teenage girl struggling with addiction, "Your president made the same kind of choice, I had to quit drinking," then later tells ABC "I wanted her, this young girl who's struggling with drug addiction, to know that others who might be famous have the same issue, that she's not alone." So, like, famous people have drug probs? Hot!• : The writer's strike threatens to not only ruin Christmas, but also possibly the Oscar party. "There might be an Oscar show, but I fear that it will look more like your high school graduation than it ever has before," says a former head writer for the awards show.• : Bitter daughter-in-law Charlene Marshall confronts Brooke Astor biographer Frances Kiernan at a Barnes & Noble reading. Marshall is married to Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, who has been indicted for plundering his late mother's estate.?Though Blake Lively has big Manolo Blahniks to fill, taking over Sarah Jessica Parker’s Sexy in the City status, the rising star is well on her way.NYC’s current reigning 'It Girl' hit The National Board Of Review Motion Pictures Gala on Tuesday night, in absolutely smashing fashion. Wearing a to-die-for plum colored Marchesa lasercut sculpted sleeve cocktail dress with turquoise Lorraine Schwartz jewels (which were the perfect contrast with the deeply hued dress) and Burberry Prorsum ruched strap platforms, the Gossip Girl lived up to her style status.Jennifer Garner got pretty in pink, rocking a magenta Roland Mouret sleeveless cocktail dress with Christian Louboutin heels, while Michelle Williams looked fem and sophisticated in an Oscar de la Renta embroidered cocktail dress.What other leading ladies dazzled at the swanky NYC event? ?From the red carpet to the streets, stars were dressed in the best and worst fashions on Monday, and RadarOnline.com has all the photos.Brooklyn Decker has a lot to celebrate! Not only did the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition hit the newsstands last week, but her first feature film Just Go With It has continued to burn up at the box office. Brook hit the Berlin premiere of the movie, dressed to thrill in spring style. Wearing a slitty, lilac Max Mara gown with bright red heels, the beautiful blonde definitely mastered the art of color!? Jennifer Aniston was scored on the style sector, wearing a one-shoulder Nina Ricci mini with Gucci heels.Kanye West’s former flame Amber Rose could learn a thing a two about avoiding a color clash! The busty babe hit London Fashion Week wearing Valentine’s colors a week too late.Kate Bosworth rocked heavy metal to the Burberry Prorsum Fashion Show, wearing the Brit brand from head to toe in flawless fashion, while Kate Moss flopped in her foil faux pas of a dress at a London bash.Suri Cruise looked adorable in faux fur, while out and about in Vancouver while Lady Gaga hit the streets of NYC, nearly naked as usually.Who else rocked and shocked on the fashion front this Monday? .?From London Fashion Week to Wall Street, stars hit the scene in fab fashion and absolutely arrest-worthy attire this week. Sarah Jessica Parker lived up to her style icon status at the Burberry Prorsum Spring 2011 runway show in London, wearing a leather peacoat with a lace miniskirt from the Brit brand, while carrying a glittery pink Alexander McQueen purse. Tres Sexy!While platforms boots are a super hot trend this fall, not everyone gets the look right---take it from Lenny Kravtiz! The hippy rocker hit the streets of NYC wearing a pair of the boots of the season with leather pants and a cowl-necked top, while carrying a purse. Now that's what we call feminine fashion.Gisele Bundchen was on a style streak this week, looking supermodel sophisticated in a cream jacquard cocktail dress and nude Christian Louboutin pumps at the Dinner For Important Women in NYC. A few days later she showed up to the Brazil Gala at the MET, showing off her flawless figure in a custom-designed Calvin Klein sequin gown.Kate Moss and Amber Rose committed fashion fur-pas in London, while Paz de la Huerta went a little too wild at the New Yorkers for Children Fall Gala in animal print.What leading ladies made the a la mode grade and who committed style sins?Check out 's weekly feature for all the fashion-packed photos!RELATED STORIES:?Naomi Watts had a run in with the cops in Los Angeles on Thursday, but it wasn’t the Fair Game star who had the issue: instead a female paparazzo called the police on the mother-of-two for hitting her video camera.Naomi, 42, was playing with her two children, Sasha and Sammy, in a park in Brentwood when the run in with the paparazzo occurred.? The shutterbug apparently called the cops and claimed Naomi “slapped her video camera” while she was filming.? When the cops arrived Naomi told them the photographer was too close to her and the children and that the photographer had been “stalking her for the entire morning, even inside the Whole Foods Market where she grocery shopped earlier.”RELATED STORIES:???Stars hit the streets and the red carpet on Tuesday dressed in the best and worst fashions?and RadarOnline.com has all the photos in our daily feature.Dancing with the Stars & Burlesque babe Julianne Hough was dressed to thrill at the The 9” Next Milk Mustache Stars launch in NYC. Ryan Seacrest’s gorgeous gal pal looked delicious enough to drink in her milky white Pamela Roland keyhole mini, which she paired with nude peep-toed heels and a matching clutch.Jennifer Lopez committed a fashion fur pas in NYC. The American Idol judge hit a promotional event dressed in a kill0embellished coat, adding ugly lace-up boots to the mix.? Better luck next time, Jen!Leighton Meester and Minka Kelly were busy at the Soho Apple Store in NYC promoting The Roommate. While the Gossip Girl looked sexy and sophisticated in Giambattista Valli, the Friday Night Lights babe kept her look conservative in a chic navy and black pant ensemble.Rachel Bilson sported a leather trimmed Burberry dress from the Spring 2011 collection to the Los Angeles premiere of Waiting for Forever, pairing the sexy racerback number with Mary Jane heels and a Burberry clutch.As for a la mode misses, Ellen Pompeo was dressed for Studio 54 in a chambray, zip-up jumpsuit, while Californication missy Madeline Zima was clad in Granny Getup at the Waiting for Forever premiere.Who else rocked and shocked on the fashion front? ?From the red carpet of movie premieres to the streets of Paris Fashion Week, stars were dressed to rock and shock on Wednesday in the best and worst fashions -- and RadarOnline.com has all the photos in our daily feature.Supermodel turned bigscreen babe Jamie King was dressed to thrill as the Los Angeles premiere of Take Me Home Tonight. The beautiful blonde showed off her flawless figure (and a few tattoos left over from the late 1990’s) in a tiered Burberry Prorsum slate grey dress, which featured a sexy cutout back. Paired with gorgeous platforms and a tight bun, the statuesque star scored herself the best look of the day.So, we know that Take Me Home Tonight takes place in the past, but why did Debbie Gibson have to resurrect her Electric Youth threads for the premiere? The 1980’s pop star paired an animal print off-the-shoulder crop top with sparkly leggings and teal eye shadow, resulting in a fashion flashback flop.Blake Lively was in honorable a la mode at a Chanel dinner in her name.? The Gossip Girl rocked Haute Couture from the French fashion brand with Christian Louboutin ballerina inspired pumps and a quilted bowling bag, in her signature sexy and sophisticated style.Paris Hilton and Olivia Munn both experienced boho blunders in hippie dippy threads, while Rosie Huntington-Whitelely was dressed to thrill in luxe leather for lunch with Jason Statham.Audrina Patridge dazzled at the Beverly Hills Flagship Store opening of Badgley Mischka, wearing a sexy sparkler from the luxe label.? Rumer Willis was also on hand at the opening, wearing a pink gown, which clashed with her orange hair.Who else rocked and shocked on the fashion front?? .?The stars were out at the World Premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, which took place at the London Odeon on Thursday night, where Emma Watson dominated the red carpet in sexy style.? has all the photos, hot off the red carpet!The pixie-haired actress wore a lace and feathered cap-sleeved Rafael Lopez mini dress, which featured an attached cape, with towering Charlotte Olympia platforms.Emma was joined on the red carpet by her Harry Potter costars Daniel Raddcliffe, Rupert Grint and Helena Bonham Carter (who wore a totally wacky fuchsia dress, sporting un unruly hairdo!) as well as the book’s scribe J K Rowling and even Elvis Presley’s daughter Lisa Marie!The latest installment of the popular franchise, which will premiere in the United States on November 15th, is set to hit the big screen on Friday, November 19th.RELATED STORIES:?Amy Adams dazzled old Hollywood style on Monday night at the Los Angeles premiere of The Fighter. The new mom showed off her post-preggers bod in a delightful pale grey J. Mendel Grecian style gown, which perfectly complimented her skin tone.? Paired with red satin heels and lipstick, as well as a pair of Irit Design oxidized sterling silver pave diamond and Tahitian pearl earrings with a matching Irit Design oxidized sterling silver pave diamond ring, the big screen babe was dressed for success!While Brad Pitt was as dapper as can be in Burberry and Angelina Jolie looked wondrous in Atelier Versace winter white, fashion designer Betsey Johnson brought the wacky factor to the New York premiere, wearing a nightmarish look from the Spring 2010 Alexander McQueen collection.Over in Las Vegas, Carrie Underwood radiated in a red Georges Chakra gown and gold Rene Caovilla sandals at the American Country Awards.At the Los Angels premiere of The Tempest, Katy Perry supported her hubby Russell Brand, looking demure in a pale lavender Elie Saab Couture gown at the Los Angeles premiere of The Tempest, while Helen Mirren dazzled in a navy blue sequin top and luxe matching skirt.Lady Gaga had a complete fashion fur pas in Milan, wearing an overbearing multi-colored coat.Who else rocked and shocked on the fashion front?? Find out in 's daily photo feature!?As 80% of America freezes, Jennifer Lopez made the most of the beautiful Miami weather Friday, lazing by a swimming pool with her twins Max and Emme.Despite the balmy weather J-Lo remained relatively covered up, with a blue all in one, large shades and a red bandana while adorable Max and Emme rocked matching Burberry outfits.The family were chilling poolside at the luxurious Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach, with J-Lo sipping on a glass of white wine and catching some rays as her children toddled around the pool.There was no sign of hubby Marc Anthony, but Jennifer wasn't left without some adult company, she was joined by her long time manager and close friend Benny Medina.? Radar Style & Beauty EditorJennifer Lawrence, who was recently cast as the lead in the buzz-worthy movie Hunger Games, hit The Tonight Show with David Letterman in NYC on Thursday showing off her newly dyed locks?and has the photos.The Academy Award-nominated star of Winter’s Bone, who bounced around to all the awards shows earlier this year with beautiful, blonde locks, dyed her hair brown to play the role of Katniss Everdeen.Wearing a terrific Burberry trench over an asymmetrical Altuzarra dress with sexy Yves Saint Laurent heels, the young actress was dressed to thrill for her promotional appearance.Lawrence beat out several other young stars, including Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin and Emma Roberts, for the coveted role, and will be starring alongside Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth in the adaptation of the popular young-adult science fiction novel written by Suzanne Collins.RELATED STORIES:?From the East Coast to the West, stars were out and about on Monday wearing the best and worst fashions -- and RadarOnline.com has all the photos in our daily feature!Newly engaged Reese Witherspoon bundled up for a chilly afternoon in Los Angeles, hiding her new bling in the pockets of her totally chic peacoat! The bride to be added knee-high brown boots, a chain strapped purse and a cashmere beanie for a totally stellar look.Meanwhile, Snooki embarrassed the Brit brand Burberry, while hitting Extra to promote her upcoming fashion line, adding their iconic plaid scarf to her Jersey Girl getup, which included a leopard print bomber jacket and metallic accessories.NJ Housewife Danielle Staub supported Snooki’s Jersey Shore cast mate Vinny Guadagnino as he launched his new clothing line, keeping her look simple but sexy in NYC.Jude Law and Sienna Miller were trendy travelers in London, while LeAnn Rimes showed off her blinging ring as she arrived in Los Angeles from her Mexican holiday.Who else rocked and shocked on the fashion front? .?Jennifer Aniston and Brooklyn Decker have been busy promoting their latest romantic comedy Just Go With It, wearing fabulous fashion every step of the way. While Jen usually dominates the red carpet with effortless ease, the Sports Illustrated bikini model has been giving Jen a little fashionable and friendly competition. At the NYC premiere Jen showed off her famous figure in a sexy Dolce & Gabbana strapless gown, which featured a sexy slit and also clung to her body in all the right places. Brook also rocked D&G, in the form of a sizzling skintight leopard dress, which she paired with burgundy Brian Atwood Maniac pumps. Over in Berlin, Brooklyn had spring in her step, wearing a lilac hued Max Mara gown, which featured a high slit, while Jen opted for a one-shoulder ruffle Nina Ricci mini.And in Madrid on Monday, Jen debuted a new, shorter do, wearing a black tank and slacks, while Brooklyn looked like she just stepped off the runway of London Fashion Week in Burberry.See Jen and Brooklyn battle it out on at all of their Just Go With It events by .?Jennifer Aniston knows how to dominate a red carpet!? The former Friend hit the NYC premiere of Just Go With It on Tuesday night in New York City dressed to thrill -- and has all the photos.Wearing a strapless corseted Dolce & Gabbana gown, which clung tightly to her fat-free figure, the stunning star finished off the luscious look with Gucci heels, Fred Leighton jewels and a Burberry bag.Jen was joined on the red carpet by her Just Go With It costars Adam Sandler and Brooklyn Decker, as well as pals Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.Swimsuit model Brooklyn, who makes her bigscreen debut in the romantic comedy, followed Jen’s lead by also rocking Dolce & Gabbana, showing off her supermodel body in a skintight leopard print pencil dress.Just Go With It hits theaters this Friday -- Jen’s 42nd birthday!RELATED STORIES:?Every year a new crop of It Girls pop up from out of nowhere, stealing the buzz from the Katy Perry's, Angelina Jolie's and Megan Fox's of the entertainment industry. has the inside scoop on the latest group of up-and-comers in town -- and what current It Girls need to watch out for their new competition!What happens when an Angelic model steals the action from a big screen babe?Just ask Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who replaced Megan Fox as the Transformers babe in the popular franchise.The Victoria's Secret and Burberry model is painfully gorgeous and already has a leading man on her arm -- the hunky Jason Statham.Hollywood loves sexy and sultry vixens who live on the edge, so you can be sure that Boardwalk Empire's Paz de la Huerta isn't a name that will go away any time soon.The NYC bred Spaniard isn't new to Hollywood, having a slew of indie films on her resume, but insiders are buzzing about her performance in Boardwalk Empire - as well as her beyond exotic looks.The tattooed and free spirited thespian has what it takes to be Hollywood's new bad girl, a role that Angelina Jolie played so well for so many years!You may have never heard the name Andrea Riseborough, but that is about to change!The Brit babe was the most talked about gal at the Toronto Film Festival, starring alongside Carrie Mulligan and Keira Knightley in Never Let Me Go, but her biggest break has yet to hit.The flawlessly faced actress is shooting the Madonna directed movie W.E., playing the starring role of Wallis Simpson.Watch out Carrie Mulligan... there is a new indie darling in town.Kate Mara has been a Hollywood name for quite some time, but she is about to get some major competition -- from her little sister!When Rooney Mara scored herself the coveted lead role in the highly anticipated The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Nightmare on Elm Street starlet instantly created buzz.With her angelic beauty and superior style, she is destined for box office success.She isn't the only sibling-to-the-stars to make our hot list!After years of small roles in movies, Dakota Fanning's 12-year-old sis Elle has positioned herself as a Hollywood player, scoring the coveted role alongside Stephen Dorff in Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, which will hit the big screen on December 22.From Nicki Minaj to Emma Stone, find out all about the biggest up-and-coming names in Hollywood on RadarOnline.com!?The glam factor was high on Thursday, as stars hit the red carpet and the streets dressed to rock and shock in designer duds -- and has all the photos in our daily fashion feature. Katy Perry paid a visit to BBC Radio in London, dressed to impress in a sassy silver Matthew Williamson dress.? The sleek and chic mini featured a gorgeously embellished neckline, and hugged her curves to perfection.? She finished off the look with bright yellow Charlotte Olympia heels and a silver cuff bracelet, scoring herself the best look of the day.Lindsay Lohan wasn’t exactly looking city smart in New York.? The trouble-ridden starlet paired spandex pants with a totally preppy cable knit sweater, fur vest and leopard bag, resulting in the ultimate fashion flop.Holly Madison celebrated Saint Paddy’s Day in Sin City, hitting O’Sheas Casino in a sexy Herve Leger by Max Azria dress, which was patterned in attention grabbing style.Former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger was dressed to thrill in Paris, showing off her hot bod in Burberry Prorsum, while Taylor Momsen looked grotesquely goth as she arrived to her Pretty Reckless show in Virginia.Who else rocked and shocked on the fashion front Thursday?? .?They're a group of wealthy housewives who balance their careers, friendships and home life. But how do the women of Bravo's hit Real Housewives juggernaut manage to look so good? has the scoop!Whether walking the streets during the day, or gliding down the red carpet at night, the Real Housewives all manage to look flawlessly fashionable."Their job is to look good, stir up trouble and engage in consumer gluttony," notes fashion critic Robin Givhan.With New York the fashion capital of the country, it no surprise that Bethenny, Kelly, Jill & Co. are fiercely devoted to their designer duds.And there's little doubting housewife Kelly Killoren Bensimon is one of the most stylish of the popular franchise.The New York Times Magazine counts her as one of the "most fabulous tastemakers" around!As a former model and ex-wife of a fashion editor, Kelly has made a career reporting on fashion and style with her own unique flavor and is always seen in the front row at New York Fashion Week.At the other end of the style spectrum is Bethenny Frankel, who has a more simple taste, yet through a brutal fitness regime headlined by yoga, manages to look good in almost anything that she wears."This city girl worked hard for her assets and her style clearly reflects it," says Hollyood stylist , who has dressed such fashion alumns as Carrie Preston."Just three months after the birth of her daughter, Bethenny was back to being a 'skinny girl'."Bethenny is mostly spotted in modestly priced labels such as alice + olivia, French Connection and Vince.But every now and then, she will splurge -- and has been spotted grabbing attention in a Herve Leger bandage dress or a Dolce & Gabbana mini, with luxe accessorizes such as a Hermes Birkin bag and Christian Louboutin or Brian Atwood heels.Style is different across the Hudson, in New Jersey, however: there, it is all about big hair, truckloads of makeup and bling.Teresa Giudice was named No. 27 on InStyle magazine's 2009 Style 100 List.On the show, Teresa's fans get an insight into her hair-raising taste; she once spent $2,000 in a 10-minute shopping spree.These expensive habits were honed at Berkeley College, where Teresa earned a degree in Fashion Marketing and Management, before working as an accessories buyer for Macy's."I am passionate about fashion and simply looking good; so I wanted to share my style with you. I hope you 'love, love, love' it," Theresa writes on ."In true glammed up Jersey style, Teresa pulls out all the stops," explains Megaro. "Even after filing for bankruptcy, she's still sporting blinged up designer clothes!"In Washington D.C., the undisputed fashionista is Mary Schmidt Amons, who even has a fingerprint scanner on her closet door to protect its contents from her children!In a recent episode, when the housewives trekked to a winery, Mary donned a Burberry novacheck check and looked amazing.??RELATED STORIES:?From the star-studded red carpet premiere of Scream 4 to the city streets, stars were out and about on Monday dressed in the best & worst fashions and has all the photos in our daily feature.Anna Paquin hit the Los Angeles premiere of the highly anticipated Wes Craven sequel in totally stellar style.? The True Blood hottie looked sexier than ever in a Cushnie Et Ochs sleeved dress, which consisted of two pieces held together by metal bars. Paired with metallic Brian Atwood Maniac heels, Anna scored herself the best look of the day.Khloe and the rest of the Kardashian clan celebrated their May 2011 cover of Redbook Magazine with a Hollywood bash, but the curvy reality show star didn't quite score the high marks with her choice of a la mode.? Khloe tried the menswear trend, wearing a white tuxedo style shirt and bow tie with a pencil skirt, which didn't quite rock our world.Other notable looks at the Scream 4 premiere include Emma Roberts in Burberry blue, Hayden Panettiere in Zac Posen, Neve Campbell in Vivienne Westwood Red Label and Kristen Bell in Vanessa Bruno.? The biggest blunder on the carpet? Courteney Cox had a tan-tastrophe, showing off beyond orange legs under her black frock.At the New York premiere of The Conspirator, Robin Wright looked white hot in a Julien Macdonald pantsuit, while Evan Rachel Wood didn't exactly ravish in a vintage-looking Gucci number.?It was a dazzling and frazzling day in fashion on Thursday, as stars hit the red carpet and the streets dressed in the best and worst duds, and RadarOnline.com has all the photos in our daily feature.Kim Kardashian has been promoting her latest reality show Kim & Kourtney Take New York to the max, hitting the talk show circuit in smashing style. The curvaceous babe hit the Jimmy Kimmel Live show in Los Angeles showing off her famed figure in a white hot Roland Mouret number, which clung to her bod in all the right places.? Finishing the look off with snazzy zebra heels, Kim scored herself the sexiest look of the day.The camouflage cargo trend has been around for quite awhile, but some stars haven’t figured out how to make it work. Christina Milian stepped out in Los Angeles, looking totally frump pairing her cargos with brightly hued kicks, adding some not-so-sassy separates. Young, single and gorgeous, Christina needs to get her A-game on!She should take some pointers from Gwen Stefani, who got the cargo look right. The No Doubt babe paired her flattering fit pair with a white blouse, fitted leather jacket and towering beige platforms, for a trip to the Dr.’s office in Beverly Hills.J. Lo continued her American Idol style streak in NYC, rocking a white Herve Leger bandage dress with a fur caplet and studded Christian Louboutin heels and matching clutch.Kate Hudson was flying high on the fashion front in London, looking super skinny in ultra-flared denim paired with a Burberry Prorsum Fall 2010 cropped shearling aviator jacket. Is it just us, or has Kate actually lost weight during her pregnancy.Miley Cyrus tried her best biker babe look?and failed, pairing her Harley Davidson t-shirt with acid washed jeggings, while Carey Mulligan was not exactly living up to her fashionista status at the opening night of Three Sisters in NYC, wearing frump fashion and absolutely no makeup.Who else rocked and shocked on the fashion front Thursday?? .?Going … going … gone.?? Sexy Agyness Deyn took a tumble on a New York catwalk this weekend in some towering heels during Naomi Campbell’s Fashion For Relief Haiti event, and has the supermodel’s spill in pictures.The seasoned model couldn’t get to grips with her killer Burberry footwear and eventually stumbled on to the floor in a fit of laughter.Fashionista Deyn decided to abandon her troublesome heels as she turned around and headed back to the dressing room to hopefully slip into something more comfortable.Ironically, the event was put together by supermodel Naomi Campbell, who famously fell over? on the catwalk during a Vivienne Westwood show in 1993.A couple of hours after the show Deyn Tweeted: ‘1st show of fashion week! Took a tumble! Got up! Fell again. Should have stayed down the 1st time. Twice! WTF! Ouch my knees!'Campbell had called together her model, designer and celebrity friends for the fundraiser,? but the most poignant moment of the event, held as part of New York Fashion Week, was the finale tribute to fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who died suddenly last week.The last seven outfits in Fashion for Relief were McQueen's, modeled by Campbell, Helena Christensen and Karen Elson, among others ? all wearing impossibly high heels by the designer, including one pair of platforms that didn't actually have any heels.Campbell said before the show that she's always nervous before walking the runway, 'but just doubly nervous' for the relief show because she had depended on friends to collaborate and wanted everyone to enjoy it.Other celebrities and models taking part in the fundraiser included Chris Brown, The Duchess Of York, Estelle, Helena Christensen, and Kelly Osbourne.?From the catwalk of the hottest fashion shows to inside the glossy pages of the top fashion magazines and catalogues, these sexy supermodels have taken over the world with their gorgeous faces and flawless figures. has compiled a list of the 15 sexiest supermodels on the planet, complete with sizzling photos of them stripped down to nearly nothing looking oh-so-sexy!Gisele Bundchen is the highest paid supermodel in the world, raking in over $25 million dollars last year, according to Forbes magazine. The Brazilian bombshell, who is married to NFL hunk Tom Brady, has coveted contracts with Dolce & Gabbana and True Religion, as well as her own sandals line. With her fat-free figure and purely Angelic face, she is definitely the sexiest and richest supermodel in the world!Rosie Huntington-Whiteley may not make as much money as fellow Angels Miranda Kerr, Alessandra Ambrosio and Adriana Lima, but her long term plan is definitely looking fruitful. The Brit babe, who calls hunky actor Jason Statham her beau, has skyrocketed to success with her doll-like face and beautiful body. And not only did she score a contract with Burberry this year, but replaced Megan Fox in the Transformers franchise.? She comes in 2nd on our hot list!Alessandra Ambrosia has made a splash in the modeling industry and comes in 3rd on our list. The Victoria's Secret babe is sexy, sultry and sassy, and we can't get enough of her bikini bod!Brooklyn Decker is a sexy swimsuit model who has made a racket on and off the catwalk! Not only does the bikini babe splash the pages and the covers of the coolest mags, but she gets to sit courtside and watch tennis pro hubby Andy Roddick squash the competition. The bombshell blonde comes in 4th on our list.Adriana Lima is another Brazilian babe, who has been a Victoria's Secret Angel since 2000. The super sexy siren (who professed she would remain a virgin until married) dated a slew of famous men, including Lenny Kravitz and Derek Jeter before she settled down with basketballer Marko Jaric. The sultry sex kitten rounds out our top 5.From Sports Illustrated swimsuit models to Brazilian babes, find out what other sexy supermodels ranked on our list of the 15 Sexiest Supermodels In The World in RadarOnline.com's sexy photo special!?RELATED STORIES:?Hollywood's hottest stars will be hitting the red carpet at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles on Wednesday night for the 2011 People's Choice Awards, and will be bringing you all of the action!Before the star-studded show, you don't want to miss this special fashion flashback with photos all the best, worst & wackiest fashions from years past.Sandra Bullock Blind Sided the world with her beauty and smashing fashion sense at the show in 2010, hitting the red carpet in stellar style.The Academy Awards winning star showed off her fab figure in a nude brocade off-the-shoulder Vivienne Westwood number, which she perfectly paired with Brian Atwood Maniac heels. Kate Hudson is a big screen babe known for her laid back look, but the beauty looked more frumpy than fashionable in 2009, when she drenched her figure in a bright blue, palm tree print Gucci gown..And when it comes to wacky, wrestler-turned-Celebrity Rehab star Chyna takes home the top honors for her bizarre red and black getup in 2004.The buff beauty finished off the hideous ensemble by wearing a chain necklace -- around her face! .?Jessica Alba always keeps it sexy at the People's Choice Awards.In 2001, the Dark Angel showed off her perfect 10 bod in a fab floral curve-hugger and ten years later in 2010, Jess scored the 'sexiest in show' honors, wearing a teeny tiny Antonio Berardi brocade mini with Burberry platforms. and .Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift are two country cuties who know how to hit the high note when they hit the press line.While Taylor opted for a white hot Jenny Packham mini in 2010, Carrie stepped out of her metallic a la mode comfort zone in a gauzy mesh Christian Cota strapless, which she paired with Rock and Republic cutout heels. and .What happens when you pair a red dress with a bad tan?Jessica Simpson learned the brutal lesson in 2006, when she stepped out in a scarlet strapless number, which was made disastrous by her Snooki tan..From sassy singers to bigscreen babes, find out who scored style wins and sins at the People's Choice Awards over the years .?RELATED STORIES:?Hollywood celebs bounced out of vacation mode and headed back to work this week, stepping out in fab and faux pas fashions and has all the photos in our weekly feature. To see stars in the best, worst & wackiest fashions, click the next sentence. After reports that she had split ways with her Thanksgiving-to-Christmas beau Jake Gyllenhaal, Taylor Swift rocked the red carpet of the People's Choice Awards in Los Angeles on Wednesday night, in fabulously fem fashion. The country cutie looked pretty in pink in a J. Mendel number from the Spring 2011 collection, which she paired with matching Prada heels and Neil Lane jewels. If she keeps looking this gorgeous, Tay Tay will surely find herself a new plus-one in time for the Grammy Awards in February.? See Taylor . Drew Barrymore missed the a la mode mark at the 50th Anniversary bash for CoverGirl. The brand's beautiful spokesperson looked great from the waist up in her marigold Jill Sander strapless gown from the Spring 2011 collection, but the cinched detail under her knees was unforgivable. See Drew's miss .Little Red Riding Dame? The fabulous Helen Mirren had a not so fabulous fashion faux pas in Los Angeles, pulling a Britney Spears and baring her belly in a crop top. The 65-year-old star paired a loudly patterned skirt with red tights, shoes and sweatshirt, landing herself the worst look of the week.? See Helen .Nicole Richie was dressed to thrill for a day at the salon in West Hollywood, rocking cutoff denim shorts with black tights, a white top, black jacket, a patterned scarf and a bright red Chanel flap bag, while Angel-turned-Transformer babe Rosie Huntington-Whiteley aced the less-is-more look, making a splash in St. Barts wearing a skimpy bikini.See Nicole and Rosie .Britney Spears and Lisa Rinna sported some not-so-hot headwear, while running errands in Los Angeles, while Snooki embarrassed the Burberry brand, wearing their iconic plaid scarf, while promoting her latest book on Extra.See Britney's blunder , Lisa's and Snooki's .To see more rocking and shocking fashion in RadarOnline.com's weekly photo feature, .RELATED STORIES: ?From the AFI Film Fest in Los Angeles to the NYC premiere of Morning Glory, stars were out and about over the weekend in the Best, Worst & Wackiest Fashions and RadarOnline.com has all the photos!Minnie Driver has definitely put herself back into the red carpet game over the past few months! The hot mamma showed up to the AFI screening of Barney’s Vision in orange crush a la mode, wearing a stunning strapless J. Mendel gown with oodles of Neil Lane jewels. Does it get any more gorgeous and glam?Sassy rapper Nicki Minaj was on hand for Lil Wayne’s welcome home party in Miami. The teal-haired singer definitely brightened up the night with her Pepto-Bismol doused ensemble, which consisted of a cutout, sparkly hooded romper (which barely covered her bum) with perfectly matching tights.Victoria Beckham was spotted at Heathrow airport in London, looking tres Posh in a perfectly tailored Burberry Prorsum peacoat and Christian Louboutin boots, while Rachel McAdams looked lovely in Lanvin at the NYC premiere of Morning Glory.Steven Tyler took a walk on the wild side in Rancho Mirage, California, wearing a short-sleeved leopard shirt with jeans, socks and Teva-style sandals, while Kourtney Kardashian continued her Mad Hatter streak in NYC.Several stars flocked to Sin City, where Tao Las Vegas celebrated their 5th anniversary. Karina Smirnoff showed off her new engagement ring bling, wearing a sexy cutout one-shouldered mini, while Kelly Bensimon looked like a dancer in the Nutcracker, wearing a tou tou dress with a black blazer.Who else rocked and shocked with their creative wardrobe choices? ?• : The Telegraph alerts us to a truly startling trend: England's poshest blondes are taking cues from aristo-brat and adopting Eurotrash signifiers like wraparound shades, hooker boots, shopping in "Pradashire," and working at Cond? Nast. • : Prince William's bird, Kate Middleton, gets a 9-5 at high-street shop . The Guardian uses this momentous occasion to take swipes at her lumpen bod, mom-jeans, and tired haircut. • : A plague of murses begs the question: Could British men be any wetter?• : Evil reality TV geniuses hand real live tots to moronic teenagers for a show called . Somewhere, Mark Burnett punches a wall.• : Snapper Mario Testino shoots nepotistas Otis and Isaac Ferry, Jasset Ormsby Gore, Sam Branson, Max Irons, and Justin Portman for Burberry's latest ad assault.?NO PURCHASE NECESSARY.1. Eligibility: RADAR’s “AWARDS GIFT BAG” Contest (the “Contest”) is open to legal residents of the fifty (50) states of the United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 years or older.? Radar Online, LLC (the “Sponsor”) and its managers, employees and agents, and members of the immediate family of such individuals (including spouses, parents, siblings, children and their respective spouses) and persons living in the same household with any such individuals are ineligible.? Void where prohibited or restricted by law.2. How To Enter: Entrants will need to establish a Twitter account, follow @radar_online and watch the MTV Movie Awards televised Sunday, June 3, 2012 at 9PM ET / 8PM CT. 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Sponsor or third parties may contact entrants at a future date about services the Sponsor believes entrants will find of interest.9. For the name of the Winner, mail a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: RADAR ONLINE/MTV AWARDS, 4 New York Plaza, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10004. Requests for the name of the Winner must be received by June 15, 2012. Residents of Vermont may omit return postage.10. This Contest is sponsored by RADAR ONLINE, 4 New York Plaza, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10004??It was a fashionably fierce Monday night in NYC as style stars flocked to the 2010 CFDA Fashion Awards, where Marc Jacobs, Jason Wu, Michael Kors and Christopher Bailey for Burberry were amongst the trendsetters who took home trophies honoring their contribution to the industry. The competition was even more intense on the red carpet, with huge stars like Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwyneth Paltrow and Dakota Fanning wearing top designer looks from the newest runway collections.We weren’t surprised to see Sarah Jessica Parker honoring her late pal Alexander McQueen, wearing a gorgeous boho gown from his Pre-Fall 2010 Collection. Her purple and pink, wildly patterned gown was absolutely stunning, and we loved how she paired it with balanced bracelets on each wrist and a hippie-chic grey bucket clutch.Gwyneth Paltrow looked totally glam in a custom coutured Michael Kors one-shouldered gown, which featured sexy cutouts.? The black liquid number hugged her covetable curves in all the right places and was perfectly paired with a crocodile Michael Kors clutch and Fred Leighton jewels.We have been loving Jessica Biel’s look lately, but the bombshell failed to impress us in a Diane von Furstenberg gown, which looked like it belonged in the jungle.? We weren’t impressed with Alexa Chung’s choice of granny footwear or Kate Mara’s little red riding hood Zac Posen dress either!Who else rocked and shocked on the red carpet? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.? and make a beautiful couple!Fortunately though for Rosie's boyfriend, Jason Statham, (and Ryan's rumored squeeze Sandra Bullock) their romantic clinch is just for the cameras.The perfectly-formed pair are the new faces of the Autograph brand in British department store Marks and Spencer's fall campaign.The Transformers 3 star and the Green Hornet hunk join current M&S spokesmodels, Lisa Snowdon, soccer star Jamie Redknapp and sixties model Twiggy.“Rosie and Ryan are the perfect fit for Autograph ? beautiful, exclusive and absolutely contemporary,"?said Marks and Spencer executive director Steve Sharp, ."On set, they worked together to deliver a mesmerizing performance which allowed us to capture shots that sizzle with excitement and an air of mystery."Sharp went on to add: "We are very proud of the result ? a set of truly stunning photographs that totally encapsulates the Autograph brand."English beauty Huntington-Whiteley, 24, is far more experienced as a model than an actress, having posed in front of the cameras for Victoria's Secret and Burberry.Ryan, 34, is best known for his string of hit films including The Proposal and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but by the look of these brooding photos, he is a natural fashion model.RELATED STORIES:? &lt;a href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" mce_href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" target="_top"&gt; &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"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt; ?Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is working at breakneck speed to balance her modeling and acting careers. The English beauty went bi-coastal this week, flying from the Los Angeles set of her first high-profile film to the Victoria’s Secret catwalk in New York- all within 48 hours! On Monday, Rosie was alongside Shia LaBeouf in Los Angeles as they filmed some high octane scenes for the upcoming Transformers sequel. Clad in jeans and a white jacket, Rosie put on her best frightened and tough face for the harrowing action-packed shoot. Two days later, she was the vision of model calm backstage at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in New York. Clad in a darling pink robe, she smiled happily for the cameras as she waited for her cue to hit the catwalk. The fashion show will air on Tuesday, November 30 at 10/9c on CBS.RELATED STORIES: ? - Radar Style & Beauty Editor made her bigscreen debut on Wednesday in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which she has been promoting for weeks in flawless fashion. has all the details about all of the supermodel-turned-blockbuster babe's latest looks in this special photo feature.Michael Kors, Burberry Prorsum, Gucci, Naeem Khan and Antonio Berardi were the designers who the Victoria's Secret model turned to for her red carpet appearances - and each of the masters a la mode dressed her to perfection.Even when Rosie was in-between red carpet appearances, she managed to look absolutely flawless with her casually chic fashion. We are especially craving the frugal Yosi Samra chain strap ballet flats she sported in NYC, which retail for $66 on .What was your favorite look of Rosie's? Leave your comments below!RELATED STORIES:?Sarah Jessica Parker and husband Matthew Broderick are moving on up: the couple have reportedly purchased a $21 million townhouse in the Upper West Side. The says Sarah and Matthew have settled on Laurie Tisch's former place at 88 Central Park West.The apartment has 8 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms and 5 half bathrooms, 2 walk-in closets in the master bedroom, and a 32-foot living room with 10.5-foot ceilings.RELATED STORIES:?Sarah Jessica Parker had a style hit and miss over the weekend, stepping out in sexy and sloppy threads!? The fabulous fashionista attended the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston, shimmering in silver ensemble from the Stella McCartney Spring 2009 Collection, however, on a daytime outing with her babies, the usually a la mode mom looked super disheveled, wearing an oversized v-neck t-shirt, with a frumpy skirt and white tennis shoes.Rihanna looked glam glam glam in Paris, pairing a stylized Burberry Prorsum trench with Balmain booties, while the Material Girl awkwardly paired embellished sandals with an athletic tracksuit in NYC!? Suddenly single Halle Berry looked casually chic, wearing an oversized Riller & Fount top with leggings, grommeted sandals and Ralph Lauren shades, as did Kate Bosworth, who rocked uber-short J Brand cutoffs with a white blouse.What Gossip Girl star was inappropriately clothed, while performing onstage in New Jersey? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.? - Radar Style & Beauty EditorFrom the swankiest soirees of London Fashion Week to the hottest red carpet premiere in Los Angeles, the sexiest stars were dressed to rock and shock on Monday ? and has all the wardrobe winners and style sinners in our daily fashion feature.The was no lack of sex appeal at the Moet & Chandon Etoile Awards in London, where Sienna Miller, Kate Moss, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Candice Swanepoel were dressed to thrill in dangerously divine attire.While Sienna dazzled in an embellished slipdress with a glossy coat of bright red lipstick, Rosie showed off her banging bod in a lowcut and slitty Burberry gown, Victoria’s Secret model Candice channeled her dark Angel in Tom Ford and Kate rocked a white hot, slightly embellished gown with a fur coat. Well done, ladies!Over at the Los Angeles premiere of What’s Your Number, Marley Shelton experienced a bedtime blunder wearing a boob-baring wrap dress, which looked more like a bathrobe! Luckily the movie’s star, Anna Faris, was there to save the style day.? The funny and fabulous leading lady rocked a white strapless Prada cocktail frock with Christian Louboutin spiked heels and glistening gold clutch.Sienna Miller and Gemma Arterton rocked beyond cool Burberry Prorsum duds to the Brit brands Spring 2012 show in London, while stylist to-the-stars Rachel Zoe got drenched in an oversized plaid, fur-cuffed coat.What other stars were dressed to rock and shock on Monday? Click to find out.?Me and Orson Welles star Zac Efron, was not always a heartthrob! Before he became every little girl’s High School Musical screensaver, Zac looked like the average boy next door. Overnight, the sweet faced, blue eyed boy turned into a stud, putting some meat, and designer duds, on his bones!Though Zac likes to get all done up for the red carpet, wearing perfectly tailored and traditional Burberry suits, he has incorporated his personal style into his not-so-formal ensembles, adding tennis shoes to ties, and t-shirts to tailored vests.What makes his style work? Check out the gallery to find out!? &lt;a href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" mce_href="http://s27.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=s27radaronline" target="_top"&gt; &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"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt; ?From inflatable swimming wings and bras to MC Hammer pants and fanny packs, stars sported some wacky and tacky fashions this week, but thankfully the powers that be put Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week on the style schedule, where glamazon gals walked the red carpet in devastatingly divine duds.Jessica Alba was the Lady in Red of the fiercely fashionable week, hitting the Chanel show in a Spring 2010 embroidered white mini, which featured a slender red belt and then making her way over to Valentino, where she modeled a gorgeously ruffled, one-shouldered gown from the designer's Spring 2010 collection.? Painting her pout in scarlet lipstick, the brunette beauty ravished. Claire Danes looked anything but mellow in a multi-shaded Valentino strapless, while Gossip Girl duo Blake Lively and Leighton Meester rocked night-and-day looks at Chanel. Dita von Teese stole the spotlight away from the other catwalk crawlers at the Jean Paul Gaultier show, shedding her gorgeously designed black gown to reveal a barely decent, sequined, bandage corset.? Mind you, there were children sitting in the front row as she strut her stuff with her bum fully exposed!Lil' Kim also rocked underwear as outerwear in Canada, while Kelis attempted to bring back some unfortunate 1990's trends, while hopping on a flight in London.What tennis champ hit a grand slam in Burberry?? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.?New York may steal the glory from ready-to-wear shows around the world, but don't be mistaken, other Fashion Weeks get celeb attendance all the same. Just ask Burberry Porsum, who had a fantastic show of A List support for their new collection. !The biggest treat for Burberry no doubt was the surfacing of college girl Emma Watson?who popped back from America where she's studying at Brown University. Emma looks amazing in Burberry's own yellow flowered frock, belted in black.?Gossip Girl’s bad boy Ed Westwick has quickly established himself as one of the haute-ist actors in Hollywood! His clever off-screen style, which channels his character Chuck Bass, is a fluid mixture of prepster and hipster.Off the carpet, Ed mixes and matches key components, such as concert t-shirts, plaid scarves, stylish work boots, and panama hats, while dressing up for the press in perfectly tailored suits and Gucci loafers.Check out the secrets to Ed's style success!?The stars turned out in style for a signage unveiling party to celebrate the British fashion house Burberry's newest flagship location in New York City. Claire Danes stole the show at the rooftop fete, in a heather-grey bubble hem dress from the designer's pre-fall 09 collection, Molly Sims shimmered in a feathered and crinkled frock, and Rose McGowan went retro in an over-sized cream suit.Downtown for a benefit at Capitale, Sex And The City star Kristin Davis was beauteous in black, as she traded in her Charlotte-like dresses for a modern glam twist in a black leather studded Oscar de la Renta strapless dress with embroidered details and a feathered skirt.And while were on the subject of comely, cable TV brunettes, Weeds star Mary-Louise Parker shined while showing her support for the Worldwide Orphan Foundation Benefit at the La Perla boutique in Los Angeles. The Fried Green Tomatoes alumna looked cutesy casual in a bow-waisted, strapless black dress. Parker's simple-yet-chic style is flattering -- until you notice the woodblock platform, metallic sandals, which would have been better left buried in the closet.Also in Los Angeles, for Oakley's Intro to Summer Event, High School Musical's Vanessa Hudgens sported a flirty white mini dress that complemented her flawless olive complexion. She topped off the fashionable ensemble with mix-matched bangles and metallic gladiator sandals. The girl we envy snagged a pair of the brand's retro Frogskins shades while she was in the neighborhood.For these looks and many more hit our Style Radar.? Radar Style & Beauty EditorFrom the red carpet to the streets, stars were dressed to rock and shock on Thursday and RadarOnline.com has all the photos in our daily fashion feature!Olivia Wilde was in full bloom at the Maui Film Festival. The stunning star, who was honored with the Shining Star Award, rocked the tropics in a dramatically lowcut, fab Vivienne Westwood floral frock, which she paired with metallic heels.Only a Playboy Bunny would pair a swimsuit with heels and head out to a birthday dinner! Jayde Nicole definitely made a splash in Los Angeles, wearing sexy beachwear on the streets.Serena Williams hit a grand slam in a jewel-toned Burberry cocktail dress the WTA Tour Pre-Wimbledon Party, while Elle Fanning looked princess pretty in Marc Jacobs at the Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards. Katie Holmes and Julie Benz were also at the swanky soiree, but only one of them scored best dressed status.What other stars rocked and shocked on the fashion front? Click to find out.? Radar Style & Beauty EditorFrom the MuchMusic Video Awards in Canada to biggest Sin City soirees, Hollywood’s hottest stars were dressed to rock and shock over the weekend in the best, worst & wackiest fashions and RadarOnline.com has all the photos in our weekly feature.Selena Gomez brought her steamy style north of the border for the Canadian awards show, rocking a super chic and sexy Burberry Prorsum mini on the red carpet. The Disney diva paired the tiny little thang with bright purple Giuseppe Zanotti peep-toes, dominating the red carpet. Also at the show, Avril Lavigne wore another Sk*er girl outfit (blah!) while Lady Gaga upped the wacky factor wearing one Versace outfit after another.Miley Cyrus experience a crop-top catastrophe Down Under, while Heidi Klum made an appearance on a German television show looking totally out of character in a crazily patterned catsuit.Kate Bosworth looked pretty in hot pink at the Life Happens premiere of the Los Angeles Film Festival, rocking a Richard Nicoll number with Chloe sandals, while Kim Kardashian showed off her crazy curves at Khloe’s 27th birthday bash, wearing a sexy Herve Leger by Max Azria bandage dress with black Christian Louboutins.What other stars were dressed to rock and shock over the weekend? Click to find out.?Dominic Cooper and Amanda Seyfried can't get enough of each other---or their trench coats! The Mama Mia couple has been spotted all over New York, wearing their hearts on the sleeves of their coordinating spring coats.? While Amanda has been sporting the Brit brand's iconic trench in black, her beau has been rocking the navy blue. The Burberry trench coat is a great wardrobe staple, as it can be worn with casually, for an afternoon of stomping through the spring rain or on the red carpet, as the couple has proved!? The versatile coat is what put the over 100-year-old designer label on the map.? Back in 1901, Thomas Burberry created the belted khaki coat for British Army officers, spawning a style evolution. Who looked better in their Burberry trench coat?? Check out the gallery in Style and let us know.?Now that Kate Moss has checked into an Arizona rehab clinic to atone for her coke-induced PR debacle, she'll have plenty of time to deal with the most tragic aspect of her ordeal--reports that her ex-boyfriend, Jefferson Hack, is seeking sole custody of their two-year-old daughter, Lila Grace. Unlike her other issues, however, we hear this one could be resolved with a simple DNA test.According to sources close to the model, rumors have been circulating London fashion circles for years that Lila's true father is not Hack--globetrotting editor of Brit mags Dazed & Confused and Another--but chronic bed-hopper Jude Law."Sadie [Frost, Jude's ex] and Kate are best, best friends, and Jude and Sadie were huge into couples swapping and orgies," says a friend of the former couple. "They had group sex where absolutely everything was okay."Meanwhile, fallout from Moss's ouster by prominent Euro fashion houses H&M and Burberry has triggered panic among stateside fashionistas about an impending crackdown on the slimming drug."Kate has always had a horrible cocaine problem, but for these companies to dismiss her now is ridiculous because people will only start hunting for the other ones," says one top fashion editor. "All the girls are doing coke again. If you held everyone to the same standard, no one would be left to model the freakin' clothes!"Neither Moss's lawyer, publicist, nor agent returned phone calls or e-mails seeking comment by press time.?The metrosexual blather is so passe and now we just accept that men - can and do - have style!? Bomber leather jackets, paperboy caps, tailored suit-coats, embellished boots, and all - the manly men of Hollywood are picking up the latest trends and fashioning some pretty fab accessories! (Continue for pictures)Lenny Kravitz worked a man-purse and zippy hip boots in Paris. Brad Pitt,? in a black bomber coat, was caught toting a Burberry bag at the airport. Kellan Lutz styled it up sharply in a tailored suit-jacket with a? matching knit cap in Hollywood, and Russell Brand worked his rocker-guy, Brit trendy-mess style! The ladies may be fashionistas, but these studs are fashioneers! Touche!(Photo: Splash News)?Bill Murray braved the chilly winter weather of New York City yesterday, wearing plaid Bermuda shorts with his galoshes. The funny-guy, who is recovering from a ski accident, headed to an appearance on David Letterman, adding a striped oxford, tie and leather vest to the already wacky and insensible gear. If he isn’t careful, he will soon be recovering from frost bite as well!Emile De Ravin looking very memorable at the New York Premiere of Remember Me. The angelic actress wore a demurely-hued, Gianfranco Ferre, one-shouldered mini with Burberry Prorsum Twisted Band platform sandals.Though the actress cuddled with costar Robert Pattinson for pictures, Kristen Stewart was there to dispel any romance rumors. What was Kristen wearing to support her main man? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.?Yet another accident occurred Monday on the set of Transformers 3 when a Washington D.C. police officer en route to a call was unaware filming was going on, and collided into a yellow Chevy Camaro known in the films as “Bumblebee.”Watch the video on The police officer involved in the collision was headed to investigate a suspicious package report, authorities said, when the accident took place at 3:30 pm ET at Third Street and Maryland Avenue NW in the nation's capital. The officer was taken via ambulance to the hospital, while the driver of the Camaro was unharmed.The officer was treated at the hospital and released.Monday's incident marks the second major accident during production of the film, as extra Gabriela Cedillo suffered brain damage and partial paralysis when she was hit in the head by a flying metal cable September 1 while filming in Hammond, Indiana.Cedillo's family last week filed a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures, citing negligence in connection with her accident.?RELATED STORIES:?Sarah Jessica Parker had the fashion industry buzzing, making an appearance at the Spring 2011 Burberry Prorsum collection fashion show at London Fashion Week on Tuesday. Wearing the Brit brand from leather peacoat to strappy sandal, the Sex in the City star was far from camera shy as she shared her excitement about sitting catwalk side at the show."The Burberry folks were very kind to invite me," she modestly exclaimed. "They have been very generous in the past and this is the first occasion that I could work it out with my children and with my work schedule."Carrying a princess-like sparkly pink purse, Sarah was joined by the likes of gorgeous tennis pro Serena Williams, Alexa Chung and the Devil herself, Anna Wintour."This is my first fashion show in Europe," gushed Serena Williams, in a teenage-like manner. "I always do the ones in New York so I definitely wanted to come outside of the United States and do some this time. I love it. I can't believe I'm here. I'm so excited!"Highlights of the show included Burberry1s intricately studded leather jackets, wildly wondrous animal prints and of course, a stellar fashion show wouldn't be complete without a model taking a tumble on her way down the runway.Inspired by biker culture, Christopher Bailey's Spring 2011 collection for Burberry Prorsum is sure to be a celeb favorite, aa Sarah Jessica Parker herself will most definitely be rocking the look soon enough!?The B-list tableau inside the new Vogue Italia is enough to induce purging, with four versions of Nicole Richie's malnourished carcass fronting the avant-guard style bible, and Lance Bass, Kathy Griffin, Carmen Elektra, Paris Hilton, and Kevin Federline trashing up the feature well. Celebrity snapper Steven Meisel's latest bravely satirizing the vapidity of celebrity culture and its outsized influence on American fashion isn't quite as stunning . But this time, the stars are in on it!Meanwhile, we hear professional party guest Mischa Barton is set to appear on the cover of Vogue UK, and Burberry addicted chav-queen Victoria "Posh" Beckham has booked Australian . No word yet on whether Meisel is shooting them. [Images after the jump]?Over the weekend, fashion’s most fabulous strut their stuff down the runway of the Naomi Campbell’s Fashion For Relief Haiti show during New York Fashion Week.? The charitably chic event, which is expected to raise nearly $1 million, featured creations from Alexander McQueen, Marchesa, Burberry, Missoni and other haute couture designers, many of which have been worn by celebs on the red carpet.Supermodel Helena Christensen rocked the same Alexander McQueen yellow and black number, which Drew Barrymore was critically panned for at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Whip It, while Naomi shimmied down the carpet in the same wildly designed McQueen, that Lily Cole made famous at the Tokyo premiere of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman wore one of her own creations, which a certain Gossip Girl snagged Best Dressed nods for in 2009.? Who wore it best?? Check out the gallery in Style to find out.?What do Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Amber Heard and Lily Donaldson have in common -- other than the fact that they are all drop dead gorgeous blondes? All three babes have rocked the same red hot Christian Dior gown to different swanky events over the last year.Amber Heard was the first big screen babe to wear the sheer and sexy gown, hitting the 3rd Annual Art of Elysium Heaven Gala back in January.A few months later in May, Transformers babe/Burberry model Rosie rocked the gown with a fur shrug to the Elle Style Awards in the UK.And last, but not least, model Lily Donaldson got gowned in the Dior number at the Vogue 90th Anniversary Party in Paris last week.Who Wore Christian Dior Best? Check out the gallery and find out.?While and most of the Western world (with the possible exception of Katie Holmes and Harper's Bazaar) agree that Posh Spice is a head-to-toe style disaster, David Beckham usually fares better in the press. And it David's boys are following in his dandy footsteps. Last week the fellows stepped out in $500 Ralph Lauren "Wimbledon" jackets to celebrate the christening of Geri Halliwell's daughter, Bluebell. Adorable, no? Trouble is, Posh and Becks were livid to find that a hapless flack at Ralph Lauren sent out a release and pictures boasting about the kids wearing their duds, without first checking with the family.And, really, what were the publicists thinking? Considering the negative impact the chavvy Beckhams' adoption of Burberry had on the brand, you'd think Ralph Lauren would have known better. It's only a few years before we start seeing Brooklyn Beckham careening around Hollywood with Suri Cruise in his 'n' hers "I put the sexy in dislexia" tees. ?as it stands now is enough to make a girl’s head spin, but just to keep you in the here and now, Resort, though it debuted beginning in June is just trickling in for the buying. I picked my top ten that have me dying for a long weekend get-away to somewhere lovely, maybe exotic and just a bit warmer (but not necessarily tropical). Historically, isn’t meant for the shock-me shock-me value, it’s all about the buy-me buy-me, so be prepared to get inspired. From the to sick prints and more than a few outstanding shorts, let resort knock you out of your which-coat-to-wear-today fashion haze. ?looks from both local and non-local designers (such as Britain’s own ), who flocked to the Swedish capital to showcase their Autumn/Winter 2012 collections for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.During the three-day period, Sweden’s home-grown creatives proved that they are indeed experts at layering, and masters of using the warmest fabrics, knits and wools.On Monday, Stylein helped kick off the event with and jumpsuits in vibrant solids.Boomerang also reminded everyone of the season with chunky knits scarves, while Carin Wester did the same by incorporating luxurious winter coats into her collection that included many classically feminine designs.V Ave Shoe Repair had one of the more dramatic collections. Models walked the runway wering dark colors in bold, .In contrast to V Ave Shoe Repair, the looks from the Whyred runway show seemed to be inspired by the shapes and color palette of a .Go-to favorites like and Rodebjer killed it once again by pushing the boundaries on current trend staples with Cheap Monday doing their own unique take on boyfriend jeans, while Rodebjer had no problem throwing bold colors into the mix.Click through the slideshow above to see these and more fashion week highlights, and let us know what you think in the comments section below![Photos courtesey of ]?, the highlights of the night included Marc Jacobs being inducted into the Fragrance Foundation’s Hall of Fame and Coty winning the most awards, with six total. Other big winners were Estée Lauder Inc., with four awards, and Arden, with three.For those less interested in the number of awards won, and more interested in what must-have scents to rush to Sephora for during their lunch break today, here is the complete list of fragrance winners:Fragrance of the Year, Women’s Luxe: Harajuku Lovers Fragrances — Love, Lil’Angel, Music, Baby, “G” — Coty Prestige??Fragrance of the Year, Men’s Luxe: I Am King — Sean John — Sean John Fragrances??Fragrance of the Year, Women’s Popular Appeal: American Beauty Beloved — BeautyBank??Fragrance of the Year, Men’s Popular Appeal: McGraw by Tim McGraw — Coty Inc.??Fragrance of the Year Unique Boutique: Tom Ford Private Blend Champaca Absolute — Tom Ford Beauty??Fragrance of the Year Women’s Nouveau Niche: Chloé Eau de Parfum — Coty Prestige??Fragrance of the Year Men’s Nouveau Niche: Burberry the Beat for Men — P&G Prestige Products Inc.??Fragrance of the Year — Private Label/Direct Sell: Victoria’s Secret Sexy Little Things Noir Eau de Parfum — Victoria’s Secret BeautyHall of Fame: Marc Jacobs?: For those of you who still have respect for Galliano, he has indeed apologized for his “little” outburst. Read it here. : Check out some of your favorite models in the amazing, trippy and eccentric video from everyone’s favorite Miuccia Prada. The London fashion queen has just named the voluptuous Christina Hendricks as the face of her Palladium Jewelry Collection. One word: amazing.: Animal prints are still very much in, especially python. Mario Testino shoots these incredible new pieces for the line. Trenches, clutches and stilettos. Oh my! Find out what the fabulous blogger Beth Jones is listening to, her secret style weapon, her favorite designers and much more.?may not be the biggest of the bunch , but it is still definitely packed with tons of quality films, and just like New York City itself, the festival’s only real trademark is its diversity.At Tribeca (or TFF as it’s called on the cobblestone streets), you’ll find a mixture of genres and experience levels (both on a directorial and acting front), so this just happens to be one festival where you’ll see household names (, Bobby De Niro and the like) headlining premieres along with .But because we have yet to see the performances in the latter group, we’ve compiled a list of people you may kind-of-sort-of know when they had that supporting role in that one movie, but who will most give big-time, possibly career-launching performances at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.Browse through our top five up-and-coming talents to keep an eye out for this week in the slideshow above?and don’t forget to check out the over on the official TFF website, and let us know who you’re looking forward to seeing at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival that kicks off this Wednesday in lower Manhattan!?, I was fortunate to run into a good pal of mine from London.He goes by the name of and is a regular on London’s nightlife circuit, promoting and DJing at his own popular Central London party known as .Funny enough, turns out the dude for a living as well! That’s how we came to run into each other at the Libertine Fall/Winter 2012 runway show at Milk Studios, as he was doing hair for the New York-based label (and a few other shows that week too).Since he’s no stranger to the fashion week circuit and knows how to spin a few jams, we hit up our boy across the pond to give us the lowdown on the best tracks that played on the catwalks during this most recent London Fashion Week.From to a classic 90s jam courtesy of TLC, Fall/Winter 2012 London Fashion Week was one part pop, one part hip hop and just all-around awesome.Check out all of Scott’s 7 top tracks down below!Charli XCX “I’ll Never Know” at Fred Butler Azealia Banks “212″ at House Of Holland TLC “Creep” at Topshop Unique Rocky Horror Picture Show “Sweet Transvestite” at Meadham Kirchhoff Marina & The Diamonds “Numb” at Burberry The D “Too Insistent” at Nicole Farhi Kelis “Milkshake” at Kinder Aggugini ?have been announced, it’s time to celebrate! Vanity Fair and the Elton John AIDS Foundation both held after parties once the Oscars wrapped last night. Celebrities were dressed to the nines, of course, and we’ve picked our favorites from the late-night festivities.Jennifer Lopez (above): embodied Gucci’s glamour with a black drape gown from the Italian house’s Pre-Fall 2010 line. The black ostrich feathers and cut-out sides are the perfect modern details for a classic gown.: The rising starlet and Vanity Fair cover girl wore a short and playful Valentino dress from the line’s Haute Couture Spring 2010 runway show. It’s a younger, more playful dress than the gown she wore to present the 2010 Academy Award for “Best Song” that went to Crazy Heart. Anna Kendrick: Another rising starlet, Anna Kendrick, didn’t let her loss for Best Actress in a Supporting Role get her down. Post-Oscars, the young sensation switched from a rosy pink chiffon gown to a short and white dress with a sweetheart neckline, feathers, and lace. Kate Beckinsale: The English actress (and our favorite ) sports a silver one shoulder draped gown by Kaufman Franco– with a shining smile to match. Natalie Portman: , Natalie Portman, took advantage of the post-Oscars hoopla in a gray, strapless Lanvin dress. But listen up, Portman admirers: her expensive dress of choice is surprisingly paired with an of black satin “Segura” platform peep toes! Kate Bosworth: Bosworth leaves us red with envy in a gorgeous Valentino gown from the Fall 2010 season. Victoria Beckham: The Oscars is the perfect showcase for designers. practiced a little self-promotion as a by flaunting her very own creation at two after parties. Hilary Swank: The 35-year-old Academy Award winning actress is known to wow onlookers with her choices. Despite her absence at the actual award show this year, Swank made it a point to catch everyone’s attention post-Oscars. Her sultry Armani Priv gown plunged in the front and the back. Julianne Moore: A-lister and Best Actress in a Supporting Role nominee for , Julianne Moore, showed off her timeless beauty in this slender and strapless gown. : The H.S.M. star sparkles on the red carpet in a Jenny Packham gown with a plunging neckline. However, nothing beats her ultimate accessory and arm candy– . Rashida Jones: Looks like plunging necklines were all the rage at the Vanity Fair fete. Funny girl , opts for neutral tones (courtesy of Burberry) with bold black platform sandals by YSL and bright red lipstick. Cameron Diaz: After presenting the Best Animated Feature award to Pixar’s Up, Diaz switched from a to a metallic one-shouldered cocktail frock from Victoria Beckham’s Fall 2010 collection. Looks like Beckham more than approved– the former Spice Girl chose a similar dress to wear to the event herself (see above). Lydia Hearst: The and New York socialite was utterly dazzling at the 18th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Party in a flapper-inspired dress with elaborate beading. While prepping for the party, Hearst even Tweeted about her hair and makeup.More News We Love: ?‘s bold trompe l’oeil pumps leading the way, we’ve spotted taste makers on the street (and at fashion week!) in sparkly numbers more traditionally reserved for nights on the town.Whether you’re rocking ‘s amazing envelope clutch with a t-shirt or platform heels with your favorite skinny jeans, the key to wearing this trend is keeping it simple. That means keeping it to one glittery piece per outfit and refraining from adding evening textures such as silk and velvet into the mix if possible.(P.S. We will be posting a new Accessories Trend Report every Friday. Check back for updates and let us know in the comments section below what you think!)Photographer: Spencer Wohlrab Stylist: Truc Nguyen?. And for ladies looking to get away in style, Vegas has so much to offer way beyond just the casinos and flashing lights for which its best known. Whether youre looking to lie by the pool, see a show, dine out, dance the night away or some combination of all of those the hotels along theStrip can provide a weekend of non-stop fun and relaxation. Plus, room rates in Vegas these days are terrifically reasonable. If you’ve been thinking of planning one such gals getaway, read on for insider info on Las Vegas top five hotels for the perfect girl excursion.Palazzo Location: 3325 Las Vegas Blvd. South Prices start at: $159 – $229 Hotel: 702.607.7777One of Las Vegas nicest hotels, the Palazzo is centrally located on the Strip and has standard rooms that start at a whopping 720 square feet. Girlfriends can easily fit everyone into one room all of which include a sunken living room and still live in the lap of luxury. The haute-couture shopping mall here has names like and Christian Louboutin; the LAVO nightclub is one of the hottest in town; and the 15 or so restaurants include joints from the likes of Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse. The Canyon Ranch Spa is arguably the best in Vegas, with a ceramic-tiled laconium, rain showers, and an indoor rock climbing wall. Head next door to the attached Venetian hotel to check out Tao the three-in-one nightclub, restaurant, and party pool that is the talk of the town. Aria Location: 3730 Las Vegas Blvd. South Prices start at: $139 – $299 Hotel: 866.359.7111Aria is a hotel and shopping complex that opened in December 2009. It cost $11 billion to build and is the biggest hotel in City Center. Even at a whopping 4,004 rooms, service here is still attentive and impressive, and the beautiful hotel includes 16 restaurants, seven bars, four pools, and a 150,000-square-foot casino. The adult-only Liquid Pool and Lounge and Haze nightclub have quickly become among Vegas most popular, especially on weekends. And although all guest rooms dazzle with supremely comfy beds, state-of-the-art technology, and big marble bathrooms, the spacious Sky Suites are a great option for groups who want to spread out in style and receive VIP treatment (a limo from the airport and a private elevator, for example). Attached to the hotel is Crystals shopping mall, with designer stores from Prada to Tom Ford. Encore Location: 3131 Las Vegas Blvd. South Prices start at: $133 – $324 Hotel: 877.3210.9966Although its been arguably the most luxurious Vegas hotel since opening as the sister property to the Wynn, Encores recently-opened venues, Surrender nightclub and Encore Beach Club, have stepped up the hotels game, especially for those coming to party. Theres also the sexy poolside lounge XS, and the hot Tryst nightclub next door at Wynn. For a more zen experience, the beautiful spa has 37 treatment rooms; the fitness center offers spinning, yoga, pilates, and meditation classes and features a delicious juice bar. Come evening its time for the spectacular, aquatic acrobatic show Le Rve at the Wynn, and for dinner at one of Encores five fine dining restaurants. Hard Rock Location: 4455 Paradise Road Prices start at: $48 – $120 Hotel: 702.693.5000This hotel has a sexy, bad-boy reputation, and its well-deserved. Theres always lots of action here whether its in the three main pools where sip beers all day long, in the two sprawling casinos, in the nine restaurants (including Nobu and Ago), or at the extremely popular Vanity nightclub. All three towers of guest rooms are stylish and sumptuous, and the HRH and Paradise Towers are both new as of 2009. Groups may want to opt for a large room in the HRH all-suites tower, though even standard rooms here are plenty comfortable for four people (opt for two double beds). Wild party girls can head to the infamous Rehab pool party on Sundays, but those looking for a more relaxing respite can hit up the new Reliquary Spa, which features a beautiful co-ed Turkish bathhouse. Caesars Location: 3570 Las Vegas Blvd. South Price next 30 days: $57 – $341 Hotel: 702.731.7333One of the Vegas most famous names, Caesars is a Vegas icon that sits smack in the middle of the Strip and offers countless amenities. The massive spa includes Roman baths, a steamy laconium, and an arctic ice room; a tea sommelier is on hand. The hotel has five main pools, including one with casino games and an adjacent bar, plus another adults-only party pool. And while the 13 restaurants include big names like Bobby Flays Mesa Grill and Restaurant Guy Savoy, there are affordable options too. And if a lively casino scene is what youre after, then look no further. Youll feel in the heart of the action when youre placing bets at tables that stretch across this classic hotel. If youre not a gambler, head to the hotels PURE nightclub, where a huge outdoor terrace has a perfect view of the Strip, or stroll through the Forum Shops for world-class shopping at stores like , Fendi, and Coach.Contributed by Jennifer Garfinkel, Editor of All photos courtesy of Oyster.com. All rights reserved. ?‘s postergirl for the British house’s ad campaign, but this time, the legendary Mario Testino photographed her alongside one of her favorite leading men: her younger brother, Alex. As a new face over at Storm Models, one of Britain’s leading modeling agencies, this is not Alex Watson‘s first foray into the spotlight, as he appeared as an extra in two of his big sis’ Harry Potter films. Even though he had a dose of fame from her Harry Potter films, Alex will upstage Emma when he walks for Burberry at London Fashion Week next month, according to . We’re just as excited to watch Alex walk as we are to see what Emma wears as she cheers from the front row. And because we know how excited you’re getting for Fashion Week, here are our picks for hottest male models to watch out for. Lars Burmeister: When he’s not posing for Vogue, Armani, or Hugo Boss, this former mechanic from Germany enjoys soccer. Baptiste Giabiconi: Baptiste, native to France, is Karl Lagerfeld’s favorite male muse. Simon Nessman: This Canadian model was discovered after his sister’s friend sent his photo to Mode Models in Calgary. Ben Hill: Ben Hill is a southern gentlemen who graduated from the Abercrombie and Fitch Quarterly to Italian Vanity Fair and Vogue. Julien Quevenne: No one can pout for the camera quite like Julien, which is why he has become a regular face for D&G, DSquared2, and Lucien Pellat-Finet. Nate Gill: This handsome American water polo player has been photographed for DKNY and Rugby. Max Motta: A rising star from Brazil, Max Motta has stunned Dior and Trussardi with his innocent looks. Danny Schwarz: The British model has charmed everyone from D&G to Armani to Barneys New York.Marlon Teixeira: With Portuguese, Indian, and Japanese genes, Marlon Teixeira began modeling at age 16. Mat Gordon: This hockey-loving Canadian model has most recently posed for Daks, Desigual, Tommy Hilfiger, and Missoni. [] ?for you before you even have the opportunity to get your hands on a hard copy, but there’s so much Katie Grand-curated perfection in there that we can’t help but share.To go along with her cover, little has an interview in the magazine, but in true LOVE fashion, it’s not some no-name editor who had the privilege of asking the most sought-after starlet in Hollywood some questions. It was Alexa Chung — the very girl who Elle has named as her “fashion icon” on a number of occasions — who got to do the honors.What we see is an adorably enthusiastic e-mail exchange between the two young ladies (who both manage to mention that they are “obsessed” with one another) and a sickeningly sweet Q&A that will make your inner tween squeal with delight. Here are the highlights — we won’t spoil the whole interview for you!Alexa to Elle:What’s your favorite joke? My 6 year old cousin told me this joke and it has been my favorite ever since! Here it is. What did the pencil say to the other pencil? You’re looking SHARP today! HAHAHAElle to Alexa:If you had to live in one outfit for the rest of your life, what would it be? A Charles Anastase dress with a Peter Pan collar, a Burberry trench, a tartan scarf, some awesome Chelsea boots (still haven’t found the right ones) and a novelty bag (my Chanel ladybird one probably). ?Me, a clear umbrella, bottled water and @ at dinner at the Hotel Costes Looks like someone rained on Derek Blasberg’s couture party. RT I dislike the phrase ‘investment buys’ – i never buy anything to throw it away. Everything is an investment? The 4th of July long weekend made somebody very philosophical today.RT Carmen Kass opens Armani couture, followed by suits in glitter wools, choc and beige. We’re sure it was divine, but please don’t say wool when it’s 107 degrees in NYC today!RT Wanna see who your true friends are? F**k up and see who stays by your side We guess that’s one way to do it…RT will try to hand-deliver a note to anna w. later at chanel. any special messages you want me to say? Are bloggers getting too bold for their britches? Discuss.SITES WE LOVENo one ever said that Anna doesn’t pick favorites! It seems the Vogue editrix not only likes Blake Lively enough to put her on the mag’s cover, but she’s also taken to hanging out with the Gossip Girl. The two were spotted side by side front row at Dior yesterday making a very interesting pair. () Anna Wintour and Blake Lively at the Christian Dior Haute Couture Show in Paris on July 5. Photo: Eric Ryan/Getty Images Ferragamo is targeting the youngsters. The Italiano brand is launching a footwear line in September aimed at the teen set featuring bold colors and even bolder logos. ()Seems you can’t just go stealing someone’s name for your own marketing purposes. George Clooney is set to testify at a trial for three guys who tried just that with the Syriana’s star’s moniker for a clothing label. ( via ) Although it was the 4th of July, we can forgive Serena Williams for wearing Brit label Burberry after her Wimbeldon win. Plus, she looked fantastic out of her tennis whites and in something with a little more sparkle. () Serena Williams takes the top spot at Wimbledon. Photo courtesy of Burberryand now Abercrombie & Fitch? If the strong scent of cologne wasn’t enough to scare you off before, an NYC outpost of A&F was shut down due to a bedbug outbreak. () Related fashion news: ?is saying that Francisco Costa of Calvin Klein will take home the prize for fashion design this year, continuing his run of incredible critical acclaim. On Friday, Costa will also appear on the Martha Stewart Show.The show takes viewers into the Calvin Klein atelier and demonstrates the making of origami pleats. Costa exhibited a different kind of artistry in Stewart’s kitchen, where he demonstrated how to make two kinds of caipirinhas (passion fruit and ginger) from his native Brazil.Setting my Tivo now.?opens it’s first European flagship in London. The 10,000 square-foot clothing, accessories, and home collections boost a space reminiscent of England’s grand country homes and town houses. Its bright and airy feel, along with skylights, white oak flooring, and a 50-foot-high wall that waters the evergreen plants with rainwater collected by the roof will be sure to attract customers from all over the world. Besides plants, you’ll also find artwork from a mix of locally sourced artists and those brought from the US, South Africa, and continental Europe. The store hopes to appeal to the well-traveled, artistic, and creative types.Merchandise wise, you’ll find anything from literary classics like Sense and Sensibility to a mix of British and American clothing labels like Ruffian, MiH jeans, Leifsdottir, and knitwear by Sparrow. Some new local British brands include Sara Berman, Pyrus, Lowie, and Comfort Station.Headed across the pond anytime soon? Make sure to check out the new emporium that is Anthropologie, a true eclectic’s dream come true.[]?collide once again with of tote bags with British street artist, Ben Eine. Eine is best known for the colorful alphabet lettering that he spray paints on shop shutters around London, Paris, and Stockholm. Now, Hindmarch is using this lettering in a four-piece collection, due to come out this spring. Booty and Loot are just a couple of the words that will be colorfully displayed on the totes.We are sure to see these totes on the arms of celebrities like Sienna Miller and Jessica Biel, who are both fans of the . Hindmarch is most well known for her infamous Im Not a Plastic Bag totes, which were an instant hit when they were released in 2007. In fact, the bags were so popular that 30 people in Beijing were sent to the hospital after being involved in what has been described as a scrum over bag possession. Talk about dangerous fashion! If I had to describe the brand in three words, they would be: British, humorous and bespoke, Hindmarch told the London Times in 2008. That being said, her collaboration with Eine is the perfect representation of all three of these qualities. Eine, who was featured as one of the six best new street artists by Time Out Magazine, is known for his bold and quirky aesthetic. His work can be seen more commercially in music videos for British singer, Duffy, and popular Danish pop group, Alphabeat.The totes will be available at Anya Hindmarch boutiques, Dover Street Market in London, and Colette in Paris starting in April — they will retail for around $235.More News We Love: ?new book aptly tiled White Girl Problems (which you can pre-order from and/or ), Babe Walker has been doing a series of guests posts over the past few weeks right here on StyleCaster, offering up outfit advice for a number of occasions just about everyone will (or could) get themselves into.Admit it everyone is guilty of at least trolling an internet dating site once in their lives. Whether it’s just to eyeball some potential match-ups or perhaps even contemplate taking the plunge to go out on a date with some random, we’re all familiar with the reality that finding a date can be made a lot easier with the help of the World Wide Web.Even Babe knows that sometimes during drastic times, drastic measures need to be taken. That’s why you need to put down those sugar-free gummy bears and read Babe’s advice below and get ready to capture the heart (or at least the wallet) of a total stranger.Thanks to Babe’s fashion savviness, you’re pretty much guaranteed to make one heck of a first impression!You told yourself you would never go online to find love. I get it. But do you realize that you haven’t gotten laid in three months and you ate FIVE macaroons last night? (I don’t care that they’re gluten-free. I can’t sit by and condone lonely eating. I just can’t.) So, here’s what you’re going to do: you’re going to get on Match.com/OKcupid/JDate and find yourself a semi-attractive man (who’s over 5’7″) to take you out this Friday night.The worst thing you can do on a date with someone you’ve never met is to give them a glimpse of the real you. It’s important to test them out at first to see if you’re both a true match made in heaven. Therefore, I recommend showing up to date night dressed as a man.If you’re scared of this idea, let’s compromise. You can wear a sheer, man-dress like this gorge option from over a pair of stretch twill wool trousers. (Side note: make sure you’ve been appropriately spray-tanned before wearing this man-dress, as it requires major abdominal presence). This outfit is chic, it’s peek-a-boo, and strikes a perfect masculine/feminine option because your tits will be out, but you’re also wearing pants. (If you’re scared of showing off the girls on a first date with some psycho you met off of the Internet, maybe you need to reevaluate what you’re really looking for in life, and throw on a vest. The Balmain python option will do the trick.)I personally can not go on any date without wearing a heel of some sort. A YSL boot is sure to compliment your outfit and give you the “gift of lift” without being overly feminine. The option I picked out in the slideshow above come in the softest-of-soft python skin, so between those and the vest, you’ll be ultra texturized. Or you can go full urban warrior on your date’s ass and wear a pair of gladiator sandals.If you’re feeling like incorporating more crazy colors into your ensemble, pair the Galliano pants with an intense printed shirt — like the Givenchy number — and top it off with some fringed lace-ups.If your date makes a negative comment about your look, blow him off. If he compliments you, he’s gay. Either way, you won’t be having sex with anyone, but at least you’ll have gotten dressed up and out of the house. Good luck!xBabeCheck out all of Babe’s outfit picks in the slideshow above!?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?nod to Bianca Jagger (what girl doesn’t feel a tad more glamourous in the louche ’70s pieces?) though I couldn’t help the feeling that there was more a nod to Celine’s Phoebe Philo with the cleaned up cuts. Uptown, offered plenty of dramatic dresses for his favorite social swans, but the highlights of the show was actually in the sportswear. There were plenty of little knit jackets, some with stunning embroidery detailing, that could give Chanel a run for its euro. This being American soil though, dollars would suit just fine. Chances are greenbacks are already changing hands for the stunning closing number: a silk faille white gown with a demure neckline that riffed off polka dots with a cutout and embroidered circle pattern. Per usual, Alexander Wang (coming off a ) was much watched. You have to wonder where Wang is going to go with his off-duty model look like what if the looks are veering towards polished as it did in the Paris Fall 2010 collections? This time around, Wang was exploring folds and proportions an effect that won’t be lost on fans of Japanese ’90s fashion. Comme des Garcons certainly came to mind.Meanwhile across the pond, another hot designer, keeps upping his stock. The Resort 2011 collection was full of rich texture and visual candy. A trench was once again retooled this time with a crochet hem and perhaps in a nod to the melding of fashion seasons, there was luxe spotted fur too. The girls didn’t veer far from their usual fashion girl meets cool Brooklyn dweller aesthetic. But it worked for Resort and there were a couple pieces notably a sweetheart neckline jumpsuit with suspender straps and a mesh meets tribal print bustier and pencil skirt pairing that, while not necessarily trend-setting would be wise additions to any resort-loving closet.Related: ?Da da dad dun da da dad dun, seems some ladies had bridal on the brain for the Costume Institute Gala last night. While more than one celeb looked pretty in white, en masse, we couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a hint of Pachabel’s Canon in D in the spring air.Perhaps the likes of Taylor, Kirsten, Jessica and Emma were sending some not so secret, if-you-like-it-then-you-shoulda-put-a-ring-on-it vibes to their respective beaus, while Diane was giving Josh a sneak peak at how gorge she’ll look on her big day, and Eva and Gwen got to relive a bit of their bridal glory. Emma Watson (above) Hermione looked lovely in asymmetrical white with a sexy slit by . We think we even spy some glitz on that left ring finger. Is Watson considering trading in her wizard cloak for a wedding gown? Kirsten Dunst Photo courtesy of . Kirsten Dunst went asymmetrical as well in for Gap. We think the lace and pearl details are downright lovely, but those white tights and shoes may have taken the look one Victorian step too far. Diane Kruger Diane Kruger at the MET Gala. Photo provided by The German beauty went sleek in minimal for the evening. We love the long sleeves and column style gown. We can’t wait to see this bride-to-be’s real wedding day look.Taylor Swift Taylor Swift at the MET Gala. Photo: The still-quite-young country girl looked gorgeous in the white-cut out sleeve gown with tiered ruffles by Collection. The bold red lip and powdered face was a bit of throwback though and gave some sass to an otherwise romantic look.Gwen Stefani Gwen Stefani at the MET Gala. Photo:Gwen Stefani wore her own creation, a ’30s inspired sparkler that fits like, well, it was made for her. The bustier tulle detail is stunning, and we love the peak of black lingerie that makes it all the rocker chick’s own. Her signature red lip and bleached out blond up do finish out the look.Jessica Biel Jessica Biel at the MET Gala. Photo: Jessica Biel knows she snagged a serial monogamist in , so perhaps she just wanted to remind the former boy band member that she’d cut a stunning figure in a wedding gown. We think her cowl neck Ralph Lauren Collection silk gown cut on the bias sends just the right message. Eva Longoria-Parker Eva Longoria at the MET Gala. Photo provided by .Eva Longoria jumped on the bridal bandwagon with the most literal bent. Her sparking Loubs, long train, and embroidered strapless creation by recall days of trying on gowns at Kleinfeld’s. Right down to the Harry Winston jewels, this Desperate Housewife is all set for some vow renewals with Tony Parker. Related: ?and their latest promotional push.For their upcoming summer 2012 eyewear campaign, Burberry’s chief creative officer Christopher Bailey has cast some of Britain’s up-and-coming noise-making talents, including , , and . As a part of the campaign, each act will record one song exclusively for Burberry, appear in accompanying music videos for said jam shot in London, as well as perform at Burberry events in Paris, Milan, New York and Sydney over four nights in May.Throughout the month, Burberry will be rolling out the release of each music video, kicking things off with the video for One Night Only’s “Long Time Coming.” If you like musicians that look like The Strokes but sound like Keane, then definitely have a glance at the music video posted down below.For relatively unheard of bands, this is a super, super maje opportunity for each act to get some buzz around them, and who knows?maybe these melody-making dudes and dudettes will one day have a pair of sunglasses named after them from Burberry a la and their jump-the-gun decision to .As for the actual eyewear pieces part of the summer 2012 eyewear collection, which includes aviator-shaped sunglasses and optical frames available in men’s, women’s and unisex looks, they’re all pretty safe styles that definitely won’t clash with your fashion palette for the spring and summer seasons. You’ll be able to check out all the styles in person this month at Sunglass Hut and other select retailers.Check out Burberry’s musical class of 2012 appearing in the British brand’s latest eyewear campaign in the slideshow above, and don’t forget to take a peek at the first of four eyewear-celebrating music videos down below:?The Olympics have given us quite a bit to think about (especially our workout routine, or lack thereof). With the closing ceremony last night, we geared up for a spectacle full of some of our favorite British bands and all-around insane showmanship. Spice Girls aside, we were most excited to see our favorite Great Britain babes do their thing down a massive Union Jack runway.Most notably, of course, were the appearances of Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss (both clad in Alexander McQueen, naturally). While fresh faces like also adorned the catwalk, we were secretly hoping for Twiggy to pop out of the center to call it a day.Even though the legendary model didn’t make an appearance, some of the top design houses did while the ladies worked it out sporting aforementioned McQueen, Christopher Kane, Victoria Beckham, Vivienne Westwood, Erdem, Burberry, Jonathan Saunders and Paul Smith.?‘s, it’s easy to forget about our old colonizers, the Brits. We love those quirky kids for their fun accents and dry senses of humor it’s like a whole country of Hugh Grants! Last night’s brought out some of the well-dressed and those who dress them. The actual awards went to a lot of people who deserved them, beginning with the fab for Designer of the Year, who could dress us every day if she so pleases so long as she promises to never, ever fake retire for a few years ever again. received a posthumous Outstanding Achievement in Fashion, got the Style Award, while took home the Digital Innovation Award, and we think their 3 million Facebook fans would agree.Christopher Bailey recognized his peeps, which just proves how good he is at socializing, “Digital innovation is an integral part of the culture at and this award recognizes the incredible and inspirational team I work with.”Get the full list of winners below and click through for some fancy ladies.BFC Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design: Designer of the Year: Phoebe Philo for Celine Menswear Designer of the Year: Patrick Grant for E. Tautz Accessory Designer of the Year: Nicholas Kirkwood Designer Brand of the Year: Mulberry Model of the Year: Lara Stone Emerging Talent Award, Ready-to-Wear: Meadham Kirchhoff Emerging Talent Award, Accessories: Husam El Odeh Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator: Nicola Formichetti British Style Award: Alexa Chung Special Recognition Award: Naomi Campbell Digital Innovation Award: Burberry?)Burberry remains perched high above other brands in the realm of technology and social media. The brand announces the launch of the Burberry Retail Theatre concept which allows the luxury label to live-stream directly to its boutiques starting with its Spring/Summer 2011 runway presentation. ()Gucci has taken to speedboats, designing one with Riva, which was unveiled at the Cannes boat show. That’s too much luxury to handle in one sentence. () is living up to his meteoric rise rep if the rumor mill is right. Word has it that the designer may be in talks for an upcoming . ()Is it the mark of a true lifestyle brand to have your very own logo? If so, Jason Wu is well on his way with Miss Wu, a wide-eyed owl that will make an appearance on the designer’s belts, knitwear, eyewear et al. ()Angelina Jolie spoke out against a Florida church’s plan to burn the Quran saying, I have hardly the words that somebody would do that to somebodys religious book. She also takes issue with the lack of media attention the floods in Pakistan are garnering. When does this lady sleep? ()TWITTER RT @ DKNY Pop Corn. Donna, we’ll take salt please. RT @ My first ever branded dancefloor!!!! That is so fun it repels the possibility of snarky commentary. RT @ James Franco likes to masturbate 5 times a day. TMI much?! Sadly though, that announcement got him press, a tweet and now this.RT @ Revenge is a confession of pain. That is so one to think about.RT @ ELLE’s 25! Robbie Myers discussed traits today’s 25-yr olds want in men on the @ this AM. Steady income topped the survey. Agree? I’m not saying she’s a gold digger…?‘ version in her new , then I say bring on the apocalypse. Leave it to Britney to turn the end of the world into a full-blown, dance-all-night rager. I don’t know about you, but that’s exactly how I’d like to spend my last few hours on this planet and that spiked, leather would definitely help ease the blow of the apocalypse too. I’m giving Brit and A++ for her latest masterpiece! But, what say you? Watch and let me know in the comments!?)Ralph Lauren is designing the costumes for the ball boys and girls at Wimbledon, which is amazing because in case you didn’t know, he’s American. ()Apparently, Galliano’s perfume sales took a nosedive after the “incident.” But it’s coming back slowly. ()See Brit Brit in her Femme Fatale looks. It’s not awesome, just a warning. ()DOUBLE SHOT: TWEET, TWEET RT @ Watch the Prorsum Menswear S/S12 Show live tomorrow from Milan – Saturday 18 June, 5pm (Milan time) OK!RT @ New Versace men’s campaign by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott #prettyboysRT @ Beauty look of the day: Karolina Kurkova plays it cool. Find out how to get her smoldering gaze! Somehow I doubt it’s a makeup secret.RT @ REAL WEDDING: Allison & Benjamin share their vintage-modern style Southern wedding, and a love of all things personal I love wedding pics and thought you might, too.?is teaming up with photographers to bring us , a website devoted to showing us pictures of people wearing trenchcoats… That’s right, the sole purpose of the website seems to be to show us that people wear trenchcoats.If you and your friends wear trenches, you’re welcome to submit your own pictures to be featured on the site. The first collaborator is Scott Schuman of ; stay tuned for works from other photographers.People of all ages are pictured wearing the classic Burberry trench. Users can share (using Facebook Connect) and comment on each photo, or arrange the photos according to their popularity. The photos can also be sorted by gender, styling (belted or not belted), color (classic, dark, or other), weather (wet, bright, or cloudy), or collaborator.Art of the Trench also features the , a decade-by-decade timeline of Burberry’s iconic coat since 1910.?to purchase 18 select outerwear pieces and 30 handbags from Tuesdays F/W 2010 runway show that took place during . But we suggest you do it fast; the online sale ends Friday, February 26. The site also includes a new feature — when you roll your cursor over each image, you will get a full 360 degree view of each image before you buy.In a departure from typical Fashion Week tradition, the pieces were made available immediately following Burberry’s Tuesday showing of their Fall 2010 collection — a collection that, thanks to a live 3D broadcast, was the most globally viewed fashion show a luxury brand has ever held.In attendance at the physical show were and , who both donned outerwear from the upcoming collection. While there are a slew of great pieces available, some of our favorites include: The Shearling Giant Collar Tailored Aviator Jacket, the Cropped Peacoat with Oversize Funnel Collar (above), and the Alligator Armour Stud Sling Blag.Scope out the looks from the Fall 2010 runway show here:The looks that we’ll be hoping to snatch up, below: Burberry Prorsum Shearling Giant Collar Tailored Aviator Jacket ($2,995, at ) Burberry Prorsum Short Patchwork Shearling Trench Coat ($5,995, at )Burberry Prorsum Military Doeskin Great Coat With Shearling Panel ($2,995, at ) Burberry Prorsum Alligator Armour Stud Sling Bag: ($13,500, at ) Burberry Prorsum Mega Check Sling Bag with Shearling Trims and Buckle ($1,395, at ) Burberry Prorsum Plisse Leather Hobo Bag ($1,895, at )More News We Love: ?clips down below, it’s that wearing a coat from the Burberry Prorsum‘sspring/summer 2012 collection will pretty much turn you into an instant babe. Whether it’s the British brand’s classic trench or a casually cool parka, nothing says “Babe-o-rama” like sporting one of these coats, whether you’re a boy or a girl (or if you’re models Cara Delevingne and Eddie Redmayne).Example A:Two hot modelscheck. Branded clothing easily visiblecheck. Close up on hot female model’s bare legscheck. Close up on the female model’s face with her mouth suggestively openedcheck. Yup, this clip definitely scores high on the hotness factor. Double points if you go the stalker route and go au naturale underneath the coat!Example B:Want to get close and flirty with that member of the opposite sex you’ve had your eye on for a while? Just throw on a Burberry Prorsum parka, rock some semi-bed-head hair and a cute smile, and boomyou’ll be 5 minutes away from your first date (or even your first kiss).After watching these two videos, do you think you’ll be rocking a Burberry Prorsum coat this spring, or are you going to forgo the expensive jackets and just work with what your Momma gave ya’??CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?at starting February 19. All the shows will be accessible online allowing the public to get as close to the runway as the stiletto clad models themselves. Although this announcement revolutionizes the availability and convenience of fashion, Burberry head designer, Christopher Bailey, has decided to take things to the next level. After airing the live at Burberry.com in the fall, the designer has decided to stay one step ahead of the game by going 3D.On February 23, VIP guests will be viewing the live 3D show inscreening spaces designed by Bailey.The screenings will be held in the of New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Dubai with a delayed viewing in Los Angeles due to the time difference. Not only do these privileged few get the chance to view the first ever live screening of a 3D fashion show, they will also be entertained with a behind-the-scenes pre-show including footage of all the glamazons on the — jealous?Christopher Bailey spoke of his innovative digital show, saying “We are very excited to announce that we are hosting the first ever truly global fashion show. This unprecedented event will enable people to experience the energy and atmosphere of this event from around the world.” We can’t promise that the 3D glasses used in the screenings will be printed with Burberry’s signature plaid or that the models will come stomping down the runway painted head-to-toe in Avatar-Blue, but it is safe to say that the show will be a hit, marking the beginning of a new digital trend.More News We Love: ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?will be live streaming their men’s show tomorrow (that’s Saturday kids) at 5 PM Milan time (that’s 11 AM EST). (Click on the Burberry link to find your way.)The best part though? You can shop the runway looks shortly after the show. Since when does that happen?!We think this sounds like a perfect way to kick off the weekend. What says happy Saturday like seeing awesome clothes on some beautiful bodies? We think nothing.?will do next. The British brand that’s been quick to embrace social media in some very artistic ways (see: The photo site) has turned its attention to little-known bands.We have collaborated on so many projects with new and young emerging British bands over the years,” , Burberry Chief Creative Officer said. “We felt that with the great interaction that we have experienced with our social media website that we could collaborate with musicians and artists to put together an incredible group of ongoing acoustic sessions from some of the finest talent coming out of the UK,” the designer added.Naturally, each of the acts are selected by Bailey, who we think has proven his knack for knowing what the fashionable crew like. As a lead up to the live-streamed tomorrow (Saturday June 19 at 9AM Eastern Standard Time), the site has put up fresh content featuring young artists and Misty. Life in FilmCheck out the accoustic videos , and being a tech-savvy brand, you can also view them from your iPhone and iPad and share them via and . All images courtesy of BurberryRelated: ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?from across the pond, and now will be offering a cosmetics line in July, a project that will be a complete color line for eyes, lips, and skin. The British fashion house hasn’t provided any details concerning this development, but considering the brand’s classic aesthetic and outdoorsy heritage, we imagine the cosmetics offered will be high-quality products in neutral, distinguished, and timeless shades. And judging from their show, we might expect to see pale primers and loose powders, dark brow pencils and pretty neutrals.?discipline while python accessories, buckled sky high booties and a laid-back disposition scream luxury.Burberry was inspired by the British colonies in the 1930s and ’40s and is everything we want to be wearing now and later. We enthusiastically suggest buying the collection in heapfuls, but if you can only afford say the , fill in the rest with our own military-meets-luxe pieces in the slide show above. As you were.?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?‘s story lies in the outerwear, but each season, while that outerwear remains particularly awesome and structured, Creative Director Christopher Bailey is expanding on other elements including floaty dresses and for the first time, a whole new range of pretty, printed pieces.Those prints found on the aforementioned outerwear and floaty dresses reference African tribal prints and lighten things up a bit for the resort 2012 season as do some raffia sandals that are about to become ubiquitous in street style photos if overheard editor swoons are any indication. Among signature neutrals, blacks and tans, color comes in bits of yellow on a brown belt, a strand of red in a woven handbag and even something so bold as a striped pencil skirt.The Burberry girl is still there she is rather loyal but resort saw her get a little playful undernearth her deathly cool tan suede trench.?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?With luxury brands cutting back like a coupon-crazed suburban mom lately, is bucking the trend. The mega British label that could teach a class on rebranding is gearing up to launch a , reports WWD. Beginning in July, Burberry, partnered with beauty licensee Inter Parfums, will offer sheer products for the face with focus on the eyes, cheeks and lips, inspired by the brand’s signature piece, the trenchcoat.I liked the idea of taking the trenchcoat and the weather as the two things that influence and define the colors, Bailey told the fashion news site. Youve got the naturals from the trenchcoats and from the weather youve got these beautiful stormy grays and stormy blues. Then, when the sun comes out, youve got this glow and youve got lighter tones, as well.”The collection will range in price from $24 at current exchange for a Lip Definer pencil, to $59 for an 8-g. Sheer Foundation compact.Rebeling against staid beauty rules, the brand will not produce seasonal beauty collections, but will instead introduce products on an ad hoc basis when inspiration strikes. Initial distribution will be limited, with just 30 doors worldwide, including a U.K. exclusive at Harrod’s, and in the U.S.With projected U.S. sales as much as $1.3 million for the first year, jumping on the beauty bandwagon seems to be an inspired revelation. Burberry currently also has several apparel lines, fragrance, jewelry and accessories in their repetoire. As for Hermione fans, may currently front Burberry Prorsum, but Bailey is going the mannequin route for beauty. The label booked Lily Donaldson, and Nina Porter for the ads shot by Mario Testino, and outfitted the ladies in what else, Burberry trenches. I didnt want it to be about any one specific type or muse or face, Bailey told WWD. I like the fact that its the same makeup on all of them, but it expresses their individuality.Related:?is bound to have some trenches, some bodycon dresses, some awesome shoes, some signature plaid bags, some skinny pants but it doesn’t make them any less perfect for your current closet.Christopher Bailey changes the game in just the right places every season, adding varying fabrications, hardware, exotics without ever losing his core fan base. For Spring 2011, he’s a bit workwear, a bit edgy, a bit brighter…and then there are those badass over the knee boots. Click through for the lookbook, and check out the chic in the rain video below featuring Sebastian Brice and Cara Delevingne.?is adding to its roster of famous (Scott Schuman aka ) and non-famous (anyone with a camera who pleases to post) photographers who contribute to its innovative website, . Famed shutterbug agency, Magnum Photos (co-founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson) sent some of their best to get in on the street style photography bandwagon, by shooting images of models and everyday chic pedestrians donning the classic . Magnum lensmen and women including Jim Goldberg, Bruce Gilden, Elliott Erwitt, Christopher Anderson, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, and Olivia Arthur shot subjects in various cities and boroughs including Milan, San Francisco, London, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. The results? Artful, inspirational, and a clever way to bring the focus back to the legion of Burberry’s followers– with over one million facebook fans to its page, there certainly are a lot of them.More News We Love: ?you’ve probably seen the iconic image of Humphrey Bogart in a trench and fedora. Well, decided to use the image to show customers how far back the brand goes (their first store opened in 1856, FYI) to help create a “historical timeline”, so the brand decided to post it to , according to the . Unfortunately, Bogart’s estate wasn’t too thrilled that an image of the late great actor was being used to sell products and now the trench-coat-making company is being sued for “unspecified damages” which could run into the seven-figure ballpark.Bogart’s son Stephen claims the brand illegally used an image of his father from the film Casablanca, and filed a lawsuit against Burberry back in April in Los Angeles, according to . A few weeks later, Burberry then filed a counter-claim stating that they paid a fee to a photo agency to use the photo, and that it was in no way used to sell merchandise. The brand also states that their right to use this image is protected under the?the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.But, to make things a little more interesting, it seems that the trench in the image may not even be a Burberry coat after all. Stephen Bogart says that it’s likely the trench in question could be from . And so the plot thickens…Now, I’m no lawyer (I can’t lie — my face gives me away and I start laughing uncontrollably) but I’m not entirely sure Burberry did anything wrong. They paid for the image and if anyone has the right to sue wouldn’t it be Warner Brothers, the producer of the film?But, if Burberry is claiming that Bogart wore one of their trenches, then maybe Stephen Bogart has a case. But, what if Burberry is only claiming that Bogart’s character is wearing Burberry? God, that just gave me a headache.This also delves into the murky waters of social media and the law, which I won’t go into too deeply because I am not an expert. But, it will definitely be interesting to see how this case will resolve itself in the end as it could set a precedent for social media and copyright issues, and could help answer this question: if a brand uses an image of a fictional or non-fictional person or character from a movie, TV show or the like on a social media platform, could the brand still be liable if they use said image to just innocently engage with their audience?Do you think Burberry did anything wrong? And, if any of you are lawyers out there, please feel free to chime in.[Image source: ]?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?has announced that they will be broadcasting their runway show live on the internet.No longer is high fashion limited to those with the means. Through the and digital media, fashion has become much more democratized: from to Facebook fan pages, those of us who arent fashion editors or can now participate in the once-exclusive world of fashion.Both shows (the mens and womens) will be available to watch through Calvin Klein’s and . Mens Fall 2010 will air on Sunday, February 14 at 2 pm EST, while the Womens Fall 2010 collection will air on Thursday, February 18 at 2 pm EST. In addition, a live chat room will allow viewers to openly discuss and critique the collection while watching the show live. Be sure to pencil the date into your calendar now and have the web page bookmarked, so you can participate in the virtual fashion festivities.More News We Love: ?have been released and they’re stronger then ever. From Burberry getting a little playful to Dolce & Gabbana coming together as one serious family, everyone seems to be outdoing each other. However, today we came to a crossroads. With Arizona Muse staring in the Fendi spring ads and Abbey Lee Kershaw & Karmen Pedaru taking the main stage for Gucci — we just couldn’t decide which one we though was more stunning. Everyone is giving some serious face and we’re just perplexed. Then it hit us like a ton of bricks, let’s ask our readers!So let us know in the poll below which one you think is more jaw dropping.Photos via?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. 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: “Tonight is the night we designers and members of the industry salute our peers and celebrate their talents. We are a family.” The complete list of winners are…Womenswear Designer of the Year: Marc Jacobs presented by Jessica BielMenswear Designer of the Year: David Neville & Marcus Wainwright for Rag & Bone, presented by Anthony MackieAccessory Designer of the Year: Alexis Bittar presented by Dakota FanningSwarovski Fashion Awards, all presented by and Ed Westwick: Womenswear: Menswear: Richard Chai Accessories: Alexander WangGeoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award: Michael Kors, presented by Anna WintourBoard of Directors Special Tribute Award: the , presented by Fashion Icon Award: Iman presented by gal pal Isabella RosselliniInternational Award: Christopher Bailey of , presented by Donna KaranEleanor Lambert Award: Tonne Goodman of Vogue, presented by Caroline KennedyEugenia Sheppard Award for journalism: Kim Hastreiter, founding Editor and Publisher of Paper magazine, presented by Brooke ShieldsL’Oreal Popular Vote Award: Ralph Lauren presented by Doutzen KroesEarlier: l?)Hussein Chalayan is dropping the Hussein and going just with the Chalayan for his brand name. How Madonna of him. ()Lauren Santo Domingo craved caviar when she was pregnant. Best thing I’ve ever heard. ()Check out some awesome CFDA after party shots. ()Check out the Burberry Fall preview campaign. ()DOUBLE SHOT: TWEET, TWEETRT @ Is that what they call now? Celebrity seeding? Bombarding blogs with images of celebrities sporting wares? I mean, it’s hardly new.RT @ Here’s a tip – do not use us a reference when we fired you! Especially of you dress like a vampire and work in closets hmm, I wonder who that’s about?RT @ r&b Sample Sale, Next Thursday June 16th at Chelsea Market in NYC Please and thank you.RT @ Nicole Richie Tried driving with my seat low & way back, you know, to be cool. Now all I have to do is figure out how to reach the pedal #cute?J’Adore may not be my favorite scent (just a smidge too floral for me), but it does produce some of the best ad campaigns.Charlize Theron is reprising her previous role for Dior as the seductive and secretive woman who struts around Paris peeling off layers of clothing and jewels for the new Dior J’adore Eau de Parfum . In the new ad, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, Theron is seen dressed in as the quintessential Parisian chic with skinny jeans, stilettos and dark shades as she races up the steps into Versailles’ OTT Hall of Mirrors. We want you to see it for yourselves, but we weren’t the only ones thoroughly impressed by Annaud’s vision ?and Keith Richard’s biography, the fleeting thought has crossed my multi-tasking mind: what do editors and designers who have access to just about everything or a sewing machine and a wealth of creativity to make it really want for the holidays? What better way to find out inquisitive ones, than to simply ask.There are some stealth interior design junkies, your die hard fashion girls and someone with a soft spot for the furry kind and not one makes. Click through for everyone from Waris to ‘s not so secret Christmas picks. ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?in May alone, the 46-year-old Kristen McMenamy covers Vogue Italia’s spring swimwear supplement in a skimpy two-piece, rocks a golden Gucci dress for June’s Vogue Japan, Helena Christensen looks better than ever on the front of Denmark’s Cover magazine and Cindy Crawford makes an epic comeback with not one but two May covers. For her Elle China cover, shot by Chen Man Zhang Jing, Cindy wears that red Lanvin dress that we’ve been dying over since Karlie Kloss strutted down the Spring 2011 runway in it. On the other hand, she goes the no-pants route for Vogue Mexico in a bad-ass Burberry Prorsum leather jacket and lingerie. Both shots show why Miss Crawford is such a legend, but we find that Lanvin look especially swoonworthy.Click through to check out the Vogue Mexico shoot, and make sure to tell us which of Cindy’s cover looks is your favorite! ?, Kate Bosworth, Emma Watson, and the Olsen twins (whose lovely coffee table book Influence was edited by Blasberg). Throughout his years of jet-setting, Blasberg has witnessed his fair share of feminine wiles– and has become quite the expert on female etiquette (or lack there of, as we’re sure more than a few of those fashion parties included some table dancing). It was almost inevitable then that his new book, Classy: Exceptional Advice for the Extremely Modern Lady ( Tuesday, April 6) would offer up tips and tools on style, manners, dating, and socializing for women in 2010.Blasberg’s tome is one in a long line of advice books by fashion moguls, from Rachel Zoe, to Nina Garcia, and . But, with his natural penchant for humor and taste, this fashionable male may just be the leader of the pack.And speaking of fashionable males– Blasberg isn’t the only one we’d turn to for advice. Below, weve gathered up our top choices for men in the fashion industry that gals religiously rely on.Simon Doonan Image: infphoto.comDoonan, Creative Director of , caught the attention of visionaries around the world with his innovative and elaborate window displays (think celebrity caricatures and blood-stained windows with murdered mannequins). What you may not know is that he has also been entertaining readers since 2001– starting with his first book (of four total), Confessions of a Window Dresser. His dry British humor and witty cultural critiques even landed him a regular column at The New York Observer. Doonan is certainly a leader in a long line of male fashionistos. Andre Leon Talley Image: infphoto.comThe 67 contributing editor of American Vogue, ALT (as he’s oft referred), has always been known for his extravagant lifestyle– even before he hit the tennis courts in a diamond-encrusted Piaget in . The man has basically inherited the fabulous gene via osmosis– before his decades-long tenure at Vogue, former editrix, Diana Vreeland, and Andy Warhol mentored him. Between being a front row fashion show staple and style advisor to the first family (ALT introduced Michelle Obama to Jason Wu), hes now on the judging panel of the long-running reality show Americas Next Top Model. Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist Image: designerdirection.comAt first, Scott Schumans fashion blog , , included photos of fashionable people based in NY. As it gained hits and popularity, he began traveling and shooting photos all over the world. Soon enough, his posts were not only on everyones GoogleReader but major designers inspiration boards as well. Schuman boasts a monthly column in GQ, an ad campaign for DKNY, Burberrys Art of the Trench project, a six-figure book deal with Penguin, and a chic French fellow-shutterbug girlfriend, . Joe Zee Image: modelinia.comAs the current Creative Director of Elle (since 2007), got the job with a resume that includes stints at W as Fashion Director and Contributing Fashion Editor at Details and House & Garden. He’s also worked with top fashion photographers including Annie Leibovitz, Patrick Demarchelier, Juergen Teller, and Bruce Weber on major ad campaigns. These days, we follow straight from the front row of Fashion Week. Brad Goreski Image: themalcolm.comWeve witnessed his ups and downs on – from his spats with longtime assistant Taylor Jacobson, to his pronouncement of love for Natalia Vodianova through song. Before joining Camp Zoe, Brad served as a West Coast assistant at Vogue, where he discovered and came to admire Zoes styling. Once he met her at a dinner, the rest was history. Ever since his small screen debut, weve fallen for the four-eyed, bow tie wearing boy. Image: theselby.comWhile obviously isnt the only male fashion designer that influences ladies’ style choices (our list would also include Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, and John Galliano, to name a few)– its his love for Mean Girls and Clueless that makes us want to be his best friend, too. With about three years in the fashion game, his iconic look has made his label skyrocket in sales as well as in the press. His clothing is street-savvy chic and wearable. Plus, with his affordable diffusion line expanding, Wang will be in far more closets than those of his well-to-do downtown followers.More News We Love: ?has surely changed. The days of crazed women stocking up on huge boxes of cereal, gallons upon gallons of iced tea, and toilet paper that would last about year, just might be over. Picture Upper East Side women flocking to Costco, but not for the food; instead, for high fashion. The best clothing you used to be able to find in a Costco would be a bulk pack of sweat socks for the gym, but like I said shopping, at Costco has surely changed.I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this quilted Chanel bag perched above a Speedy Vuitton bag, both with price tags prominently displayed. Apparently, the in New York City is now selling designer goods at a discount. The Chanel bag will run you $1,999, Burberry’s mini satchel for $1,019.99, Tod’s medium shopper handbag for $549.99 and a Ferragamo “Marissa” handbag for $629.99.The $50 membership to shop at Costco just might get bumped up, now that they’re handling some pretty couture goods. Will you be heading uptown to snag the latest designer steals among the crowds of economical shoppers??and fashion industry insiders gathered together at the Grand Connaughts Rooms in London for the Elle Style Awards in order to, well, celebrate style.And celebrate in style they did (well, some more than others). Below, our hits and misses of the night.Hits:Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (pictured above): The always fashion-forward twins looked stunning (as usual) during last nights festivities. Ashley rocked a divine vintage Christian Lacroix gown with killer Fendi platforms, while sis Mary-Kate opted for a chic all black ensemble courtesy of Lanvin and a clutch. Do these two ever get it wrong?Naomi Campbell:Supermodel Naomi Campbell paid homage to her dear friend, by rocking one of his frocks from his iconic spring 2010 collection (who could ever forget those?). We love how she keeps everything else simple by pairing plain black heels and sleek, unfussy hair with the psychedelic dress. What a great tribute to such a legendary designer.Alexa Chung:Alexa, can we be you please? The pretty young thing showed up to the Elle Style Awards in head-to-toe Chanel. Were certain Uncle Karl approves.Rosie Huntington-Whitely:The gorgeous dripped of sex appeal last night. Ms. Whitely brought the va-va-voom, sporting a sultry red Dior gown from their spring 2010 collection paired with a fur cape. Sexy has a new name, and we’re pretty sure it’s Rosie Huntington-Whitely.Kristen Stewart:Is that a smile we see? Though she still looks painfully awkward (as usual), we have to admit that this rocker-chic dress suits the , more so than Sunday night.Claire Danes:The always classy Claire Danes looked understated and chic in a lacy sheath dress by Burberry.Misses:Agyness Deyn:Oh Aggy, we know youre a supermodel and all, but that doesnt mean you can wear anything you want. We admit, the style icon does look pretty cool, but we draw the line on the matching laptop case made with the remains of our dearly beloved Cookie Monster.Paloma Faith:While we admire originality, this shower curtain-turned-headwear is just a bit too much. The only person who could ever pull this off would be the late great Isabella Blow. Thats about it.Carey Mulligan:We love the fresh-faced British actress Carey Mulligan, andwe love . Unfortunately, in this case, two rights make a wrong. The petite actress looks more uncomfortable and dowdy here than she does chic.Olivia Palermo:We usually love this leggy socialite, but we have to admit that theres just too much going on here. The stunning Matthew Williamson frock would have looked great with bare legs and minimal accessories, but The City star unfortunately chose to pair it with heavy opaque tights and a burnt orange python print clutch. Too much is just too much.Images: More News We Love: ?is our girl of the week to shop for. A red carpet stunner with a preternaturally mature take on style, Watson isn’t afraid to don a cutting edge designer or two think Rodarte and Proenza Schouler, putting those celebs who think skin tight and uber short is the only way to roll to shame.Although the final installment of Harry Potter is debuting this fall, Hermione’s alter ego has another important milestone to look forward to first: entering year two of her Ivy League education (how of her!). We trust the face of Burberry will have her premiere ensembles styled and ready to go, so we’ve opted to compile cute yet causal pieces that are perfect for a New England autumn and the hallowed halls of Brown University instead. Consider it back to school for a rising star willing to take chances have you peeped that new Rosemary’s Baby inspired cut? We think she’s pretty enough to pull it off, but will approve? 1. Blue fringe scarf, $21.99, by 2. Gray tall leather flat boots, $249.95, by 3. Cotton twill trench coat, $1,395, by 4. Army green leather and canvas backpack, $68, by 5. Leather embossed wrap watch, $85, by 6. Green silk army shorts, $187, by 7. Denim button-down shirt, $88, by 8. Gray over-the-knee ribbed socks, $16.50, by 9. Brown suede lace-up bootie, $82.47, by 10. Gray long-sleeved t-shirt dress, $135, by Photo: Emma Watson, FacebookRelated:?graces the cover of Vogue UKs December issue with a mature elegance that seems a far cry from her big screen days playing a wizard. In fact, she was so eager to escape the Potter phenomenon that she told the mag how she turned down a place at Cambridge University because it was a bit Hogwarts-looking. And now that the Harry Potter movies are finally wrapped, the young is finally free to shed her Hermione Granger exterior and let the real Emma Watson shine. And that she did in the much anticipated December editorial, shot by famed photographer Mario Testino.In the spread, a playful Watson models beautiful pieces from Chanel, Valentino, and Marc Jacobs, among others. A photo of Watson jumping on a bed in nothing but an over-sized sweater beautifully captures the actress down to earth spirit, something that seems to be lacking in many of the young actresses weve seen grow up in front of our eyes. On the contrary, Watson is a Prius driving, Ivy League student the true antithesis of her Hollywood peers. In the “superstar” issue, which hits newsstands tomorrow, Vogues megastar reveals how she managed to stay so grounded, all while balancing school, acting and being last year’s face of . Click through the photos above for a sneak peek at the striking editorial.?, “before he speak his suit bespoke.” In other words, those who are well-tailored make the very best impressions. debuted a Burberry bespoke trench to enter the wilds of the airport. With leather sleeves and a totally adorable broach accoutrement, it’s more than fairly awesome. If Christopher Bailey isn’t your bff and you don’t star in campaigns, you can get your very own bespoke trench come the New Year. Photo: ?collection. Today, it’s all about their newly released fall/winter ads featuring Emma Watson. The campaign, which was shot by Mario Testino in Westminster, will launch in August, but thanks to , we have a sneak peek.The actress otherwise known as Hermione has been getting a lot of attention for her fashionable choices lately, but the Harry Potter producers think it may have gone too far. They reportedly asked her to a shoot for W that was maybe a little too steamy for her young fans.?beauty and Brown dropout Emma Watson has amazed the fashion world once againher design debut, a collaboration with fashion icon Alberta Ferretti, has just hit the web. “Pure Threads” looks very much like Watson’s own wardrobe, with lots of whites, florals and romantic elements that totally fit in with the ’70s revival that’s going on. Exclusively for sale on the designer’s , Watson has also made the collection environmentally friendly. A portion of the sales will go to People Tree Foundationan organization that Watson has worked with in the pastwhich helps produce low-impact clothing. The five-piece line is a bit expensive (um, $880 for a cotton maxi skirt?!), but I am really digging the denim shorts with white appliqued details on the sides. I guess I’ll have to sell some of my paraphernalia in order to afford them.Plus, there is an exclusive behind-the-scenes video of the shoot on the website, which makes Emma Watson & Alberta Ferretti totally look like bffs.Photos via WWD?-worthy) British rose, we have to admit that the Harry Potter star aged more than gracefully. 2. Jessica BielMary who? Let’s just say that has come a long way since 7th Heaven. Long gone are her days as the goody-goody tomboy/ ministers daughter and thank goodness for that. Were sure legions of men around the world agree with us.3. Leighton MeesterWho would have thought that the Queen Bee of the Upper East Side could look so (dare we say it) dowdy? Attention Tinseltown stylists: We applaud you for keeping awkward pink turtlenecks at bay.4. Anne HathawayFirst things first, just look at the pants that Miss Hathaway is sporting in the above pic. The actress is looking more like your clashing, er, ecletic kid sister than the ravishing red-carpet stunner that she has become.5. Megan FoxSome girls just never ran into speed bumps well, in the looks department at least. is one of those special breeds. From cute girl-next-door to smoldering sexpot, we have to admit that the Transformers star looked damn good throughout. Jealous.6. Carey MulliganSweet-faced but plain actress to fierce pixie-cut rocking starlet (Rosemary’s Baby anyone?), we cant tell which version we like better of British star Carey Mulligan. Opinions?7. Kelly OsbourneKelly fulfilled her role well as the offspring of Ozzy Osbourne during her earlier years. Youd have to look like that if your fathers nickname is the Prince of Darkness. Lately, Ms. Osbourne has been looking a lot more prim and polished, but we’re sure Daddy doesn’t mind.8. Nicole Richie has come a long way since her days as the hard-partying, reckless heiress she portrayed on The Simple Life. From trashy tabloid queen to polished A-lister, we applaud Ms. Richie for her 180-degree transformation.9. Kristen Stewart Here, we have another gangly child star-turned-starlet. Unfortunately, it seems as if the headliner has managed to retain every bit of awkwardness from her early years, but luckily minus the little boy connotations. 10. Mia WasikowskaBest known for her portrayal of Alice in the trippy Tim Burton rendition of, actress Mia Wasikowska has been filming movies for years in her native country of Australia. Since chopping off her long locks, we have to admit that we barely recognize the Aussie star. But is that a good thing?What do you thing of these stars’ head-turning transformations? Let us know your favorites in the comments below!?looked elegant and age-appropriate on the red carpet. The target=”_blank”>Interview covergirl and star of wore a floor length vintage Ossie Clark dress with soft hair and very natural makeup. This was a perfect choice for the premiere, as it guarantees that the 19-year-old actress will appeal to both her younger and older fan base. Famed Harry Potter author JK Rowling wore a royal blue Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti dress and a metallic blue Marc Jacobs clutch.?gotten the best of Emma Watson? Seems our dear Hermione, who so clearly stated in July that she thinks celebrity fashion branding is ridiculous, has had a change of heart. In July, quoted the Harry Potter star () as saying:“I’m not a designer…If someone asked me to do something that was beneficial to a cause, then maybe I’d consider it, but not just [to be able to say] ‘Look at me! I’ve got my own line!’…[It's] gotten so ridiculous. The idea of making my own perfume makes me want to vomit.”Well, looks like Emma has found her cause. After months of “is she or isn’t she” chatter, Emma confirmed that she will be collaborating with , a London-based Fair Trade fashion brand that uses sustainable fabrics in their designs. Launching in February 2010, it will be Emma’s first collection for the label, featuring 26 women’s styles and– wait for it– 15 men’s styles as well. Some accessories will pop up in the collection as well, but judging by said quote above, we’re thinking she’ll take a raincheck on the perfume this time around.Since the profits of the line will go to the (which promotes fair trade), the rising fashionista can now justify her jump onto the celebrity branding bandwagon with her contribution to a charitable cause. Since herself, we already know the women’s line will be fab, but how will she measure up in menswear? We can’t wait to find out.?has been my idol ever since she donned the silver screen as a bushy haired, smart alec companion of Harry Potter. And how could she not? Aside from starring in one of the biggest blockbusters of a generation, she’s since like no other and transformed into a. Just within the past few days, she’s been presented a 2011 ELLE Style award by and named the face of Lancome. Oh, and she just happens to be an Ivy League student too, you know, NBD. Well, Watson added one more thing to her seemingly effortless affinity for perfection by debuting a designer collaboration with Alberta Ferretti in the March issue of VOGUE. Echoing her work last year with People Tree, a line for ethical fashion, Watson and Ferretti came together forPure Threads, an featuring lace-lined denim, bohemian dresses, and cotton blouses, like the one she wears above. Priding herself on it’s purely organic creation, Watson tells VOGUE, “I’m happy to help anyone interested in making conscientious clothing from raw, sustainable materials, so much that I’ll work for free.”With the last installment of our favorite wizarding world set for July, Emma Watson may not be a wizard anymore, but she’s certainly got us enchanted.(Image via VOGUE) ?, that is. Nowadays, quite literally everybody and their mother (and grandmother) has an account on the mammoth. Boasting an impressive 400 million users worldwide, it has become an unavoidable global trend, even for you technophobes out there.Because of the unprecedented success of the site, it is only common sense that companies take advantage of this phenomenon. From Nike to Chanel, fashion brands are creating fan pages in an attempt to better understand their clientele. In addition to getting a better grasp on their target consumer, labels also use Facebook as a means to network, advertise, and market new products. Large like Adidas have fans in the millions (over 2.3 million for Adidas at the moment, to be specific).Companies also use the popularity of Facebook to offer exclusive first looks at products, such as the high street British store New Look who recently debuted their on the social networking site. Other designers hold private exclusive sales for their Facebook users — such is the case with with famed chanteuse Estelle.With our generation spiraling even deeper into the technological age, theres no knowing what the power of the Internet — or in this case, Facebook, holds for us.Here are the top 10 most popular fashion fan pages on Facebook, nine of which happen to also be in the shoe business. Now, what is that saying about American culture?1) – 2,338,393 Fans2) – 1,819,821 Fans3) – 1,343,801 Fans4) – 1,209,995 Fans5) – 803,764 Fans6) – 772,886 Fans7) – 602,076 Fans8) – 545,994 Fans9) – 543,022 Fans10) – 523,748 FansBecome a fan of today![]More News We Love: ?styled it for the chic outdoorsy woman, sexed it up with a draped tartan mini dress paired with over-the-knee lace up boots, and Chris Benz made it work appropriate with an embellished blazer. Left to right: Chris Benz, Rag & Bone, Rodarte, Jill Stuart, Peter Jensen, Tommy Hilfiger. Best Print: Gothic Florals We’ve already talked your ears off over our current obsession with , but the fall ’10 season brings in a moodier version of the print– think black and more black for a gothic vibe. Our favorite interpretation of the trend was on where the designer toughened up the floral with dark accessories including black fishnet gloves and a rosary-inspired necklace. Clockwise from top left: Christopher Kane, Dolce & Gabbana, Kenzo, Matthew Williamson, Preen, Ralph Lauren. Best to Bare: Belly If you think that the end of the 2010 bikini season will mark the end of your exercise routine– think again. The belly shirt trend, which became popular in the 90s, took a turn on the recent runways– but with a decidedly less tacky/trashy feel. Whether we decide to sport the look with a cute , a sheer overlay, or a bralet paired with shorts and cardigan has yet to be determined, but we do know one thing– we’ll be keeping up those ab exercises! All we can hope for is that a resurgence of navel piercings doesn’t follow suit. Clockwise from top left: Dolce & Gabbana, Missoni, Diesel Black Gold, Alexander Wang, Brian Reyes, Givenchy. Wear Head-to-Toe: Leather Not that it’s never been done before, but head-to-toe leather is a look that few have pulled off successfully in the past. Typically reserved for those with motorcycles in their driveways (or whips in their dresser drawers), this trend is best worn with a large dose of confidence. We’ll be easing into the look for fall– beginning with a floor-length leather gown (a la Staerk). Mustering up the guts to try out Altuzarra’s leather catsuit (worn seductively by Abbey Lee here) may provide a greater challenge.Clockwise from top left: Staerk, Bottega Veneta, Ann Demeulemeester, Chloe, Altuzarra, Narciso Rodriguez. Best Comeback: Velvet Velvet typically reminds us of the cutesy outfits our moms used to dress us in back in the 5th grade– whether it was for our middle school father-daughter dance or for a family outing to see the Nutcracker. Whether the soft fabric brings back fond memories of your childhood, or makes you want to puke, velvet is one trend that rarely comes with neutrality. We know this one’s not for everyone, but if Alex Wang and Marc are open to the fabric– we’re ready to give another go at it. Clockwise from top left: Dolce & Gabbana, Altuzarra, Alexander Wang, Marc Jacobs, Elise Overland, Burberry. Sexiest Conservative Look: Collars While a small detail, it seems that priestly collars pervaded almost every collection for fall. The chest region is clearly not the ideal place to be showing skin for the coming season– and with the cooler weather that fall brings, we’re not complaining. While the restricted collars give us a bit of claustrophobia just looking at them, we like that they provide an interesting challenge– how exactly does one make the reserved look a bit sexier? Well, that’s up to you to decide.Clockwise from top left: D&G, Proenza Schouler, Dries van Noten, Derek Lam, Miu Miu, Christopher Kane. How to Wear Outerwear: Belted The got a bit more playful with cold weather gear that allows for some styling creativity. Instead of purchasing a trench or peacoat with an already attached belt, we’ll be on the lookout for outerwear that we can style ourselves– and in an unexpected way. Think belted fur (gasp!), buckles that cinch below the hips (a la Michael Kors), and unexpected knots accessorizing sweaters and jackets. From left to right: Vena Cava, Burberry, Derek Lam, Michael Kors, Thakoon, Jill Stuart. Coolest Updated Trend: Interesting Fur When it comes to , whether you wear real or faux doesn’t matter for fall– it’s where you wear it that matters. And if the runways were any indication– our options have vastly expanded from previous seasons. Don it to provide warmth around your midsection (like at Balanciaga), update your cocktail attire with some some aggressive fur sleeves, or find the perfect leather and fur combo jacket to provide any ensemble with some toughened up glam.Clockwise from top left: Balenciaga, Michael Kors, Chloe, Lanvin, Jen Kao, Proenza Schouler. Best New Cut: Asymmetrical Skirts The fall ’10 runways made it pretty clear that mini skirts are over. Longer hemlines were out in full force– but that didn’t minimize their sex appeal. Our favorite skirt style for fall melded a bit of the two, with asymmetrical cuts that provided some drastic contrast from front to back (or side to side). The best of this trend were seen on the runways of designers including Kimberly Ovitz, Mark Fast, and . Clockwise from top left: Maison Martin Margiela, Stella McCartney, Mark Fast, Paris 68, Ann Demeulemeester, Kimberly Ovitz. More News We Love: ?just released its Fall 2011 images and the adorable Cara Delevingne fronts again as well as Jordan Dunn and a range of other pretty girls and boys in printed trenches and pea coats. That black tasseled clutch is really what’s calling to me though.Photos: (c) Copyright Burberry/Testino?is less than a week away. I know we’ve said it a million times already, but sometimes it’s hard to believe how fast it’s approaching if you don’t physically write it down, reread it, and then pinch yourself to make sure it’s actually true. Yes, one more time. Less than a week away. But perhaps more shocking than the speed at which Fashion Week has arrived this year is the fact that before fall weather even officially sets in, we won’t be able to get anything but spring dressing off our minds. So before the spring frenzy starts, we’re giving you an ode to fall dressing with all of our favorite editors’ picks of the season. Each StyleCaster editor narrowed down their top 10 items for fall, which was not an easy task considering the vast selection of goods. From Burberry’s highly coveted and ‘s rabbit fur coat priced at upwards of $2,000, to an of-the-moment gray full-length dress you can get for under $100, we’re loving it all. Click through the slide show above to find the next treasure for your cool weather closet.?and Derek Lam were all about the over-the-knee boot. Try using the boots in lieu of your leggings or opaque tights underneath mid-length dresses. Sequins. Although sequins were dazzling on the cocktail dresses this runway season, we love them for the daytime too! Click to read more on how to wear your sequins when the sun’s out. Camel Coat. The everlasting camel coat was all over the runways this season; Alexander Wang, Michael Kors, and Jason Wu all put their own spin on this classic piece. A strong camel coat is a worthy investment this season as a trend item that won’t ever become pass. Credits Photographer: Stylist: and, Model: Lizzy Glynn, Hair Stylist: Stacey Ho, Makeup Artist: Feeling inspired to shop? Check out more of our fall favorites !More fashion trends: ?blog gave us a few bigger insights on her Cali-based universe, fashion, watercolors, “Supermods Enter Rehab” and World of Warcraft. Homebase? Irvine, CAIf you had a theme song what would it be? Fleetwood Mac, “Dreams.”You have such great illustrations. Do you have an art background? Aw thank you! I absolutely have no artistic background other than Im left-handed, maybe? I think is one of the most beautiful forms of creative output; theres something about the way watercolor can convey a mood and a feeling distinctly. Where do you find most of your beautiful imagery? Theres no specific site I go to because Im pretty much all over the Internet when Im browsing. I guess when I come across something that inspires me, I get lost for hours scrounging for morethat inevitably leads to another thing. Seven subjects later, and I have a mess of pictures on my desktop.What is your first real fashion memory? I cant pinpoint some sort of epiphany thing since my interest is one that just grows and changes every day. The first real photo shoot, however, is one that sticks out most to me. I was approached by during the growth of my blog, and they asked me to come over to the owners house and play dress-up with a professional photographer. It was for their Quiksilvers “it” girl shoot along with a couple of other bloggers. It was very, very cool. What are the last three things you bought? Clinique moisturizer, suede black boots, a quesadilla. When did you launch your blog? What inspired you to start blogging? I started my blog super early like before blogging was even remotely popular. Susie Bubble was pretty much the only blog worth reading at the time. As for starting up, I had really strict parents in high school, so there wasnt much of an outlet for me. I turned to overwhelming myself with beautiful imagery and dressing up and needed a place to document all that. Whats the best thing thats happened to you since you started blogging? The opportunity to meet all these amazing people across the nation!If you had to explain your style in x + x + x = me what would it be? Androgynous + California casual + any kind of ankle boots + gold accessories + 50s hemline + = me. What do you do full time? I have a part time job as an admin. assistant for an asset management company while going to school full-time at University of California, Irvine studying business econ. Favorite editorial of all time? Vogue Italia July 2007, “Supermods Enter Rehab,” will always have a soft spot since its one of the first editorials I stumbled on that transitioned me out of high school. Photo: Steven MeiselWhat are the 5 items you find yourself wearing over and over again? , black nail polish, long lacey hems, loose tank tops, things that sit on the waist.Girl crush? Changes all the time, but is a constant. Best vintage score ever? Not an obvious answer, but I am quite fond of my wool, llama printed backpack. What inspires you most in creating outfits? New acquisitions that Im excited to play dress up with.Favorite piece of jewelry that you own? I found this gorgeous, gold elephant ring at the flea market for less than the price of a latte. The detailing and texture is so gorgeous on it! Whats the last song that played on your iPod? Giant Drag, “Swan Song.”What do you do if you have brands gift you items you dont like? Thats such a good question that I think PR companies need to address; its a problem that shouldnt exist to begin with. I personally am tired of being pressured to blog about something that was randomly sent to me without my interests in mind. If its a good relationship, I blog it no matter what, but I think Im getting to the point where Im fed up and refuse to wear something that was sent to me for the sake of the brand. Who has your dream job? .Finish this sentence. When Im not blogging you can most likely find me …Studying at a coffee shop or driving with my boyfriend to a random Yelp.com destination. Any advice for girls wanting to start a blog? Other than the obvious aesthetics, I think the most important thing is to stay true to yourself and your style. Blog because you enjoy it! Something people would be surprised to know about you? Im a closet nerd. I played World of Warcraft like hardcore in high school. I still would play if I had the time Your idea of fashion heaven? A warehouse of for me to play in. ?is one of the last quintessential rock-and-roll clubs left standing in , which is why it made the perfect location for our latest video by Bon Duke, Jive! Jive! Jive! The same could be said about the punk boys who star in it they embody the spirit that the underground rock scene is all about. Think Buddy Holly, but way more bad-ass theyre tattooed, guitar-smashing and knife-wielding, but they clean up really nicely. Alyssa Vingan Clothing provided by On Cole: vest; coat; pants and belt; oxfords; necklaces On Miles: shirt and blazer; leather jacket; trousers; boots On Joey: brown sweater; pink sweater; blazer; jeans; shoes; belt; necklaces; ring On Shane: shirt; blazer; jeans; shoes; belt; necklace On Luca: t-shirt and denim shirt; jeans; boots; gold necklace; leather bracelet necklace; bracelet On Danny: t-shirt and leather jacket;blazer; pants; boots; Lewis dager necklace; gold triangle necklace; braceletsCredits Creative Director: Emily Finkbinder, Director: Models: Shane Gambill (); Miles Garber (); Joey Kirchner (); Daniel McSweeney (); Cole Mohr (); Luca Vigorelli () Director of Photography: Pat Scola Second Camera: Blake Martin, StyleCaster Digital Effects Artist: Logan Seaman Stylist: , Stylist Assistant: Dee Grossmann, Hair Stylist: , Hair Assistant: Shane Gambill Makeup Artist: , Tattoo Artist: , Art Director: Production Assistants: Marijn Westerlaken and Brandon Wickencamp Special thanks to and ?.From the brightly-lit presentations at The Portico Rooms to the evening’s after-hours soires in Mayfield, music is just about everywhere during LFW, just like the fabulous fashions that cover the city from inch-to-inch (or shall we say centimeter to centimeter instead?)To help give us an idea on what’s currently in rotation on the London fashion scene, we’ve went to one of the city’s more well-known industry insiders, . Being a fashion and PR maven (as well as one heck of a “door bitch” and DJ at one of the hands-down most fashionable ftes in London and Paris), Cozette always has her eyes and ears on the transatlantic scenes.Get ready to break out your , Henry Holland, Burberry, TOPSHOP, and so on as you jam out to Cozette’s London Fashion Week playlist below!Kelly Rowland “Work (Freemason’s Remix)” The Jags “Back Of My Hand” Scissors Sisters “Comfortably Numb” Sheila E “The Glamorous Life” Kylie Minogue vs New Order “Can’t Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head” IMAGINATION “Just An Illusion” Les Rita Mitsouko “Andy” Stacy Lattisaw “Jump To The Beat” Pitbull “I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)” Madonna “Deeper and Deeper” ?skyrocketed to the second place spot on Bloglovin’s blog rankings, with over 5,000 followers — and that’s not including the scores of additional people who visit her page each month. Her extensive shoe and designer clothing collection has helped her transcend from mere to something of an obsession. Plus, her newfound status has put her in the pages of fashion magazines like Teen Vogue and allowed her to attend the 2009 Crillon Ball in Paris for which she wore Chanel Haute Couture. 3. Leighton Meester Leighton Meester‘s alter ego, Blair Waldorf, on the guilty pleasure drama Gossip Girl, has always had some seriously covetable style. But as the show progresses from season to season, it seems that Meester is growing into her own sense of style as well. The actress still does a nicely off-screen, but her true signature style is a bit more badass than that of the character she plays. Take this sexy cut-out LBD above, for example. We love it, Leighton. 4. Dree Hemingway If you’ll be celebrating the New Year in a warmer climate, take a cue from Dree Hemingway‘s down-South-meets-downtown look above. Her rise to “It” status may have been helped by the fact that she’s the great-granddaughter to one very famous writer (yes, the one you learned about in high school), but her impeccable fashion sense and beautiful face may have had a little to do with it as well. Hemingway is currently signed with Elite Model Management and was one of the faces of Gucci’s ad campaign this past fall. Look out for the rising star in upcoming ads for Valentino’s S/S 2010 collection. 5. Daphne Guinness She’s the girl who isn’t afraid to get noticed–can’t you tell? If metallic platform Mary Janes and streaked hair don’t scream “look at me,” then the positively alien-like from the designer’s S/S 2010 collection definitely had that covered. The self-proclaimed haute couture collector has a closet to die for, and she utilizes it well. Guinness is constantly on our radar, and we’re excited to see what she’ll be wearing to celebrate the end of the decade. 6. Emma Watson Someone must be performing Hogwarts spells on Emma Watson, because sometime in the last year she’s completely transformed from a semi-awkward-but-innocent young girl to a stunning starlet with some serious fashion cred. Perhaps it was the Burberry effect; the Harry Potter actress was the face of the fashion label’s fall 2009 ad campaign, and she dons a sparkly yellow cocktail dress from the British line above. We think it’s the perfect look to get noticed amongst the New Year’s crowds. 7. Zoe Saldana While Saldana has been acting for quite some time, 2009 saw leaps and bounds for her career. She starred in two of the year’s biggest hit movies, Avatar and Star Trek, and has a slew of films on the docket for 2010. But Saldana isn’t just any old actress who’s making her way to leading lady status–she’s building a fantastic fashion resume along the way. At the Star Trek premiere above, Saldana wore a short sparkly cocktail dress with long sleeves–the newest style to add to your closet pronto. Not only is it sexy and slimming–it’s warm too!8. Leigh Lezark We’re pretty sure that everyone wants to be a celebrity DJ — at least for one night. Lucky girl Leigh Lezark is living that dream full time. As one of three in the New York-based DJ trio, the MisShapes, Lezark spends her days sporting designer ensembles around the city, and her nights spinning the hottest new beats at the hottest fashion parties. If you’re confident with your figure, try a body conscious dress in this season’s , like Lezark’s above. 9. Georgia May Jagger Georgia, Georgia, Georgia…okay, we just like saying her name. But there’s a lot of other things about the sexy model we like as well, starting with her Brigitte Bardot-esque good looks, and her famous family (dad is Mick Jagger and mom is Jerry Hall). She may not be a household name (yet), but among the fashion set, she’s envied and obsessed over. Her gorgeous ensemble above is the perfect inspiration for a more formal New Year’s gathering. If you’re going for sophistication, red lipstick a la Georgia May is the name of the game. 10. Diane Kruger We’re going to be honest here, and tell you a little secret. We’ve never actually seen one single movie that Diane Kruger has starred in, but we did see the Inglourious Basterds trailer–does that count? So why, you might ask, do we know so much about her? Because of her impeccable fashion choices, of course. This red dress with embellished shoulders was one of many fabulous pieces she stepped out wearing in 2009. A bright bold color that is still appropriate for winter would be perfect for our New Year’s fete. You’ve found the key to our hearts, Diane. ?? Through the haze of free champagne, swooning over Lily Donaldson spinning at Burberry, and StyleCaster’s joint events with M Missoni, , and , it’s a hard night to forget. (Dizzying, but amazing.) Luckily, the fashion gods heard our cries of joy, and the event is slated to return September 9, 2010.Due to general party merriment, and basically every girl’s idea of a fashion playground, Fashion’s Night Out raised retail traffic by 50 percent that evening. That’s a lotta Gucci, Prada, and Dolce. Today , Vogue, the CFDA, and NYC & Company, announced the return, making this hopefully a yearly event. (Better than Fleet Week, guys.)“We were absolutely bowled over by the response to Fashion’s Night Out,” Anna Wintour said. “It was only fifteen minutes after the event began and we were getting reports about lines around the block at stores throughout the city.”After the insane success in New York, Fashion’s Night Out will also take place in London, Paris, MIlan, Madrid, Berlin, Moscow, Athens, Tokyo, Taipei, Beijing, Sao Paolo, and New Delhi.Let the revolution begin!?, birthplace of the and a city that considers beans on toast as an actual meal. With so much going on in this cultural epicentre, be sure you don’t waste one minute checking your friend’s Facebook statuses or watching European MTV in your hotel room!Head over to East London to get your fill on all things hip and trendy, or hop on the tube to Oxford Street to go window shopping at all the major department stores. You can also swing by in your best homage outfit to Mary Quant and the psychedelic 60s, or cruise on over to Parliament to say “Hello!” to Big Ben.Whatever your own personal itinerary ends up being, just make sure its “well ace.” To gurantee that you’ll have a jolly good ol’ time in the L-D-N, I’ve compiled a list of all the hotspots you need to check out.No need to thank me for this guide of awesomness…unless you don’t mind sending a few HobNob biscuits my way here in New York?!The SoHo Hotel (Photo courtesy of Firmdale Hotels) HOTELS:Old Blue Last (Photo by Victor Frankowski)BARS/CLUBS: Hoxton/Shoreditch Dalston Islington Camden SoHoSpitalfields MarketMARKET GUIDE:Friday – Go to Portabello Road in the morning for some extreme thrifting, literally. From records, to jewelry, to vintage clothes and to old riding boots, we recommend you get a good night’s sleep the day before for all the exhausting digging you will be doing!Saturday – Head to Broadway Market in the morning to see the “quiet” side of Hackney, and then hop on the bus over to Camden to check out the stalls situated near the canal.Sunday – Check out Spitalfields Market first, and then you can cross the street to spend the rest of the afternoon on Brick Lane purchasing knick knacks from craft vendors, tasting grub from international food stalls or thrifting through strangers’ personal belongings, hanging out of suitcases on the pavement.Tate Modern Museum MUSEUMS:Boho MexicaRESTAURANTS: SoHoCovent Garden CamdenShoreditch/HoxtonBrick LaneOxford StreetSHOPPING:All photos unless otherwise noted are from ?, Dior and Rochas are giving their sartorial OK, we’re naturally inclined to follow suit. Plus, you can’t get a more than the stretchy feetwear. So, in the spirit of trying out the new trend, we’ve taken some inspiration from some of our favorite runway looks as well as trend-savvy fashion bloggers to construct the look from the sock down!Related: ?Perusing our favorite for a little inspiration fix has become as de rigueur as afternoon coffee runs. That said, it’s easy to forget that the creatives behind the blogs are often real-life, working photogs. is here to remind us that she doesn’t just write a blog in two languages, she’s also hard at work behind the lens and this time for a mainstream, giant brand. Dor has been tapped to shoot Club Monaco’s Fall 2010 lookbook only the brand’s second to features models.The Polo -owned retailer didn’t waste the opportunity by booking just any mannequins. Instead, they opted for a bit of a motley crew of cool kids: The shoot includes girl-about-town , Dossier Journal co-founder Alex Friedman, assistant beauty editor Laurel Pantin, womens merchant Maria McManus and furniture designer Jeff Raynor.Taken in the style of Dor’s blog that is, airy and sun-dappled with a French laissez-faire chicness about it on the streets of NYC’s West Village and Meatpacking District, the lookbook is filled with cobbled roadways that recall the photog’s homeland, Paris bien sur.With as beau, the picture perfect couple may just be making a run for fashion campaigns. Watch out !For those interested in shopping the looks, the Fall collection is slated to hit U.S. locations in July. Related: ?)Anna Wintour personally approved all 150 looks for the runway show. Can anyone spell control freak? ()Check out a hint of what stylist extraordinaire ‘s chic QVC collection, Logo Instant Chic, will look like when it goes on sale during Fashion Week on September 10 and 15. () Courtesy of Logo Instant ChicKelly Osbourne has been loosening up her buttons, baby, and after a year of crazy dieting, she’s showing off her sexy bod by performing with the Pussycat Dolls. ()Simon Doonan is moving his column away from the pink paper, the NY Observer, and will now lend his bon mots to Slate. () debuted their Pure Matte lipstick yesterday with a short film featuring Canadian beauty Heather Marks and director Tim Richardson’s play on reflections proving that Marks looks good from every angle. ()Blair and Serena may not be the fairest girls of all on the Gossip Girl set. is rumored to be making an appearance on the show. ()TWITTER: RT @ @ @ Jess x 2 There are only so many people in the world who can tweet photos of themselves holding magazines with their visage on the cover. Here’s two of them: RT @ Come to me oh Burberry Prorsum shearling canvas coatLet us know if just asking for it works BB…RT @ And now I present a familial footwear conundrum. Courtesy 3.1 Phillip Lim & … I mean, I’d borrow my bro’s shoes if they were cool enough and fit. RT @ Only once a century does a day this epic occur… Ladies and gentlemen, today is 9-02-10. (cue theme song) Let’s just hope 90210 (the original) still matters in the next century. That show has lessons for every generation.RT @ My design team channeling 90210! Maybe I have been working them too hard. We don’t care that this is getting redundant, 90210 Day is our new favorite holiday! ?has seen her fair share of airports in the past few weeks. With out today, Emma has been on a whirlwind of sorts, jumping from one continent to another. She proved that she has definitely mastered the art of effortless airport style, appearing in a decidedly 60s, beatle-esque look as she made her way through Heathrow airport on the way to last week. She kept it comfy in flats, and gave us a little taste of Fall by donning a chic Burberry suede trench. Click through to replicate her retro style for yourself.?. ? Arlenis Sosa shows her softer side as she volunteered Saturday to run the face painting booth for children with severe disabilities alongside New Yorkers for Children at the 5th Annual New Alternatives for Children Kids Olympics. () Arlenis Sosa. Photo courtesy of New Yorker’s for ChildrenW to get a dose of Italian style? Word on the street is that Stefano Tonchi is wooing his friend and street style fave Anna Dello Russo to fill the fashion editorial director spot at the mag. ()has a round-up of pop’s biggest bra moments. Tina Turner may have started the revolution. Proving his creativity knows no bounds designer, photographer and all-around artiste took pen to hand to illustrate all 0f today’s issue of France’s Libration as part of his guest editorship. () Drawing by Karl Lagerfeld in June 22 issue of Libration. A Cleveland Walmart forced a gay employee to wear a yellow vest after coming out to his boss. There’s a Target opening in NYC and we bet they’re hiring! ()Related: ?, sorry Colin Firth, you’re way talented, but I would have loved to see ‘s speech, you deserved it, but it’s weird to hear all that sexy talk out of you, the concept of Miss Golden Globe is lost on me and I’m not convinced The Social Network was the film of the year. And there you have my Awards ceremony recap. On to what we really care about Lanvin, Calvin killing it, Marc Jacobs SS11 in real life, already getting rocked, the girls who looked hot and the ones who maybe didn’t. Click through and feel free to get all judgey.?. Jourdan Dunn looks decidedly while sporting everything from an adorable striped dress to high-waisted white wash jeans, and the collection appropriately titled “Romantic Preppy” is right on-trend with a of pinks and oranges. Le Swoon!Photos: via ?. While we remember her as the small, slightly frizzy child star, Watson turns 22 today and has proved that she’s all grown up.Girl can work a red carpet, has mastered the college chic look well enough to blend in at Brown University and is one of the few people we know who can chop off her hair and still look good enough to star in a Burberry campaign. So celebrate Emma’s big day with us by clicking through the slideshow above for some prime red carpet moments — including a glorious shot of her romping around a music festival.Cheers!?, the toddler celebrated her birthday yesterday afternoon with a small princess-themed party at her family’s home in Los Angeles. The spawn of the former Joey Potter and Scientology advocate/antidepressant hater, Tom Cruise, is perhaps most well known for single handedly making the bowl cut current again. Additionally, Suri, whose most notable competition in the A-list offspring arena is the blonde haired, blue eyed Shiloh Jolie Pitt, is oft photographed in designer ensembles with her stylish mom Katie. Amid the controversy surrounding her conception and subsequent birth, as well as the highly anticipated photo shoot, I can’t believe it’s been three years since Suri graced the world with her presence. How many other kids can say they are victims of photoshop fraud? Yes, we’re referring to the doctored cover featuring Suri and (best friend? frenemy?) Shiloh’s alleged “afternoon tea party with cupcakes, giggles”.Was the hair for Phillip Lim’s fall 2009 collection inspired by Suri Cruise?style.com?who rarely steps out of the house without a Birkin bag and $2,500,000 worth of diamonds.I’m . Not only does she work her (famous) ass off, she seems relatively normal for all of the outrageous media attention she receives. That doesn’t mean she hasn’t made some tragic fashion choices over the years. Let’s take a look back at some of her biggest faux pas and her greatest successes, shall we? Check out the gallery above, and let me know your thoughts.My ultimate conclusion is that Kim needs to keep it simple. She can throw together a killer ensemble of pricey basics and accessorize the sh*t out of them with her drool-worthy handbag and shoe collection. On the red carpet, she needs to play it a little safer. And for the love of all that is holy, no one-shoulder Grecian inspired items. Please, Kimmy! For me!?before you did. I attended a sleepaway camp where the counselors were all filthy foreign expats who exposed us all to weird pornography, Viz (a British humor magazine characterized by explicit drawings) and Sacha Baron Cohen, who was just becoming super famous back in the UK for his “Ali G” character. By the time Ali G hit the states 5 years later with the release of?Da Ali G Show, I rolled my eyes a little bit but was still willing to give the show a shot.I even willingly sat through his movies?Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and Bruno IN THEATERS. I enjoyed them, I really did — Borat was certainly original and Bruno was amusing if only because it showcased a pilled-out and genuinely confused Paula Abdul acting like a lunatic. Basically, I gave him a chance, but he has officially gone too far and I am completely done.At this past Oscars, he made a complete fool of himself after on the red carpet dressed as the main character Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen from his latest film The Dictator (released today). Dude, that just wasn’t cool at all. Ryan Seacrest’s biggest night of work of the year is the Oscars — and messing up his flawless Burberry tux was damn rude. His latest publicity stunt involved a series of photos with model (a.k.a. , or something not as nice as girlfriend but I won’t go there) Elisabetta Canalis as they sun on a yacht in Cannes. Honestly, these two are the only people in the world who could make Hotel Du Cap look like Hotel Du Crap. Sorry, I thought of that earlier and had to include it somehow. Obviously, there’s nothing actually wrong with this — but it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.What boggles my mind the most is that Sacha is married to the stunning Isla Fisher. I don’t understand their relationship and how she puts up with his questionable antics. I get that what he does is for publicity and that it’s a part of his job, but I really feel that there’s a line he crosses.I will not be seeing Sacha’s latest cinematic effort (as if he gives a crap — he’s probably rolling a pool of money right now), and I hope you won’t be either. I can’t support his behavior anymore and I think he needs to go back to his roots of simple comedy without such a grand production scale. Act however you want onstage or on camera, but don’t bring that into real life.Ugh. On that note, click through the gallery above for the yacht pictures…which are actually sort of funny, but don’t tell him I said that.?. To embrace the entire trend, not just in your wardrobe, we chose a few simple and affordable ideas inspired by the new season to update your home.Natural Tree-Stump Side Table ($199) at One key feature to this look is the use of . We love this unique piece from West Elm. Aside from the strikingly simple silhouette, it’s a multi-tasker it’s do just as well as an end table or a stool. Basay Basket ($59.95) at A cluttered room is nothing short of an eye sore. Keep things organized while with this modern take on the safari look. Use the basket to hide shoes in your front entry or store magazines. Belgian Linen Tufted Coffee Ottoman ($695) at Replace those hard-edged coffee tables for something more comfortable. These ottomans can easily double as a coffee table by adding a stacking tray or art books to create a hard surface where needed, or to just kick up your feet to relax. Tyrol Horn Cup ($21) at Natural and stunning shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. A great addition to your desk, use these horn cups to hold pencils or your makeup brushes.Box-Weave Hurricanes ($33) at Ready for some romance? These hurricanes will set the mood of a safari tent adventure. Turn off overhead lighting and pretend you’re on a faraway adventure. attended the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 2003 with a Bachelors of Fine Arts and a Bachelors of Architecture. She moved to New York City to accept a position at the prestigious interior design firm, Kondylis Design. After four years working as a senior designer, Freudenberger ventured out on her own and founded , an interior design firm specializing in the decoration of private residences, model homes and commercial spaces. In June of 2009, she opened the flagship home accessories boutique for Haus Interior in Nolita, NYC.More News We Love: ?, the actress has been taking fabric-cutting, design and sewing classes in the meantime. A source told the paper, “She’s already designed a line of T-shirts and wants to expand her skills to create bespoke eveningwear. She looks up to designers such as Georgina Chapman and Sarah Burton.”This doesn’t really come as a shock considering that the girl has already collaborated on a collection for fair trade fashion line People Tree and an. In addition, Watson already has some serious style cred: she’s a Burberry model, has been on the and is no stranger to celebrity best-dressed lists. The creative mind also looks to the works of Spanish surrealist painter Joan Mir for inspiration, so perhaps that’s a hint about what her future fabrics will look like.And hey, at least she’s educating herself in the craft as opposed to pretending to be a designer like so many other celebrity “designers.” Do you believe that Watson is going to take the plunge into the world of fashion design? And if she does, would you buy it?Photo: Alexi Lubomirski for Harper’s Bazaar UK?, the new face of Miu Miu, has been cast to star alongside Burberry model Douglas Booth in a new adaptation of Shakespear’s Romeo and Juliet (not that Leo’s version needs an update). Additionally, Ed Westwick is cast as Tybalt, in the film that begins shooting in August, which couldn’t be more perfect.I’m all for opening up the current generation to some highly watchable Shakespeare, but Hailee is only 14 and slated to appear nude in the film, which, not to get all American and prude, seems kind of wrong. According to the , the script’s writer, Julian Fellowes, explains, “I wanted Hailee because she is the perfect age. Juliet is at that stage of what you might call a child/woman. Just like Hailee herself is, [It's] about that first love affair. We all remember it, don’t we? There is never a love again like it.”I might argue that 13 in the 1400s was more like 18 is now, so maybe, not that I want Hailee to lose the role, but maybe, that could have been taken into casting consideration.?, , Ajak Deng, , Melodie Monrose, Arlenis Sosa Pea, Georgie Baddiel, Kinee Diouf, Lais Ribeiro, Mia Aminata Niaria, Rose Cordero and Sessilee Lopez all appear in this month’s stunning, all-black editorial for . There’s no arguing that these beauties are some of the top black models of the decade, which is exactly why the magazine chose to honor them in this spread, aptly titled The Black Allure.But to play devil’s advocate, I can’t help but wonder if it’s doing more harm than good to features models in these one-race-spreads that seem to be so prevalent lately. And this doesn’t only pertain to black models in particular, but rather, any ethnicity that departs from the conventional white female. For instance, take the December 2010 editorial, Asia Major, in American Vogue. While the spread is meant as a form of recognition and praise for these “non-traditional” faces, it can also be construed as a way of lumping an entire race of models in one place. I applaud these magazines for embracing all races, but are these one-race issues actually as inclusive as they’re intended to be, or are they in some way segregating these models into their own category? The argument could be made that by putting a qualifier like “black” before , we’re lessening the amount of success they’ve achieved in their field, race aside. That said, why shouldn’t we refer to someone as talented as Melodie Monrose as a top model instead of a ? No matter what side of the argument you fall on, there’s no denying that we’re seeing more diversity in the modeling world than we’ve ever seen in history. And I, for one, can’t wait to see what these beautiful ladies have in store for us. Click through to see the rest of the striking images from Vogue Italia’s spread for Black History Month. All Photos: Emma Summerton, Vogue Italia February 2011?was big, Jackie Collins knew the world would worship him. In an interview for her new book Poor Little Bitch Girl, Collins reveals her own obsession.In an interview for TheWrap.com, Jackie Collins indicates that she sometimes writes her character based on , because, as Collins says, “I’m actually a popular culture junkie.” Read these clips from Jackie Collins’ interview to see how she incorporated into her new release:The Wrap: Most of your characters are under 30. How do you keep current? Jackie Collins: I’m actually a popular culture junkie. I love keeping up on things on the internet, reading all the fabulous stuff that goes on … I like to be able to mention things before they actually happen. For instance, I mention . When I wrote the book he wasn’t as big as he is today, but I knew he would be. I just had this feeling.The Wrap: [For a short] time you had a brief affair with Marlon Brando?Jackie Collins: Yes, he was my , and I was actually 16. I met him at a party and it was all bets are off because I was a very street smart 16 and what are you going to do when you come face-to-face with your favorite movie star and you’ve seen The Wild One 10 times?The Wrap: That’s the fantasy of every woman of your generation and half the men!Jackie Collins: Well yes, I think any 16-year-old today who came across Robert Pattinson would do the same thing! The Wrap: How’d he measure up?Jackie Collins: Oh honey, he lived up.Well Robert Pattinson does too! We even heard that he may be working on a . Contributed by Kristine Gasbarre.More celebrity news from : More News We Love: ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?are only a few of her marks on the industry thus far. Taking her career to the next level, Jane and her mom designed a unique trench coat in collaboration with Gryphon. The adorable bell sleeves add an avant-garde edge to an otherwise predictable design.Jane’s not the only one that has us hooked on a unique trench; we fell in love with Scott Schuman’s online campaign, at the end of ’09. To go along with our trench obsession, here are our top 12 picks of great trenches from around the style web to take inspiration from the next time you have to update your classic: Shot by our very own on the streets of SoHo, NYC. Andrew Heid just happened to be strolling by when we snapped him in his TopMan trench. How adorable are these mini-trenches? Both of these amazing street style shots were taken by the infamous Scott Shuman for Burberry’s Art-of-the-Trench campaign in NYC. Love the army green trench with classic Burberry lining. A colorful fashion blog that captures fashion lovers, female and male alike. This gent gets style points for his navy trench and knit hat. Lookbook.nu, is a style blog open to the public, allowing fashionista’s everywhere to upload their own pictures to be celebrated by all! We love this Copenhagen girl’s classic trench. Hoy features street style from across the pond. All pictures are from London, Manchester, or Liverpool. What do you think of this BrIT girl’s trench above? Another shot by hoyfashion, this clear plastic is perfect for rainy London days. A definite favorite and everyday read is Jak&Jil. How do you like Vogue‘s Viginia Smith and Hamish Bowles’ trench moment? We’re loving every minute of it. Jak&Jil also captured Anna Dello Russo in this beautiful Lanvin trench. An Indie approach to all that is stylish on the street. Can’t get over how great this picture is. Complete with gladiator sandals, cropped red pants, a scarf, cigar, bowler cap, and of course, a great trench, this gent has unstoppable style. A german style blog that captures Berlin’s most fashionable. Loving this vintage navy trench. ?is actually two fold. First, you may literally fall in love with his romantic-for-the-city-girl look at structured florals, short shorts, perfect little sweaters and utterly adorable boyswear looks for girls. Then again, wearing all of these pretty clothes just might also put you in the mood to actually, maybe fall in love.The Jason Wu line is five years old, but his aesthetic, his commitment to that aesthetic and the precision with which he creates is well beyond Wu’s 28 years. There were pretty floral dresses fit for a modern Daisy Buchanan and a couple of evening looks including a sheer floor sweeping black gown with white flower detail, but that surfer/scuba vibe popped up again for this resort season (See, also: Michael Kors) in black and yellow sporty one piece suiting. The shorts with jackets and maybe a bow tie killed it for me though a perfectly modern approach to resort.?, the brand famous for its blatantly sexy footwear. On the beauty front, the company has just signed a 12-year contract with Inter Parfums to create and distribute a new scent. Tamara Mellon, Jimmy Choo‘s founder and president, is the former British Vogue accessories editor, and says that her lifelong “vision [is to] to fully accessorize the woman, and fragrance is an integral part of the modern wardrobe.” Jimmy Choo was signed with Selective Beauty, but no scent was ever developed. Mellon’s dream is in better hands with Inter Parfums, which holds the fragrance licensing to , , and . The brand’s extension will also feature scarves, swimsuits, and jewelry. In addition to diversifying their focus, Jimmy Choo also has an upcoming collaboration with , with the shoe company delivering its high-end glamour for less, starting November 14th. This marks H&M’s first alliance with an accessories brand, and Jimmy Choo will also design apparel to accompany the shoes and handbags. As if these two huge developments weren’t enough for the luxury house, last week in Milan saw the launch of their new line of updated classics, a range of footwear appropriately deemed “24/7.” This collection, available in January, will focus on their top-selling past designs, such as the perfect pump, wedge, and flat. The range is a dream for women who crave stellar, time-honored style, and will see the ideal forms refreshed each season with new colors and materials. ?forward men everywhere, we’re counting down the days until John Galliano shows his first ever menswear line at , on January 18, 2010. Comprised of outerwear, knitwear, shirts,leather jackets, jeans, and , the line is going to be geared towards the 18 to 35-year-old demographic.We’re inspired by Galliano’s never-ending creativity and efforts to push the envelope in not one, but four other high-fashion labels, so here is a gift guide designed for guys who appreciate fashion just as much as we do. Bottega Veneta Dark Navy Nero Marco Polo Large Travel Tote, $840, andTruffle Toro Bag, $1,980, at .Lanvin Patent Toe Suede Sneakers, $479.10, at .Burberry Trench 19 with Warmer, $1895, and Modern Fit Trench Coat, $1695,at . Salvatore Ferragamo Leather Dress Belt in black and brown, $280 each, at .James Perse Light Weight V Neck in gray and white, $50 each, at .Steven Alan Long Wool Scarf in blue plaid and brown houndstooth, $78 each, at .Steven Alan Fall Trilby in Charcoal and BrownHerringbone Tweed, $98 each, at . Vince Pullovers in navy and black, $175 each, at . Cartier Santos 100 Watch, $6250, and Large Santos Steel Watch, $5825, at . Dolce & Gabbana Classic Suit in black and charcoal, $1,395 each, at . Gucci Silk Bow Tie, $140, and Stefano Ricci Tonal-Scroll Tie, $570,at .Prada Patent Card Case, $150, and Stud Wallet, $365,at .Want a little something inexpensive to buy for yourself? ?‘s beauty campaign, being featured in every issue of American Vogue since September. You know, the usual. The London native is back after a one-year hiatus following the , lounging on the shores of Brighton Beach as the new face of Burberry’s Spring/Summer 2011 campaign. Jourdan’s pictured with fellow hottie Sacha M’Baye who’s showcasing some seriously studded leather and an enticing stare. The pair is just one of the couples shot by for this season’s ads, which Burberry CEO Christopher Bailey called a “dynamic campaign that reflects the diversity of our broad global consumer.” He also mentioned they chose the sunny locale to “celebrate the great British outdoors and our history of supporting emerging talent and to bring to life the emotion behind protection from the elements.” Um, said protection would be much appreciated i, thank you very much. Check out the awesomely sexy video of the two damn near seducing the camera during a stroll down the beach. Photos via Models.com?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?)Naomi Campbell works out for an hour and a half every day. Hey, at least she admits it. Don’t you hate when skinny chicks are all like, oh, yah, this is just genetic. ()Chance Crawford walked in Versace’s men’s show. ()Taylor Momsen is the face of Japanese line Samantha Thavasa. Hey, a job’s a job. ()DOUBLE SHOT: TWEET, TWEETRT @ Calvin Klein SS12 Menswear backstage photographs by Boo George, now on thelovemagazine.co.uk! I just really like that photographer’s name.RT @ In honor of my queen, – Can’t wait to dance tonight! I think Brit Brit might be my queen too.RT @ Jean Shrimpton the inspiration for Burberry A/W11 campaign our latest Vintage Style icon… Love a good retro inspiration.RT @ Looking for a brand new set of denim in your life? Naomi Campbell’s designing a line of jeans with Fiorucci! — How does she fit it in with all of that working out?TRIPLE SHOT: WATCH ITI die… ?is usually when you see celebs who normally wouldn’t be caught dead without the latest Proenza on step out in a puffy parka you wouldn’t have worn when you were six OR when celebs who normally wear body con bandage dresses-only think it’s super sexy to wear cropped and tight yet still puffy jackets with skin tight pants and totally obnoxious furry boots. Well, found some chicks who can go out in the cold and still show off their steeze. Of coursefigured out a way to incorporate some Burberry lace and Elizabeth Olsen has access to The Row. Click through for the cutest, and shop something cozy and Park City worthy below.Clockwise Left to Right: Rag & Bone chunky knit beanie, $80, at ; Jeffrey Campbell Brit boot, $239.95, at ; Citizens of Humanity, $165, at ; Striped fingerless gloves, $2.99, ; Alexander Wang leather sleeve cardigan, $625, at ; 3.1 Phillip Lim sunglasses, $275, at ?may be sort of the original street style icon because everyone from Fashion Toast to Sienna Miller has co-opted her look, but that’s not to venture that she’s the type to pile on the accessories, call up Celine for the newest must-have bag and get her pose on for Tommy Ton.Nope. Just look at her here at Paris Fashion Week, she’s practically running (gazelle-like, of course) from this photographer. The model who closed Louis Vuitton also isn’t in the latest Proenza paired with Alexander Wang booties and a leather studded Burberry trench just black skinnies, a black leather jacket and some kickass Rag & Bone boots.If you’re more of the effortless cool sort, you might be eyeing said booties. Get them for $550, at .Photo: Bauer Griffin ?)Alexis Bittar is joining the likes of Uniqlo and donating a generous sum to Japan relief efforts namely, profits from everything sold on his website next week. It’s not over $25 million, but it’s rather kind. ()Emmanuelle Alt shot Kate Moss for the cover of French Vogue’s may issue! ()Galliano apparently has a rich history of substance abuse, according to the WP, “His best friend, DJ Jeremy Healy, told The Post in the mid-1990s, that Galliano would go on “binges.” In recent months, according to sources, Galliano had been in a depressive state, his drinking increased voluminously and his work habits became increasingly erratic. Friends and colleagues reportedly urged him to seek help, but he refused. No one staged an intervention. Many in the fashion industry now wonder why.” It’s certainly curious. ()The Tisci at Dior Twitter rumors abound! According to Fashionologie, fashion CEO Susan Tabak Twittered: “Sources tell me as Riccardo Tisci moves to Dior his pr staff goes along too.And now I hear Haute Couture finito.” Also this morning, Tweeted: “So I hear it’s confirmed that Tisci is headed to Dior. Possibly with a mutual friend. Wonder when it will be announced.” hmm… ()DOUBLE SHOT: TWEET TWEET! RT @ Just wrapped a giddily fun brunch at with the town’s finest fashionistas. Now settling into a little poolside champers. SXSW tweets make me sad.RT @ Rachel Weisz wearing @ for the front cover of Madame Figaro, France I want it.RT @ For the first time @ will live stream the @ Award nominee/honoree announcements tonight at 6:30 EST on Facebook.com/Swarovski! Party!RT @ Exciting news — we just added Eddie Borgo on neimanmarcus.com! What took so long??hosted, called “Khlo After Dark.” The reality diva discussed sex and dudes, and pissed off her producer when she brought a vial of coke she found in the Dash dressing room on air. Nope, that wasn’t scripted. Not even a little (ha).Anyway, she was actually a natural at it, mainly because she has no boundaries and isn’t afraid to be boisterous and crazy in public. So, I’m actually excited that she’ll be back at it again. Her latest show, “The Mix Up With ,” will begin on Monday, January 30th and will be centered in Dallas.It looks like her hubby Lamar getting traded to the Dallas Mavericks hasn’t dampened her spirits too much. The Kardashians really make the most out of everything, don’t you think??shake me from my Nantucket tinged dreams and remind me that there’s not much better than the pairing of leathers with a great dress. Bilson went Burberry Prorsum for her film premiere, with what can only be described as a badass jacket paired with a light and breezy dove grey layered dress. Her hair is a bit severe, but those Louboutins are a nice balance for the tougher jacket.Kiera took a lesson in layers with a little leather shearling with a knit navy dress and heavy infinity scarf. I dig the affect, but the color choice seems off, meaning I’m giving this one to Bilson.Am I just so wrong??, and other limited edition covers will feature artwork by the likes of Paul Smith and Pete Doherty.Bedecked as a platinum blond, blinking back disco-ball eyeshadow and smoky lashes, and poured into a skin-tight, shiny dress with scaly black lace cut-outs, Allen is a fitting cover subject for an issue showcasing 25 years of London Fashion Week. She wears iconic British designers: Burberry, , and who all customized looks for the shoot. This cover makes us think that we should all inject a little rock-star into our wardrobes. Get Lily’s rockin’ look for yourself at StyleCaster shop:This black leather dress is one-half classic, one-half bad-ass.Fun, sexy, and sparkly: this dress is made for good girls gone bad.And this eerie creation from is possibly the coolest dress ever.And not that we can see what phenomenal shoes they’ve put on Lily, but we can imagine they’re something like :Or maybe the editors went for a more hipster look with these oxfords, or all-out sexy in snakeskin pumps.?)Lest you forget how most models really are younger than your little sister, Modelinia is asking about her Junior Prom. Look out under 18 year old boys only, the beauty just broke up with her bf and is currently dateless. () got a full article in the Times wherein he explains the difference between working and werking and major and mayjor. Whoa, I mean, whow? ()German Cosmo is garnering some flack for its recent S&M themed spread. I mean, the US version has some articles that sort of make us blush. So isn’t this just, like, fitting? () Photo: German Cosmopolitanloves a solid collaboration. The brand’s newest alignment is with New Balance. Get ready for some new sporty gone preppy kicks. ()Stop the presses, a rockstar is marrying a model! Kings of Leon’s Caleb Followill proposed to model Lily Aldridge and they’re pretty adorable. ()TWITTER RT @ Coffee just can’t be strong enough this morning! Truer words have never been spoken…RT @ So many faces.. Creepy, I feel like they’re staring at me… RT @ My French ELLE cover;) Kind of makes your tweets seem boring, non? RT @ remember that diet i said i was going to try last week? well one week down and i loss 11lbs! try it here >> Is this different than the Fashion Week Diet wherein there’s no eating all day, followed by champers and cigarettes at night? RT @ Christopher, gutted Im going to miss the @ show, will make sure I watch the live stream from here in the States. Good luck, Em x Midterms should not keep a girl from Burberry!?, whose tenure at has resurrected and refined the concept of classic , or princess bride , whose fondness for UK retailers like Whistles and Reiss has caused a stampede at the shops. The only question is, in a city this spread out, where does one begin? Leave it all to us. Grab your A-Z, bust out the credit (and Oyster) card, and make your way to these top , vintage haunts and department stores. ?is over, designers, critics, and fashion lovers have turned their attention across the pond to the runways of London. Although , which started on February 19 and ends February 24, is still in full-swing, weve already picked out some of our favorite shows.Mark Fast (and above)Canadian-born not only embraced shape and texture with his collection, but also the inclusion of . Fast, who has been praised for his lack of size discrimination, alternated between the body-hugging and free and flowing, with looks that ranged from a cranberry pink, draped, silk dress to a short, tight, shoulder-baring dress modeled by fashions plus-size icon, .Twenty8TwelveActress and her sister, Savannah, opted for a presentation this year rather than a runway show. The reason? The actress confessed to that the duo never intended to set ourselves up against . Dotted with boho, military, and hippie influences, the collection seemed to reflect the actress’ own street style, featuring acid wash jeans, leather jackets, and psychedelic-print sweaters. Admittedly, although Twenty8Twelve may not carry the same professional finish as Bailey or even celeb labels such as , we kind of like the fact that its more street-ready than runway-savvy.Todd LynnWhat was the inspiration behind Todd Lynns 2010 collection? The thrill of the hunt. Each look seemed to evoke the contrast between the predator and the prey, featuring olive-colored pants paired with shoulder-padded jackets draped with fox fur. Not only do we love Lynns concept, but we love his leather-fueled execution.Matthew Williamson is known for his panache for the bright and bold geared toward the young and beautiful. With this collection, Williamson not only showed what he does best, but he captured a sense of mature femininity. Grown-up looks, such as this tweed jacket and dress combination that opened the show, competed with brightly-colored silk dresses.Christopher Kane was keen on florals this season; through an array of textures and fabrics, flowers fueled this years fall collection. From leather jackets to body-conscious kimonos, it appeared that each look aimed to highlight the utilization of floral print, rather than showcasing drastic experimentations with shape.Louise GoldinWhile some designers channeled nature, looked to the stars for inspiration. Goldin described her collection as , and her collection certainly didnt stray from the sci-fi and futuristic. It seemed to be the perfect mish-mash of in The Fifth Element and .House of HollandHenry Hollands is likely to appeal to the twentysomething New York City hipster, as models sported sherbet-colored printed tights, side-ponytails and acronym-printed T-shirts. It was rather appropriate that fashionistas such as and sat in the front row.PPQ On Saturday, closed the night with looks that were all about the femme fatale. However, these weren’t 40s vamps in pin curls. Amy Molyneaux and Percy Parker gave their looks a rocknroll edge with heavy eyeliner, gold embellishments, animal prints, and metallics.Unique Topshops went into the wild with a collection that featured a Boy Scout-inspired jacket and shorts, animal-inspired knitwear, and mushroom-print chiffons. We especially loved the animal masks designed by Emma Cook.Images: style.com & coutorture.comMore News We Love: ?‘s New York show (we’re giving ourselves a theoretical pat on the back right about now). Then Baby Phat designer, Kimora Lee Simmons, debuted her Spring 2010 collection at the Roseland Ballroom while the show played live on the big screen in Times Square for tourists and passersby to watch.Burberry successfully followed suit with the option of live user commenting on while the show was happening in London, and Emporio Armani hopped on the bandwagon for their September 27 show in Milan.We already knew Twitter addict Alexander McQueen was planning on live-streaming his Paris spring 2010 collection on October 6, but we were pleasantly surprised to learn today that Marc Jacobs plans to do the same for his collection for Louis Vuitton the following day–and on Facebook, no less. Seems a bit un-Louis-like, if you ask us, given the usual exclusivity of the fashion house, but not to do away completely with their exclusive allure, the brand will only keep the live-stream posted for 24 hours.Might this be Marc’s attempt at targeting a more middle-class consumer due to a , or is he just trying to stay current with the rest of fashion’s techies?Since we’ve been forced to live vicariously through our (shout out to !) who’s been camping out around the Paris Fashion Week events the last two days, this will at least give us the chance to witness the show at the same moment that the likes of Anna, Madge, and Rihanna are watching LV’s looks come down the catwalk. And at the moment, we couldn’t ask for more.Watch the Louis Vuitton Spring 2010 runway show live at 8:30 am East Coast time (5:30 am for overly-enthusiastic LV fans in LA).?International Concepts line is known for its versatility and affordability. Their collection always consists of office chic meets Saturday shopping meets date night outfits. Really, you can wear these pieces for any occasion.Their two themes for this spring are “Animal Instincts” and “Shine the Times.” One word: amazing. I am all for the sparkle and the. I always feel that leopard is appropriate, no matter the event and no matter what my friends say And now Macy’s is giving you the option to glam it up with some sequins! This is absolutely fabulous. Take the Turquoise Leopard Dress, for instance. You can’t tell me it doesn’t remind you of ? Or the light beige leather jacket, totes Burberry Prorsum inspired, no? Just sans the hefty price tags! Check out the new INC International Concepts collection on Macy’s .For more on our relationship with Macy’s please click here:?are so 2009. Technology and fashion are basically symbiotic in that both are constantly changing, have to look incredible and have utility. Marie Claire‘s new iPad app melds the best of both worlds. From trends to 360 degree product views, beauty, celeb style and daily outfit ideas, it’s super visual, a lot of fun and costs $2.99, which is basically one mag at the newsstand. We chatted the state of print, Nina Garcia and why wood nymphs don’t make for good with .So tell me about the new !The thing thats so great about the iPad is the design and fashion is also all about design. We wanted to come up with a great way to put it together in the A-Z application, and I think that what weve done plays into the technology of the iPad its very tactile.Photo courtesy of Marie ClaireWhy do you think its so important for magazines to have a strong digital element?Digital is really a part of our readers’ lives and it’s another way of bringing the magazine to her and bringing the part that print can’t bring to her. Print is very luxurious and it’s portable you can have it with you in a bath, on a plane, put it in your bag. [With the iPad] you can sample things. In the magazine we can show a photo of the shoe; on the iPad you can get a 360 degree view of the shoe.Your brand is doing so well what do you think sets Marie Claire apart from other fashion mags?I think that what sets us apart is that we’re more than just a fashion magazine. We have great stories about women who have overcome things, or inspiring women who have achieved their dreams. Also, our fashion is very real and we dont do a lot of as women dressed up as wood nymphs dancing through a forest its about the useful. has such an amazing balance of fashion and social awareness. Why do you think thats so important and how do you maintain it?I think women find it very interesting and they are engaged with things beyond themselves. If you have a life where you only think of yourself, you’ll be miserable. We do stories in which readers help women across the world and you get the sense of ‘I have to appreciate that I dont live in a place where I have to wake up to walk three miles to get water, or that I don’t have to worry that my neighbor will rape me, and if I go to the police they won’t rape me.’What are the biggest challenges you face in your position?The challenge we face is that we are always looking for the great photographer and the best models and the celebrity you want to read about that month staying on top of things. The world is getting much bigger but also much smaller.Fast fashion has become so ubiquitous, do you think there will be a backlash?I think that what will eventually happen is the biggest designers will be forced to do more collections like and . You see a brand like now that has a show in September and then the items will be available to wear if you order them in November or December it’s all about speeding things up. Photo courtesy of Marie ClaireWhat advice do you have for those just breaking into fashion journalism?I think set up your own blog or website like StyleCaster. With the web you have an easy way to demonstrate your interests. Ask people you respect, reach out to people and ask what you want to ask them and demonstrate what you can do. You can email your work to strangers that you wouldnt be able to get in touch with otherwise.Which women do you think embody fashion right now?Nina Garcia embodies tremendous fashion. When she came to work here we wanted to see if she would come in wearing something different every day, but her daily looks always have something she feels familiar with, and everything is a variation on that sort of a uniform in a way. She is one of our style heroines. And is on our December cover and she has this amazing pixie cut and she was so effortless in the looks. I think shes a new fashion face for the future.What were you loving at ?I loved Jil Sander, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada and I love that color is coming back in a big way. Ill never wear it, but I’m happy to see it on other people! And I just think hes [Alber Elbaz] such a great, interesting designer.?, but more of you probably remember him as the adorable Paul (JGL‘s BFF) in . Let me just cut to the chase here: Mr. Gubler is gorgeous in that quirky, hipster way that we all know and love.Who brings out the best in these types of guy? Why, Terry Richardson of course. Gubler posed for the famed fashion photographer as they hung out at the Chateau Marmont (add him to Terry’s list of crazy/random friends). If you think Gubler looks like a natural in front of the camera, there’s a reason why. He previously modeled for Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Jacobs, Burberry, and more.Click through the gallery above for some afternoon eye candy.? Rachel McAdams: Rachel McAdams has come a long way since she was a Mean Girl. More recently, she’s taken the silver screen by storm with classics such as The Notebook, Wedding Crashers, and this year’s Sherlock Holmes. Emma Watson: Hermione Granger has been on the big screen since the start of this decade in 2001. But with the Harry Potter series coming to a close, Emma Watson‘s career has now transcended into modeling. Sitting front row at fashion shows and starring in Burberry’s 2009 ad campaign, we can’t wait to see more of this beauty come 2010. Ellen Page: If you don’t already know how awesome Ellen Page is, than you’re seriously missing out. Underneath the long locks of brown hair, cute button nose, and innocent gaze, lies a rising star. Our favorite pregnant teen from Juno, switched it up this year as a roller derby bad-ass for Whip It! Plus, she’s scoring big points with other Hollywood A-listers–according to Marie Claire, Page and Drew Barrymore became fast friends on the film’s set. Carey Mulligan: She earned big points for her role in Pride & Prejudice in 2005, and now Carey Mulligan is taking 2009 by storm. Proving herself as a true talent in Public Enemies, and in the recent indie flick, An Education, Mulligan is not only gifted, but gorgeous. Sienna Miller: From actress, to model, to fashion designer, to broadway star, Sienna Miller, has an aptitude for dominating the limelight with class and creativity. From Factory Girl’s, Edie Sedgwick to G.I. Joe‘s, Ana DeCobray, she’s portrayed some seriously hot characters. Most recently, she made her Broadway debut in the drama After Miss Julie. With a gleaming smile, a , and undeniable style, we have high hopes for Miller come 2010. Kristen Stewart: Kristen Stewart has definitely dominated 2009 as far as acting is concerned. Starring in the record-breaking, tween saga, Twilight, she has rocketed herself from Adventureland’s theme park nerd, to a very hot vampire-loving babe. Zooey Deschanel: We loved Zooey Deschanel as a singing Elf, and again this year as the office tease and unique beauty in 500 Days Of Summer. Her chemistry with Joseph Gordon Levitt made us pine for some serious romance in our lives. With Deschanel’s bright blue eyes and a smile that lights up the big screen, she’s a hard one not to fall for. Zoe Saldana: Zoe Saldana is definitely an actress of the future. Taking the Sci-Fi screen by storm this year with Star Trek and Avatar, Saldana’s talents are other-wordly. We’re curious to see what kind of futuristic endeavors she’ll pick up next. Dakota Fanning: Another Twilight star to add to the list of favorites, Dakota Fanning still has years of successful films ahead of her. She’s already racked up quite the impressive resume for a 15-year-old, starring in films like Charlotte’s Web, War of the Worlds, and this year’s animated favorite Coraline. Anna Kendrick: Anna Kendrick may be semi-annoying as Jessica in the Twilight saga films, but we think that’s clearly just part of the guise. Her role opposite George Clooney in recently released Up in the Air proved that she’s a contender for future leading lady roles. Maggie Gyllenhaal: We wonder what it was like playing the romantic opposite of The Dude (also known as Jeff Bridges) in this year’s highly-anticipated drama Crazy Heart. Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s acting talents never cease to amaze us, and we’re hoping she’ll receive some nods from the academy for her role. Diane Kruger: Diane Kruger gets an equal number of points for her amazing style as she does for her acting talents, which is why she’s hot on our radar this year. In Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, Kruger held her own alongside Brad Pitt, and is quickly rising to household name status. Penelope Cruz: When it comes to great actresses in Hollywood, there’s never been a question that Penelope Cruz ranks high on the A-list. This is even more apparent in her most recent film Nine, for which she is only one of many great stars in a cast that includes the likes of Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard, and Nicole Kidman. She’s already been for her role in the film. ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?launch last night at the recently opened Dream Downtown hotel got to experience just that. Hosting duties of the evening went to (loving the addition of her new hubby’s surname, by the way), who invited a few of her “celebrity friends” to party with her at the VIP tables inside PH-D, the hotel’s rooftop lounge. and violinist Caitlin Moe curated the party’s soundtrack with a mix of freestyle, electro pop and 90s throwback jams. During an energetic battle of the beats, Caitlin was killing it on the strings while Mia was mixing and scratching alongside her, using the tunes of Calvin Harris, Daft Punk and the like.HPNOTIQ Harmonie is a blend of Premium French Vodka (French, so you know it’s classier than a Polish or Russian Vodka) with “infused natural fruits, flowers and Cognac.” This isn’t your rap superstar’s vodka by the way – HPNOTIQ Harmonie is aimed for the who knows how to be a sweetheart, but isn’t always that innocent.To see who came out last night and left with a sweet tooth, take a browse through the photos in the slideshow above!?and toward a bold, graphic girl who looks like she took her pallet from a Mondrian is where found himself for pre-Fall. In a restrained color showing of cobalt, red, white and black, it’s all about sleek and architectural, like the apparel equivalent of wayfarers. Well-tailored pants are continuing to bask in their moment, white linear pumps look sharp (who says sharp, I know, but they do!), harness belts and a nod towards , and that leather and silk gown is going to haunt my dreams until the end of next summer when just maybe I can have it. Click through for all of the all-American city chick line-up, care of MK.Photos courtesy of .?kicked things off with some cool weather effects by making it rain on the catwalk at the beginning of their showCheck out all of the video recaps from our favorite Milan menswear shows down below, and let us know which collections you’re loving (or hating) in the comments section underneath!Burberry Prorsum: Vivienne Westwood Man:Prada:Calvin Klein Collection:Moncler Gamme Bleu:Dolce & Gabbana:Jil Sander:Bottega Veneta:Roberto Cavalli:[Photo via ]?about nails– beloved beauty necessity of , Blake Lively, Lady Gaga and Posh Spice, to name a few– the revolutionary nail product has sky-rocketed to become the latest and best beauty trend out there, and with good reason. The flash of the pure metallic color accessorizes your look immediately, creating an instant outfit, or at least instant jewelry.The flexible polymer sheets adhere to your nails under heat (similar to ), injecting your look with a blaze of color and show-stopping intensity. We love the – like precious treasure on each nail– and the classic chrome lightning, a mirror-like silver. In the collection, there are nearly two hundred prints to sort through, from sweet paisley to classic houndstooth to an outrageous magenta fishnet pattern. Designs can even be customized a la Eve’s Obama nails:The outlandish leopard prints, bursts of colorful graffiti and eye-catching metallic dots look great as long as the nails are short and trimmed, to keep them from looking overwhelming. We’d love to see the Burberry print on our nails, retro sailor tattoo images, or screen-printed skull-and-crossbones.What pattern would you choose??]Who wasn’t in the front row of the Burberry show?! [Via ]Elizabeth Smart, who captivated the nation when she was abducted at the age of 14, tied the knot in Hawaii over the weekend! [Via ]Take a look at this season’s America’s Next Top Model cast. Looks like the Brits are taking over. [Via]If Whitney Houston had a lesbian lover, this is who it would be. [Via ]?]We’re not sure if there’s another motive here, but Russell Brand is apparently not asking for a dime of Katy Perry‘s money. [Via]Karl Lagerfeld is making amends for his comment about Adele. [Via ]Here’s another reason to love Michelle Obama. [Via]Check out J Brand’s very first ready-to-wear collection! But beware: you’ll want everything. [Via ]?]Pictures have begun to surface of pieces fromMary Katrantzou’s collection for Topshop. From what we’ve seen, it’s going to be pretty epic.[Via ]Pay Pal tapped Simon Doonan, thecreative ambassador at large ofBarney’s, to design the windows of their storefront.[Via ]Elisabeth Canalis, George Clooney‘s ex, described their former relationship in a way that made us a little more than slightly uncomfortable.[Via ]Anya Ayoung-Chee, the winner of Project Runway season 9, dishes on how the final episode was shot and who her favorite designer from season 9 was.[Via]?Bright’s Fall 2011 foldable sunglasses, available in all of those shades that make you double take. Just think of how cute they’ll look with that camel trench you love so much.Burberry Brights Sunglasses, $250, at ?has been reincarnated in many forms with new details suiting a diverse range of characters and personalities. This season, turned out a new spin on this wardrobe staple. Toughened up with leather tabs, this updated Burberry trench coat runs the style gamut between perma-classic, military inspired and hard-rocker luxe.Because the trench coat is a long withstanding classic and it’s a naturally diverse look, it reels in your more fashionably risque ensembles. Alas, let your trench coat anchor a flirty skirt or flashy bottoms and take your look from to downtown girl about town and stop off at all the neighborhoods in between…Credits Photographer: , Stylists: and, Model: , Hairstylist: , Makeup Artist: , For more on our relationship with Net-A-Porter please click here:?looks all model-y in the spring/summer issue of The Block, shot by High Lippe. With wavy hair, signature, major sunnies and looks by Marchesa, Burberry, Posen and Dior, it’s amazing how tall the pint sized designer/fashion girl appears. In a very decadence meets decay meets high fashion look, styled by James Worthington DeMolet, Richie rocks that Prada as well as any of the 5,000 models who have worn the Spring collection in editorials. Props, lady.?. Don’t freak out if you missed the first day of the five-day event — you still have until Friday to pick up some awesome swag. From designer exclusives, to winning one-of-a-kind creations, Vogue’s OFW has us on the other side of the pond wondering: why don’t we have an Online Fashion Week?? Seriously…not fair.On Monday, we .Today, the British soiree definitely steps it up a notch and reflects their pride for a variety of awesome UK brands– with favorites like Burberry, Charlotte Olympia, Anya Hindermach, Mulberry, Lulu Guinness, and Alice Temperley.Here are some of our favorite stellar steals (so far)…?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?, a front-row regular at fashion shows, and a frequent Best Dressed List nominee, Emma Watson is no stranger to fashion. So it doesn’t come as any surprise that for the first time, the Harry Potter starlet is trying her hand at design in an eco-friendly collaboration with People Tree. “I wanted to help produce a younger range,” Watson explained, “because I was excited by the idea of using fashion as a tool to alleviate poverty and knew it was something I could help make a difference with. It has been the most incredible gap year project.” The line will include a variety of “clean, sexy, and easy to wear” knits, t-shirts, dresses, skirts, and shorts in both men’s and women’s styles, stated People Tree in a . All items are handmade from organic and fair trade cotton products by disadvantaged people in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. “I think young people like me are becoming increasingly aware of the humanitarian issues surrounding fast fashion and want to make good choices but there aren’t many options out there,” Watson said. The capsule collection, set to launch in February 2010, will be available at People Tree stores and . Watson’s not the first to break into eco-friendly fashion. Here are ten green lines you should be wearing now. 1. American Apparel Made in the US, all items in this cult line of basics is made from 20% organic materials. From leggings to v-necks to zip-ups to dresses, this affordable brand features mens, womens, and unisex pieces. [] 2. Organic by John Patrick Launched in 2007, Patrick’s line of organic men’s and women’s pieces are perfect for weekend lounging or wearing to the office. His goal for the future? People wont ask is it organic? but say of course its organic!’” []3. Alkemie Jewelry Husband-and-wife design duo Ashley Lowengrub and Dara Gerson are the minds behind this earth-friendly jewelry line, made entirely from reclaimed metals. All pieces are hand-manufactured in LA. []4. Beau Soleil New Yorker Anne Salvatore Epstein launched this line, named after her favorite type of oyster, with the focus of encouraging sustainability, fair trade and labor. Why? To be kind to both the planet and laborers when bringing her designs to life. [] 5. TDM Design TDM accepts social responsibility in its fashion endeavors by providing education and healthcare for children of the Nepali women who hand weave each scarf in this eco-conscious line. All items are made from natural silk, cashmere, bamboo, modal, and wool. [] 6. Re Collection PJ Faulstick launched this brand by bringing the fabrics from vintage pieces back to life. The designer toys with masculine and feminine pieces while constructing them entirely from materials. []7. Levi’s Eco This American lifestyle brand went modern in 2006 when it pledged to use organic cotton and recycled metals to make its famous blue jeans. To top it off, all packaging associated with the brand is made from organic fabric or recycled paper. [] 8. EDUN Bono is known for his awareness of global issues, but he took his concerns to new levels in 2005 when he launched, along with partner Ali Hewson, EDUN. The label hopes to encourage employment sustainability in far-reaching parts of the world where the items are produced. [] 9. Mr. Larkin With Mr. Larkin, Casey Larkin presents a variety of playful looks in pastel shades hand-dyed from vegetables found at local groceries. Recycled embellishments add a feminine touch. []10. Susan Woo After stints at Vuitton and Chanel, Woo decided to make a bold statement in high fashion with this colorful organic line. I wanted to create clothing that reflected an individuals personal beliefs, Woo told . []?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?for Burberry, Tali Lennox and Tara Ferry star in March’s ad release. The theme is one especially close to my heart, exotics, via Burberry Exotic Icons. Proving that trench coats are very much like music, in that there are endless combinations, Spring takes the timeless classic and does it up in python, studs it and tailors it within an inch of its life. That green is so cool it hurts my heart a little. Click through for the main images, and my favorites from the exotics collection, all shot by Mario Testino.Photos:Version: Copyright Burberry/Testino?was formerly an assistant for VPL, she’s a rock girl who has collaborated with it-kid musicians including Joanna Newsom, Coco Rosie, Bat for Lashes, Florence and the Machine, Sleigh Bells and Best Coast and her awesome approach to styling has appeared in WWD, Nylon, Die Zeit, Surface, Contributing Editor, Gravure, and Giant. She’s also the girl who styled all the six models of Jive! Jive! Jive. Get to know her below: Tell me a little about your background. Where are you from? Did you study anywhere exciting? Places or people youve worked with? And how old you are (if youre comfortable sharing)? I am originally from Portland Oregon, I studied music composition at Oberlin and Brandeis before moving to NYC. After I got to New York I spent 3 years working as the personal assistant to Lou Reed, followed by a year with Ian Schrager before taking a position as a styling assistant with.Where do currently live? BrooklynWhat are some of your favorite editorials or projects youve worked on? I am currently working on a two part film and still shoot with Annelise Philips, coming out in the next month or so it’s going to be amazing. It has been six months in the works.I have loved working on the WWD Beauty magazine covers over the last few years. It has given me a chance to work with some amazing supermodels and actresses, including , Isabeli Fontana, Amanda Seyfried and .What are some of your favorite editorials of all time? That is really an impossible question! My are not so much the crazy fashion excess, but the simple images that tell a story.Whats your philosophy on styling? That above all it must be believable the viewer needs to understand and have a connection with the image. I love anything a little wrong and unexpected all the small imperfect touches are what makes the images special to me.Tell me your approach to Jive! Jive! Jive! ? What were some of your inspiration? Initially, the references were in the Teddy Boy vein a little . But we wanted it a little dirtier than your normal Teddy Boy shoot and so I began to look at at general punk references in the UK from the mid-century through the , including Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols. Which designers were a good fit for that vision? There were a lot of fantastic men’s collections that were really perfect for this shoot in particular had a very direct Teddy Boy reference in their F/W show. We used a lot of beautiful , Aesa and Bevel. Other designers included Marc Jacobs, Burberry, John Varvatos, Cerrutti, and Loden Dager. Photo: Annelise Phillips Do you often style men? How does it differ from women, outside of the obvious reasons? Yes, I really like working with men. They are, in general, less concerned with how they look and more focused on their physicality and action in front of the camera.What was the experience like dressing these models in particular? All the guys were really sweet and a pleasure to work with. Shane was actually working on the shoot with Shawn Mount, and he was so amazing-looking we had to ask him to take part, and he agreed! What was your favorite look and why? I think Shane’s red jacket really stole the show and with his dance moves he is hard to ignore. Is it different for you to shoot a rather than stills? How do you change or alter your approach? I LOVE shooting video! I am so glad that it is becoming more and more a part of our work. One major difference is that there is no re-touching, so everything must look good at all angles and fit correctly. What is your idea of a dream shoot? Something with a big budget, a sunny location and a team of friends.?in the fashion worldLady Gaga being the Queen among themand it turns out that explored this relationship in depth for its July 2011 issue. Some of today’s most revered fashion designers, including Burberry’s Christopher Bailey, the Rodarte Sisters and Alexander Wang, were paired with the musicians who most inspire them and their work for an intimate photoshoot. Some of the match ups seem pitch perfect, while others are definitely unexpected. Click through for some photos of our favorite fashion designers and their muses, and check out for some exclusive videos and outtakes from the shoot. ?may not have had a role as famous since, but this 28-year old has maintained her place firmly on the radar for one reason girls are utterly fascinated with her fashion perspective.Not one to bother with shock value, Bilson embodies style: 2010. Translation: mix vintage with new, designer with high street, layer and never fear a . Bite off her look with , jackets, boots and killer heels that call this newly anointed style icon to mind. 1. Cooperative buckle tote, $58, by 2. Jeffrey Campbell brown leather boots, $249.95, at 3. Alexander Wang green Grecian dress, $595, at 4. Burberry short shearling jacket, $2,195, at 5. Asos Tortoise glasses, $16.85, at 6. Topshop sheer leopard top, $55, at 7. Shine in red shimmer, $22, at 8. Miu Miu tan patent leather heels, $506.45, at 9. Delia’s tweed blazer, $59.50, at ?and even tried some new ones. I’ve even had Netflix marathons to the point of exhaustion.So whats one to do when all the options seem to be null and non-existent? Here at SyleCaster we collected some that will serve as a welcome distraction to get you through the rest of this drizzly season and wont break your bank.Image courtesy of Burberry ?innovation, was at it again today– with the launch of a new initiative that melds e-commerce, marketing, and editorial. Instead of viewing the collection and then having to wait for the pieces to hit stores, customers are able to watch a virtual runway show of the entire Lauren by Ralph Lauren collection and click to purchase items immediately. In addition, top editors from Hearst Corporation such as Avril Graham of , Nina Garcia of Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan‘s Michelle McCool provide audio commentary as each of the looks are modeled down the runway, providing an insider perspective on the view from the front row.Graham, who serves as Harper’s Bazaar‘s Executive Fashion Director, said of the experience, I absolutely think that women will find this new technology useful and inspiring. You get to see what the clothes will look like on a person and then instantly purchase. Theres something really gratifying about that.Check out all 21 looks in the runway video below, and visit for the full video accompanied by editorial commentary. More News We Love: ?discovered that the 24-year-old model is renting out her East Village 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment, which she purchased back in 2008 for$2.2 million. I must say, the pre-war Avenue B address is pretty dreamy, with fresh white walls, French windows and gorgeous hardwood floors. Check out the photos above! makes sure to add that the “master bedroom has ample closet space with a separate dressing area.” Girl had to stash all of that Burberry somewhere, I suppose. Oh, to be a model. Would you pay almost 8K a month to live like Lily? ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?was destined for the spotlight. Be it spiky stilettos or , she turns goth to glamour in our exclusive . Read more to hear about Alexandras , music picks and first venture into fashion.StyleCaster: What was the first shoot you ever did? Alexandra Richards: It was an editorial piece in W magazine that Bruce Weber shot. I must have been 9 or 10 and a chimpanzee was involved and elephants and snakes. How would you describe your personal style? Comfortable, black. What is number one on your shopping list? .Who are your style icons? My brother Marlon. What are your tips for healthy skin and hair? Less is more. I always forget, but I feel wonderful after I use Tracie Martyns face wash. Morning and night. Always keep a clean face before bed. I use Frederic Fekkai Baby Blonde shampoo; its nice and light. What is your morning (breakfast) must-have? Coffee! And if I make the time, I love my egg white omelets with scallions and a little parsley. Whats your favorite place in the world? I haven’t been there yet, but crossing fingers [on] Hawaii. Whats on your iPod? Black Crows, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Chuck Berry, Etta James, Creedence Clearwater, Guns N Roses, Itals, Wynos, Everly Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Howlin Wolf, LCD Soundsystem, Ramones, Ronnets, Stevie Ray Vaughan. Favorite party song to DJ? So many, but right now I guess it would be Soul Rebel by Bob Marley and Trust in Me by Etta James. Favorite thing you wore on the StyleCaster shoot? The jewelry and masks were incredible on the shoot. I loved the whole mystical creature theme we were going for. Whats your biggest indulgence? Furniture. I’ve been at my place for three years and only have had a bean bag to sit on in my living room. What has been your scariest fashion moment? I sometimes used to wear a black, short-haired wig with bangs to middle school. What is your favorite footwear? My black leather Chuck Taylors. What are your favorite movies? What About Bob?, Groundhog Day. What is your fitness routine? I run the Brooklyn Bridge and have a membership at David Barton gym. Are you reading anything right now? A biography on Queen Victoria. Don’t forget to check out the full editorial, starring Alexandra Richards.All images courtesy of Wilhelmina Women?as more of a trench coat, ready-to-wear daywear brand rather than red carpet, just look at Rosie Huntington-Whitely in a custom made deep purple gown and prepare to have your breath taken away.Rosie did a quick change in two Burberry looks for the London premiere of Transformers 3. First, that stunning, flowing, silk gown was perfection on her and for the after party she went with a white studded knee-length dress that’s somehow demure and edgy simultaneously. Christopher Bailey recognizes the stellar bod of the model turned actress, saying, Rosie has an effortless beauty and an incredible body. She has been part of the Burberry family since she was 17 and we are enormously proud of her success. We are working on something exciting together which we will be announcing soon.” Rosie is the current face of the Burberry Beauty. ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?, it doesnt mean we still dont have a soft spot for the fictional ones seen in Hollywood. From the outlandish 80s to today, heres a list of some of the most notable, drama-filled and flashy-fun scenes seen on the small and .Dont Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead presents the teenage fashion wave of the future. Until mom comes home, that is. Check out the intense and a sleazy, slicked back David Duchovny in the audience. Fashion roadkill! Carrie trips on the runway in , only to pick herself back up again and give a high five.Drama alert at the mother-daughter fashion show! Kellys mom freaks out from behind the podium. Classic 90210.Troop Beverly HillsBecause those dowdy uniforms will simply not do the girls from your favorite girl scout gang show off some chic, new . The WomenMeg Ryan takes a turn on the designers chair for a successful, empowering show! Maybe it helped that the clothes were actually designed by . On and off the screen, style-setter Serena takes a scene-stealing spin on the runway in this poofy green Eleanor Waldorf dress. The OC The beginning of an era! See a fashion show, straight from southern California with Cohen, Summer, Marissa and the rest of the gang on the first episode. Melrose Place Well one thing’s for sure have never looked so wild and so . The perfect way to frame the dram-bomb thats about to happen on Melrose.?‘s ashes). He was doing his best to hold it together, but past all of the concealer and the Burberry tux, I could see his inner-pain. Sacha, that was classless. Be a man, grab your hot wife Isla Fisher, and attend the Oscars like a normal human. You are not Kanye.Anyway, let’s all enjoy the show and Billy Crystal‘s awkward hosting job, but in the interim, tell me: what were your favorite moments??, we were ready for a change up. It was definitely‘s year, and we would have loved to see a girl with some curves walk away with the prize. Alas, Chung was voted in by the public as the individual who best embodies the spirit of London.Other winners included Christopher Kane for New Establishment, Stella McCartney for Red Carpet of the Year and Sir Paul Smith for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion. Click for the full list of winners.Image courtesy ofBFA/SIPA.?)Betsey Johnson designed three hats for the Kentucky Derby, which will be unveiled May 6 and 7 Johnson. Proceeds from two of the designs will go to The National Breast Cancer Coalition and Gildas Club of Louisville. ()In case you weren’t in Beijing, see Burberry’s amazing event in China on YouTube. ()Emma Watson feels badly for Kate Middleton, saying, “”Poor girl, that must be an incredible amount of pressure. I hope she’s enjoying it. It must be intense.” ()DOUBLE SHOT: TWEET, TWEETRT @ Just because you dress up does not mean you are fashionable. Cold yet true.RT @ Abbey Clancy’s flat stomach We wouldn’t expect anything less.RT @ Gilt’s giving away a free Marchesa wedding gown as part of our big Wedding Shop sweepstakes; spread the word! And if you win, I think you should give it to me.RT @ Hottest party this weekend? Mulberry Creative Director Emma Hill’s barbecue at the Parker Hotel during Coachella. RSVP? Yes please! I’d like to RSVP to Coachella, generally speaking.??Shenae Grimes ? a testament to her ability to remain down-to-earth despite her star wattage.?The Canadian actress (who first honed her chops playing Shania Twain in a TV movie) has become a front row fixture in recent years, which has sparked some speculation as to her next career move.Millions of viewers have watched Grimes grow up on the small screen through her “90210″ character, Annie, but it seems most appropriate to capture her evolution through a different lens: fashion. Modeling a slew of fall’s biggest trends ? from peplum to brocade ? Shenae was able to leave behind the teenage archetype she plays on TV and embrace the perks of being a lady.“In past years, I think sexy has been a lot of ‘less is more,’ and I don’t believe that. I think less skin is more,” she said. “I loved the peplum looks. I felt like such a woman.”Given the subtle nod to the ’50s we’ve seen in the trends of the current season, iconic malt shop and burger joint Johnny Rockets seemed like the perfect setting for our shoot with the star. After all, it does bear a certain resemblance to The Peach Pit, so she felt right at home.Check out the gallery above for a look at Grimes modeling Burberry, Carven, Sandro and more, and read on to see what she has to say about her future in fashion, the upcoming fifth season of “90210″ (premiering October 8!), and more.How has your style evolved over the years??When I was younger, my favorite thing to do when I got dressed (and when I was shopping) was to always put something on that I wouldn’t see on anyone else. That’s still the case, but I think I was a lot more outrageous back then. I know that’s how you start trends, but these days, my style has gotten a lot less trend oriented and a lot more timeless. I have a pretty strict comfort zone that I don’t like to veer out of. I can appreciate it in magazines or on other girls, but as far as I incorporate things into my closet, I look for pieces that will stand the test of time.Who are your style icons?I find a lot of inspiration in men.?Steven Tyler?is a definite style icon of mine. I just went to my first Aerosmith show a little while ago, and to see that man come out on stage in his lavender velvet jumpsuit and matching silk coat with a top hat. He just always looks so badass. I can’t get enough of it.?Sienna Miller?is also an icon of mine. She always looks amazing. Everytime she leaves the house whether it’s a casual day out, going to dinner or a red carpet, she looks effortless and for me that’s the key. I don’t want to look like I spent hours getting into the clothes and, like, I can’t sit down.How would you say that you and your boyfriend (model Josh Beech) shape each other’s style?I think we appreciate each other’s style. I think I dress how he would if he were a chick, and he dresses how I would if I were a dude ? if that makes any sense! I’ve always said I dress like the kind of guy I would want to date someday. We dress kind of similarly. We’re definitely kind of the male and female grungy versions of each other.Where do you think you’re headed in terms of your career with fashion? Is designing a line the next step?I feel like you have to really know your stuff before you delve into any new career path, which is why I’ve kind of spread my wings and tried to intern in different fields in fashion in the past couple of years. I would like to head in the direction of presenting more immediately and doing some type of hosting and series work that revolves around fashion, more specifically street style and what designers are doing now ? and how women can translate that into their wardrobes, because it can be such an overwhelming topic for people who aren’t savvy to it and don’t really care to be educated on it.?As far as design is concerned, if I were to ever head into that aspect of the industry, I’d definitely want to take a lot of classes. I’d want to sketch properly so I could translate my ideas correctly. I’d want to take sewing lessons and pattern making lessons, because I’m not the type of person who likes to attach my name to something that I don’t have full creative control over.?I’ve never believed in putting my name behind something that I don’t believe in and know 100%.If you had to name three designers to wear for the rest of your life, who would they be??I love Helmut Lang. I can’t go on a trip without my Helmut Lang blazers, leather pants and this amazing black dress. It’s super simple, it’s a sleeveless black beautiful cut dress but it has one black lace sleeve, and it’s probably the most gorgeous thing that I have in my closet. I find Helmut Lang’s clothes slimming and put together with the perfect cut.?I love Stella McCartney for that same reason. Her pantsuits are always amazing. I’m definitely more of a suit girl. I’d take a sick pair of pants and a blazer over a pretty dress any day. A more girly designer I like is Isabel Marant. Some of her skirts are a little too schoolgirl for me, but again, her blazers and jackets are amazing. The textures, prints and fabrics she uses make the pieces so special.?There’s a brocade jacket that I just got by her but it’s silver metallic and it’s so stunning. I wore it during fashion week. It’s something that your boyfriend doesn’t understand, but every girl that passes you is like, “Oh my God! What is that?!” You know you’re doing well when the ladies love it.The fifth season of “90210″ starts on October 8. What can we expect from Annie and the show this season??I know. I can’t believe how time has flown! Annie’s calming down a bit this year. She’s so naive at heart, but she’s finally toning it down. She’s trying to act as more of a support system to the people that are close to her, which I like. She’s a lot more grounded this year. Everyone’s growing up and dealing with real issues, which I think will be cool for our audience to see. Also, the guest stars and musical guests this season are insane. Our producers have gone all out.What has been your favorite part about working on the show?My favorite part is that we all have such different personalities and different quirks about all of us. “Beverly Hills, 90210″ was such a pivotal part of television when it launched, so to be on the next generation of such an iconic teen drama is a massive experience. It has brought the cast together in a way that many people don’t even understand. These people are my family for life. No matter where our lives go, where we end up living or what we end up working on, we’ll always be there for the highs and lows in each other’s lives ? and that’s a pretty spectacular thing.Photography by: Editorial Director: Marni GoldenStyling by: Hair by: Makeup by: for?Giorgio Armani BeautyStyling Assistant:?Gabrielle MarcecaPost-Production by: ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?is the bearer of the most ‘likes’ on their Facebook page. Runners up? Adidas, Burberry and even Puma made the top 10 list.But we’re wondering, are we being baited by some of these massive retailers just for their own promotion? You might be saying, that’s the entire purpose, dimwit — but stop and think for a moment. How many pages have you ‘liked’ in hopes of scoring some free loot or an exclusive sneak peek at a collection? We know we have. Are they capitalizing on our weakness and affinity for shoes, models or nosiness? And ultimately, what is to gain from all these ‘likes?’We’re bona fide obsessed with our own social networking sites (how else would we lurk on our best frenemies?). But, is this new kind of consumer/brand rapport replacing the in-store shopping experience? Or is it improving it? Back in the day, ultimate customer service was considered an attentive store clerk who was able to suggest items suiting your personal style or stash away a couple of pieces that are perfect for you. But now, we receive daily emails (which can become a nuisance). There are also those times we can build relationships with the people behind the label itself, something that wasn’t necessarily the case when we simply shopped in a store.Let’s also not forget, thanks to Facebook pages and Twitter updates, we can learn of a flash sale with the click of our mouse and cruise to a store or website to snatch up some goodies. Are we just playing into their hand and spending money we should be using on dinner or are we simply more informed shoppers?We know that we couldn’t go a day without checking our Twitter page ? it’s a convenient and streaming news source with everyone from CNN to WWD to filling us in with the latest updates. And let’s be honest, we can’t help but share our own little tidbits as well. What do you think? Is shopping and fashion social media our friend or foe? Or, is it like the girl who we can’t resist loving to hate or hating to love, or whatever? The jury is still out over here.Tell us what you think in the comments section below!?and , are fast becoming some of our favorite ways to connect with one another. So naturally, it is only fitting that so many of our favorite fashion designers and brands are turning to these various online platforms as ways of connecting with their fans.The social networking site was just one example of a way that brands jumped on the social media bandwagon. In fact, sample sale site has partnered with to create the . The awards celebrate some of the brands and designers who have successfully and innovatively connected to fans through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, or with online videos, blogs, or even their own brand’s websites.Nominees have been split into seven different categories, from Favorite New Social Media Site to the Innovator Award for Best Designer or Brand using multiple social media platforms. While there are 30 different nominees, a few familiar names pop up more then once in multiple categories. With three nominations, the always-on point, Christian Louboutin is a top contender, but in true Chanel style, our favorite luxury label takes the lead with a whopping four nominations. You can make that five if you want to count for Best Twitter Account by a Fashion Designer or Brand. Louis Vuitton, DvF, Tory Burch, and Dolce & Gabbana are all double nominees. It should be a good fight, and lucky for us, voting is open to the public until February 8, 2010 at 11:59pm EST. Get voting!Check out the full listing of categories below:Innovator Award: Best Designer Or Brand Using Multiple Social Media Platforms Nominees: Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Norma Kamali, Alexander McQueen, DvF, Vivienne Tam.Best Online Video By A Fashion Designer or Brand Nominees: by Christian Louboutin; by Chanel N 5; by Erin Fetherston; Lady Dior / ; , V Magazine; SHOWstudio: .Best Twitter Account By A Fashion Designer Or Brand Nominees: , , , , , Best Facebook Account By A Fashion Designer Or Brand Nominees: Tory Burch, Coach, Converse, Dolce & Gabbana, DVF, Victoria’s Secret.Best Blog By A Fashion Designer Or Brand Nominees: , , , , , .Best Website By A Fashion Designer Or Brand Nominees: , , , , , . Next Big Thing Award in Social Media Nominees: , , , , . More News We Love:?… and I have it no, I’ve never been officially diagnosed, but I know I have it! They’re creepy, crawly and just completely freak me out. So, it’s a little ironic that one of my favorite is python. But as long as we’re just talking about the skin, I have no problem wearing it.Burberry, , Thakoon and Pucci all showed us that the creepy creatures can actually be quite gorgeous… as long as they’re in the form of bags, shoes and clothing. Click through for some of my favorite picks to rock this spring. ?can keep me from wishing for 70-degree days and bare legs! For my fellow cabin fever sufferers, medicate your winter woes with Solestrucks . Indulge in the delicious buffet of eye candy as platform wedges, chunky heels and sleek rain boots prance across your screen. With the mission, “to rid the world of ugly shoes one pair at a time,” is obviously no ordinary shoe store. offers a drool-inducing selection of footwear, with brands like and Dolce Vita, tailored to the youthful, trendy shopper. Unlike other online shoe retailers, Solestruck is a small and intimate company, boasting a unique ability to relate to its customers. You dont get lost in endless options and overwhelming advanced searches here rather, it feels like youre walking into your favorite local shoe boutique.?, “We’re all fed up with walking into shops and seeing winter clothes in the middle of summer and vice versa. This collection is more consumer-friendly. We treated resort as a series of months rather than a season, and there are various fabric weights for different times of the year.”This translated to a voluminous gingham dress fit for a stylish summer picnic and evening looks that would work year-round including a variation on the jumpsuit that she wore to the .See some of the celebs we can expect to be wearing these looks in the future at the she hosted at her West Hollywood boutique.For full resort coverage, see our ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?.Reason #1Adorn your finger with this little piece of heavy metal, indicative of ‘s runway theme of , you’ll be right on trend at a much more affordable price!Reason #2Its understated edge will surely add to any outfit no matter what your style. If you are more adventurous, stack this ring with others on your hand or on the same finger.Reason #3This fabulous rocked-out, gold spiked ring is a perfect stocking stuffer or holiday gift that every girl will definitely love.?application and next week, you could be one of the lucky chosen few! Check out this week’s fabulous fashionistas, below. Tuuli plays around with one of our favorite looks of the moment, , and layers her shirt and jackets impeccably for an ultra cool Alex Wang-inspired ensemble. & Left: Ever since our Disney-World-with-the-family days, fannypacks have been completely off of our radars, and happily so– that is, until we saw Bianca sporting this version by Uniqlo. Paired with a leather jacket and feminine frock, the bag previously reserved for moms everywhere gets a much cooler reputation, as Bianca demonstrates above. Right: First of all, we’re suckers for this season. Second? If you can rock the socks and heels look a la Burberry, like Mel does so suitably above, we’ll give you instant style cred. Love the look. This outfit immediately caught our eyes– mostly due to the delicious spring hue of this lavender skirt. Longer hemlines are back in style, and Delmy shows here that the look can still be worn with a youthful aesthetic. There’s a reason why Arielle titled this Daily Mirror picture “Playhouse.” We love how she paired her vintage Mickey tee and floral skirt with some lacy shorts from H&M that barely peek out from underneath. It’s the ultimate girly-girl-meets-downtown-hipster ensemble. More News We Love: ?is sauntering up to your seat at a show only to find that your goodie bag has been swiped by the girl sitting two seats down from you. Theres always that uncomfortable moment when you make eye contact with her, clearly expressing the I know that you did! glare. Immediately thereafter, she’ll start staring very intently at her BlackBerry, unnecessarily scrolling her trackball up and down like a maniac. My longwinded point is this: because not all of us get Fashion Week goodie bags or even have the opportunity to steal someone elses (which Im not condoning), StyleCaster teamed up with to give everyone a little Fashion Week gift of their own! Starting today, you can download Sounds From the Front Row a free StyleCaster/Mick Boogie remix album featuring your favorite artists like Vampire Weekend, Phoenix, Jay-Z, Radiohead, Passion Pit, and many more. Check the track listing below and including StyleCasters very own title track, Sounds From the Front Row by for FREE!1. “Sounds From The Front Row” by Outasight 2. “Encore” (Jaydiohead Remix) by Jay-Z/Radiohead 3. “Lisztomania” (Holy Ghost Remix) by Phoenix 4. “Merrymakin at My Place” by Calvin Harris 5. “What a World” by Common and Chester French 6. “Skeleton Boy” by Friendly Fires 7. “Baby Can’t Stop” (Aeroplane Remix) by Lindstrom & Christabelle 8. “Wake Up” (Meterhead Remix) by Acid Girls 9. “Little Secrets” (Hey Champ Remix) by Passion Pit 10. “When They Fight, They Fight” by Generationals 11. “Yes I Know” by DJ Eleven 12. “Toot d’Amor” (Eli Remix) by Chin Chin 13. “Rockin That Thang” by Telephoned 14. “Im Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend” (Twelves Remix) by The Black Kids 15. “Im Not Your Toy” by La Roux 16. “The Kids” (Chromeo Remix) by Vampire Weekend 17. “Walking On a Dream” (Treasure Fingers Remix) by Empire Of The Sun 18. “Time” by Beach Fossils 19. “Take On Me” (Twelves Remix) by A-Ha 20. “Take the Hit” by Jade (featuring Theophilus London) 21. “Flower” by Bobby Hebb 22. “Priority” by Mos Def 23. “Things Work Out” by The Kickdrums 24. “Downtown in My Mind” by Outasight More News We Love: ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?.With a modeling career that launched just roughly two years ago, Tali has already walked the runways for established brands and designers like Burberry, Christopher Kane, Miu Miu, Kenzo, Prada, Missoni, Cavalli and Marc Jacobs.Trading in high fashion for high street cred, Tali is now the latest fresh face for Spanish retailer (who just opened a location on 34th street in New York City), appearing in some rock-inspired duds for the brand’s autumn 2011 catalogue, and definitely giving a whole new meaning to the term For someone who is only 18-years-old, I’m pretty sure Tali knows just exactly what I’m talking about.?, but if beauties from the other side of the pond are more your cup of tea, tip your cup because we have a very special treat for you. just wrapped up and in honor of our former patriarchal leaders, we’ve gone Brit for the day and rounded up the hottest English models. Cheerio!ROSIE HUNTINGTON-WHITELEY Image: , September 2010 Best known for her status, this hottie will be replacing Megan Fox in the upcoming Transformers 3 movie. From model to actress, this seems to be typical in the life of a supermodel, but Rosie’s dream job was always to have ajob in fashion but to be the one dressing the girls on the catwalk, not walking it herself. Why, you ask? Because she never considered herself ‘pretty enough’. Crazy talk.KAREN ELSON Image: , October 2010 This model sure isn’t fighting anyone off not even a seven nation army (of paparazzi) gonna hold her back. And neither is the writer of those lyrics, Jack White of the White Stripes, who happens to be her hubby! Playing muse for Karl Lagerfeld and Steven Meisel in the fashion sphere, Elson also acted as muse in the White Stripes’ music video for their song “Blue Orchid,” which she starred in, naturally.LILY COLE Image:, May 2010Talk about chance. Lily was first discovered while walking through Sohowhen she was approached by Benjamin Hart,who asked her to consider modeling. She declined but later changed her mind and signed to Storm Models. She has modeled on the international runway circuit and at many fashion shows on behalf of Chanel, DKNY, and Jean Paul Gaultier since.CONSTANCE JABLONSKI Image: , September 2010Constance racked up a total of 72 shows last season, and we wonder if she could possibly hit that high number again. In just the short period of time that she’s been a part of the industry, Constance has certainly made a mark. She looks absolutely stunning on the runways of Acne, Paul Smith, Erdem, and Jaeger London (to name a few). Think she will make a new record?LILY DONALDSON Image: , July 2010Fashion, photography and good looks must run in the Donaldson family. The model’s father is a photographer, and in the past, Lily dated Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, son of Carine. Her life seems so glam, it’s no wonder she’s had her turn on all the major catwalks.EDEN CLARK Image: , August 2009Eden is one studly model, er, stunning we mean! She does look a bit more masculine than others in the Paul Smith SS 2011 show in London this past week, but she makes up for it in her walk for the Spring 2011 RTW Vivienne Westwood Red label show and especially in this Vogue cover. AGYNESS DEYNImage: , F/W 2010 This supermodel worked her way up from serving part-time at a fish and chip shop in Ramsbottom to beinghailed as “the fashion industry’s next great supermodel.” And while it seems that Deyn has spent quite some time over the years trying to find herself or her look, rather it’s pretty safe to say she has recently hit her stride with her shaved ‘do of the moment. ALICE GIBB Image: , December 2009 With appearances in , Alexander McQueen, and D&G campaigns, it’s no wonder this girl is such a familiar face. This Britwalks the walk in tons of shows with big name designers including Proenza Schouler, Rodarte and Marc Jacobs to name a few, but where, you ask, does she get her gracefulness having to walk in some of the designers’ monster claw shoes? Well, this top model is also a ballerina in her free time, so it’s off the runway to the barre to plie and grand plie. JOURDAN DUNN Image: , December 2009Tickety-boo (British slang for when something is going well) for Jourdan Dunn for being the first black model to walk for Prada in over 1o years when she walked in 2008. We must say, she’s still workin’ it after giving birth to her son in December of ’09, being the second model down the catwalk at London Fashion Week’s show. TALI LENNOX Image: , August 2010 Annie Lennox, who once saidI want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well, has had her dream come true. Unlike her mother, however, Tali doesn’t want to get deeper into music but wants to become a fashion designer. Well Tali, you’re on the right track, or runway, should we say?KATE MOSS Image: , September 2010 She may be considered a muse forW and may win “cover girl” forBritish Vogue with over 25 appearances on the magazines cover, but this girl has seriously got it all. She has her own clothing line (Topshop) and fragrance line, once won the Fashion Personality of the Year Award, and is one the; who wouldn’t want to be her or be with her?ERIN O’CONNOR Image: , April 2010 This one’s an oldie (not really but comparatively speaking) but a goodie, as she still snagged a spot on the cover of Korea’sHarpers Bazaar this past April, not to mention walking the fall 2010 Jean Paul Gaultier couture show in Paris.NAOMI CAMPBELLImage: , April 2010 You know you’re big when Tyra Banksdescribes you on America’s Next Top Model as somebody that’s one of the “best in the business,” or maybe that’s the wrong description. But when something like this happens, you know you’re something! In August 1988, Campbell appeared on the cover ofasthe publication’s first blackcover girl, after friend and mentor, Yves St. Laurent, threatened to withdraw all of his advertising from the publication after it refused to place Campbell, or any black model, on its cover. IMOGEN MORRIS CLARKE Image: S/S 10 This darling English Rose is living it up on the runway but not aspiring to her true dream to become an actress. She plans to continue modeling but also to pursue her dream. We don’t know about you, but we’d be just fine with growing a few inches and walking for designers like Badgley Mischka, Victoria Beckham and , just like Imogen did in London this past week.JACQUETTA WHEELER Image: , Summer 2010 When we were 17, we wanted everything inside Vogue mag, but this lanky gal had it a bit different. By the age of 17, Wheeler was on the cover ofFrench Vogue and was tapped as the face of a Gucci ad campaign. That’s an impressive under 20 resume if you ask us. ?was an exhilarating and exhausting blur of fashion, ftes and beautiful people. The fact that there were still three fashion full weeks to come was a bit of a mind boggle, so we decided to stay stateside for the rest of the adventure. Not ones to miss out on a stellar round-up, we turned to the expert editor eyes from Harper’s Bazaar, , WWD and Glamour for a little insider perspective on the best of London-town. Click through to see who loves the whimsy of Erdem, the biker babes at and the minimal subtly at Paul Smith. ?)D&G La Lune This dreamy and serene fragrance creates an ethereally sensual scent using soft notes of lily, tuberose, sandalwood, musk, and white leather. ($65, at )Jil by Jil Sander From the queen of minimalist fashion comes this pure, understated scent. It contains notes of pink pepper, lavender, tangerine, lily-of-the-valley, musks, and vanilla beans that create a clean, slightly sensual fragrance that is equal parts powdery, spicy and warm. ($70, at Dillard’s stores)Juicy Couture Couture Couture Like your favorite outfit, this trendy scent combines everything you love to create a stylish statement. It contains notes of pink grape, orange flower, plum, honeysuckle, and sandalwood. The fab bottle is bedecked with a gold top, Juicy charms, and a hot pink zipper. ($65, at ) Yves Saint Laurent Parisienne This feminine, slightly mischievous fragrance features vinyl, cranberry, blackberry, Damask rose, violet, patchouli, and vetiver. The overall effect is meant to embody a mysterious woman on the morning after an intense night of passion. Ooh la la! ($65, at )Frederic Fekkai Femme Fekkai Sensuelle For the ultimate in feminine fragrances, this gorgeous scent can’t be beat. It features notes of neroli, jasmine, fleur d’orange musk, and honey. Best of all, it also comes in a shampoo, conditioner, and hairspray so you can smell good from head to toe. ($95, at )Maison Francis Kurkdjian Paris Lumiere Noire Pour Femme They say opposites attract and nowhere is that more apparent than with this scent. It highlights duality and contrast by featuring light notes of narcissus with dark, spicy notes of cumin and cinnamon-spiked rose, and patchouli. ($145, at ) Leslie Blodgett Perfume Diaries Bare Skin This warm and creamy fragrance is like sun-kissed skin in a bottle. It features black pepper, freesia, iris, patchouli, and musk that create a sensual and intoxicating scent. ($55, at ) Burberry Brit Red This sensual and crisp scent is full of fruity notes of green mandarin, rhubarb, red rose, vanilla, and gingerbread which makes it the perfect scent to curl up with during the cold months. ($32.99, )Chanel Bois des Iles This Chanel fragrance has an understated elegance to it which lingers long after it has been released. With notes of bergamot, neroli, peach, jasmine, vanilla, and musk these scents tie together to create a perfectly harmonious parfum. ($199.99, at ) Annick Goutal Les Orientales Myrrhe Ardente Eau de ParfumThis lavish scent from the Les Orientales Trio begins with the sweetness of vanilla, but is coolly balanced by the freshness of myrrhe. Hidden underneath are notes of licorice, Maraschino, and a woodsy undertone. This mix of sweet and fresh are the perfect combination for winter scent. ($175.00, )Check out Daily Makeover for more beauty coverage: ?ad nauseum, and most of the pieces haven’t even hit stores yet! If you’re sick of the feline frenzy, don’t worry: you might be in luck. We’ve got an accessory to discuss that’s inspired by another animal, one whose ears have become famous thanks to Louis Vuitton, an Olsen twin and a magazine editorial or two. That’s right, we’re talking about the bunny.In the playful cover shoot for the September 2011 issue of RUSSH, Will Davidson shot French up-and-comer in a stunning white Burberry sweater and a pair of lace ears by Maison Michel. If these look familiar to you, it might be because Mary-Kate Olsen wore an identical pair back in 2009 at the height of bunny-ear popularity.Around (how appropriate) when the Spring 2011 editorials were rolling out, the ears made a couple of sporadic editorial appearances, and last week a pair of lace ears by hit the Web and promptly sold out.Could someone please explain to me why these bunny ears have such staying power? Also, would you rather see rabbit fashion or cat fashion thrive? Just curious.?officially over, it’s time for the fashion kids to have some fun. The CFDA Awards won’t take place until June 7th– and we can’t wait to see the stunning ensembles that the sartorially blessed attendees will be wearing– but in the meantime, here are the nominees for the best of the best in fashion.Womenswear Designer of the Year: Donna Karan Marc Jacobs Menswear Designer of the Year: Michael Bastian Tom Ford David Neville & Marcus Wainwright for Rag & BoneAccessory Designer of the Year: Lazaro Hernandez & Jack McCollough for Proenza Schouler Swarovski Award for Womenswear: Joseph Altuzarra Prabal GurungSwarovski Award for Menswear: Richard Chai Simon Spurr Patrik ErvellSwarovski Award for Accessories: Alexander Wang Dana Lorenz Eddie BorgoThe Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award: Michael KorsThe International Award: Christopher Bailey for BurberryFashion Icon Award: ImanThe Eugenia Sheppard Award: Kim Hastreiter (Paper Magazine)Eleanor Lambert Award: Tonne Goodman (Vogue)Board of Directors Special Tribute: It looks like Wang and Jacobs are the two stars of the year so far– with two nominations each– but who knows what will happen come award night. Perhaps we’ll do an NCAA style-bracket and bet on some of our favorites.More News We Love: ?CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONIncoming… 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.?destroying Ryan Seacrest’s Burberry custom suit live on camera to Rooney Mara in white, it’s been a jam-packed evening filled with some fierce fashion moments, leaving us (almost) forgetting that there are actually, you know, awards other than Best Dressed handed out at this thing.Some of the biggest moments were surprisingly the lack of color seen during this Academy Awards. Leaving colors behind to award shows past, it seems that a chunk of the celebs went for a more minimal palette (for the most part) and instead played with silhouettes and fit.We have to say, we commend these ladies who really stuck to what felt right and not trying to go too much out of their comfort zone. Click through our slideshow to see the best and worst dressed from this year’s Academy Awards.?‘s Burberry Project. Dore explains, “Scott will tell you about it more himself, but he shot a hundred trench coats for Burberry. The end product is awesome, you’ll see it soon…”. We are looking forward to seeing more snap shots of the classic Burberry trench on our favorite fashion icons.Dore’s talks about how she’s wearing a Yankees cap, “even though I have no idea what a bat is for.” She ends her post with a series of PS’s, talking about what Scott thinks of her hat, how she sadly did not get to keep the trench, and her final, “PPPS: Yiiippppppiiiii! The Yankees are winning! I really have no idea what that means, but everybody seems happy, so it’s good, right?”Even though she has no clue about baseball or the Yankees doesn’t she look seriously cute in her cap??, “I’m shooting some things for Italian Vogue, GQ, and stuff like that. But there’s maybe a TV show coming up, maybe a clothing collection coming up. There’s a lot of negotiating going on right now…I was offered a lot of shows before and I don’t think the companies were right that were asking me. But this company I think is right. It’s a very well-known director and all, they’re a company.”We can’t wait to find out who he is talking about working with, but in the meantime, we have picked eight dream bloggers that we wish would design their own lines. These three Danish friends are drumming up a cultish following with their blog (i.e. us) and we would love to see their relaxed, but fashion-forward style translated into a collection of clothing and accessories.Geri uses her blog to share her great sense of personal style as well as her wealth of inspiration. The best part is seeing how the two come together, now we want to see what would happen if she took her love for fashion to the next step.Rumi has made a name for herself by showing off her waifish figure and California grunge style. She already served as the inspiration for Erin Wasson‘s first collection, but we want to see what she would whip up herself.We love following Alix’s sweet style in her photo blog. Her Parisian sensabilities would make for a beautifully youthful collection.Our favorite new blog for mens fashion, J.Elquist shows off his love of classic fashion and the history behind the way we dress. The boys could use a helping hand from this one. He already has a line of neckwear in the works.This sweet blog shows off a love of all design from fashion, to interior decorating and prints. We would love to see her design a small collection of dresses. Full of Indie cred, we think Erica could design a great collection of basics that we would want to wear every day. Hanneli’s street style photography shows off a love for simple, clean designs. We’d love to see her own take on modern minimalism.Kristin and Valerie, the two friends behind Bleach Black share a love for Goth fashion and a penchant for DIYs. They have already designed a line of jewelry for Urban Outfitters, but we’d love to see them try their hand at clothes.Black Eiffel We love the crafty impulses Rachel Jones displays in her blog, Black Eiffel, and would love to discover her designs in small boutiques.?on Tuesday, when designers such as , , , Carly Cushnie and Michelle Ochs of , Jeff Halmos and Sam Shipley of , , and fashion figures like , Tinsley Mortimer, and Daphne Mercer (all pictured above) attended the Sundance Channels premiere of Catwalk Countdown.Catwalk Countdown, which premieres this week, features ten of the U.S. fashion scenes most up-and-coming and buzz-worthy designers as they prepare for . The series promises to give viewers an exclusive backstage pass to the fashion world, showing behind-the-scenes videos and photos that capture every step of the process.The show is a part of the Sundance Channels , which will have new fashion programming set to air via broadcast and online. In addition to Catwalk Countdown, the Full Frontal Fashion will debut Douglas Keeves Dirty Denim web series and up-to-the-minute accounts from the Bryant Park Tents. Broadcast programs will include fashion-orientated documentaries such as Savile Row and The Red Carpet Issue.Left to Right: Michelle Ochs, Christian Cota, Carly Cushnie. Left to Right: Lyn Devon, Erin Fetherston.Left to Right: Jeff Halmos & Sam Shipley, Sachin and Babi Ahluwalia.Left to Right: Robert Geller and Ana Lerario-Geller.Left to Right: Lisa Mayock and Sophie BuhaiMore News We Love: ?, Lacoste, Chloe, Dolce & Gabbana, and Marc Jacobs’ fragrance Lola. Chanel Iman (right): She’s got the name to match the personality, and she’s quickly gaining “It” girl status with her impressive resume and adorable off-the-runway style. Even more importantly, Chanel is helping bring black models more visibility in the fashion industry, posing for covers like this November 2009 issue of Teen Vogue with Jourdan Dunn. Freja Beha Erichsen: The Danish-born model is bringing androgyny back into the forefront for uber-sexy fashion models. Her bad-girl attitude has served her well, helping her book ad campaigns for Gucci (above), Karl Lagerfeld, Roberto Cavalli, Gap, and J Brand, all in the last year. Natasha Poly: This international Vogue cover girl’s been on our radar for several years now, but she’s been staying on a steady incline. Flip through any major fashion mag and she’s bound to make an appearance (or two, or three, or four). Plus, did we mention she has the fiercest catwalk strut…ever? Lara Stone: 2009 was definitely the year of Lara Stone–and, well, in general (but Lara you’re our favorite)! Stone is the leader of the pack, bringing in a new look that we hope will last well beyond 2010. Her Brigitte Bardot-esque sensuality helped land her on the covers of W, , British Vogue (above), and American Vogue all within a matter of months. Sasha Pivovarova: Another model who hasn’t seem to hit her peak, Sasha just keeps rising steadier year after year. The look-a-like went mass-market in 2009 as the face of , but she’s beloved by the luxury labels as well, modeling for Chanel eyewear, John Galliano, Giorgio Armani, and Tiffany among others. Jourdan Dunn: Recently posing alongside Chanel Iman for Teen Vogue‘s November 2009 cover, Jourdan Dunn is quickly rising up the ranks. American Vogue included her on the cover of their “Faces of the Moment” issue back in May, and the Brit has modeled for labels such as (above) and cK Calvin Klein. Anna Jagodzinska: Anna Jagodzinska may have been on the modeling scene since 2003, but her name is on the cusp of becoming a household name since her career exploded this past year. Not only did she appear alongside Natalia Vodianova and Liya Kebede on the cover of Vogue‘s May 2009 “Faces of the Moment” issue shot by Steven Meisel, but she seems to be looking at us from every page of every fashion magazine, abroad and at home. She racked in quite the list of contracts for the F/W 2009 season with labels including Oscar de la Renta, Bottega Veneta, David Yurman, Jimmy Choo for H&M, and Tom Ford Eyewear (pictured above). Iris Strubegger: Seemingly the antithesis of ultra feminine models of the moment like Lara Stone, Iris Strubegger is like the alien that everyone wants to adopt. Her boyish features and pixie cut make her immediately recognizable on the catwalk, and in a fashion world criticized for its cult of clones, Strubegger is gaining a fair amount of attention for her unique look. She landed the cover of French Vogue this past March and is currently the face of Valentino and Givenchy for the F/W 2009 season.Anja Rubik: Anja has firmly been holding onto her spot at the top for some time now–and is it any surprise? If that Chloe scent is going to make us as sexy as she appears in the above ad, then we are all running out to the fragrance counter after work. We’re not the only ones who love her; Giuseppe Zanotti, Gucci, Gap, and “It” fashion house of the Fall 2009 season, Balmain, all enlisted her to represent their brands this year. Coco Rocha: Move over Chanel, there’s a new Coco ready to take on the design world. We’re talking about Coco Rocha. The red-haired beauty is officially branding her name, with a fashion line in the works, according to an announcement she made on her blog , on November 25. It’s still in the early stages, but until you can get a little piece of Coco for your closet, you can still see her this season in ad campaigns for Liz Claiborne, YSL skincare, Uniqlo, and Zac Posen (above). Anna Selezneva: If you’re an opener for Balmain, and a closer for Rodarte, you know you’re doing something right. Such is the case for Russian-born model Anna Selezneva who is reigning the catwalk as of late. For the S/S 2010 season, she also walked for Burberry, Hermes, John Galliano, Valentino, and Ralph Lauren, solidifying her status at the top. Hanne Gaby Odiele: There’s something a little bit sweet and a little bit devilish at the same time about Hanne. Her girlish face paired with intense blue eyes that could seemingly burn holes through any onlooker make her more versatile than the average girl with long legs and a pretty face. She’s caught the attention of some of the biggest fashion houses in the business too–both Balenciaga and Missoni made her the face of their brands this past year. Sigrid Agren: Our gut tells us that playing with Disney animals in the forest for Stella McCartney’s fall 2009 ad campaign is only the beginning of exciting opportunities to arise for Sigrid Agren. Although she skipped this fall’s S/S 2010 fashion week, she’s showed no signs of slowing down, booking campaigns for Chloe, Karl Lagerfeld, Bottega Veneta, and cK Calvin Klein. She’s a classically beautiful face that we look forward to seeing again soon.?was already over. Known for paying less attention to commercialism and more attention to risk-taking, London’s shows amplified the trends we spotted on the spring runway during New York Fashion Week. Across the board, patterns were bold and silhouettes were strong, often featuring exaggerated shoulders and oblong shapes.Metallics also made a strong showing, ?as Burberry Prorsum introduced an entirely new sheen palette, displaying spring-ready pastel tones. As always, there was a sense of humor among the collections, as kitschy mottos were splashed across sweatshirts and over-the-top hats were the accessory of choice. such as peplum and mosaic were updated for spring as well, proving their transitional possibilities. Here, we share the top 20 best looks seen during London Fashion Week.?the definitive guide still being used now. How to Get Tickets Getting tickets to Fashion Week isn’t easy, but there are a few tricks to get access to the event. Showing up is half the battle, but it’s not a sure shot way to get in.American Express offers access to card members, who can buy tickets to the . Charities will also raffle off tickets to raise money, so keep an eye out for these programs. Bloggers are invited to shows, as designers hope to get some coverage and press. Starting a blog might be a great way to get tickets, especially if you’re a good writer and passionate about fashion. Finally, you can always look out for contests and giveaways. It’s common for big brands to give some of their tickets to fans and followers. If you’re lucky, you might just win enough for you and your friends. Getting to Fashion Week: Airports in the Area: 1. 2. 3. Hotels to Stay At: , 848 Washington Street (at 13th Street) Its a short walk from Milk Studios, and if you get a little too tipsy at a Boom Boom Room or Le Bain after party, theres only a short elevator ride between you and your bed! , 113 Jane Street Since the Jane is right on the Westside Highway, it provides easy access by cab to Lincoln Center, and is only a short walk from Milk Studios. Plus, the Jane Ballroom is the go-to after hours spot for the fashion flock, and a room at the hotel guarantees you entry. , 310 West Broadway (at Grand Street) A regular hangout for the fashion crowd. Only quick cab ride away from Milk and the usual after-hours spots like Don Hills, Kenmare and the soon-to-be-opened Le Baron in Chinatown. , 2 6th Avenue (between Walker and White Street) See Soho Grand it IS its sister hotel, after all. , 60 Thompson Street This Soho boutique hotel is a favorite of the fashion elite. Your Fashion Week neighbor is bound to be someone like Rachel Zoe. , 335 Bowery (at E. 3rd Street) A constant meeting hub for industry insiders. While youre a little further away from the Milk and Lincoln Center action, youll likely spot Olivier Zahm, Stefano Pilati or Terry Richardson, and isnt that what Fashion Week is all about? Plus, its restaurant Gemma is delicious. , 18 9th Avenue (at W. 13th Street) Yes, its ultra trendy, but you couldnt get much closer to Milk Studios if you tried. , 356 West 58th Street (at 9th Avenue) A short walk from Lincoln Center, and has a bustling nightlife scene. , 44 West 63rd Street (at Broadway) Good for those of you party animals who want to sleep in as late as possible before hitting Lincoln Center for the shows. Its literally right across the street. , 1 Central Park West For all you fancy-pants, this five star hotel overlooking Central Park is just blocks from Lincoln Center. Travel Options in the City: Subway:Check out the for more information about the Subways Taxis: Of course if you’re really not sure where you’re going, you can always grab a cab. There’s a great guide to . Things to Look Forward to These young designers keep editors paying attention, and we cant wait to see what amazing prints and interesting silhouettes they come up with next. Those detail shots get us every time. The Fact That Fall Fashion Week Doesnt Have Fashions Night Out: Well look forward to it come Spring 2012, but not having another night of madness during a week of madness even when the Olsens are bartending is really kind of nice. So sorry Anna! After the Mulleavy sisters incredible way with costumes for Black Swan, the world is watching and ready to see what dramatic creations these two come up with next. : Last season we felt maybe a little displaced leaving Bryant Park for the Upper West Side, but this season should feel a bit more settled, and that beautiful fountain rivals the Tuileries in Paris for street style shots. : Suno and Loeffler Randall, Chris Benz and Alejandro Ingelmo hooked up last season: we cant wait to see which cool kids get together for Fall. Its always interesting to see celebrities in the wild. Courtney Love was our highlight of last season, were holding out for some CW starlets and maybe a Pretty Little Liar this season. We are suckers for nail colors and the best always come straight from the runway. Plus, were still waiting for the new side braid. After a super secret event to launch his super exclusive return to womenswear for Spring, we are holding our breath in anticipation for what Fall will hold, and whether or not Beyonce will be involved. Arizona Muse was the breakout success of last season walking just about every major runway, which led to campaigns that are slowly making her a household name. We cant wait to see who comes to the front this time. Models to Watch This newcomer made waves last season when she opened the Alexander Wang show and underwent a major hair makeover at Balenciaga. She also walked Balmain, Chanel, Marc Jacobs and Lanvin. Last season, Arizona was an exclusive in Milan for Prada, but she made the rounds in New York and Paris, walking Altuzarra, Marc Jacobs, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Miu Miu and more. Shes also the Spring 2011 face of YSL and Prada eyewear. This girl has skyrocketed to stardom seemingly overnight: Shes been featured in editorials for W, Nmero, Lula, RUSSH, Jalouse and more. Plus, she walked Topshop, Giles Deacon and Balenciaga for Spring 2011, and she starred in the Topshop Holiday ad campaign. Her Spring 2011 season can be summed up in three words: Calvin Klein exclusive. Shes also covered Vogue Paris alongside Tom Ford and is a current face of Givenchy. Keep an eye out for this girl, she is going to be HUGE. She stars in the Spring 2011 Valentino campaign, and had an impressive breakout Spring 2011 season, walking shows like Lanvin, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Cline and Chanel. Already an editorial favorite with spreads in RUSSH and i-D, Bambi broke out in Spring 2011, walking in shows like Jen Kao, Rag & Bone and Chanel. She made the runway rounds in her debut season for the Fall 2010 shows, and is the star of the Spring 2011 ad campaigns for Marc Jacobs and Valentino. This stunner from Martinique took the Spring 2011 shows by storm, walking Marc Jacobs, Dries Van Noten, Lanvin, YSL and more. Shes also been featured in recent editorials for V, Interview and Dazed & Confused. She walked some of the most exclusive shows for Spring 2011, including Calvin Klein, Miu Miu and Jil Sander, and has recently starred in editorials for Dazed & Confused and W. Not only is this girl rock-and-roll royalty (her mom is Annie Lennox), she starred alongside Ashley Smith in the Topshop Holiday ad campaign and walked shows like Prada, Burberry and Miu Miu for Spring 2011. The Brands of Fashion Week: The argument could be made that the brands that sponsor NYFW have grown to play just as important a role at fashion week as the designers and models themselves. Obviously, fashion week would cease to exist without names like Mercedes Benz, for whom fashion week is named. But lets not forget about all the other brands that make NYFW possible. With vehicles literally sitting in and around Lincoln Center, it becomes glaringly obvious that Mercedes Benz plays the biggest and most important role of all the brands at NYFW. And they arent going anywhere anytime soon it was announced that Mercedes-Benz will stay on as the title sponsor for NYFW for the next three years. During New York Fashion Week, M.A.C Cosmetics partners with Milk Studios, transforming the venue into MAC At Milk. As one of the biggest sponsors of NYFW, American Express provides card members with a number of exclusive perks and experiences. In the past, cardholders were given access to some of the runway shows and tents ordinarily not open to the public. Maybelline plays a very vital role in creating many of the runway beauty looks for the shows at NYFW. As the official cosmetics sponsor of NYFW, you will also see Maybelline booths conveniently stationed in Lincoln Center. Makeup giveaways, gift bags and even touch-ups are at attendees fingertips. TRESemm will be responsible for the hair looks at a number of shows this season. In addition, attendees will also find the TRESemm Hair Salon and Lounge conveniently located in Lincoln Centers main lobby, where they will be offering dry styling and touch-ups all week. Frappuccino Caffeine is probably the single most important tool if you will needed to survive NYFW. So naturally it makes sense that the Bucks is the official coffee sponsor of this tiresome week. Attendees will be treated to drinks from the Starbucks Frappuccino Light beverage line. If you need an extra jolt, you can also visit the Starbucks Frappuccino Coffee Drink Lounge. In the past, guests of The W Hotels Arrivals Lounge were treated to champagne cocktails, delicious food and music from some of the hottest celebrity DJs. Think of it as a place for attendees to catch a breather and relaz in between shows. As one of the sponsors of MAC at Milk, fiji water will be handed out to Fashion Week attendees to keep you hydrated between and during shows. A national awareness campaign for women about heart disease sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The red dress has become a national symbol for women and heart disease, and since 2003, The Heart Truth’s Red Dress Collection Fashion Show has been held at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week every year. As specialists in global delivery and shipping, DHL has been the official logistics provider of NYFW for eight seasons and counting. As the official express delivery and logistics partner of Fashion Week, DHL makes it possible for designers fashion collections to go out to international media and industry insiders around the globe. Finding Fashion Week Coverage: These chicks crack us up every time, were sort of obsessed with their witty banter and fixation on Anna. The Go-To for up to the minute runway images. Leah and Lauren always make readers feel like theyre along for the ride. These chicks are obsessed with all things model so its obviously the best spot for your models of New York Fashion Week fix. We dont know where its going or what its doing, but hopefully we can access The Daily without an iPad because those overheards are in a word, amazing. Fashion Week on Twitter: With New York Fashion Week fast approaching, its time to make sure you dont miss out on any of the front row and backstage action. By following some key fashion week heavy-hitters on Twitter, youll stay current on all the excitement from the tents. These 10 designers, editors, models and fashion enthusiasts are sure to give you the inside, up-to-the-minute account straight from NYFW. Other Things to do in the Area Restaurants To Check Out Between the long days trekking around the city and the even longer nights going from after party to after party, NYFW can really take it out of you. So much so that accidentally skipping meals can actually become very regular during those jam-packed 7 days or so. But being busy is no excuse to miss out on all the amazing restaurants New York has to offer this is one of the food capitals of the world after all. Besides, youre going to need some fuel for all that walking youll inevitably be doing all week. So whether youre in town attending the shows or just looking for some great, tasty fare, these are the restaurants you need to check out. Near Lincoln Center: View in a larger mapMore Fashion Week Coverage from StyleCasterOur coverage is just beginning but you can get it all here on our very own . We’ll help you stay up to date with what’s going on and give you our take on what really matters. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter so you don’t miss a moment of the action.?and live appearances. Join us as we take a look back at The White Stripes’ most stylish clips, and prepare yourself for a lot of pinstripes, top hats and seemingly countless combinations of red, white and black. Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground (2002) Jack’s got a bowler hat, a perfectly tailored suit and a house full of memories set to a killer soundtrack. Fell In Love With A Girl (2002) While this LEGO animated clip might not fit into the “stylish” category, we can definitely file it under “pretty f*cking cool.” The video and the song really put the band on the map, and helped to secure them a place in rock and roll history. Seven Nation Army (2003) My personal favorite White Stripes video, this kaleidoscopic clip is a work of art. The Hardest Button To Button (2003) Between the stop animation and the vivid red color of Meg’s drum, it’s near impossible to take your eyes off of the screen until this video ends. Jack’s cherry-colored guitar and pant leg are pretty sweet, too. My Doorbell (2005) Jack gives his best “Johnny Depp” with the shaggy hair, fedora and black and white striped suit, and Meg looks gorgeous all done up in old-school glamour namely, the big hair and the lace dress. You Don’t Know Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told) (2007) On the style front, this simple, beachside video is the strongest the Stripes look like they could be Burberry spokesmodels with their classic black peacoats. I’m loving the beret Meg, by the way! Photo: Stephen Lovekin, WireImage ?. I am always on the lookout for pieces that put a rugged spin on luxury, and this gold fused accessory fits the bill. More than that, it stops me in my tracks and makes me want to go goth…kidding. Sort of.One of Burberry‘s many specialties is cutting-edge jewelry and this season they really shut the house down with their offerings. The barbed-wire detailing trickled all throughout the British brand’s fall collection, turning up on , and . I literally want one of each. The ring in particular is a worthy investment, because it can subtly implement a punkish vibe into clean-cut work attire, but will just as easily put the finishing touch on an all-out hardcore look. xoRZAvailability: Burberry , $195. For additional retailer information, visit .P.S. Want to see my debut collection in its entirety? Tune in to QVC this Saturday, October 10 at 1 p.m. ET for . So Excited!Parallel UniverseBanana Republic, Wide Chain Ring, $30, at .Stylist has long been known as the go-to force among “It” starlets, fashion houses, beauty firms and magazine editors looking for a dose of effortlessly chic style.October 2007 marked the launch of Zoe’s first tome, Style A to Zoe by Grand Central Publishing, a stylebook filled with insightful tips and observations by Zoe, her designer friends and star clients. It was included in the New York Times Best Seller List. Zoe is continuing her mission to make fashion attainable with a full line of affordable accessories and faux fur that will debut on QVC this fall. She also acts as contributing editor and consultant for . Rachel is continuing to expand her business endeavors with the second season of , which premiered August 24th on Bravo.Zoe and her husband, venture capitalist and new-media entrepreneur Rodger Berman, reside in Los Angeles.See more posts on .?, shopping for spring and summer trends is a fun indulgence. Trends are a way to demonstrate that you are a fashion taste-maker. However, as you’re cutting off the bottom six inches of your t-shirt for a homemade (really, why would you pay for less of a shirt? definitely DIY) don’t neglect the anchoring staples of your wardrobe. While you’re drunk on military jackets and floral prints, sober up your closet with a few timeless pieces to balance out the trendy items you indulged in this season. Fashion designer is known for incorporating prints into classic silhouettes for a more subtle introduction of trends into your closet. Check below for Tory Burch’s invaluable tips on how to dress with timeless elegance and three outfits inspired by the Tory Burch collection.Outfit #1 Inspired by Tory Burch: Beige trench by ($460); Green floral print dress by ($465); Tortoiseshell sunglasses by ($128); Red striped scarf by ($128); White cross-body bag by ($225); Beige round toe pump by ($450); Gold bangles by ($100) StyleCaster: What do you consider to be the staple wardrobe items to achieve a classic look? Tory Burch: I really believe that women should wear what looks good on them and what reflects their personal style. That said, there are pieces that I think are universal looks that are seasonless, functional, and versatile.1. A great jersey dress is flattering. I especially love printed looks.? 2. A jacket depending on your personal style it can be a more fitted blazer, a tweed look, or a looser knit. Either way, its perfect for layering with a dress, a t-shirt, etc.? 3. A slouchy t-shirt, whether embellished or not, is the ultimate American staple.? 4. A perfect pair of jeans. When you find a fit that works for you, stick with it. Jeans can be dressed up or down so easily.? 5. The right accessories. A roomy, well-made leather day bag is essential. Shoes are just as important chic pairs of heels and boots. Sunglasses are key, as well, and something you can wear year-round.? 6. For me, a bold piece of jewelry is a must-have. It can take your look to a whole new level no matter what youre wearing. It doesnt have to be an expensive, jewel-covered look. It can be an incredible costume piece that reflects your personality.???Outfit #2 Inspired by Tory Burch: Navy and white striped blazer by ; White t-shirt by ($76); Yellow bib necklace by ($198); Dark denim skinny leg jeans by ($165); Pale pink ballet flats by ($235); Beige square sunglasses by ($210); Beige python embossed tote by ($198)SC: If you could only invest in one classic item, what would it be and why? TB: A dress is so important. It can anchor your entire wardrobe. If its the right one, you can wear it all year long and just style it differently with a blazer and heeled boots or sandals and a bold cuff. SC: Black, tan, white, and navy are usually considered the most classic colors. If you want to add a little color to your wardrobe, what color do you recommend and how would you incorporate it into an outfit? TB: Color is very personal. What looks good on one person might not work on the next. When you find a color that complements you, there are so many ways to incorporate it. Start with simple touches, like a shoe, a bag, or a scarf. From there, you can add brighter ready-to-wear pieces like a cardigan or a dress. The great thing about a brighter hue is that you can always balance it with a neutral (blue, white, camel, etc.)??Outfit #3 Inspired by Tory Burch: Gold earrings by ($160); Navy blazer by ($585); White button up shirt by ($68); Blue print scarf by ($29.50); Straw and white tote by ($350); Red floral print skirt by ($375); Tan sandals by ($395)SC: What steps can a woman take to make sure her look is pulled together, but not dull? TB: My best advice here is to, again, find the silhouettes that look best on you. When clothes fit right, you feel more confident and thats what translates.??SC: It seems most feel more suitable for the workplace. What are some casual classic pieces and how do you wear them on the weekends? TB: There are some pieces that can translate from work to weekend, like a cardigan or a great blazer. When Im at home with my boys or relaxing with friends I usually wear jeans with a tunic, sweater, or t-shirt. Even when youre completely laid-back, you can still add a little something special an embellished t-shirt perhaps or an animal-print cardigan.More Tory Burch News ?yes, even all the crop tops and furry pink stilettos. But while we’ve spent years fawning over her closet full of Manolos, we’ve yet to live out the dream ourselves. and online retailer , however, are aiming to change all that with their collaboration on an upcoming shopping event inspired by not only Carrie, but all four of our favorite characters. Decadestwo has rented out a four-bedroom, luxed out Manhattan apartment (the specific location is being kept under wraps!) decked out in homage to Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. Each room will be fully stocked with designer goodies inspired by each character’s individual style (see above). The best part? The killer designer items will be marked down up to 80 percent off retail.But like so many great events, this one’s private. To gain access, enter our Twitter tickets giveaway. It’s simple: between now and Tuesday May 18, log onto and tweet the following phrase to be entered into our drawing: @StyleCaster send me #SATC2 inspired shopping with @HauteLook and @Decadestwo. Fifty tweeters will be randomly selected to attend the Sex and the City 2-inspired shopping extravaganza taking place on May 21 through May 22. And because shopping is more fun with a friend, each winner can bring a guest. Look out for winners to be announced on Wednesday May 19 so start tweeting!Related: ?is meaning two very different things for us this year. Of course there’s the holiday — that one day of the year when single girls across America sit at home with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and cry at their TV screens while Love Actually plays on repeat. Well, we refuse to let February 14 live up to that image in 2010. Instead, we’ll be hitting up the local theater to check out the that releases February 12 — yes, that Valentine’s Day. But while we eagerly anticipate the exciting release, we’re oogling over the amazing dresses (and ewing over the not-so-amazing ones) that came down the red carpet at the film’s premiere last night. Below, check out all the red carpet hits and misses. Hits: Jessica Biel (above): Words cannot describe how much we LOVE Jessica Biel’s gown that she wore to the Valentine’s Day premiere. The pink is perfectly planned for the romance-themed film, but without the cringe-worthy cheese factor. Completely stunning. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore: Demi and Ashton always look amazing together, and last night was no exception. We’re a bit suspicious about how young Demi is looking these days () but nevertheless she looks phenomenal in her strapless cream-colored frock. Louise Roe: The TV presenter does the winter white trend with exceptional ease, but we’re particularly smitten by her velvet shoes that add an appropriate wintry accent to her ensemble. Anne Hathaway: While this Marchesa frock is not our favorite from the talented designer, Hathaway pulls it off nicely, finishing off her look with an elegant updo and a muted red lip. She’s smart to keep the accessories to a minimum; the bright blue feathers do plenty of the talking. Jennifer Garner: Plain black pumps seemed to be a trend for the night, but we love how Jennifer Garner livened up the simple look with an intricately textured dress. The combination of sexy leather with is making us want to reach through our computer screens. Emma Roberts: Move over Emma Watson — as far as we’re concerned, Roberts is the next acting sensation to take the teen market by storm. The 19-year-old is already ahead of the curve with a sense of style that beats out Miley’s any day. Taylor Lautner: Are those grey streaks we see in Taylor Lautner’s hair? If so, we don’t see anything wrong with the silver fox look when it comes on Lautner. The hue matches his classic suit, plus it’s quite the as of late. Misses:Jessica Alba: We have to give it to Jessica — these two-toned shoes she strapped on for last night’s premiere are quite covetable, but the rest of the look is just all wrong. First of all, you’d think with such star power, she could persuade the designer to give her a dress in her size. And what’s with the undershirt? We sincerely hope that’s not a wife beater she’s sporting on the red carpet. Anna Kulinova: Anna Kulinova plays the part of a Bulgarian girl in Valentine’s Day, but on the red carpet last night, she looked more like a a figure skater — or perhaps a Vegas showgirl. It’s a toss up. Shea Curry: Personally, this look is a bit too Malibu Barbie with a side of watermelon for us. Garcelle Beauvais: While the actress’ dress is perfectly pretty for the red carpet, everything went awry as soon as she threw on the accessories. With a below-the-knee dress like this one, Beauvais should have gone with a lighter pair of stilettos, but instead she chose these aggressive heels that only weigh her down. Sandra Taylor: Just because CVS decks out their entire store in pink during Valentine’s Day doesn’t mean that you should follow suit in your sartorial choices — and neither should Sandra Taylor. Take this as an example of what not to do. Melissa Rycroft: Do we have to exhaust the Barbie pink commentary further? At least Melissa Rycroft had the sense not to pair her pink party dress with a pair of matching heels — but still, this dress brings back way too many suppressed prom memories. More News We Love: ?, Johnny Depp?Were positive Paradis je-ne-sais-quoi is what led iconic French label Chanel to use her yet again in their. Paradis, who has already been the face of Chanel twice (back in 1992 for “Coco Chanel,” and then again in 2003 for Chanel’s Cambon handbags) was wearing a dress straight from the recent Pre-Fall 2010 presentation, paired with Christian Louboutin .To celebrate, the brand threw Paradis a dinner last night at the swanky Marks Hotel with some of the chicest people in the industry. Check out our hits and misses below. Hits:Irina Lazareanu:We love supermodel Irina Lazareanus new spin on an old classic. Pairing a timeless Chanel tweed jacket with leather skinnies and killer boots, were positive Coco would be proud.Leigh Lezark:We must admit that Leigh Lezark looked impeccably chic at last night’s soiree. Sporting black from head to toe is no easy feat, but the DJ pulled it off with style and ease.Jen Brill:Devastatingly cool It-girl Jen Brill can do no wrong in our eyes. We love how she plays with proportions and texture by pairing her flowy floor-length floral dress with a tough leather motorcycle jacket. And dont get us started on her .Caroline Sieber:We can definitely see why Uncle Karl handpicked her to be one of . Australian-born, London-based stylist Caroline Sieber looked stunning in her unconventional beaded, lace number (by Chanel, of course). What a great way to represent the iconic fashion house.Kate Bosworth:Kate, Kate, Kate, is it even possible for you to look bad? From her flattering multi-colored frock, to her boxy cream clutch, right down to her metal-tipped blue suede platforms, this ravishing actress receives an A+ from us, as usual.Misses:Heidi Mount:Heidi, we know youre a top model and all, but we dont think that even a top model could pull off a black crinoline skirt-turned-cape over a sheer lace top. Its just a little too much.Alexandra Richards:With flowing through her veins, we cant help but admit that we were expecting something a little more exciting from Alexandra Richards. It’s slightly dowdy and borderline boring — maybe you can ask your rock star daddy for style advice next time?Nina Garcia:Nina, as the ex fashion director of Elle, what were you thinking when you chose this outfit? While we’re obsessed with this season, this lace dress is odd-fitting and frumpy — and whats with those little colorful beads? In fashion, you are either in or youre out. Sorry Nina, but wed have to say auf weidersehen to this outfit. More News We Love:?would like to see don her eponymous fashion line, 19-year-old gets Posh’s stamp of approval. Although Victoria’s structured dresses and fitted denim have no trouble finding themselves on celebrities ( and Jennifer Lopez are fans), Beckham told British Harper’s Bazaar that she would love to dress the Harry Potter star in particular, who she described as “so sweet, so true to herself.”Victoria Beckham’s line would certainly befit Watson’s style sensibility: simple, ladylike, sophisticated, and classic. We would especially love to see the in Beckham’s dress, a black and gold mini with ¾ sleeves. Cute, right? Posh also listed Charlize Theron, Angelina Jolie, and as stars whose style she admires, but probably no one’s style is as important to her at the moment than Madonna‘s, who wore Victoria Beckham’s black cotton and elastane dress in a W photo shoot earlier this year (you know, the one where she met her “close friend” Jesus Luz).?), has put together their behind-the-scenes footage from an upcoming fashion editorial shot byfor a fashion short that presents us with the Home Shopping Network of our dreams.Featuring runway collections for the Spring 2012 season from the likes of Alexander McQueen,, Prada, Moschino, Burberry, Louis Vuitton and others, Vogue Italia does an excellent job of presenting expensive, luxury fashions through a less-than-luxury medium.Check out the fashion film for yourself down below, and let us know what you think in the comments section underneath!?or looking at the shoe porn archives on . In the time that I’ve spent working in the industry and living in New York, I have slowly become immune to the fact that, yes, some of the unnaturally-shaped shoes I lust after are pretty strange looking. Not unattractive, necessarily5-inchers have a way of making your legs look impossibly longjust weird. cat-print platforms might seem totally normal to me, but to others, not so much. Considering my slight obsession with said footwear, I didn’t really have any funky pairs myself, so this season I picked up some tribal wedges and couldn’t wait to wear them. I took them for a spin for the first time yesterday, and was surprised by two things: first, how incredibly easy they are to walk in (!), and second, how many befuddled passersby were staring at my feet. I wouldn’t say that I get “checked out” on the street very often, and while I would like to think that all the new attention is from people looking at me in an “oh my! What a classic beauty” way, in reality they’re probably just wondering, “what the eff are those bricks that she’s wearing on her feet?”The reactions have ranged from enthusiastic tourists about my age who were wondering where they could buy them, to a creepy middle-aged man who asked me to twirl around so he could get a 360 degree view, to very, very confused guys and gals of all ages whose necks nearly snapped from turning to get a better look as they walked by. My favorite encounter thus far happened on my lunch break, when I caught an adorable, bespectacled gentlemen in his mid-60s staring at my shoes and shaking his head, so obviously I called him out about it. Our exchange went a little like this:Me: Are you checking out my shoes? They’re pretty funky, huh?Man: Yeah… they suit you though.Me: Oh, so you like them?Man: I’m not sure that I do, but I like them on you. I take a compliment where I can get it, so I smiled, satisfied with his answer, but do you guys think my shoes are really that weird? Or is this all in my head??contains hidden pockets of water. Scientists had previously insisted that the moon is in fact a dry planet, but now it is possible that a source of water is living beneath the planet’s hidden craters. A NASA mission is now scheduled next month to investigate.In lieu of this exciting discovery (yay, traveling aliens won’t go thirsty), here are seven looks from the Spring 2010 runway that are space-inspired.BurberryRodarteCushnie et OchsChristopher KaneBasso & BrookePreenElise Øverland?in 2009Burberry’s Chief Creative OfficerChristopher Bailey decided to move the Prorsum show from Milan to their hometown of London, immediately catapulting London Fashion Week to new heights.The talented designers of the United Kingdom draw the attention of its own glitterati. Expect to spot thewho’s who of the British fashion scene such assuperstar model Kate Moss, English rosesKeira Knightley andRosamund Pike sitting front-row—not to mention “it” girlsElizabeth Jagger and Georgia May Jagger who often grace the runways as well.I’m sure this year London Fashion Week will be getting a royal visit from the UK’s new first lady of fashion—the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton and her scene-stealing sister Pippa Middleton (or as the locals call her,P-Middy).So stay tuned to StyleCaster for exclusive London Fashion Week coverage. And click to find out who top()s‘s list of.?)Check out the images of Lady Gaga’s i-D spread. It’s black and white and Gaga all over. ()Win a ticket to a Chanel Couture show! Christies is hosting its second annual Bid to Save the EarthGreen Auction. Among the items up on the block is that aforementioned covetable seat and a style consult from DVF and ATL. ()Havianas collaborated with Missoni on some very cute flip flops. ()DOUBLE SHOT: TWEET, TWEETRT @ @ Thanks Rachel! Miss you!! Next time we are in the same city, dinner is a must. Love to Rodger xxVera OMG it’s like a personal message between Vera and Zoe! Love to Rodg!RT @ Image of the Day: Nearly-Naked Julia Restoin-Roitfeld Covers Russian Tatler Def worthy of an image of the day.RT @ British actress Sienna Miller wearing a @ Biker jacket in London Preeetttyyy…RT @ Hey guys – Vanessa Traina here – stay tuned for a behind-the-scenes look into the prep for my maje capsule collection launching @! ooh, fun!?to show a lovely collection that gets buyers and editors a-Twitter, they now have to build an entire around it. All the more fun for us! is releasing the latest in fashion meets art videos. Directed by Amsterdam-born photographer and filmmaker Ari Marcopoulos, the doc-style short titled No Way Back is a meditation on the life and times of iconic tattoo artist Mark Mahoney. Mark Mahoney: Image from No Way BackThe video will be presented at Yves Saint Laurent Creative Director Stefano Pilatis showing on Friday, June 25 in Paris. In the rare occasion that the masses get a sneak peek prior to the glamorati, the video will go live the day beforehand on YSL’s dedicated , and page at 6pm EST on Thursday, June 24. Ah, the demoracy of 21st century fashion.All photos courtesy of YSLRelated: ?is the Senior Fashion Editor at Marie Claire and a super stylish, rather rad English girl who’s a favorite among the street style paps. The girl in Burberry describes her style as “masculine meets feminine,” and that she’s “drawn to sloppy oversized clothing.” Find out how some distressed boots and her dapper Dad influence her and her path to the fashion top. -Kerry Pieri?11 Fashionable Predictions For The Year Ahead by 11:10 am, January 1st, 2011 Happy Hangovers! Since we’ve spent the last few weeks , we thought we’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. *** will take over ‘s role at Vogue. (Sorry, we couldn’t resist.) In all seriousness, this isn’t going to happen. Instead, she will probably move on to consulting — what we’d give to see Balenciaga .After much internal debate, Gap will redesign their logo . It will look exactly like J.Crew’s.The CFDA will slowly but inexorably move towards the annual fashion calendar. Though they won’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.Anna Dello Russo will buy the Rosetta Stone and become fluent in English. We will miss her .In direct competition to Natalie Portman’s, Ben Millepied will become ‘s new muse. will move on to co-star with Cher in the straight-to-tv sequel of Burlesque.The Federal Trade Commission with ban the use Photoshop in advertising. Magazines will follow suit. And bloggers around the world will continue to dream.Willow Smith will wear a dress made of veal. ?Kanye West will denounce fashion (it really did ) and wear only burlap sacks.Land’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. will about during Fall Fashion Week, declare him the best possibly successor for at Chanel.People will continue to ignore the fact that leggings aren’t pants.Leave your predictions in the comments! ?The 11 Most Insanely Expensive Things To Buy A Child by 5:13 pm, April 20th, 2010 Some people may say a triple-ply cashmere jumpsuit for a newborn is gratuitious. Ostentastious. Downright insulting in These Hard Times. I am not one of those people. From the first time I wandered into the Greenwich Village outpost of Bonpoint– sort of a Brunello Cucinelli for children– I became utterly enchanted with the idea of swathing my eventual babies in the proverbial Bonpoint lifestyle, right from the cashmere-jumpsuited beginning.In the years since that first fateful stroll through the store, solid gold baby rattles, Bugaboos (and their alpha cousins – prams), and Burberry baby boxers have worked their way through my conciousness, gratis to a veritable Suri Cruise minifeed in the checkout line of the grocery store and my own avid, early research on how best to spoil my way-unborn children. Some may say that if a baby gets the best of everything right from the beginning, uses a Cartier love bracelet as a teething ring and an Alfa-Romeo as a sandbox, they will have nothing to look forward to. I say pish-posh, with emphasis on posh. If you can swing it, your little Bonpoint Baby will grow up with a sincere and sophisticated appreciation for the finer things in life. Or turn on you completely, and refuse to wear anything but Keds, ripoff jean shorts and grungy band tees — and not the $400 ironic kind from Saks. Accordingly, here some of the more luxe items available to purchase for the youngest subset of the population– and those who will be most likely to spit on your gift, outgrow it, and otherwise generally unappreciate it. Pages: 1 ?6 Reasons Opening Ceremony’s Owners Are Cooler Than You by 12:44 pm, September 28th, 2010 Opening Ceremony is the coolest, and by extension, its owners Humberto Leon and Carol Lim are the coolest. The LA natives met at Berkeley, and their close friendship helped conceive what is arguably our favorite store in the city (world?). Humberto explains what was going through their heads a decade ago: “What do we love? We love traveling, we love shopping, we love eating, we love magazines, we love music. So what can we do to incorporate all these loves into, you know, a business?”They in New York Magazine‘s entirely delightful “Who Runs New York?” power issue, and we’re here to break down what exactly makes them so awesome. Yeah, they’re the coolest. ?YSL Reissues Opium, We Smell 70s Revival by 12:48 pm, June 16th, 2010 Our sense of smell is a powerful one. Just a waft of a specific scent–be it your mother’s musk or an evocative eau de toilette–can instantly trigger memories and totally transport you to a different time. Well, with YSL set to reissue Opium that odorous, drugged out ode to the gold-enrusted 1970′s, we couldn’t help but find ourselves taken on a bit of a trip. Wayback Wednesday, anyone? More, it seems we weren’t alone in our DeLorean.?Between the return of a Jagger to the catwalk and the pant-suit heavy fall collections, might?the decade of disco be having another moment? We can only cross our fingers–for hopes of a?Talking Heads reunion tour alone. Here are a few signs you might want to dust the cobwebs off your Hustle.Gap Toothed Models: Lauren Hutton’s grin–in all of its desperately seeking ortho-dentist glory was undoubtedly a defining feature of the 1970s. But, leave it to Dutch model Lara Stone to give her signature smirk pas a new found sensuality and glamour. Now with Stone fronting a major campaign for Calvin Klein, along with fellow natural whistlers Vanessa Paradis and Georgia Jagger putting in time for Chanel, we can officially endorse this one as a trend. Break out the spacers girls.Pantsuits: As loathe as we are to admit it, when Balmain does pantsuits, you’ve just got to accept that they are going to be huge this fall. And by pantsuits we mean completely inappropriate for the office, utterly covetable, brocade printed pieces that look like something that would have passed under the velvet rope at Studio 54. Think Jerry Hall gone corporate.Chunky Platforms: If you’ve ever attempted to do the Hustle in a pair of stilettos you know that towering platforms were as fashionable as they were a disco bred necessity. So while we can’t exactly explain their return (since line dancing has long since been relegated to barns in Texas) with options like Miu Miu‘s swallow tail printed Mary Janes, do we really need to?Man Heels: Hold onto your heels ladies, as lately the meel–that super questionable 70′s era shoe is staging a cautious return to the men’s department. And we’re not just talking about those draggy, glam rock numbers Gene Simmons was know to sport on stage. Whether a discreetish Cuban heel a la Karl Lagerfeld or something feverishly?Travolta–looks like gender bending is no longer for the ladies only.Upholstery Prints: There’s a reason why the 70s is commonly known as one of the fugliest decades ever: Prints. Overly floral, textured, looked like they just got ripped from the rod prints. And well, from the upholstered numbers that took the runway at?Marc Jacobs recent resort outing for Louis Vuitton, designers seem bent on taking another go at curtain couture. Cue Julie Andrews.Carine Roitfeld Said So: In the fashion world what French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld wants, she gets. And if her recent 18-spread editorial in the glossy’s July issue is any guide, Carine wants the 1970s. Styling Freja Beha Erichsen and?Lara Stone in mustard hues, turtlenecks and tailored pieces from the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Burberry and Dior, love it or hate it, there’s no arguing with her. ?Girl Crush: Abbey Lee Kershaw In Korean Vogue by 8:44 am, March 31st, 2010 We have a major crush on model Abbey Lee Kershaw, which is why we couldn’t help but post some of these gorgeous pictures, shot for Korean Vogue’s April 2010 issue. The spread, photographed by Rafael Stahelin and styled by Ye Young Kim is aptly titled Lovely Bones and features a ghostlike Kershaw in form-fitting clothes with skeletal detailing. The piece features an edgier side of Burberry Prorsum and is brilliantly accessorized. ?Adele Gives Middle Finger At Brit Awards, Might Be Engaged by 12:01 pm, February 22nd, 2012 Adele had a very big night last night! The songstress walked the Brit Awards wearing?Burberry ? and possibly an engagement ring. She then went on to win two awards at the show, where she was rudely interrupted during one of her acceptance speeches.First let’s discuss this ring business. Adele sported not one but two sparklers on her left ring finger last night. One was a diamond band, while the other involved a huge yellow stone:However! She wore a different (though equally sparkly) ring on her left ring finger at the? earlier this month:Maybe she just likes wearing rings on that finger? Or maybe she really is engaged to boyfriend Simon Konecki? In her she did make mention of marriage:“I am fucking off for four or five years. If I am constantly working, my relationships fail. So at least now I can have enough time to write a happy record. And be in love and be happy. And then I don’t know what I’ll do. Get married. Have some kids. Plant a nice vegetable patch.”Hmmm. And about that rude interruption ? WTF Brit Awards? National treasure Adele wins the biggest award of the night (album of the year!) and goes on about how proud she is to be British, and they CUT HER OFF. (FOR BLUR!) As such, she flipped them off. [Note: Unlike Justin, I'm cool with the . It also feels especially deserved in this case!] Here, look: ?Model Agyness Deyn Has Been Lying About Her Age Her Entire Career by 11:45 am, February 28th, 2012 The modeling industry is obsessed with youth, so it’s not surprising to find out that well known models have shaved a year or two off their age. But supermodel revealed Tuesday that she’s a full six years older than she’s claimed to be when she started modeling.Deyn, who many believed was 23 years old, that she’s actually 29 — not young woman so much as grown lady. Deyn says that she chose to change her age — as well as her name, which is Laura Hollins in reality — when she started modeling so that she’d have a better chance of standing out and landing jobs. And it worked.“No, when I decided I would really do modelling I was like 18, and I think at the time that was quite old for a new face, so we knocked off a few years.” The deception has long since been corrected. “But it was my birthday last week, and [designer ] was saying how old would you have been? Cos it got really complicated ? when personal and work collide ? and Henry was like: ‘But it looks like I started being friends with you when you were four or something!’”Deyn has been facing questions about her true age ever since she struck gold with campaigns for everyone from Burberry to . There’s even a Facebook group called “Agyness Deyn You Are Not 18.” Her age might not matter that much now that she’s tapered off modeling work in favor of acting — she’s currently promoting her turn in a play called The Leisure Society — but if she felt the need to lie just to get work, then it must have really mattered when she started modeling.And that’s just sad. Ad campaigns and magazine covers might be dominated by young women who aren’t technically old enough to drink () or buy cigarettes (), but we’ve always thought that grown women should have a bigger place in selling products to, well, the grown women who buy them. You see that at the other end of the age spectrum — (47), (38) and (41) are still getting tons of work. But if the industry is inflexible about letting girls start anywhere past 14 or 15, it’s going to miss out on some major talent. After all, it would have missed Deyn if she hadn’t lied.[] ?Alexa Chung Gives Her Mom A Style Shout Out by 6:50 pm, April 21st, 2010 Cloggery aside, I’ve got to admit I would, without hesitation, raid Alexa Chung’s closet — for the Mulberry satchel bags and slouchy cardigans alone! But as it , a lot of the vintage pieces in Ms. Chung’s?arsenal actually belong to her mom!According to the style-setting ‘It Brit,’ Burberry macs and Louis Vuitton satchels were staples at their home and she continues to draw inspiration from her mom’s classic style. Wonder if the elder Chung happened to be a nurse or an avid gardener… Seriously though, what girl hasn’t gone a hunting in mom’s closet — or better yet, her jewelry box? In fact, it almost makes Alexa’s offbeat brand of style seem a tad bit more relatable, though she recently complained we Americans just don’t get her. “I feel like American girls are a lot neater,” she said. “People would try to fuss with my hair and I’d say, ‘No, it’s meant to be like that.’” Ah, the great cultural divide claims another — maybe she should compare notes with the similarly misunderstood (though quite American) .Fortunately there’s nothing that says you have to get her to get all those covetable pieces in her upcoming collaboration with Madewell. ?McQueen To Launch Posthumous Line Of Undies by 9:43 am, March 24th, 2010 The late Alexander McQueen was never afraid of taking risks, so it comes as no surprise that his final undertaking would be something a little out of the box. As one of his final design feats, McQueen created a men’s underwear collection, slated to launch in June. According to , the prints will mimic much of McQueen’s token graphics — like the skull prints we loved so much on those , as well as X-rays, feathers, and bones. The packaging of the underwear will feature photographs of men’s bodies, shot by Alasdair McLellan — focuses specifically on young men and has graced the pages of Burberry Ad Campaigns, POP Magazine, and Vogue.The collection, which in addition to boxers and briefs will include pajamas, loungewear, and swimwear, will be sold at high-end department stores such as Barneys New York, Selfridges in London, and Galeries Lafayette in Paris, as well as on . The prices range from about $50 to $600., part of the first collection includes a red skull boxer, with the proceeds going to various AIDS foundations. Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Akeroyd of the line, “The development of our men’s wear is a priority for us, and expanding the diversity of products within the sector is mandatory.” The truth? We would be thrilled about anything that meant more McQueen. Now all we have to do is get our boyfriends to buy these so we can repossess them. Isn’t underwear as outerwear in for Fall 2010 anyway? [] []Get Styleite directly to your inbox – ?Ambrose Olsen, Male Model, Dead At 24 by 1:11 pm, April 27th, 2010 Model passed away last Thursday. He was 24. Originally from Alaska, Olsen starred in Armani Exchange’s 2007 ad campaign with , in addition to modeling for Hugo Boss, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, and YSL.While is still unconfirmed, there are that he hung himself.PHOTOS: VIDEO: ?PHOTOS: Who Was Best Dressed On Last Night’s Fancy Red Carpets? by 11:14 am, June 8th, 2012 Last night, New York?celebrated the annual?amfAR Inspiration Gala, while California honored?Shirley MacLaine with the?AFI Life Achievement Award. But who was best dressed?There were equal parts LBDs and LWDs on both red carpets. Jennifer Aniston, Mena Suvari, Elizabeth McGovern, and Claire Pfister wore pristine white gowns, while Julia Roberts, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Emma Ostilly, and Katherine Heigl went with classic black dresses. The ensembles were on the boring side, but props to Aniston for showing off her stems in Burberry, and more props to Roberts for that super sparkly necklace. We approve!Other things we liked:?Dakota Fanning‘s Gucci frock and Wendi Deng Murdoch‘s cool colorblocked outfit.?Fanning’s studded accessories added a hint of edginess to the Grecian-style dress, and Murdoch’s unexpected color pairing was refreshing. On the other hand,?Hilary Swank‘s dress looked like a tablecloth, and Lea Thompson‘s pin-up girl pose just made us feel awkward. We weren’t even going to point her out, but that pose…why?Check out the gallery and tell us who you think is best dressed: Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?And The Kanye West Fashion Debut Rumors Continue! by 4:32 pm, September 20th, 2011 T-minus 10 days until Kanye unveils his during Paris Fashion Week! We’ll take any details we can get, and we’re grateful Grazia did a little snooping regarding the top secret project.According to their “the collection was put together in Turnmills, an enormous now-defunct nightclub in London, by a crack team of Central Saint Martin’s fashion graduates under the direction of designers Louise Goldin, and Dean Quinn (both ex-CSM students themselves), and with the likely consultation of Louise Wilson, head of MA Fashion at Central Saint Martin’s”. Well then!Said source calls the whole thing “excruciating” thanks to Kanye’s indecisiveness, confirms Christine Centenera‘s , and calls the pieces “extraordinarily expensive; some of it is virtually unproduceable”. The clothes are apparently “ivory and gold” and “seemingly based on Samurai, with lots of sporty garments, but in luxury fabrics, with embellishment, embroidery – Japanese stuff – gold chainmail, that sort of sports-luxe thang, and unsurprisingly, lots of hoods, baseball/biker jacket shapes”.Whew! Just 10 days, you guys…[via ] ?There Is An Anna Dello Russo Barbie Doll! by 2:53 pm, April 18th, 2011 We already knew Anna Dello Russo was an , but now that she has her very own customized Barbie, she’s on a whole other level.Mario Paglino and Gianni Cossi of Magia 2000 made the , replete with a lace Dolce & Gabbana ensemble and leopard clutch. Look familiar? It should! It’s an exact replica of the outfit Anna wore to the?Burberry men’s show in Milan last summer. The doll was made in collaboration with Mattel Italy, and it’s totally rad.We wonder how much one of these babies will cost us… Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. [] ?5 Editors Who Should Follow In Anna Dello Russo’s Footsteps by 3:14 pm, July 26th, 2010 Today, Vogue Nippon’s Anna Dello Russo to WWD that she’s planning to debut her own fragrance. Worshipped on fashion blogs for her playful runway-to-street style, it makes sense for Dello Russo to cash in on her name. But what does this say about editors in general? Are they fashion’s newest celebrity?While Teen Vogue and Elle editors like Lisa Love and have already made themselves near-household names by opening their office doors to some rolling cameras, we think they could be a little more proactive. To save them from the brainstorming process, we thought of a few editorial partnerships that are?guaranteed?to fly off the store shelves. ?WATCH: Anna Wintour On Being One Of Forbes Most Powerful Women by 9:52 am, August 25th, 2011 To hear tell it, her reputation for being an intimidating and demanding boss isn’t so much fact as it is complete and total media fabrication. But that reputation has nevertheless earned the Vogue editor-in-chief a spot on Forbes list of the tell it, her reputation for being an intimidating and demanding boss isn’t so much fact as it is complete and total media fabrication. But that reputation has nevertheless earned the Vogue editor-in-chief a spot on Forbes list of the world’s most powerful women.Wintour landed at 69 on the list of 100 ladies who run major businesses, academic institutions, humanitarian efforts, television shows and in some cases entire nations. Wintour isn’t the sole member of the fashion and beauty community on the list — she’s joined by designers (91) and (79), supermodel (60), Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts (58), TJ Maxx CEO Carol Meyrowitz (73), and Avon CEO Andrea Jung (64). Our first lady and fashion icon Michelle Obama is number 8.But most of those women found their way onto the list without inspiring best-selling roman-a-clefs about their dictatorial management style — and we’ve never heard a rumor suggesting that to Angela Ahrendts if you share an elevator with her.Still, Wintour insists that she’s really just doing her job — and the fact that she’s a woman and she does her job well means she’s had to deal with some nasty rumors. Forbes‘ Jenna Godreau about those rumors, which Wintour denounced as untrue.You’ve gained a reputation for being incredibly intimidating. Do you think that helps or hurts you as a leader? I assure you all the people that work with me on a day-to-day basis don’t think that. That’s just something that’s been fabricated by the media. And as you well know once something is out there, particularly in today’s world, it just gets exaggerated. I keep my head down and do the job to the best of my ability.And for the most part, that’s true. Wintour has done an exceptional job of turning Vogue into a behemoth of a brand, but we don’t doubt for a second there are a few people she’s had to scare into submission to do that. Take a look at what she has to say about her power in the video below, and check out the rest of the powerful women list .[] ?PHOTOS: Anna Wintour Banned Entire Vogue Staff From Alaia Couture Show by 12:38 pm, July 8th, 2011 The devil may wear Prada, but she wouldn’t be caught dead in Alaia. Not only did go to the Harry Potter premiere instead of the Azzedine Alaia show yesterday, she forbade the entire Vogue staff from attending the designer’s Paris show.While and walked the runway for Alaia, Anna Wintour jetted to London for the with stylish Burberry-clad niece, Ellie Wintour.(Speaking of which, we just have to point out that Anna totally here and recycled her on the red carpet yesterday — the Webby award she just so happened to receive from HP star Daniel Radcliffe! Meta.)It’s no secret that the Wintour and the Tunisian-born Alaia are anything but friends. The feud started in 2009 when Alaia was not featured in Wintour’s “Model As A Muse” exhibit at the Met. Last week, tensions got tenser when Alaia The New York Times that Wintour has no taste.Even if Anna hadn’t banned her whole staff, Alaia didn’t invite anyone associated with the editor or her magazine to his show. Alaia said last month of Wintour, “She hasn’t photographed my work in years even if I am a best seller in the U.S. and I have 140 square meters at Barneys. American women love me; I don’t need her support at all.”We get that there’s bad blood between Wintour and Alaia, but banning the entire Vogue staff from attending the show? That seems a little extreme on both the editor and the designer’s parts. Regardless, it’s Wintour’s loss, because Alaia’s fall collection was really worth seeing.The collection is full of fitted crocodile and knit pieces. It’s pretty classic but with a whimsical twist, thanks to the feather detailing and elegant cuts. See for yourself, below. Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. [] ?Blake Lively’s Wedding Dress Designer Revealed! by 10:43 am, September 11th, 2012 Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds made headlines this weekend with in Charleston, South Carolina. And while some details — Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine performed, Bette Midler serenaded the crowd, and a cake was trucked in from Virginia — the one thing everyone really wanted to know remained inscrutably underwraps, which is to say: what did she wear?Lively, who stars on the style-centric CW show, Gossip Girl, is known for being a bit of a fashion plate. (Girl once bought at a sample sale.) And though she’s got plenty of designer friends in very high places (she’s modeled for Chanel’s and ), most news outlets initially reported that Lively’s bridal gown was by Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld. (Lively and designer Karl Lagerfeld A rep for the French fashion house refuted that claim to us yesterday, and today, Martha Stewart Weddings the big scoop.Lively worked with the team at Stewart’s bridal spinoff to plan her rustic nuptials, which took place in a barn on (otherwise known as the place The Notebook was filmed — Oh-Em-Gee!). Here’s what they had to say about her bridal stylings.The bride and her bridesmaids walked down the aisle in custom Marchesa gowns designed by Blake’s friends, and , with shoes created for the celebration by . The groom and groomsmen wore specially made Burberry suits with custom leather suspenders designed by the groom’s friend, . The couple exchanged unique wedding rings by Lorraine Schwartz.A from Marchesa described her gown as a one-of-a-kind creation featuring “a hand-draped silk tulle bodice adorned with custom crystal and rose gold embroidery”. Lively’s bridesmaids wore “custom-made blush silk chiffon gowns with crystal embroidered detail.”Back in June, Lively she hoped Louboutin would design her shoes. (When you’re Blake Lively, dreams really do come true.)Photos have yet to surface, but Martha Stewart Weddings promises to share “the exclusive details” in their upcoming winter issue, which hits newsstands in December. We can’t wait. ?Quaint NYC Street Officially Ritzier Than The Champs Elysees by 5:50 pm, December 3rd, 2010 New York City’s Bleecker Street just charged ahead of a few world shopping meccas as one of the most expensive retail strips on the planet.The New York Daily News reports that the buildings housing Bleecker’s Burberry store and a planned outpost just sold for a whopping $34 million. And it’s not a ton of space, either — the new owners paid about $6,700 per square foot for just over 5,000 square feet.To put it in perspective for you, it’s the third highest cost per square foot any piece of commercial real estate has sold for since 2003. To further put it in perspective for you, it’s more expensive than prices of buildings on Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue in New York, and it leaves prices for storefronts on London’s Bond Street and on the Champs Elysees in Paris in the dust.Of course, it’s not too huge a surprise. The area has been getting more and more expensive since started setting up his shops there in 2001. He now has six stores in the area. Jacobs did for the West VIllage what did for the Meatpacking District — and now everyone in fashion wants to have a store on Bleecker.Whether they can actually afford it remains to be seen. [Racked NY] [New York Daily News] ?Brad Goreski Tells Us All About His New eBay Gig, The CFDAs, And Beyonce by 6:33 pm, June 7th, 2012 All eyes were on the perennially bow tie-clad Brad Goreski at 21 Grams in New York last night as he celebrated his new gig with?eBay. The online shopping site is launching? pop-up shops in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to offer fashionable listing tips and advice to sellers. As part of the Chic Squad, Goreski will be on hand in the?Meatpacking District on Friday and Saturday doling out listing secrets.Dressed in a sharp Antonio Azzuolo blazer, printed Mr. Turk pants, and a Burberry bowtie (a gift from the students at the University of Texas), we couldn’t help but wonder if Goreski is really a bargain-loving eBay shopper. We chatted with the stylist, and he filled us in on his longtime affair with with the company, this year’s , and our homegirl Beyonce.How does it feel to be part of eBay’s Chic Squad?I love it. It makes sense for me as a stylist and as somebody who’s constantly working with clothes. This is a problem I actually have???I’ll buy a pair of shoes, get home, and be like ‘I think I bought them half a size too small’. All the time! Why can’t I figure out how big my feet are? It doesn’t make sense! So,?I think that it’s the perfect opportunity to sell your items on eBay, get money back, and put it towards the new trends and fashion finds you have.We wouldn’t have pegged you as an eBay-er. What’s been your favorite purchase?A green Epi leather Louis Vuitton briefcase, it was under $1,000. I’m a pretty avid buyer and searcher. I buy a lot of gifts, like vintage jewelry. It’s a really good resource for vintage YSL and vintage Lanvin. I recently just got a Barbara Streisand concert t-shirt from the mid-90s. The one thing I really, really want is a Les Miserables t-shirt from when it was happening in the ’80s. I’ve actually been looking for a while, probably six to eight months. There are reproductions, but I want the actual one. I would take a Cats t-shirt, too. I’m a musical theater queen. I’ll take any of them, but Les Mis is high on my list. Or I would take any of the Givenchy stuff too.You have a serious love for bowties and own about 150. What did you think about ‘s at the CFDAs?Uhh, I have one coming to my hotel! What what? Marlon Gobel, who designed that bowtie, has a few extras, so I’ll be getting my paws on one of those. I think there are three in existence.What about Seth Meyers’s Comme Des Garcons ??I think Seth is extremely funny and I think his job as a host was done very well. I think he even made Anna Wintour laugh, so I mean … that’s a feat. But I think definitely did it better. He had the real pilgrim shoes, come on!And we have to ask, are you sad about not being in London during the celebrations and the ?No. I don’t know if I’m one for a Jubilee, but I’m more devastated that I missed Beyonce in Atlantic City! That’s the kind of thing that makes me upset. Or Lana Del Rey in L.A. at the El Rey. ?Will Brett Favre Keep His Wrangler Endorsement? by 12:59 pm, October 13th, 2010 Celebrity endorsements are tricky things. On one hand, they can help a brand bring in big bucks. On the other hand, celebs can be a liability. People aren’t perfect, and even famous people can make some pretty big mistakes. But who is to say that private failings should dictate professional success? In fact, who is to say when a private failing is a failing at all?Brett Favre is the latest celebrity to hit a bit of a , with all sorts of (and penis pictures!) being thrown around. WWD that Favre-endorsed Wrangler isn’t making any sudden moves with regards to the football star, saying: “We are following the story like everyone else. We are not making any major decisions on our marketing program until more information is available.” This certainly seems to be the case as a Favre Wrangler commercial ran during the ESPN broadcast of the Vikings game Monday night.There’s no use speculating about whether or not the jean company will keep Favre on board because, well, there’s no real precedent.?Tiger Woods‘s infidelity cost him partnerships with Gatorade, AT&T, Accenture and Gillette. ?However, Nike, Tag Heuer and Electronic Arts stuck by him, and EA made the whole “personal life should not affect professional life” argument. “Regardless of what’s happening in his personal life, and regardless of his decision to take a personal leave from the sport, Tiger Woods is still one of the greatest athletes in history,” said EA Sports president Peter Moore.To some,?Michael Phelps taking a bong hit at a frat party seemed like a barely illegal (and totally normal) indiscretion.?Omega, Visa, AT&T and Speedo agreed, but Kellogg’s did not.?In 2003, Kobe Bryant encountered some personal troubles of his own. After being accused of sexual assault, he admitted to adulterous behavior but denied that it had been nonconsensual. The case was dropped after the accuser was unwilling to testify. The incident caused damage to Bryant’s endorsements and reputation, but he made a recovery thanks to the acquittal.Of course, athletes are not the only ones who face these sort of scandals. An offensive comment about China caused Dior to say goodbye to Sharon Stone. When got caught with cocaine, she got dropped by H&M, Chanel and Burberry. A year later, the deals starting rolling back in and she .What’s the common thread? There is none. Some companies turn a blind eye to personal problems, explaining professional prowess trumps all. Others are afraid a celebrity’s impropriety will tarnish their brand, or worse, lose them money. But the nature and perceived seriousness of the scandal are also factors, as are the popularity and influence of the celebrity under fire.Favre has not denied the allegations, and it’s possible that more dirty laundry may be aired soon. But, for now, Wrangler will stay put. ?PHOTOS: Stars Go For British Glamour On Brit Awards Red Carpet by 5:06 pm, February 21st, 2012 Unlike silly Americans, the Brits are totally down with awards shows not always being on Sunday nights. (Plug: get ready for all our Oscar coverage this weekend!) As such, we present to you tonight’s?Brit Awards red carpet.We love that a bunch of stars went for British glamour in Burberry (Adele!), Alexander McQueen (Florence Welch!), and Vivienne Westwood (Lana Del Rey!). Others didn’t fare quite as well… Rihanna?!Who do you love? Who do you hate? Click through the slideshow below, and let us know in the comments! Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?Britain Voted Worst Dressed Country In Europe by 2:35 pm, March 19th, 2010 Despite having a reputation for being buttoned-up, old-school, and relatively clean-cut, England has the worst dressed nation in Europe.That’s a pretty derisive honor, especially considering that some of fashion’s greatest – McQueen, Burberry’s Christopher Bailey, Stella McCartney, Celine’s Phoebe Philo, to name a few — hail from England. Nevertheless, , a price comparison and consumer review website in the UK, conducted a study that showed 44% of those polled believed England to be the worst dressed country, followed by Germany. “Britain is recognised as one of the hardest working nations in Europe” a spokesperson from Ciao told The Daily Mail, “we have longer working weeks and we spend more time in the office than almost any of our European cousins…as a result we have next to no time to go shopping; we are just diving into the nearest store to grab the first thing that takes our eye.”Perhaps “model” Katie Price and Amy Winhouse are to blame…[via ] ?PHOTOS: Who Won What At The British Fashion Awards? by Justin Fenner and Julia Rubin 11:40 am, December 8th, 2010 Britain may take flak for its climate and cuisine, but its clothing is no laughing matter — and the talented designers, models and megabrands that took home trophies from the British Fashion Awards yesterday are proof positive that our cousins across the pond take fashion very seriously.The British Fashion Council, which sponsors the awards, broke tradition yesterday by giving a posthumous award to for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design. It also added two new categories, one for special recognition and another for digital innovation. To find out where your favorite British brand or designer stacks up (or whether they stacked up at all this year), check out the list below, and let us know who you think looked best on the red carpet.Designer of the Year – , CelineOutstanding Achievement in Fashion Design – Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator – Special Recognition – Model Award – British Style Award – Alexa ChungAccessory Designer Award – Menswear Designer Award – Patrick Grant, E. TautzEmerging Talent in Ready to Wear – Meadham KirchoffEmerging Talent in Accessories – Husam el OdehDigital Innovation Award – BurberryDesigner Brand Award – Mulberry Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. [WWD (Subscription Required)] [The Independent] ?WATCH: Britney Spears Wears Tons Of Spikes In Bizarre ‘I Wanna Go’ Video by 11:12 am, June 22nd, 2011 Our unabashed love for Femme Fetale has been , so we’re sad to report that Britney Spears‘s latest video is truly awful. Brit, why must you tease us so?The video is for “I Wanna Go”, which happens to be a delightfully dancey pop tune, but the video just doesn’t work. It involves cyborgs and Bad Britney and Guillermo from Weeds and it’s really dumb. Don’t even get us started on the milk. But clothes! She wears them! The costume choices are actually kind of clever. A cut-up tee with a Mickey Mouse ears-wearing skull on it? Eff you, Mickey Mouse Club! A modified punky schoolgirl uniform? Eff you, “Baby One More Time”! It’s a lot subtler than it sounds, we promise.Oh, also, spikes! She wore that kickass spiky studded Burberry leather jacket in her , and this time she opts for spiky studded shoes. We spied both sky-high black studded Louboutins and what appear to be studded Doc Martens.Check out all the looks (and the video!) below. Totally wonderful or really, really wack? Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?WATCH: Britney Wears Studded Burberry Jacket In New Music Video by 11:58 am, April 6th, 2011 There has not been a song in recent memory that has made us want to dance as much of Britney Spears‘s “Till The World Ends” does. Even the most hardened indie rock snob cannot deny the sheer dancy force of Britney’s latest single. ?Now the music video for the pop gem is here, and we have fashion thoughts about it.First of all, she totally wears that covetable?Burberry studded leather jacket (Brit, however, doesn’t while wearing it). This is indeed something we would want to wear if the world were ending! She also favors pantlessness, sheer fabrics, and bedazzlement for the much of the video, which is actually totally fine until she busts out this awful sheer red bodysuit near the end. However! This sheer red bodysuit sin is pretty much absolved by the fact that Britney looks and sounds like she did at her early-aughts peak. Also, the repeated Burberry jacket shots help.See for yourself, but we warn that you will have to dance and that may be awkward (or awesome!) if you are currently in the company of other people. Also, make sure to check out our slideshow of the key looks below! Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?WATCH: Model Falls On Burberry’s Treacherous Runway by 4:57 pm, September 21st, 2010 Another day, another . Today a girl (wearing an amazing spiked jacket ? but also, ow!) had an at Burberry‘s spring/summer 2011 show. We found a Daily Telegraph of the painful spill, and the model’s attempt to get back on her feet is even more awful than the initial tumble. Doesn’t she know you have to ? And here are some pictures: Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?The Curious Case Of The Burberry Bank Robber by 2:30 pm, June 15th, 2012 Twenty-one-year-old Cornell Neilly was arraigned last night for a bank-robbing spree across Manhattan that started in April. He carried out 14 hits for a total of $8,500, but get this: during two of them, he was caught on camera wearing Burberry, and claims that he started his life of crime in order to fuel his shopping habits. And we thought we were shopaholics!When Neilly showed up to his arraignment, he looked relatively casual in a baseball tee and denim. Maybe it was an effort to show that he’s changed his ways?Although it’s unclear why he’s quoted in the original story in The , Styleite Mickey Boardman offered this hilarious tidbit:“It looks like a fashion story Burberry dreamed up to go viral…He’s not as chic as Patty Hearst ? the chicest wanted felon in history.?But he’s in second place.”[ via ] ?WATCH: Rosie Getting Naked For Burberry Body by 2:34 pm, September 1st, 2011 Fragrance commercials are weird as a rule, but the new ad for Burberrry Body starring supermodel and actress is weird on top of being sort of bland and also ridiculously seductive.And that’s because in it, you’re basically looking at two things. A CGI version of a bottle of Body spinning in a circle, and Huntington-Whiteley writhing her way out of one of Burberry’s iconic trench coats. It’s a pretty direct message — look at Body, now look at this body. Layering!Of course, the marketing genius behind it is that it is so uncomplicated. Burberry creative director says that’s exactly the way he wanted it. “We wanted to create something very British, feminine, timeless, distinctive and effortlessly sensual, with the attitude and energy of our iconic trench coat at the heart of it.”Take a look at the commercial and tell us if it makes you want to buy it. ?WATCH: Burberry Gives Us Real Snow And Lots Of Coat Lust by 10:01 am, February 21st, 2011 The fact that we’re not physically in London doesn’t mean we can’t bring you up-to-the-moment details of your favorite shows. In this case, we’ve got a live stream of Burberry Prorsum’s AW2011 fashion show — which means you’ve got a front row seat to the show as it happens. Check back here at 11AM EST (4PM in London) and let’s take bets on which coat will become this year’s .WATCH: ?Watch Burberry’s Fall Show On Styleite Right Now! by 10:55 am, February 20th, 2012 London fashion week has a tendency to get short shrift in the context of the whirlwind that is fashion month. Squished between New York and Milan, it may be the shortest of the four weeks, but it’s home to one of the best shows: Burberry. Last fall, models walked the runway through a delicate snowstorm — who knows what we’ll see this time around. We’ve got a livestream of the entire thing up and ready. It goes live at 11AM Eastern, so make sure to tune in! WATCH: ?Watch Burberry’s Spring 2012 Show Here! by 10:02 am, September 19th, 2011 Some brands really do new and social media right. Case in point: Burberry. Flying to London to see their show may be a pipe dream for most people — and that’s okay! Because we’ve got the whole thing livestreaming right here, starting at 11AM eastern standard time. And that’s not all, because this year Burberry added Twitter and Instagram to their show-streaming arsenal.We’ve got the livestream below, but for those of you who live for the feeling of being first, Burberry is also hosting their very first, in which backstage Twitpics will be taken (and shared, via the ) of every look before it walks down the runway.Bookmark this page and meet us back here at 11. We’ll be watching, too!Your browser does not support iframes. ?Burberry Branches Out Into Cosmetics by 10:32 am, April 24th, 2010 WWD Friday that Burberry is launching a cosmetic line in July. Chief Creative Director Christopher Bailey told WWD that the line will consist of foundations, powders, bronzers, eye shadow, eyeliner, lip gloss, lip definers, lipstick and mascara. Despite the company’s past interest in fragrances, this is the brand’s first foray into cosmetics.“It started because I felt that, at shows and the shoots, the whole [Burberry] attitude is epitomized through the shoes, the bags, the clothes, the accessories, but then the face was the one thing I really struggled with. When we were doing makeup, I felt like we weren’t able to get the right attitude,” Bailey told WWD.Playing off of the brand’s iconic , Bailey went for a color palate that was effortlessly wearable, unlike “other brands [that] are screaming out-and-out Hollywood glamour.” Shoppers can expect to buy Burberry Beauty from Harrods, as it will carry exclusive U.K. rights to the brand for the first year.We can’t say that it’s a bad idea for Burberry. In 2005, Tom Ford collaborated with Estee Lauder, launching the Tom Ford cosmetic line. The line proved to be a huge success, and has continually held a spot in the top ranking cosmetic companies since its launch. ?Burberry is hoping to find similar success, estimating that the cosmetic line will generate 1 million euros ($1.3 million) per counter within the first year. Other companies such as Chanel and Dior have launched cosmetic lines in the past, undeniably tapping into a lucrative industry — one in which the Estee Lauder company carries an of $8 billion alone. The cosmetic industry proves to be a highly profitable market, even in these times of economic troubles.The Styleite team can’t wait to try out the products! ?Guess Which Fashion Brand Has The Most Facebook Followers? by 9:37 am, January 6th, 2012 Congratulations are in order for an old British brand that started churning out cloaks in the 1850s and now has more Facebook likes than any other brand in the fashion business.We refer, of course, to Burberry, a company that has seen its fair share of ups and downs in its 156 years in business — and now has over . It’s a huge milestone when you consider that there’s only one apparel brand that’s more liked (it’s Victoria’s Secret, with just over 16 million fans, in case you were wondering). From producing the classic trench coat during World War II to being the calling card of naughty wannabe gangsters in London in the late 90s, Burberry has seen its fair share of play in the media. But this new height of social media influence really only means one thing: Burberry gets the Internet and how to build a following. (We’re pretty sure getting almost naked is a key part of that strategy.)Anyway, Burberry creative director posted a special video tribute to all his followers yesterday. It’s a Facebook video which we can’t embed, but if you’re one of the brand’s followers and you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch it . (Note: You can also totally watch it if you’re not one of the brand’s followers. Just an FYI.)[] ?Burberry Wins $100 Million Copyright Lawsuit By Default by 3:17 pm, May 18th, 2012 Burberry has just won what was probably the easiest lawsuit ever.The Manhattan Federal Court has awarded the iconic British label $100 million by default in a copyright infringement case against a ring of Internet counterfeiters. The defendants in question were a group of Chinese counterfeiters who sold at least 22 types of imitation Burberry products on sites like Yesburberryvision.com and Buyburberry.com. The products were emblazoned with Burberry’s signature check and equestrian knight design.WWD that the counterfeiters didn’t answer Burberry’s complaint, which was filed in January, and didn’t show up in court when summoned. As such, the judge awarded Burberry a whopping $100 million by default. The judge also ordered that the sites’ domain names be transferred to Burberry, which will allow the company to shut down the entire counterfeiting network.Burberry: 100,000,000; counterfeiters: 0.[] ?Are Big Name Stores Selling You Fake Handbags? by 12:19 pm, October 5th, 2010 When you buy a bag (or any item) in a store (as opposed to on Canal Street, through a discount website or anywhere that appears less than reputable), there is an expectation that what you’re buying is real. Why would you think otherwise? If the latest allegations against Century 21 prove to be true, you may need to start rethinking your latest purchase’s authenticity.This summer, style blogger Sara Zucker bought a Foley + Corinna bag for her sister at Century 21. When she and her sister went to the F+C boutique to get a longer strap for the bag, they were horrified to discover . How did they know? After realizing the lining was different from that of Zucker’s real bag she purchased directly from the company, the salesgirl called one of the designers who told her .So what happened? Who’s to blame? Did Century 21 knowingly sell the fake bags? Or were they duped by counterfeit vendors? They aren’t the only retailer to . T.J. Maxx and Marshalls have been accused of selling fake Burberry bags, while Fendi won a counterfeit suit against Filene’s. More shockingly, however, a on Racked claims Neiman Marcus sent her a fake Gucci bag. If Neiman can’t be trusted… well, who can?While some excuses seem kind of legitimate ? a fake returned bag was resold, vendors themselves were swindled ? it does raise some serious questions about retail regulation. Zucker’s story does have a bit of a happy ending though. Century 21 responded with this:Please return the item in question to our handbags manager in the store. I have cc’ed our sales audit manager to help you find your credit card receipt, so that you can return this item. We take all counterfeit issues very seriously. I am sending a copy of this email to the handbags buyer so that she can speak to her vendor about your claims. She will address any issue found.Have you ever unintentionally bought a fake? Tell us in the comments! ?And the CFDA Goes To…Annual Awards Honor In Fashion by 10:02 am, June 8th, 2010 Amidst all the models, Swarovski crystals and Paltrow‘s very high ponytail, it’s easy forget that the CFDA awards are actually a competition. You know, one that involves creative kudos just slightly more legitimate than “.” So not to seem remiss in our duties as your source of sartorial news (wouldn’t want you to be uninformed around the water cooler) it’s our great pleasure to inform you that this year’s circle o’winners was about as predictable as each is genius. took top honors as Women’s Wear designer, beating out and while David Neville and Marcus Wainwright (for rag & bone) cleaned up nicely for the men. Jewelry designer, Alexis Bittar, rounded out the bunch taking home the CFDA for accessories.On the up-and-stunning front,?Swarovski Awards for emerging talent were handed out to Mo’ Bama favorite,? (womenswear), Richard Chai (menswear) and never to be left out of the fashionable fray, (accessories). Guess wasn’t the only one who had their eye on Alex’s booties this year, no?Honorary snaps also went to supermodel (Fashion Icon Award),?, (Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by a very casually dressed ),?Paper editor and publisher Kim Hastreiter (the Eugenia Sheppard Award), for Burberry (International Award), and?Vogue fashion director (Eleanor Lambert Award).But in terms of highlights, undoubtedly that went to the show’s somber tribute to Alexander McQueen. Clad in a dress by the late designer Sarah Jessica Parker called?him “talented well beyond his years” and showed off his amazing last collection. But perhaps it was 26-year-old Alexander Wang who put it best, “I love fashion because you can’t define it.”Define, maybe not. Now and then, however it’s nice to take a second and give it a round of applause. ?CFDA Awards: McQueen Honored, Wang Nominated by 8:18 am, March 18th, 2010 To be inducted into the is like winning an Oscar. And just like the nominations for the Academy Awards, the fashion community waits breathlessly to discover who is to be honored and, more importantly, who is to be recognized as the latest and greatest in fashion.Awards fall into the following categories: womenswear, menswear, accessories, journalism, creative vision, and lifetime achievement. The awards are voted on by the (akin to the Academy) and will be announced on July 7th at Lincoln Center — the new home of New York Fashion Week — at the annual CFDA Gala.Wednesday night, the nominees and honorary awards recipients were :Honorary Awards will be given to…Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award: (last year this was awarded to )International Award: Burberry’s (last year’s recipient was for his work with Louis Vuitton) Fashion Icon Award: Eugenia Sheppard Award: Paper Magazine’s Kim HastreiterEleanor Lambert Award: Vogue’s And it goes without saying that the late will be given a Tribute Award.And the nominees are…For Womenswear Designer of the Year: , Marc Jacobs, and . Last year the award went to Rodarte’s sister-design duo and . While Donna Karen seems the front runner in this category, wouldn’t it be amazing if relative newcomer Alexander Wang won? ?That being said, while it’s of the utmost importance to celebrate brilliant newbies onto the fashion block, the CFDA should also reward those who have been around forever. This one is a tough call.For Menswear Designer of the Year: , Michael Bastian and and of Rag & Bone.Last year this award resulted in a tie between Scott Sternberg of Band of Outsiders and Italo Zucchelli of Calvin Klein . This year, the winner is dependent upon whether the Association is leaning toward welcoming in the new (in which case we’d love to see the Rag & Bone boys take home the prize) or applauding the old (it’s still exhilarating to see Tom Ford in a tux).Accessory Designer of the Year: Jacobs, Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough, Lazaro Hernandez and Alexis BittarThe Swarovski Award for new, emerging talent in the Womenswear Category: , Joseph Altuzarra and The Swarovski Award for Menswear: Simon Spurr, Patrik Ervell and The Swarovski Award for Accessories: Dana Lorenz, Alexander Wang and Eddie Borgo, the CFDA announced that the organization’s president, Diane von Furstenberg, would be continuing her tenure for another year. When asked about the decision, , “I am happy that they love me and I love them. There is so much more to do and we’re doing it.” We are happy too, DVF.It appears as though this year’s awards will be a strong indicator of where the fashion world will be going in the years to come. Do the industry’s most influential decision makers still rely on their old-favorites, or are they welcoming some of the fresh, new faces? All shall be revealed in July. ?Vogue Compares Chelsea Clinton To Beyonce by 4:06 pm, August 15th, 2012 Chelsea Clinton‘s isn’t a face frequently seen in the pages of fashion glossies (at least not since her in 2010) ? let alone in the context of a major, in-depth profile. But Vogue‘s September issue isn’t exactly your average rag, and somewhere in those 917-pages is a lengthy piece by Jonathan Van Meter on that very topic. Clinton talks about everything from what she loves about New York City to political aspirations to her experience being called a “dog” by Rush Limbaugh at the age of thirteen. This being Vogue, she also talks style. The former first-daughter claims she is “not a naturally fashionable person,” though Burberry‘s exclaims that she is “sooo stylish” and Meter certainly seems to think highly of her outfit selections, even going so far as to compare her to herself:One night in Chicago, as [Chelsea] is heading to the House of Blues for a Clinton Foundation benefit concert with Ben Harper, she turns up in the hotel lobby wearing something you might expect to see on Beyonce: black, skintight J Brand jeans, black Rag & Bone jacket, and platform stilettos. Wow, I say…I can’t help noticing that she always looks great.He also recounts a choice anecdote involving and a Washington, D.C. bathroom:“During our travels, [Chelsea] left her BlackBerry on the takeout window of a drive-through in Joplin; her book on a plane in Bentonville, Arkansas; and forgot to lock the door to the single-toilet unisex bathroom backstage at the Kennedy Center, which Diane von Furstenberg opened on her. (‘Happens all the time,’ says [Bari] Lurie, [Clinton's chief of staff.])”Well at least it wasn’t Anna Wintour, right?[] ?PHOTOS: Chelsea’s Gorgeous Vera Wang Wedding Dress by 10:10 am, August 1st, 2010 We rode the Chelsea Clinton wedding wave all day yesterday, and we don’t expect to stop riding it for another few hours or so. Photos surfaced late last night of Mrs. Mezvinsky’s wedding dress, a design, and after looking at them, we’re having a Stylegasm.People StyleWatch that Chelsea wore a “strapless silk organza gown with a draped tulle bodice and an embellished belt.” We’re reporting that she looked absolutely flawless. The dress is perfect for her, but we didn’t really expect anything less for such a highly produced affair as this wedding.Also, it turns out that we featured a photograph of another designer, Burberry creative director , without even mentioning him (we will say we thought it looked like him, but had no way of confirming it). We apologize profusely — he’s on of the we put up earlier, the only man in the picture with his face half-turned to the camera. Bailey designed Marc Mezvinsky‘s tuxedo and ties for the groomsmen and former president Bill Clinton. As was widely speculated, Secy. of State and mother-of-the-bride Hillary Clinton wore .We wish Mr. and Mrs. Mezvinsky years of happiness, love and impeccable style. Mazel tov! Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. RELATED: ?Christian Siriano Wants To Wear Gowns To The Grocery Store by 3:10 pm, November 15th, 2010 The folks over at HuffPost Style sat down with recently, and he on Project Runway, gay rights and… what he would be like as a woman. We loved his , and it’s always fun to hear what the irreverent designer has to say.Siriano thinks it’s important to show people that there is indeed life after reality TV. While he understands the need to earn one’s stripes, he makes an important point about the show’s credibility:Project Runway is a show based on talent. I mean, we don’t even get through the door unless your work is somewhat good. And I think that that’s what the world of TV has ruined for that show because reality TV is awful, and that show is based on talent.And he definitely wants to walk down the aisle one day:I am such a supporter of the gay community, and all the things just for me personally ? getting married is something that I would love to be in my future.If he were a woman, he would wear Burberry, Givenchy, Celine ? and Christian Siriano, of course:I would be amazing, and I would be in stiletto heels every day and have a driver. And I would wear exactly what I design… beautiful dresses. And I would wear gowns to the grocery store, and I would just love fashion.Watch HuffPost Style’s full interview below! [] ?Derek Lam Is In The Market For A Diffusion Line by 3:18 pm, October 20th, 2010 We’re suckers for diffusion lines. We’ve bought pieces from tons of our favorite designers ? Rodarte, , ? for a mere fraction of what we’d spend on their full-range lines. And we’re excited to report that may soon jump on the diffusion bandwagon.Lam ? along with fellow alum Jenna Lyons ? to students at Parsons this week. “The best way to control your own destiny is through direct retail. I’m really trying to be in touch with the consumer,” Lam explained. He spoke about plans to open up more stores beyond his SoHo and Madison Avenue boutiques, and his desire to collaborate with a brand like Topshop on a lower-price collection.He’s also into e-tail, selling his goods on his own website and speaking excitedly about Burberry’s tech-savvy “.” He even praised Karl Lagerfeld’s soon-to-be-revealed online line:?“What Karl Lagerfeld is doing ? it may not be luxury, but he’s always involved.”One thing’s for sure: if his diffusion stuff looks anything like his collection, we’ll be first in line.[via ] ?Top 5 Things To Shop For On eBay by 4:30 pm, June 5th, 2010 To be completely honest, we used to think shopping for clothes on eBay was kinda gross. We would tell ourselves, hey, it’s just like shopping at a vintage store or a consignment shop, but then we’d remember that we didn’t actually get to see these clothes in person before the point of sale, and we’d envision the terrible things that might have happened to them before they got shipped to us.But then, eBay cleaned up its — in presentation, anyway — and we got back on board. Because now the site’s clothing, shoes and accessories are a lot easier to navigate, so it only takes a few clicks to find what you really want.That doesn’t mean you should buy an entire wardrobe from the site; eBay tends have an awesome selection of some things, and a so-so offering of others. With that in mind, here are the top five things to shop for on eBay.1) OuterwearIt makes sense to invest in outerwear in the summer. It’s less expensive now that it will be later on in the year, which means you can get a great coat or jacket for an absurdly reasonable price. eBay tends has a pretty good collection of it right now — we found a brand new Burberry trench for less than a third of its retail price when we were shopping, er, researching this post this morning.2) HandbagsFinding a new-to-you handbag has never been easier. The handbag selector feature is so super convenient — it organizes the purses by shape and brand, so finding a Kate Spade tote or a Dooney and Bourke satchel is only two clicks away. 3) Vintage JewelryYou have the same chances of finding an antique Victorian Mantilla chignon hair comb at your local thrift store as you do of getting struck by lightning. On eBay, it’s one of the first things on the page after you search for vintage jewelry. Which isn’t to say that you need a Victorian hair comb, but instead, that eBay is the place to find it and other ancient gems like cameo rings, brooches and earrings.4) JeansFinding a discounted pair of J Brand jeans has never been easier. Simply tell eBay the brand you’re looking for and the size you need, and it will distill every piece of denim it has to find what you want.5) ShoesAs with the handbags, it’s very easy to find the brand you want and the style of shoe you’re looking for. Need a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps? Simply click the brand, then the style, and all your footwear needs will be taken care of. ?PHOTOS: Elizabeth Olsen Is The Cool Kid On The Block In Glamour by 3:35 pm, August 7th, 2012 Twenty-three-year-old Elizabeth Olsen is well on her way to becoming Hollywood’s next It-girl. The third Olsen sister is the breakout star of Martha Marcy May Marlene, will star in the upcoming Liberal Arts, and looks insanely cool in Glamour‘s September issue, which features a naked .Inside the glossy, Olsen pairs a military Burberry jacket and quirky owl shirt in one pic, and a gilded cardigan and white button-up in another. Her simple hair, lined eyes, and bold red lips complete the pulled-together look. The outfits are less thematic than in VS. mag, but we love this Glamour spread all the same.The blonde actress tells the mag that even though she’s an Olsen, she works hard to?”get proper acting training and be taken seriously”. She’s also not yet used to her fame, :“Yesterday?three people told me that I look like Elizabeth Olsen. That’s never happened before. So awkward.”Awkward, indeed. What’s not awkward is her cool spread, check it out below: Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. [] ?Emma Watson Prefers Burberry To Harry Potter‘s ‘Awful’ Tartan Skirts by 3:10 pm, March 27th, 2011 In her most recent with Remix Magazine, Emma Watson has lots of things to say. And many of them have to do with fashion!On modeling for Burberry:“Clothing and costumes are a way of becoming someone completely different. I guess that’s what attracted me to the Burberry campaign so much ? just being able to express myself in a different way. Also, I had a great time doing it because I love clothes and fashion. And they were certainly much nicer than the awful woolly jumpers and tartan skirts I had to wear in Harry Potter, which made me look very plain and boring!”On becoming a fashion darling:“It may sound crazy, but it never really occurred to me that people would care about what I was wearing. It really didn’t. It only hit home with the last film, but now I’m increasingly aware that people really care about what I put on my body. Although I find that a little strange, it’s made me realize that when I’m in the public eye it’s important how I dress because that’s how I’m presenting myself to the world.”On cutting her hair:“I’d spent more than half my life being somebody else ? with their hairstyle ? and I wanted to be Emma and have my hair the way I wanted it. I didn’t realize it, at the time, but it was actually incredibly symbolic having all this hair cut off that people so identified with Hermione. It felt great ? it was very liberating ? like I was shedding that old skin and starting a fresh, new chapter.”Isn’t she the kind of girl you want to be friends with? In fact, if you were her friend, you would have been invited to her 20th birthday party. Don’t worry ? we hadn’t heard about it either. It was held at Brown, and Emma’s loyal friends didn’t leak a single picture to the press (or post any to Facebook, apparently). In the interview, she also admits she needs to stop being “frustrated by people’s perception of me”, and speaks about her involvement with . Lots of good stuff there!(And in case you’re wondering, shot the actress for the mag. He’s also responsible for those amazing of Zombie Boy for Mugler.)[via ] ?PHOTOS: Emma Watson Stuns At Final Harry Potter World Premiere by 2:55 pm, July 7th, 2011 It’s a moment ten years in the making: the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is finally here. And for those of you who couldn’t give two hoots about The Boy Who Lived and He Who Shall Not Be Named, you should, at the very least, take a look at Emma Watson’s gown.For gawky child actor turned Burberry campaign front woman turned , Watson could not have chosen a more perfect dress. The 21 year old celebrated the end of her Harry Potter decade with a shimmering gray Oscar de la Renta creation with a ball skirt to end all ball skirts. Talk about saving the best for last. In other words, we love it. But do you? Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?Emma Watson Blames Hermione For Her Love Of Fashion by 3:50 pm, November 19th, 2010 It hasn’t been too terribly long since the world fell in love with Emma Watson and her style evolution. The actress, who’s still a few months shy of total freedom from Harry Potter mania, to WWD that all the restrictions that came with playing Hermione Granger made her literally run into the arms of the global fashion community:“I have Hermione to thank, in a weird way, for my sense of style,” says Watson. “Playing this role, fashion was my way of expressing myself away from that school uniform. When I got the chance to dress myself, I was so thrilled to be able to be Emma and show a different side of myself. Maybe I would never have been this interested in fashion if I hadn’t played that role for so long and sometimes felt so constrained by being identified with her so much,” she continues, getting heated as she recalls, “I mean, I just wasn’t allowed to do anything: wasn’t allowed to cut my hair, put on nail varnish, tan, wear a bra that made my boobs in any way look [larger], have any flesh showing, wear any makeup when I was playing Hermione. I always had to back-comb my hair ? ‘She looks too pretty, take down the blush or the mascara, take it off.’ Fashion was my rebellion.”Mark that last sentence down for page 14 of “The Quotable Emma Watson.”Watson, of course, has rebelled herself right into an ad campaign with Burberry, an with , numerous and a stunning galore. So what are we trying to say here? Well, thank goodness for Hermione Granger. [WWD (Subscription Required)] ?Patrick Demarchelier Shoots Emma Watson For Vanity Fair by 4:43 pm, June 2nd, 2010 We’ll admit we have a major style crush on Emma Watson. It seems that unlike many of her peers (ahem, ), the 20-year-old has led a straight and narrow path despite her immense fame.As the face of Burberry and a friend of , it’s no wonder the . Every time she steps onto a red carpet, images of her dorky Harry Potter character fade and a style icon emerges. Now, Watson stars in a spread shot by for the June 2010 issue of Vanity Fair. The images speak for themeselves, but we will say that we are keeping our fingers crossed for more Watson/Demarchelier shoots to come. [via ] ?PHOTOS: Emma Watson Chops Her Hair Off! by 2:25 pm, August 5th, 2010 We pretty much love everything this little fashionista does. Whether she’s appearing in Burberry’s ad campaign, walking the red carpet, or attending the hottest fashion shows of the season, it’s safe to say the Emma Watson is a girl to watch.And like any 20-year-old, Watson has decided to experiment a little with her style, and recently cut off her normally shoulder length dirty blonde locks. Watson confirmed the haircut and linked to the below photo posted on her . We’re loving the boyish haircut, which is an obvious nod at other celebrity shortcuts like Twiggy‘s 1960s look and, more recently, Carey Mulligan. ?Brands In Japan Relocate, Close Doors In Tokyo by 1:35 pm, March 18th, 2011 Japanese fashion companies based in Tokyo have largely moved their operations west to Osaka, farther away from the blackouts, limitation of resources and possible nuclear fallout caused by the earthquake and tsunami that hit the region last week. The ones that haven’t moved are taking precautionary measures.WWD reported yesterday that H&M had temporarily closed its Tokyo stores and moved all of its 800 employees in the area to Osaka. Today it’s been joined by the Japanese offices of PPR, parent company to the Gucci Group. Chanel closed its doors and is reported to have been distributing iodine tablets, largely used to prevent exposure to radiation, to its Japanese employees who choose to stay in the area. It’s providing “financial and logistical assistance” to those who decided to leave. The Gap closed the 17 stores it has in the region.Meanwhile, companies like , Burberry and stopped giving updates on their status or the status of their employees.An LVMH executive told WWD that 40 of the company’s stores in the area were “badly affected” by the natural disasters, and that they’d be closed for the foreseeable future, even though some people who live in Tokyo have chosen to stay there. [WWD] ?Government Seizes $325 Million Worth Of Counterfeit Uggs by 6:24 pm, March 3rd, 2012 Just when you thought the saga of counterfeit Uggs couldn’t get any uglier, it did. This week, US Customs officials shut down a complex plan between two criminal networks that had planned to sell some $325 million worth of counterfeit Uggs and other fake fashion items in the United States. that federal agents arrested nearly 30 people, most of them Chinese, in the US and the Philippines this week, and charged them with smuggling counterfeit goods into the US. Customs officials allege that those involved with the case were able to successfully sneak the goods into the country by using the names of honest shipping companies on customs forms. As a result, once the goods were in the country, some of them were distributed to people who didn’t even know they were getting fake merchandise.“These people exploited our borders by stealing legitimate identities of companies, whose names were essentially hijacked,” said James A. Dinkins, associate director of Homeland Security Investigations. “Today it could be counterfeit goods; tomorrow it could be something more dangerous.”The Uggs were just the tip of the iceberg in this case. The same men who imported them were also sneaking replicas of bags from Coach, Gucci, Burberry and Louis Vuitton into the country, as well as fake Nike footwear. Officials say they also discovered a plan to import and sell 50 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine — that being the “something more dangerous” Dinkins was referring to.All in a day’s work. Read more about the big bust .[] ?Which Fashion Brand Gets The Most Internet Searches? by 9:12 am, November 30th, 2011 If ever there was a metric for public opinion about the fashion industry, it’s search engine results. And according to the engineers at Bing, Gucci is the most searched fashion brand of them all.In fact, according to the annual , Gucci tops the list of the 10 most widely searched brands on the web for the second year in a row, beating out other big-name brands by countless multitudes of clicks. is close behind at number two, and Chanel, which came in second to Gucci last year, is now at number five on the list. And the only two non-super-high-end-designer labels involved are Guess and J.Crew, which came in at numbers six and seven, respectively.So what magical power does Gucci have that other brands don’t? We tend to think it’s because when most people think of fashion, they think of Gucci — the brand has been marketed to sound like it’s the be-all and end-all of the fashion industry, (it’s basically ) and it looks like it’s working.But it’s also worth pointing out that some of the search terms on the list refer to people, and not to brands. Coco Chanel came in eighth on the list, which is no surprise when you consider there have been a plethora of and released about her over the past year and a half. At number nine is the designer — and we all know why his search results have been up this year.Check out the full list below, and tell us if your favorite brand made the list.Top Searched Fashion Brands On Bing in 2011 1. Gucci 2. Ralph Lauren 3. Y-3 4. Louis Vuitton 5. Chanel 6. Guess 7. J.Crew 8. Coco Chanel 9. John Galliano 10. Burberry[] ?Has Coach’s Popularity Been Its Downfall? by 11:32 am, July 26th, 2010 While there are few brands considered as iconically American as Coach — Tommy Hilfiger perhaps, Perry Ellis, and the recently resuscitated Halston are a few of the frontrunners — there are also few who seem to struggle with their sartorial identity as much as the brand famous for their logo-printed bucket hat. That may sound cruel, but it’s one of the things we’ll forever associate with Coach. And that’s a problem.Regularly dubbed an “accessories giant” — or, alternatively, “behemoth” — by most industry publications, Coach is certainly doing well for itself. Named one of North America’s by Amazon.com, the brand is into Europe and has its fragrance presence. But all the good numbers in the world can’t silence one nagging question: who actually wears Coach?Sure, they sell their keychains and small leather goods and they’ve done their best to harness the wild, wild internet by on bag designs, but when was the last time a celebrity walked the red carpet wearing Coach? Though, in a perfect world, celebrities would not be the barometer of a successful brand, there is something to be said for, well, branding. Coach is a brand, but a brand whose ubiquitousness may have been its downfall.When Coach was founded in Manhattan in 1941, the label specialized in handmade and high-quality leather goods. But now the label’s most common association are its geometric Cs — which for some reason don’t hold the same cachet as Gucci’s Gs, Louis Vuitton’s LVs, or Chanel’s envy-inducing interlocking Cs. Maybe it’s because though they still make their high-quality and high-priced leather goods, Coach has made a concerted effort to focus . This isn’t to say that slapping a several hundred dollar price tag on a pair of shoes or taking a 20% price hike is the answer — we’re fans of democratic fashion — but there are plenty of brands, American ones at that, who manage to straddle the line between high-fashion and high sales. is one, Burberry another. We lust over MJ’s as much as we do his one.Maybe it’s that brands like Burberry and Marc Jacobs have RTW collections that inspire and, in the case of Jacobs, quite often change the face of fashion — but in our minds, Coach just doesn’t compare. may have of women’s wear under the brand’s umbrella, but only time will tell if it’s enough to give Coach back its fashion cred. ?Hermes Wants You To Know How To Tie Their Scarves by 11:23 am, August 12th, 2010 Following in the footsteps of Burberry’s , Hermes has just launched a spin-off of their brand’s eponymous site devoted solely to their scarves.The new site is called — which means “I Love My Scarf” en francais — and depicts an international bevy of cool and beautiful women wearing the brand’s iconic scarves.Click on a country to see endless photos of the gorgeous scarves and an infinite number of ways to tie them. Obviously we’re biased, but we’re quite partial to the downtown urban chic of the New York girls.Even better than the window shopping, though, is the fact that the site gives you pictorial and step by step instructions for how to tie your own scarves in a fashionable manner. Turn it into a turban, a belt, a bracelet, a shirt, a skirt, or a headband — we could go on and on, and we’d still miss some ways the iconic scarf could be worn. Our only wish is we could upload pictures of ourselves in our favorite scarves.While we understand the power of the internet and social media more than most, it’s difficult not to wonder about Hermes’ motivations behind the new site. Ever since casting in their ad campaign and hawking out those bangles like they were candy, attracting a younger, internet savvy, fashionably focused generation seems to be on the company’s radar. But how many young, internet savvy, and fashionably focused people can afford a scarf that starts at $375?[] ?Meet Hipster Cop: The Breakout Style Star Of Occupy Wall Street by 6:16 pm, October 21st, 2011 We know our job is to write about fashion, but even we think it’s weird that the one person who’s really gotten famous as a result of the Occupy Wall Street protests is an NYPD detective nicknamed Hipster Cop.Hipster Cop, otherwise known as Detective Rick Lee, is the community affairs guy for the NYPD’s first precinct, which just so happens to cover the area where most of the protesting has been taking place. Blogs covering the occupation noticed him from day one. He’s a plainclothes officer, so he mostly gets to wear what he wants — and what he wants to wear is skinny ties, slim-cut trousers and cardigans. Lee, who is 45, to GQ that he’s been into fashion since he was young, and his style is more “country gentleman” than it is hipster. But branding is branding — and if there’s one thing Lee understands, it’s brand loyalty. He’s a devoted Ralph Lauren customer — so devoted, in fact, that his best friend works for the brand and tailors all of his suits. But his tastes don’t stop there:GQ: Who are your favorite designers? Rick Lee: I like Burberry. I like Ralph Lauren and Brooks Brothers. A lot of Theory‘s stuff. What else do I usually wear? I wear Levi‘s jeans. I wear a lot of J.Crew stuff as far as casual dress goes. A lot of English designers. <br: GQ: So it sounds like you’re into nice clothes that even the 99% can afford… Rick Lee: Yeah, yeah. Well I think it’s all how you wear it, too. You can take some very conservative traditional clothing and kind of put a little of your own edge on it.Huh. Well, we couldn’t tell you the last time we saw any member of the 99% wearing Theory, but that doesn’t seem to matter all that much to the protesters in downtown Manhattan. In a story about Lee, The New York Times that his style actually helps him do his job, which is primarily concerned with talking to protesters. Per the Times:One woman was angry that protesters were talking to Detective Lee. “If he was a white-shirt, you wouldn’t be talking to him,’’ she said, referring to higher-ranking officers who wear white shirts. One of those officers became an unwitting star when amateur videos showed him shooting pepper spray at protesters who were contained behind an orange police netting.We’ll take cool ties and not getting pepper-sprayed over over starched white shirts and burning eyes any day of the week.[, ] ?Is Karlie Kloss Skipping New York Fashion Week? (UPDATED) by 12:26 pm, February 9th, 2012 Say it ain’t so!Seeing stomp down the runway in a may well have been one of our favorite moments of last season’s New York fashion week. But if rumors are to be believed, Ms. Kloss may not be making an appearance this week at all. Last night, CNN’s Alina Cho :HEARING: @karliekloss cancelled all catwalk appearances in NY for a big opportunity… #nyfw #backstagepass #cnnKloss is in town right now — she was lucky enough to attend Jay-Z’s show at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night — but that doesn’t mean she’s walking. Our best guess is that Kloss signed an exclusive for a show during one of the European shows — she did just that she’d love to walk for Burberry — but that would have to be a big contract. Either way, if it’s true, we’ll miss her. Though, there’s always the. UPDATE: The Daily Beast’s confirms (, of course) that Kloss will not be walking in New York.CONFIRMED: Karlie Kloss won’t walk in New York Fashion Week this season because of an “engagement that has come up,” says her spokesperson She won’t walk in #NYFW but it’s “very likely” that Kloss will walk in Milan and Paris, spokesperson says.[, via , .] ?Is James Middleton Fashion’s Newest ‘It Boy’? by 10:17 am, June 21st, 2011 Why yes, James Middleton is a tan little cloud of adorable British man, but does that make him a style icon? Women’s Wear Daily seems to think so. In the new issue of Menswear, a supplement to the trade newspaper, the Duchess of Cambridge‘s younger brother is touted as a possible for British men’s fashion campaigns.And it’s not just because he’s related to royalty — it’s because he’s cute and quirky and wears blazers! James’ preppy, typical English style is at odds with his “flamboyant” lifestyle (cue the guessing game of “Is he or isn’t he?” here), but it’s that mix that, apparently, makes him perfect for to star in ads. That and the fact he can fit into a sample size:Imperially slim, with the poise of a natural aristocrat, Middleton is an ideal mannequin. He’d be a dream spokesman for a chic yet classic British brand, like Turnbull & Asser or Burberry. (Are you listening, ?)We’re sure Mr. Bailey is listening — everyone seems to be listening to the Middletons at this point. From Pippa Middleton a starring role in a porno to, well, this shameless attempt to get at least one member of the family into the fashion industry, the whole world wants them to be a part of some scheme to help them make money. But the Middletons already have plenty of that, and, quite frankly, we’re glad to know they can’t be bought. Still, though, we’d be willing to bet James would look better in a Burberry campaign than Tobey Maguire did for Prada. [Menswear] ?Look! Coco & Lindsey Bump Into Each Other On Gaultier’s Runway! by 3:12 pm, March 7th, 2011 Modeling is hard. Have you ever attempted a runway walk? Have you ever attempted a runway walk in 6-inch heels, on a crazy catwalk, with a million flashbulbs going off? No? Us either! But it looks hard. That’s why sometimes ! Others, however, are total pros.At ‘s show in Paris last week, and had the most graceful near-disaster runway mishap we’ve ever seen. It involves a turn gone wrong, a late exit/early entrance situation and an ? and nobody ended up on the floor! It’s a fashion week miracle!Check out the elegant not-quite-catastrophe below:[via ] ?Jessica Chastain Is T Magazine‘s Latest Cover Girl by 5:04 pm, April 13th, 2012 We’re totally into?Jessica Chastain‘s?cover for?T Magazine‘s summer fashion and beauty issue. That lipstick!Photographer Cass Bird shot the actress at Universal Studios, and the results are really fun.?We also happen to love her fancy frocks from the likes of?Balenciaga, Celine, and Burberry.Inside the , Chastain tells? about filming The Help (“We drank moonshine and had huge dance parties. I ate a lot of fried food. I had to gain 15 pounds for the role.”) and her newfound fame (“Yesterday I had my portrait taken for the Academy. The photographer told me he shot?Rita Hayworth! For the rest of my life, I am ‘the Oscar-nominated Jessica?Chastain’.”)However, Chastain says that she wasn’t always fashionable:“Growing up, a big expense was a fashion magazine…I got $100 for clothes at the beginning of the year, and I had to be very careful about what pieces would last ? I bought thrift and vintage…I was awkward. I looked like a boy when I was 8 years old ? lanky with short red hair. You know that book Ramona the Pest? I felt like that.”Yep, we’ve been there.?Check out Chastain’s spread below: Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. [] ?Jourdan Dunn Wants Stylists To ‘Learn How To Do Black Hair’ by 6:45 pm, October 4th, 2011 We complain tirelessly about the lack of diversity in fashion. But could that lack be something we have to deal with because makeup artists and hair stylists don’t know what to do with models who aren’t white? Supermodel seems to think that might be the case.The 21-year-old British model, who has been the face of Burberry, a and in 2008 became the first Black model to walk a Prada runway in over a decade, tweeted the following:Dunn walked in two shows in Paris on the 3rd, Emanuel Ungaro at 11 am and Giambattista Valli, which was scheduled for 1:30 pm. This tweet came through at 7:19 am EST, so whatever issues she was having backstage must have happened around or before 1:19 Paris time. Which means someone backstage at the Valli show is probably to blame for her being pissed enough to tweet. (Although we wouldn’t be surprised if someone at Ungaro was a contributing factor.)And that’s because it wasn’t all that long ago that there really were only two big-name black models on the world’s runways ( and , natch), and we seem to remember one of them complaining about how there was only one shade of base coat that makeup artists had in their kits to use on dark-skinned models. With the arrival of more Black makeup artists like Pat McGrath, who is the undisputed queen of making runway models look fierce no matter what their skin color, we don’t doubt this is changing. But given that the overwhelming majority of women who come down the runway are still white, we also don’t doubt that change is slow.And because the majority of those women aren’t Black, it wouldn’t come as a total surprise to us if none of them have worked on Black hair before. So we also wouldn’t be surprised if, as a result, casting directors and show producers don’t make a point of making sure their hair stylists can actually do Black hair on the rare occasion that they cast non-white models.But as we’ve discussed, diversity on the runway is important. And while Dunn’s comment is succinct, it only points out the fact that diversity isn’t just going to happen on its own. Designers, casting directors, modeling agencies and everyone involved with how we present fashion is going to have to make a conscious decision not only to include women who aren’t Black in the process, but to be just as accommodating to them as they are to their white talent.[] ?Guess What Julia Restoin-Roitfeld Is Designing Now? by 5:19 pm, September 21st, 2011 We tend to get annoyed by celebrity clothing lines, but somehow the collection that Julia Restoin-Roitfeld is working on isn’t odious so much as it is very, very sexy.Restoin-Roitfeld, the impossibly chic daughter former Vogue Paris editor-in-chief , told Women’s Wear Daily at Monday’s Burberry presentation that she’s really excited about the she’s designing, primarily because she collects so much of it already. While she wouldn’t say who she’s working on the collection with or when we’ll be able to buy it, she does seem pretty enthusiastic about it.“I’m mostly excited about the lingerie collection I’m working on,” she said before the show. “I have a really great lingerie collection, but it’s not for my boyfriend ? he doesn’t care ? it’s for myself. Next to shoes, it’s my favorite luxury.”How titillating! Of course, it’s lingerie, so we guess anything and everything about it — including nebulous comments — should be. If we had to venture a guess, we’d say Restoin-Roitfeld is working with a cool brand that only people who live in certain areas of France have heard of, and we’re just fine with that. Stay tuned for more info on the line — if she’s talking about it to the press, it can’t be that far off from being ready to buy.[] ?W Goes Old School, Taps Julia Roberts & Tom Hanks For June Cover by 12:10 pm, May 14th, 2011 Okay, maybe old school isn’t quite the right turn of phrase, but Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks on a magazine cover reminds us of the ’90s in the BEST WAY. They starred in our favorite rom-coms of that decade ? don’t even pretend you can deny You’ve Got Mail or Notting Hill ? and while they’ve done a whole lot of other stuff and won some Oscars, we’ll always remember them fondly as Joe Fox and Anna Scott. Anyway! They’re starring in a new movie together, and consequently also gracing the cover of W.Larry Crowne comes out in July, so let’s just talk about the , okay? Roberts adds to Dolce & Gabbana‘s ridiculous in a silk and lace number (the belt is Burberry, by the way), while Hanks dons a Tom Ford suit and Dolce shirt. (Surprisingly, didn’t this one!) The pair were shot by for both the cover and inside spread, and the pics are rather lovely.However, the accompanying article is a bit disappointing. We can usually count on Lynn Hirschberg for an , but this time she went the Q&A route ? and the Hollywood superstars weren’t even interviewed together. There are some nice little bits though. For example, Hanks on writing a part in Larry Crowne for Roberts:Yes. I had some teachers who looked like Julia. I would see them and think, I love you. So there was never anyone but Julia. Still, even after she said yes, I was the boss. That meant I got to say, “You don’t wear this dress, you wear that dress.” And Julia’s Julia?she can be intimidating [Laughs].And Roberts, on if she was nervous working with Hanks:God, no. We knew each other socially. When I was in Rome, shooting Eat Pray Love, Tom sent me the script and said, “Tell me what you think.” I couldn’t stop smiling when I read it: It’s topical, but very positive. It contains this moment in history in a very interesting way. The movie says, You can lose your job and your way and still rescue yourself. Larry Crowne creates a self-excavated utopia, and I love that idea, that message. And Tom is so good at making fun of himself. In the beginning of the film, he’s wearing pleated khakis. No one should wear pleated khakis onscreen.Agreed about the pleated khakis, Jules. Also, we enjoy what she had to say about her movie wardrobes. Important style question: did she get to keep that famous red dress from Pretty Woman?No, even though it was made for me, they didn’t let me keep anything from the movie. But I did get to keep the wedding dresses from Runaway Bride. They’re all boxed up in my garage. I’ve never opened them. It’ll be fun one day when Hazel [Roberts’s daughter] is taller. She can play dress-up with her friends.Lucky Hazel! Check out the cover and photos below. What do you think of the spread? Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. [] ?Kanye West’s Runway Debut Has An Official Invite, And It’s Fancy! by 11:18 am, September 30th, 2011 If any of you are still deciding whether or not to take Kanye West’s design debut seriously, his show invite, which hit the web early this morning, just put the capital F in Fashion.According to the invite, West is being repped by international PR firm Karla Otto, whose other clients have included Valentino, Celine, Erdem, and Givenchy. Interestingly enough, Givenchy’s has reportedly been helping West with the line. Coincidence? We think not.As for the label name, DW Kanye West, the most obvious explanation is that DW stands for his late mother’s initials, Donda West.The full invite is below, though we’ve blurred some of the RSVP information in the hopes of not pissing off the Karla Otto PR gods and one day snagging an invite ourselves. We wish we were joking.[via .] ?PHOTOS: Karlie Kloss Stars In Retro Shoot For Americana Manhasset by 12:53 pm, June 13th, 2012 Long Island’s fancy shopping center Americana Manhasset is getting even more?luxurious with?, male model Clement Chabernaud, and?The Artist‘s Jack Russell terrier Uggie starring in its black-and-white fall catalog.Kloss wears glamorous and flapper-inspired wares by Burberry Prorsum,?St. John, and?Jimmy Choo, and plays with adorable Uggie in a shoot inspired by the ’20s and ’30s styles seen on fall runways. The catalog will be released in mid-August, while a behind-the-scenes video and a short silent film called?Speechless will be available on Americana’s .And this isn’t the first time that Kloss has modeled for the ritzy shopping center. Last season, the catalog and accompanying video featured Kloss and another hot male model in retro duds. Catch the over at Americana (before they take it down for the fall vid!), and get a peek at next season’s catalog below: Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. [] ?Kate Middleton Went Camping With Kids In Zara And Burberry by 10:24 am, June 18th, 2012 Kate Middleton can obviously pull off a , but she looks just as great when she dresses down. The Duchess spent?her Sunday in the woods of Kent with a group of inner-city elementary school children, wearing a mix of high and low.The camping trip was organized by ARK Schools, which is supported in part by the Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry. If you recall, Wills and Kate attended a for ARK last year, where she wore an amazing Jenny Packham gown. This time around, Kate opted for a less glitzy look.She chose a pair of $500?Le Chameau wellies, Zara skinny jeans, a Burberry shirt, and a Really Wild (awesome brand name, by the way) vest. The boots may have been a bit pricey, but her jeans $50. We also liked that the beige and muted green hues of the boots, top, and vest were coordinating without being too matchy-matchy. Girl knows how to dress!Later that day, Kate?headed to Gloucester to watch Will play in a charity polo match. She brought her puppy Lupo and played with?Peter Phillips‘s daughter?Savannah. She swapped her vest for a brown jacket ? and yes, still looked great.Check out Kate in the gallery below: Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?Kate Moss’s Drug Scandal Doubled Her Income by 12:52 pm, October 11th, 2010 Some celebrities rebound from scandal better than others ? and is . Back in 2005, a photo of Moss appeared on the cover of the Daily Mirror. Accompanied by the headline “Cocaine Kate,” the pictures depicted Moss snorting what appeared to be coke. Her boyfriend at the time was Pete Doherty, a rockstar known for his excessive drug use.Though big names like Chanel and Burberry terminated their contracts with Moss following the drug debacle, it appears as though the scandal actually helped to double her earnings. In a recent interview, Moss’s agent Sarah Doukas explained that her fees didn’t go down as a result of the drug allegations. In fact, it’s been reported that Moss saw her annual income rise from?￡2 million to ￡4 million.Said Doukas:I basically just spent a lot of time on the phone trying to reassure her big clients that you can’t believe everything you read and, unfortunately, all press actually is good press in this world we live in.?I just thought she will be fine, and I knew that some of my great clients, that were huge clients to her, they stuck by and said “we are in your capable hands, we will stick by her” – and they did.The thing I felt strongly about her was, regardless of anything, the fact that Kate wasn’t a sort of Hollywood actress – she hadn’t put herself out there, she’d never done interviews, she hadn’t done Hello!.?And I know she is in the public domain so she has a public duty to a point, but on the other hand you know, her private life is her private life and she is just a model.Though Moss is “just a model,” many believe her to be a role model as well. What did Doukas have to say about that? “I totally take that on board and she did as well. One lives and learns and moves on from there.”Five years have passed since the CoKate pictures surfaced, and Moss certainly seems to have emerged unscathed. She is regularly featured in stunning editorials (and on Vogue covers), has regular contracts with David Yurman and Longchamp and happens to be one of our .Are you surprised there wasn’t more backlash? Or do you think her private life shouldn’t play into her professional success?[via ] ?PHOTOS: Keira Knightley Dons Burgundy Burberry On The Red Carpet by 5:28 pm, February 1st, 2012 We haven’t seen much of?Keira Knightley lately, so we were more than pleased to spot the actress in a?Burberry number on the red carpet yesterday.Knightley attended the London premiere of A Dangerous Method in a burgundy dress that toed the line between pretty and dowdy. We happen to think Knightley pulled off the look ? complete with velvet bowed belt ? rather well, even if the bodice could have used a bit of tailoring. It also doesn’t hurt that her face is pretty damn perfect. Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?Irresponsible Study Claims Counterfeiting Is A Good Thing by 4:42 pm, August 31st, 2010 An adviser to the British Home Office has co-written a study claiming that counterfeit designer goods aren’t really that bad for the fashion industry, The Daily Mail . In fact, the study claims, counterfeit goods have less of a financial impact on the rag trade than we previously thought, and that selling fake Louis Vuitton Speedy 25s on the side of the road is really a good thing:Professor David Wall, who co-authored the report and advises the [British] government on crime, said the real cost to the luxury goods industry could be one-fifth of previously calculated figures. ‘It’s probably even less,’ he said yesterday. ‘There is also evidence that it actually helps the brands, by quickening the fashion cycle and raising brand awareness.’ He added: ‘We should be focusing on the trade in counterfeit drugs, dodgy aircraft parts and other stuff that really causes public harm.But that misguided pronouncement takes for granted that counterfeiting is an honest business that operates within the bounds of other legitimate enterprises. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The reason that counterfeiting is called counterfeiting is because it’s illegal, and for Wall or anyone else to say that it’s not as illegal as, say, the international trafficking of drugs, smacks highly of stupidity and snobbery.Just because someone sells a low-rent copy of a high-end bag does not mean he or she is a nice person who’s interested in getting fashion on the cheap. It means he or she is engaged in a criminal activity that largely relies on child labor and seedy customs officials who are on the take. Making fake bags is just as bad as making fake currency, and it does serious damage to a multibillion dollar global industry that shoulders its fair share of our world’s economy. Why counterfeiting in fashion should be taken any less seriously than counterfeiting in the pharmaceutical industry, we’ll never understand.In fact, when the good people at Harper’s Bazaar hosted a in May, they found that the business of counterfeiting supports terrorism, takes money away from hardworking people and can even be hazardous to your skin — a L’Oreal employee at the panel said we probably wouldn’t want to know what was in knockoff cosmetics.To wit, industry insiders told The Daily Mail that counterfeiting really is bad for business:A spokesman for Louis Vuitton said: ‘The sale of counterfeit goods is a serious offence whose revenue funds criminal organisations at the expense of consumers, companies and governments.’ A spokesman for Burberry said: ‘Counterfeiting is taken extremely seriously. Where a case is proved, Burberry will always push for the maximum penalty.’ The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) insisted that far from making consumers happy faking fashion goods was ‘not a victimless crime’. ‘Businesses, individuals, and the public purse all suffer as a result of such activities,’ said a spokesman.And we’re inclined to agree with comments like that from people who actually know something about the fashion industry. Wall himself has an and has written a long list of books about crime and the Internet, but we were hard pressed to find evidence that he could tell Chanel from Chloe. So we’re gonna stick with the camp that says fake fashion really is a bad thing.[ via ] ?Will You Dress Your Kids Up In Lanvin? Alber Elbaz To Drop Children’s Line by 12:45 pm, May 4th, 2011 In the past year, both and have joined the likes of Dior, Burberry, Marc Jacobs, Prada, and by introducing children’s lines. Now Lanvin is getting in on the action. Yes,?Lanvin for kids is a thing that is going to exist! is designing , which will debut in June and arrive in stores in November. But just because the size of these designs will be scaled down, don’t expect the price of the collection (produced with a “superluxury approach”) to follow suit. You can bet the dresses, sweaters, coats, and other items will be made out of ridiculous fabrics and have ridiculous pricetags.And in a nice bit of symmetry, Lanvin founder Jeanne Lanvin designed mother/daughter outfits through the mid-1930s! When we have kids, we will probably dress them exclusively in Lanvin because LANVIN FOR KIDS, y’all! Hopefully by that time, we’ll be dressing exclusively in Lanvin ourselves.[] ?Fashion Editor Slams Hedi Slimane In Open Letter by 5:23 pm, October 3rd, 2012 It seems like is just feuding with fashion editors left and right.?First, The New York Times‘ revealed the bad blood between them of his debut collection for the Saint Laurent Paris. He responded with an via Twitter, and now, another top editor is giving the designer a piece of her mind.Laura Craik, the fashion editor at the British publication The Times,?wrote her own open letter to Slimane, and in it echoes some of Horyn’s?criticisms — though Craik, unlike Horyn, was invited to Slimane’s show this year. Here’s :His first collection for Yves Saint Laurent was the most anticipated show of the Paris season, but Hedi Slimane didn’t make it easy for the critics to like. Or even see. So I thought I’d write him a letter to explain why… Dear Mr Slimane, We’ve never met, but I felt that, since we both like Daft Punk and skinny leather trousers, I should reach out to you, as they say in LA, and explain why your first collection for Yves Saint Laurent put a few backs up. It’s cool that you live there, by the way, even though you are Creative Director of an iconic French brand. I wouldn’t much like to live in Paris either. The internet is too slow. I don’t know if it was intentional, but you didn’t make journalists feel very welcome at your show. Some, you didn’t invite at all. Others had to stand, or were given seats so bad they could only see the top half of the models, which made it tricky to report on the clothes. Nobody minded sitting behind Azzedine Alaia, but that all those glum-looking indie kids in black drainpipes got to see the clothes from the front row seemed a little insulting. I respect that you value your friends so highly, but I don’t respect some of the people on the YSL payroll who were unnecessarily rude. Friends who have met you swear you are a lovely, laid-back bloke, so this seems weird. It was really cool to get Daft Punk to edit the music for your show. And it was really cool to have Kate Moss sit on your front row. She also sat front row when Stefano Pilati and Tom Ford were creative directors of YSL, but that’s OK: sometimes Alexa Chung just doesn’t cut it, even though she also dates hot, skinny musicians. Kate Moss is a legend and an icon: 22 years after Corinne Day first shot her, women still want to be her, a fact which wasn’t lost on Sir Philip Green and is clearly not lost on you, either. Those cigarette pants you did were made for her, and so were the tunic dresses. What you did with menswear at Dior Homme was nothing short of genius, even though I never saw a collection as I don’t cover menswear, so I feel a bit faux writing that, but I do honestly mean it. I did used to cover music, though, when I worked at The Face in another life, so I know what it’s like secretly to wish you were a musician. Music always has been and always will be cooler than fashion. Oh, if you could only render the whumping opening chords of Da Funk in stretch-leather. Still, at least you can dress the people who make the magic happen. And their girlfriends. Another thing: those e-mails. I received the one about how I should refer to the house of Yves Saint Laurent, and have noted that the house is referred to as Yves Saint Laurent, collection credits should read Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane, and Saint Laurent Paris is used in the logo but not when spoken or written about the collection. Despite these stipulations, though, and despite having sat through your show, I still don’t feel clear about your intentions for the brand. That you don’t want to give even a quote in this regard is your prerogative, just as it is mine to venture my opinion. But in the black wake of your silence, conjecture will surely breed. Because the thing is, you can’t control everything. You just can’t. You can control your brand’s image to the nth degree, and so you should: it worked for Burberry. But you can’t control people’s reactions. And I really hope you don’t want to try. If you were a suit, I wouldn’t expect you to understand that. But you’re not. You’re Hedi Slimane. All the things you seem to love and value ? music, fun, sexiness ? require freedom. You have yours. I have mine. Without it, we are nothing. So please, don’t ban me from your next show, because I really want to see it. We all do. We like you, even though you treat us like a bitch. Yours sincerely, LauraWe have two questions. First: will Slimane respond? And second: how long until Lady Gaga ?[ via , ?Would You Buy A Pair Of Designer 3D Glasses? by 11:32 am, May 10th, 2010 With Summer only a few short weeks away, inevitably, it’s time to start dusting off last year’s sunglasses and deciding whether or not you’ll be picking out some new shades. Maybe you’ll put away your Wayfarers for an aviator, or perhaps you’ll be more of a tortoise shell kind of lady this year. Round lenses, oversized, colored, vintage….3-D?As if you needed another choice on the table, is a sunglass brand dedicated to making 3-D glasses look fashionable. Now you won’t have to worry about looking dorky on line for the next Avatar-esque movie.Much to our chagrin, Look3D, which collaborated with RealD on the collection, is not the only sunglasses brand to jump on the 3-D trend. According to Gizmodo, Ray-Ban’s parent company has been working on line, and rumors have circulated that Gucci will be designing a 3-D collection as well.According to the Look3D website:“At Look3D Eyewear we strongly believe that everyone deserves to see and be seen in the best 3D glasses on the market…We predict in the future, movie lovers will increasingly demand both fashion and function when attending Digital 3D cinemas, such as the RealD projector system. Look3D Eyewear is a specialist eyewear company assisting studios, cinemas and movie lovers in the transition into Digital 3D by creating seamless vision solutions which allow the audiences to engage the on-screen story like never before. Look3D offers a number of collections at various price points and are manufactured to RealD’s specific engineering specifications carrying the RealD certification badge to ensure this quality is maintained. Our goal is to ensure movie lovers experience Digital 3D as intended by filmmakers.”From hipster-style to Upper East Side elegant, Look3D has a pair of shades for virtually every style aesthetic. But with no word on pricing, we can’t help but wonder why anyone would actually shell out more than $20 for a pair 3D shades — no matter how stylish! Then again, where there’s a time (Sunday matinees?) and possibly a place (remember ?), the fashion industry can be surprisingly quick to jump on board.What do you think? [via ] ?Gucci, Burberry And More Make Big Bucks On Kids’ Clothes by 2:42 pm, June 30th, 2010 The fashion labels that love to charge adults an arm and a leg for a pair of shoes or a good sweater (we’re talking about you, Hermes) love making money off kids, too! While it’s not exactly news that big-name and big-price brands have been selling kids’ clothes for decades, with Gucci with a kiddie collection this month, we wondered which other of luxury’s biggest brands were in on the game and, more importantly, how much they charge. ?Coach Gets More Web Traffic Than Gucci And Burberry Combined by 2:36 pm, October 25th, 2010 A recent of the amount of web traffic driven by 20 luxury labels placed Coach ahead of the pack, with 39 percent of total online market share.But when Luxury Daily, a luxury marketing news site, on the study, it cited Gucci (which took 16 percent of the share) and Burberry (clocking in at 6.5 percent) as the luxury brands that dominated the group.Now, we’re not exactly what you might call or even , but singling out the expensive, established foreign brands in the survey as its winners is a pretty low blow to dear old Coach, especially when it leads those brands by a mile. If the experts at PM Digital, who organized the study, put Coach in the same category as and ‘s companies, then they probably had a statistically relevant reason for doing so.Aside from the slight, Luxury Daily‘s story does reveal some interesting things about the way high-priced brands work online. Most of them don’t utilize paid search, meaning that if you Google brands like Goyard or Valextra, you won’t see very many sponsored links above the search results. So how do people find luxury brands online? A heavy portion of that traffic comes from sites that link to a label’s homepage or from Facebook, which for most of these brands is the predominant social networking tool. Still, many brands are reluctant to run promotions on their Facebook pages, preferring instead to go the traditional route.Moral of the story? Luxury labels need to get with it and hop on the Internet because it’s quickly becoming the best place to make a sale, and Luxury Daily needs to show respect where respect is due. Today, it’s due to Coach.[Via ] ?PHOTOS: Mad Men Style Style Stars Shine On The Emmy Red Carpet by 12:51 pm, September 19th, 2011 We thought we were done with our awesome (if somewhat exhausting!) , when we realized we’d inadvertently forgotten to highlight three of our favorite style stars: Christina Hendricks, Elisabeth Moss, and Kiernan Shipka, all of whom work on Mad Men and all of whom wore spectacularly stunning dresses.Hendricks’ sparkly silver gown was perfect in that old Hollywood glamour way she’s so good at capturing, though we feel a little bad for her pinky toe in those shoes. Moss wore a perfectly suited champagne colored, floral embroidered dress by Marchesa which was certainly pretty, but so pale as to render her almost invisible. But if you squint, you can see it: perfection. And then there’s 11-year-old Shipka who, in addition to and being , always dresses age appropriately for the red carpet — and this petal power number is no exception. Also, how cute is the orange cardigan she added for the after party? They always blast the AC at these things. Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?WATCH: Male Model Takes A Tumble On The Runway by 2:55 pm, May 12th, 2011 While there is no of that female models fairly , male models have been largely exempt from this treacherous phenomenon — no doubt due to the fact that they’re more likely to be walking the runway in loafers than in 7-inch platform heels while wearing a vision-obscuring veil or flowered headgear. And then there’s this guy. Fallen models everywhere, rejoice![via .] ?PHOTOS: Marion Cotillard ‘Has Never Been More Exhausted’ In Vogue by 2:20 pm, July 16th, 2012 Marion Cotillard may have landed the all in the same month — but we don’t mind the repetition. Just look at her face!Cotillard wears a velvet blazer on the cover of Vogue, and Burberry, Salvatore Ferragamo, and?McQ Alexander McQueen duds in the -lensed spread. Needless to say, she looks amazing in each pic.But she reveals in the accompanying interview that she’s insanely tired. She had her a baby boy Marcel in May, and filmed three movies this year ? Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises,?Jacques Audiard’s?Rust and Bone, and a yet-to-be-named film by James Gray. So yeah, girl needs a nap:“I’ve never been more exhausted. But I’ve never had more energy. This is the paradox of being happy. That’s where it comes from. But all the things I did were irresistible.”See some shots from Vogue‘s August issue (out on newsstands July 24), and : Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. [] ?Matthew Williamson Would Like You To Get Over Kate Middleton by 11:09 am, March 17th, 2011 Open mouth, insert foot. British designer to a reporter that fashion people should just stop obsessing over Kate Middleton. And why? Because she’s not really a fashion person, so no one should care what she wears. Um. What?Middleton might not eat all of her meals from a fashion plate, but she has been given the style star mantle, and we think she’s doing a pretty good job of wearing it. She might not be racking up billions of pounds for British designers just yet (the way Michelle Obama does for American designers), but when she wears things they tend to . Just look at how many people tried to her engagement . Still, Williamson doesn’t get it.“Kate isn’t a fashion bunny,” he said. “I don’t know why everyone in fashion is waiting to see what she wears. I’m, like, thinking: get over it.”While the future Queen of England isn’t the kind of person we’d want to piss off, there’s something slightly refreshing about his honesty, no?Related: [The Daily Telegraph]Earlier: [Styleite] ?PHOTOS: Max Irons Stars In Macy’s INC Spring Men’s Campaign by 6:17 pm, January 22nd, 2012 One day, when we’re older, we’re probably going to refer to Max Irons as an actor’s actor. The 26-year-old Brit (who just happens to be the son of Academy Award winner Jeremy Irons) told us this week that he has so much fun in front of the camera that he doesn’t he barely considers it work. Still, that won’t stop him from taking the odd modeling job, and his campaign with Macy’s INC men’s will go public Monday.Irons has modeled before, of course — you may remember him from his campaigns with Mango and Burberry, where he stood and smoldered alongside Kate Moss, whom he says is lovely to work with. And as talented a model he is (you’ll see him doing is best Blue Steel in the slideshow below), he says acting is where his heart is.“It’s an experience,” he said of his modeling work. “I enjoy being an actor. From what I understand being a model is a hard business, whereas acting is so much fun for me. It’s creative, you’re working with people who have a similar mindset.”Irons will work with people who share his mindset, director Andrew Niccol and actors William Hurt and Saoirse Ronan among them, while he films Stephanie Meyer‘s The Host. It won’t be in theaters until next year, but until then you can get an eyeful of him at your local Macy’s. Or below. Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?McDonald’s Uniforms As Reinterpreted By The Fall Runway Shows by 2:39 pm, July 14th, 2011 Fast food uniforms aren’t known for being the most fashion-forward, but who says that has to be the case?In Britain, McDonald’s employees will be getting new unis made by Hemingway Design. The purpose of this isn’t necessarily to up to the style factor, but to create outfits that can be upcycled. (Upcycling is a better kind of recycling, in which old products are broken down inro raw materials which are then used to remake new versions of the old products, all while maximizing quality and minimizing waste.) This green pilot program could mean that uniform changes will come to the States soon. Exciting!We’re into this upcycling idea, but allow us to consider what the uniforms could look like if a high fashion designer were given creative control. The current McD’s apparel situation strays pretty far from the yellow and red color scheme we associate with the brand. Bring back the primary shades, we say! Draw inspiration from Ronald McDonald himself! Own it!Lucky for us, we don’t have to stretch our imaginations too far ? our favorite fall runways were full of awesome reds and yellows. As such, let’s contemplate a world where burgers are served with a bit Burberry. Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?Falling Model Helped Off Runway By Nice Model Friends At Vaccarello by 9:42 am, February 29th, 2012 Karlie Kloss wasn’t the only model being at yesterday’s Anthony Vaccarello show. Behold, yet another case of !Pauline Hoarau had so much trouble walking in the finale that two other girls helped her off the runway. While the isn’t anything new, this must have come as a disappointment to Vaccarello who showed off his very first shoe collection ? a collaboration with Giuseppe Zanotti ? during the show. Ouch. Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?Model Lover Kanye West To Headline Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show by 4:25 pm, October 11th, 2011 Kanye has a well-documented history with models. The , the , the ? we’ve seen it all! So yeah, it’s pretty appropriate that the rapper is headlining the Victoria’s Secret fashion show.Maroon 5 will be joining Kanye as part of the?‘s musical lineup, and angels will include , , , , , and more. But what will their look like?! Stay tuned. The special airs Nov. 29.And behold! Candice! ?WATCH: Models Fall On The Runway Again And Again…And Again by 12:13 pm, June 12th, 2012 Though they may be just about perfect physically, models are human, too. Even the likes of? every now and then. And while you’ve probably seen videos of on the runway before, you’ve never seen it like this.This features models falling forward, models falling backward, and models wobbling around on jelly legs caused by sky-high heels ? all set to the hauntingly beautiful sounds of Joe Cocker‘s “You Are So Beautiful”.WATCH:[via ] ?Net-a-Porter Mans Up, Announces Plans to Unveil a Men’s Outpost by 9:13 am, June 10th, 2010 In news that promises to have every Thom Browne kneecap loving, Sartorialist peeping, dapperly decked gentleman squealing with delight, word is that Net-a-Porter is ready to man up. How’s that for a sign of the times? Anyways, like the gender equalizing Title 9 Act come to wear, the online fashion juggernaut has announced plans to unveil Mr. Porter--a stand alone site aimed at blue blooded chaps moving at a drive through pace with a 5-star budget. Think supremely edited offerings from the likes of Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Dunhill, and Mr. by Roland Mouret–all with a dash of style advice and a smack of net-a-luxury.“We’ve wanted to do this for years but never felt it was the right time,” said Natalie Massenet, founder of Net-a-porter and its executive chairman. “This idea did not come from a bunch of people sitting in a boardroom, it was our customers, our target market, that was asking for this.”No world on a launch date (so you’ll have time to save your pennies boys), but Massenet did confirm that the site will begin recruitment for a crack team of experts with plans to include editorial content on the site in much the same fashion as it’s better half. Oh and as for additional plans in the pipeline? For now it’s just mens but WWD notes the company already owns domain names, Petit-a-porter and Net-a-Beaute. So let’s just say, there won’t be any resting on laurels in the near future.Via ?Nicole Richie Is On The List Of Costume Institute Gala Dress Designers by 2:04 pm, April 23rd, 2011 Nicole Richie is really taking this seriously. Dare we say she’s in the midst of becoming a celebrity designer, a la ? She’s definitely headed in the right direction, even dressing a top model for the most fashionable event of the year.Richie will be Britt Maren in a Winter Kate gown for next month’s Costume Institute Gala. We can’t wait to find out the rest of the designer-attendee pairings, but this one definitely piqued our interest. The Met Ball‘s red carpet is sure to be filled with sumptuous looks by the likes of Prada, Calvin Klein, Burberry, and more. While we’re used to ladies pulling out the stops in?Chanel couture, let’s not forget that some high profile guests Gap last year.All in all, this is certainly a coup for Richie, and we’re excited to see what she cooks up![via ] ?What Kate, Karen, And Naomi Are Wearing To The Closing Ceremony by 11:51 am, August 3rd, 2012 may have snagged the coveted September cover of British Vogue, but , , , and more star in an Olympic-themed photoshoot inside the issue, which is actually .Kloss, who also of Vogue Japan, dons a pair of metallic yellow pants and a printed blouse by of British Vogue. But those gilded bottoms are nothing compared to the bespoke gowns worn by Campbell, Moss, and more in an editorial appropriately titled “Midas Touch.”Photographer snapped the supers in fancy creations by Alexander McQueen, , and Burberry. The looks are presumably the same ones that the models will wear during the Olympics Closing Ceremony on August 12.While we’re certainly excited to see if the supers will indeed sport the golden gowns, that unfortunately means that the London Olympics will be over and that we won’t get to see more of . Sad face.But on a happier note, here’s birthday girl Karlie on the mag’s September cover: [] ?Oscar de la Renta To Start A Line Of Children’s Clothes by 9:11 am, December 8th, 2011 If you thought the world of children’s clothing wasn’t fancy enough as it was, you were mistaken. has announced that he will add a line of kiddie size luxury clothing to his still-growing clothing empire.Women’s Wear Daily that De la Renta has hired Catherine Monteiro de Barros, who used to design the Portuguese kid’s line Papo d’Anjo, as his new vice president of design for children’s wear. While there’s no word yet on what it will cost, a spokesperson for the company said the clothing will appeal to “who are interested in quality and style but who also want their children to look like children.”Of course, lately the children’s wear space has been look more and more adult, with big brands like , , adding or expanding their efforts in the kiddie market over the last year. Even Chanel paraded a little boy down its runway a few seasons back — and it also added a whole suite of Internet games that have big appeal for the under-8 set.De la Renta’s clothing, specifically, will be focused on boys and girls from 18 months to 14 years old. A capsule collection should be ready for spring and will be sold at Harrod’s, Bergdorf Goodman and De la Renta’s boutiques, and a full collection will pop up by fall.And now there’s really only one question left: Will your baby have a fancier wardrobe than you?[] ?Fashion Week Wrap Up: Paris Is King by 4:12 pm, March 8th, 2010 It is often said that the heart of fashion lives in Paris. ?While some of today’s greatest designers walk their collections down the runways in London, Milan, and yes, even the United States, those who show at Paris fashion week have always been of another calibre. ?After taking a look at this season’s fashion week coverage – from New York to London to Milan, and finally, to Paris – it is clear that the edge, the creativity, the attention to detail, and the pure craftsmanship that seems to be fading more and more in the fashion world still lives on, maybe even exclusively, a Paris. Credit should be given to?Prabal Gurung for the immense creativity shown in his first fashion week runway show in New York. ?The collection emphasized Gurung’s crowning?obsession with proportion and tailoring, two things at which the designer is known to excel. ?And while color-blocking seems as ubiquitous as one must applaud the designer for his inspired ?use of this trend.But the majority of New York fashion week could best be described as a few home runs from the usual suspects and a series of yawns from the rest. ?We know already know about layering. ?We already know about knee highs, military jackets, and belts. ?Not much to learn at the Tents’ final hoorah this season.Vivienne Westwood Red Label put on a truly Westwood-ian fashion show?in London, showing pieces from a fall palate of burnt oranges, deep reds, and neutral tans, browns, and deep blacks. ?But the cut of the garments were familiar and while the Westwood look in itself is aesthetically interesting, contextually, the collection seemed tame.Burberry, London’s raison d’etre if you will, was full of amazingly tailored coats (in the first look Karmen Pedaru wore a perfect black motorcycle cropped jacket with an oversized wide sheep’s wool collar). ?But with the exception of Bailey‘s collection, much of London seemed messy and unkempt – and not in the good way. ?Michael Herz‘s Aquascutum collection hung oddly on the models and the most interesting thing about Matthew Williamson’s show – a show that usually never fails in its excessive glamour – was the color of the runway backdrop. Milan definitely came close to winning for the best shows this season. Most notable were Dolce & Gabbana’s pant-less, lingerie inspired collection, Gucci’s uber-glam girls (), and the incredibly fitted black coats at Gianfranco Ferre‘s show — which epitomize luxury at its best. ?But, while no one can tailor a suit quite like an Italian, once again: Paris still reigns.Stella McCartney, Demeulemeester, Balenciaga, Celine, Dior, Givenchy, Haider Ackermann, Chalayan, Lanvin, Margiela, Rochas, Giambattista Valli, Viktor & Rolf, and Yohji Yamamoto – just to name a few. ?This list is a roster of fashion’s most important and those with the most anticipated collections, and they all choose to show in Paris. Is it that the image of Kristen McMenamy walking down a highly patterned catwalk accompanied by two impeccably dressed body guards while wearing what appears to be a ten-pound jacket at Viktor & Rolf would not make sense elsewhere? ?Would people in London not know how to react to the jawdroppingly stunning, Mondrian-eque stacked heel at Balenciaga? ?There must be a reason that Phoebe Philo felt that a heavily Parisian audience would be the best venue to showcase her anxiously anticipated second collection for Celine. Haute Couture began in France and if fashion week is any indicator, will remain in France. ?Regardless of the beauty of the collections seen on runways elsewhere, there is nothing quite like the collections that walk down the runways of France. ?It’s where Chanel lives. It’s where Gaultier and Dior and Lacroix and Givenchy call home. While Milan may be known for its leather and lace, London the classic trench coat-centered collections, and New York for a fashion week that for most is about everything except for fashion, Paris still remains the beating heart of the industry — for featuring the most daring collections, the collections held on a pedestal and the collections that remind us fashion still can be magical, otherworldly, and groundbreaking. ?Philipp Plein’s Fall Ad Features The World’s Fanciest Merkin by 1:18 pm, July 15th, 2011 From the man who gave us the most images of Mischa Barton this world has ever seen, comes a new ad campaign featuring the fanciest merkin this world has ever seen. …And you thought that was naked.Also, there’s probably a good joke in there somewhere.[via.] ?THE ZOE REPORT: Brit Beauty by 1:31 pm, July 22nd, 2010 Clear out some room in your cosmetic cases girls because Burberry just launched a and it is as good?make that, flawless?as one would expect. Living up to the British fashion house’s standards, each product in the 96-piece debut collection is luxurious and classic. Take for example?Burberry’s !While attending the afternoon tea party (a very appropriate fete) to celebrate the launch in Beverly Hills last week, I was able to try this creamy lip color first-hand and I couldn’t be more in awe! Available in twelve understated shades?No. 9 Nude beige is my top pick?it goes on smoothly and leaves one’s lips plump and perfectly hued. I recommend it for whenever you want to want downplay your look or balance out an over-the-top smoky eye. After you are hooked on the gloss, indulge yourself in the and for an all-over aesthetic that is fresh and effortless. xoRZ Availability: Burberry ($27). For additional retailer information, visit .PARALLEL UNIVERSE Boots Botanics $8Provided by The Zoe Report on ?Rachel Zoe Recap: Kate Hudson Is Sooooo Bohemian by 12:59 pm, September 1st, 2010 Last night’s episode of was all about, well, nothing. But while the episode was missing its usual “OMG SO MUCH DRAMZ” narrative arc, it did feature plenty of a very bubbly Kate Hudson and a delightful scene with . Rodger, Brad, Rachel, and her “gaggle of gays” are en route from New York to Milan when Rachel decides to go all fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pantsy and meet longtime client and BFF Kate Hudson in London for the Burberry show. Hudson gets a lot of screen time in this episode which, for some reason, feels kind of strange. She makes a grand entrance — all $35 vintage fur coat, gasping excitement, and clearly a little wonky from the transatlantic flight — and we can’t tell if, since this is clearly Kate’s first foray into reality tv, she’s playing things up a bit for the camera.They go to the Burberry show, which is exciting and all, but what’s more exciting is what happens in the car on the way back. While the two kvell over the Steve Nicks soundtrack designer chose for the show, Hudson breaks into song. And it turns out, the girl can sing.There’s lots of emphasis on Kate’s “bohemian” personality and how good of an influence she is on Rachel and her “panic attacks.” At one point, back in the hotel room, Kate tries to convince Rachel to skip Milan and fly to Brazil, which doesn’t quite feel serious, except for the fact that Rodger and Kate can’t get over the fact that Rachel broke from the schedule and even flew to London in the first place. And you get the sense that maybe, just maybe, Kate could convince Rachel to do it except for the fact that Rachel doesn’t wear bikinis. Ever. This is a fact and Rodger confirms it. This makes us sad.But there’s no time for sadness, because now Rachel and Rodger are in Milan. Rachel and Brad have already gone vintage shopping — Brad tries on a man-cape — and they’ve all been to ‘s show which was beautiful and “ultra-feminine.”They then zip off to the Missoni showroom where they meet with Margherita and Angela Missoni. The meeting has a profound effect on Rodger, who flashes-forward a Zoe-Berman generation and realizes that this could be them. Rodger and Rachel are in the process of founding a Zoe empire, and he loves the idea of their kids and grandkids doing what Angela and Margherita are doing today. It’s actually a really sweet moment. All Rachel hears, however, is: “Babies, babies, babies. I want babies.” This is also sad.But there’s no time for babies or family talk, because they are there for the shows and that’s how we find ourselves backstage with , while Brad has a veritable heart attack over his gay icon.But, alas, Versace — with all its thigh-high slits and skin-tight dresses — is not the place for Rachel to find Oscar gowns for her clients, which (oh, yes!) is why we’re watching the show in the first place. And things are about to go very south. It turns out, while Rachel was jetsetting off to London and air-kissing Donatella, her assistants — Jordan and The New Taylor — were unable to secure three of Zoe’s first choice for Oscar gowns. This leaves her with one gown only which — spoiler alert! — just so happens to be the one Cameron Diaz wears to the 62nd Annual Academy Awards. It’s Oscar de la Renta, it’s one of a kind, and it’s gorgeous.We’ll leave you with some parting words of wisdom from Rodger, as he tries to tell Rachel that the loss of these gowns is not as bad as it seems: “In your own mind, if you dont have something, you think that you’ve lost something. But in reality, no one ever knew it existed.”To which Rachel responds, “But you know when you know it existed? When it’s on another f**king actress.”Touche.PS. If you love Rachel Zoe as much as we do, to find out how you can win $485 worth of Guerlain and a written by Zoe on your personal style! ?PHOTOS: Who Was Best Dressed On Last Night’s Red Carpets? by Jada Wong and Hilary George-Parkin 12:55 pm, September 5th, 2012 While the ladies are definitely the at the , we can’t forget about other equally glitzy events. Last night, we saw Kirsten Dunst, Zoe Saldana, and Brooke Shields hit the town in New York, while Kiera Knightley,?Azealia Banks, Jessie J, and stepped out in London. Who was best dressed? This is a tough one!Across the pond, Knightley broke out the big guns in Chanel Couture for the premiere of Anna Karenina, and though the gauzy, pale pink gown was undeniably gorgeous, the silhouette of the skirt left something to be desired. British Vogue editor and fellow attendee Laura Bailey also opted for the interlocking Cs, but the oversized ruffled sleeves unfortunately overwhelmed the entire look. Even if it wasn’t quite as opulent, the downtown, rock n’ roll Burberry ensemble on Cara Delevigne had to be our favorite look of the evening. And here in NYC, Kirsten Dunst and Zoe Saldana earned our votes for best dressed in two very different ensembles. Dunst looked adorable in separates and Chloe ankle-strap pumps, while Saldana smoldered in a backless Elie Saab number. Well done, ladies! Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?Rags By Rob: Would You Buy Clothing Designed By R-Patz? by 6:07 pm, August 15th, 2011 Robert Pattinson, he of pale skin and , is very possibly designing a clothing line.Pattinson’s Twilight costar Kellan Lutz has a collection set to debut in the fall, which may have inspired the artist also known as Edward Cullen. As Lutz told : “Rob and I were talking about doing clothing lines, and he found out I was doing one and was like ‘I should do one.’” Okay, fair enough. But then he told the gossip rag that it’s tentatively called “Rags by Rob” and that Pattinson wants to do it because “he’s always so hipster”. Cue the laugh track.We remain skeptical about this whole thing, namely because he a lucrative deal with Burberry because he’s “an actor, not a model”. Plus, we’re not sure that ever happened. At least the guy can ?[] ?Did R-Pattz Really Turn Down Burberry’s $1.6M Offer? by 3:23 pm, November 8th, 2010 Oh, Robert Pattinson. Someone needs to put you in your place. And maybe that someone is us. You just a $1.6 million deal to be the face of Burberry. This was a mistake. Allow us to tell you why.1. Your reasoning, according to the Daily Mail, is because you’re “an actor, not a model.” Is someone forgetting their ? Looks like it!2. A source said, “As far as Robert sees things he’s an actor by trade and that’s his art. He doesn’t want to start becoming a brand or anything.” We get that, we do. Artistic integrity, blah blah blah. But you have yet to prove said talent, Rob! And with the whole Marks & Spencer skivvies thing, you are already becoming a brand. You may as well make a cool mill and a half in the process.3. Relatedly, you know who has mad talent and modeled for Burbery? Emma Watson! She’s , and her Burberry gig certainly hasn’t detracted from her acting cred.4.? is awesome, and apparently “Christopher and the Burberry team were desperate to sign Robert as the main person in their new campaign.” Do not disrespect Chris, please.5. You’re British! Like Burberry! And you look great in a suit! It just makes sense. ?Paris Airport Now Has Prada And Gucci, Oysters And Macarons by 5:33 pm, April 2nd, 2012 If eating Panda Express in a poorly lit house of stress is your thing, you probably love airports! If this is not in fact your thing, you probably hate them! Unless, of course, you fly through France often.Paris’s Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport just got , you guys. A new building with 23,000 square feet of stores and restaurants just opened up, and it sounds amazing:Instead of entering the terminals through four different security areas as in the past, all passengers now enter through the same area, before being filtered through a 13,000-square-foot space designed to look like the ground floor of a Parisian department store, offering fragrance, cosmetics, alcohol, tobacco and gastronomy in branded environments. They are then led down L’Avenue, a “shopping street” designed to evoke one of the French capital’s Haussmanian boulevards, where boutiques include mono-brand stores for luxury brands such as Hermes, Dior, Prada, Burberry and Gucci as well as a multi-brand watch and jewelry outlet and banners for the Laduree and Maison du Chocolat brands, as well as two seafood bars.Is that fancy enough for you? No? Well, another (bigger!) building will open in July:The space will include a museum that will display original works on loan from the city’s art galleries and a 30,000-square-foot business lounge offering services such as free treatments from beauty brand Clarins.Art! Facials! Oysters! France, you’re doing it right![] ?Our Qualms With GQ‘s List Of Best Dressed Brits by 5:31 pm, January 4th, 2011 Fashion people everywhere are wagging their tongues about how adorable it is that 8-year-old Romeo Beckham, son to David and Victoria, in his own right, is number eight on British GQ’s list of 50 best dressed men. We think it’s a gimmick.Now, we’re pretty big on here at Styleite, and having taken flak for some of our own, we understand what a sensitive matter they can be. Which is why when we air our disagreements with the list, we do so with the utmost respect.But we can’t help but wonder why, for example, Prince WIlliam was so far down the list at number 27 (right behind the younger Beckham at 26). His brother Prince Harry is number 5, but we can’t remember an occasion on which Harry managed to out dress the future king. Does the throne entitle Wills to a higher spot? Certainly not. But his princely pocket squares and well-cut suits certainly do. We should note that this is both prince’s debut on the list.It’s not like the group includes men who don’t deserve the distinction — numbers 33 to 36 (Burberry designer , DJ Mark Ronson, actor Matthew Goode and musician Bryan Ferry) merit inclusion, if not much higher spots. Actor Jude Law and musician Tinie Tempah make sense for the list, as does Arthur Wellesley, the Earl of Mornington. ‘s not actually British, but his offices are in London, so we guess that counts. We were glad to see Aaron Johnson, the star of Kick Ass. But putting him at number one was, we think, a little generous.Also strange was how colorless the list was. There are loads of well-dressed men of racial backgrounds that don’t include the descriptors Irish or French in Britian, and all of the ones who come to mind are much better dressed people than Simon Cowell, who took spot 43. Where were actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and designer ? And what about actor Dev Patel? Without those men — and Boateng, especially — the list seems woefully incomplete.As for the younger Beckham, we can understand how fascinated people are with him. He’s a really well dressed little dude, and we’re sure that in a fair contest he and would dominate the best dressed list for Little Dude Monthly. But we’re reading GQ, which stands for Gentleman’s Quarterly. And as far as we’re concerned, no 8-year-old boy, no matter how natty, qualifies as a gentleman. [GQ UK] ?Is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley Super Naked In This Burberry Ad? by 12:30 pm, July 13th, 2011 We’ve never been accused of being conservative over here at Styleite (NSFW examples , , , etc.), but we really need to discuss Rosie Huntington-Whiteley‘s Burberry Body ad.Burberry Body is a new lady fragrance, and Rosie’s is its face ? or should we say body? The actress-slash-model-slash-professional-hot-person was photographed by for the campaign, in which she is fairly naked.This level of nudity is pretty standard for fashion editorials, but it’s a little shocking for an advertisement. Rosie is shilling for a fragrance, so it isn’t weird that she’s barely wearing anything (in fact, it’s more like she’s laying on top of a Burberry trench instead wearing one), but she is almost uncomfortably naked. Look at her lower half! Incredibly naked! Or maybe we’re being lame?Please do tell us what you think! c Copyright Burberry/Testino ?Mad Men’s Sally Draper Models Burberry Prorsum by 9:39 am, June 25th, 2010 In case you haven’t noticed the brewing excitement, Mad Men’s fourth season debuts in less than a month. Stills have been leaked, promos have been published, and now the Draper family can add one more model to its roster. Kiernan Shipka, the 10-year-old actress who plays daughter Sally Draper, models some of Burberry Prorsum‘s most covetable fall styles in this month’s Interview magazine. And yes, you read that right: she’s 10.[via .] ?VOGUE COVER WARS: Sarah Jessica Parker vs. Lara Stone by 3:52 pm, July 12th, 2011 It’s August cover time, people! In honor of the special time, allow us to pit two Vogues against one another. Sarah Jessica Parker for American Vogue versus for Vogue Paris, anddddd…GO!Okay, we think there’s a clear winner when it comes to this cover matchup. > . Always. and shot Stone (a perennial ) on a beach, in front of a vintage car, in front of palm trees, with a large (close?) plane in the distance. This is a photo with narrative and context, and Stone also happens to look great in a Haider Ackermann dress and thigh-high stockings. As always, the typography is fantastic.Conversely, SJP looks yawn-worthy (and wintry!) in a white knit Burberry trench against a simple blue background. We’re not feeling the hot pink type (also, there is so much type!), or the fact that Parker’s face has been airbrushed to unlined perfection. Did we mention this is the Age Issue? Anyway, the inside spread redeems the cover a bit. Lensed by , Parker hangs out with her husband Matthew Broderick and her super cute kids while donning?Proenza Schouler and the Bottega dress Emma Watson wore to the of Harry Potter (which Parker ).See for yourself below. Which cover do you prefer?Sarah Jessica Parker for American Vogue:Lara Stone for Vogue Paris:And SJP’s inside spread: Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. [, ] ?Snooki And Her Bags: A Lesson In Luxury Branding by 12:53 pm, August 18th, 2010 Snooki already garners the of her Guido and Guidette compatriots, and now she’s found herself in the middle of a luxury brand turf war currently being waged by Coach and Gucci – and brought to light by the inimitable . In an example that falls nicely in line with our , Snooki longtime brand association was with the interlocking Cs of the ever-ubiquitous Coach bag — until recently. As Doonan notes in this week’s : [T]he winds of change started blowing on Jersey Shore. Every photograph of Guido-huntin’ Snooki showed her toting a new designer purse. Why the sudden disloyalty? Was she trading up? Was she vomiting into her purses and then randomly replacing them? The answer is much more intriguing.And indeed it is. It turns out that Snooki hasn’t forsaken Coach of her own accord — that would be giving her — but is instead the victim of an anti-branding campaign in which luxury houses are gifting her their competitors’ bags. Doonan alleges, according to his sources, that Coach began by sending her a Gucci bag, but where will things go from here? Will Gucci send her a truckload of Goyard? Will Goyard then deluge her with Valextra? (If Snookie starts carrying a Valextra bag, it is inevitable that she will malaprop the name into “Valtrex,” the herpes medication. This will doubtless accelerate the inevitable preemptive strike by Casa Valextra.)Snooki’s meteoric and lucrative ascent means that she will soon be able to sidestep the whole issue and buy her own Birkin, thereby precipitating a mass Jonestown suicide over at Maison Hermes. (Warning! “Hermes” can easily be Snooki-spoke into “Herpes.) Or will they just go to the next level and send her a super-exclusive Belgian Delvaux bag? (Launching in the U.S. at Barneys this fall, Delvaux Since 1829 is arguably the most elitist brand in the world.)We don’t know — but if you’ve ever wondered what luxury houses will go to their brands, well, now you know: all the way down to the Jersey Shore.Related: [The Observer] ?Bye-Bye Bare Legs, Hello Mom Skirt by 4:15 pm, June 15th, 2010 Ah bare leg! We love the feeling after a season of itchy tights and confining denim to set our skin free with the warm springtime air. But unfortunately, this coming spring, designers have other ideas in mind for us.In flipping through show after show, one main trend keeps popping up — the uber-conservative, knee-length skirt. basically offered a survey of these longer length hemlines for his entire Resort 2011 collection. Both skirts and dresses were cut crisply below the knee, if not further down, to provide a much more mature aesthetic than in previous collections. One needs to wonder if this is a move to maximize sales and target a demographic that will purchase the clothing instead of one that will just google it and then splurge for the knock-off version.On a different note, for Burberry Prosum waved his magic wand again this season to make even a questionably matronly silhouette appear sexy. Gathers and ruching created dynamic surface detail to the skirts in a way to taunt for the viewing pleasure. The looks were increasingly feminine with light fabrics offering a romantic and nostalgic feel. also flirted with sophisticated sexiness in his use of vibrant prints and metallic fabrics to offset the length of the skirt.With the delight of parents everywhere for the mini to be seemingly absent, it’s difficult to completely embrace something that would well, make them so happy, but here’s to trying! ?Are Mac Users Really More Stylish Than PC Users? by 12:48 pm, March 1st, 2012 Are Mac users really more stylish than people who do all their computing on a PC? Research says yes.According to an analysis of the spending patterns of 700,000 people , a company that tracks trends in spending to give people recommendations on where to shop and go to dinner, found that people who own and use Macs tend to shop at higher end and trendier retailers like Barneys, where they buy brands like Jimmy Choo and Burberry, whereas PC users opt for places that sell mass market brands like Perry Ellis and Nautica.But the Bundle study is quick — and right — to point out that because Mac products tend to cost more than PCs, people who have Macs have more money to spend on things like clothes. PC users, meanwhile, “tend to wear clothes as reasonably priced as their computers.”That’s not to say neither group is limited to one segment of the retail market or another. PC users, according to the study, love to shop around in upmarket places like Bloomingdale’s, even if those trips don’t always turn into purchases. Mac users, meanwhile, love digging for a good bargain — but they do most of it at the outlet malls stores owned by Coach or discount stores like Last Call Neiman Marcus.But we all know that being a stylish person doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you spent a ton of money on something, and that you don’t become stylish by virtue of using a particular brand of computer — or any other product. For example, everyone at Styleite uses a Mac most of the time, but the post you’re reading right this very second was produced on a PC. And some of our favorite items are pieces we either got for real cheap (on sale J.Crew sweaters, y’all!) or free (like the hand me downs in Julia‘s .)So the lesson learned here? Perception doesn’t always equal reality, but in this case there are a lot of numbers that back up the idea that Macs really are more stylish than PCs. Check them out in the table below.[] ?StyleDish: American Apparel Is Taking On The Japanese Market by 5:59 pm, August 31st, 2012 Because why not? [Fashion Indie] [Fashionista] [The Daily Telegraph] [Teen Vogue] [Fashion Etc.] [Refinery29] ?StyleDish: Agyness Deyn & David Gandy To Run The London Marathon by 4:31 pm, April 16th, 2011 In today’s , Agyness Deyn and David Gandy show us fashion people are just like normal people by running the London Marathon. (Who are we kidding? We’re not really the marathoning type. But still!) In other news, Barneys‘ Amanda Brooks channels Jane Birkin, Gilt City offers some killer wedding packages, and Burberry holds a hologram runway show in Beijing. [The Gloss] [The Window] [Refinery29] [HuffPost Style] [Fashionista] [Gilt City] ?StyleDish: PPR Might Buy Burberry & Marc Has A New Boyfriend by 4:32 pm, December 12th, 2010 [NY Post] [Grazia] [The Gloss] [Vogue UK] [Daily Front Row] [StyleList] ?StyleDish: Prabal’s Holiday Card & A Roitfeld Retrospective by 4:28 pm, December 18th, 2010 Today’s allows us to enjoy ‘s holiday card, ‘s genius and ‘s long layers. [Elle] [Jezebel] [The Cut] [NY Times] [CocoPerez] [HuffPost Style] ?StyleDish: Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada Bandaids by 4:18 pm, October 29th, 2011 Today’s is all about luxury bandaids, hilarious search terms, and fake Chloe Sevigny. [High Snobette] [The Gloss] [Racked] [The Frisky] [Rookie] [StyleCaster] ?StyleDish: Megan Fox Wants You To Know She Has Not Had Botox by 4:11 pm, July 9th, 2011 Megan Fox is really, really pretty. And she wants you to know that she has not had Botox. We found this out thanks to today’s , which also teaches us that she used to look really different regardless. What else can we offer up this afternoon??Emma Watson, rucksacks, $70,000 shoe collections, and more! [The Gloss] [Jezebel] [StyleCaster] [Racked] [The Frisky] [Refinery29] ?StyleDish: What’s Cuter Than Moms At Fashion Shows? by 4:16 pm, March 4th, 2011 If one’s adorable, then two is… Orlando Bloom joined Katie Holmes on the list of, and we officially love him ten times more for it. More , coming right up! [Racked] [The Gloss] [The Cut] [College Candy] [HuffPost Style] [Fashionista] ?StyleDish: The Man Repeller Weighs In On The Authenticity Of Street Style by 5:45 pm, September 18th, 2012 Girl’s got some good points. [The Man Repeller] [Into The Gloss] [Refinery29] [Fashionista] [Fashion Etc.] [WWD] ?StyleDish: This Shoe Collection Is The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of by 4:37 pm, April 28th, 2012 Ok, so it’s not quite up to Khloe Kardashian‘s?. We’re still pretty impressed. [Stylelist] [Gawker] [Fashionista] [Fashionologie] [People StyleWatch] [The Coveteur] ?StyleDish: Was There A Lady Gaga Before Lady Gaga? by 5:45 pm, June 6th, 2011 People love to accuse of outright stealing their music, but today’s explains that she’s not the first person in the world to be known as Lady Gaga. Juicy! So what else will you find in the Dish? Really, really expensive ugly sandals, new creative directors at Cacharel and a few looks from the resort collections. Dig in! [The Cut] [The Gloss] [The Frisky] [Beauty High] [Racked] [Refinery29] ?Taylor Covers Glamour, Says Fame Isn’t Just ‘Sprinkles And Ponies’ by 6:00 pm, October 1st, 2012 It may seem like Taylor Swift‘s life is all sunshine and sparkles and Kennedys, but don’t let that fool you! In the latest issue of Glamour, the pop star opens up about her love life, calling ex John Mayer “presumptuous” for claiming that Dear John is about him, admits that she has “never developed that thick a skin,” and answers critics who paint her as perhaps more happy-go-lucky than she really is:“I think some people think it’s just apple pie and sunshine and sprinkles and ponies. Which is just funny. But I never feel the need to go out and make some grand statement that I’m dark and twisty and complicated, because I’m not that either. It’s just not as simple as ponies and rainbows, though I do love ponies and rainbows.”We kind of wish the glossy had gone with “ponies and rainbows” as a theme for the shoot, but as it stands, the -lensed cover shows Swift pulling her best wide-eyed “Oh golly!” face in a glitzy, gorgeous Burberry tank and Dior skirt, while , she hops aboard a Nashville train in a series of characteristically femme ensembles.A behind-the-scenes look at the shoot, the interview, and the Glamour offices will be on ABC Nightline tonight at 11:35PM, but for now check out the cover and spread below: Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?The Zoe Report: Take Flight by Rachel Zoe 12:20 pm, September 1st, 2010 The first day of the new month always brings with it a fresh and exciting feeling in the air. For me, I can attribute the sentiments today to fall fashion. After all, now that it is September I can officially?and loudly?express my worship for such a-mah-zing pieces as Burberry Prorsum’s !As if Christopher Bailey’s designs were not brilliant enough on their own, the Burberry designer took his runway show to the next level with an around-the-world, live streaming of the event…in 3-D! Talk about fashion-forward thinking. In case you missed it, I invite you now to take a look at the breathtaking collection yourself and try as you might to pick a favorite amongst the OOC outerwear pieces. Warning: It is not easy. As for , I have landed on today’s pilot-inspired bomber jacket for its boxy cut, snug shearling lining and strappy belts?ready to be buckled up for any fashion flight! xoRZ Availability: Burberry Prorsum ($3595). For additional retailer information, visit .Style It With: , , Parallel Universe Express $138Provided by The Zoe Report on . ?So What If Tom Ford Is On The London Fashion Week Schedule? by 3:26 pm, July 14th, 2011 In a move that has our heads just a little bit confused, designer has added himself to the very public schedule of designers who will present their spring collections during London Fashion Week. This from a man whose last two shows were harder to get into than West Point.The Daily Telegraph reports that Ford will join some 100 other designers who on the official roster of London spring shows. But just because he’s on the schedule doesn’t mean his show will be as open as Burberry, which live-streamed its last London show on the Internet.Ford has staged women’s wear presentations before, but he’s only unveiled information about them to a select few. His spring 2011 collection, which he showed off the New York Fashion Week calendar last September, had a limited audience of 100 editors, including the lone photographer . It was the object of curiosity and speculation for months, until the designer was gracious enough to unveil photos of it in and video of it in . His fall 2011 collection was http://www.styleite.com/media/tom-ford-london-fahsion-week/ this February under similar strictures, but got less attention. That may be because he asked the show’s attendees to . The entire spectacle prompted the fashion industry to ask whether it was prudent to have images of a new collection online within hours of the runway show ending.Ford’s opinion was — and presumably still is — that putting a collection in front of consumers out of season would only ensure they got bored with it sooner rather than later. So is he changing his tune by adding his name to the London list? We think not.Just because he’s on the calendar doesn’t mean he’s all of a sudden going to start tweeting pictures of samples arriving at his atelier, and it certainly doesn’t mean he’s going to allow just anyone into the show. The London Fashion Week only tells us that the show will go down at 6 pm on Sunday, Sept. 18 somewhere in postal code SW1. Putting the time and date of his show out there just means his show will get more attention — and more coverage. We, for example, just wrote a post about it. And you just read it. And now you know.[] ?U.S. Government Shuts Down 82 Counterfeit Retail Sites by 2:56 pm, November 30th, 2010 Say what you will about the Obama Administration, but it just scored a huge win for the fashion industry. Yesterday, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security shut down 82 websites that had been selling counterfeit apparel and accessories while claiming they were the real mccoy.WWD that the sites, which sold fake Tag Hauer, Nike and Burberry, among other brands, offered unsuspecting consumers prices about 15 percent of the suggested retail prices on products advertised as the real deal. While it’s unclear just how much money the sites made by parroting the goods of companies both foreign and domestic, one government official said it was clear the sites were “thriving.”The seized domains were registered in the US, but most were operated in China. No one got arrested, but anyone who tries to access one of the sites, which had names like “LouisVuittonOutlet” and “RealTimberland.com”, will get a message explaining the consequences of copyright infringement.We’ve gotta say just how proud we are that the government is taking these steps to protect the fashion industry — from Sen. Chuck Schumer‘s to Sen. Patrick Leahy‘s proposed legislation that would let the Justice Department crack down on other sites that sell counterfeit fashion. All that said, there is one problem — as anyone with an internet connection knows, it’s pretty easy to register a domain name and set up a website. What’s to prevent these companies from doing the same thing, over and over and over again — and quite possibly faster than the government can shut them down.Until there’s a permanent fix, it comes down to consumer education. As Attorney General Eric Holder told WWD:“With today’s seizures, we are disrupting the sale of thousands of counterfeit items,” Holder said. As the holiday shopping season gets under way, we are also reminding consumers to exercise caution when looking for deals and discounts online. To put it simply: if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.” [WWD (Subscription Required)] ?UGG Model Lounge Helps Models Unwind During Fashion Week by 3:22 pm, February 15th, 2011 Being a blogger during Fashion Week is exhausting, but being a model during Fashion Week sounds downright grueling. Castings and fittings and shows and parties ? oh, and those ! Where can a girl catch some R&R in the midst of all the madness? The UGG Australia Model Lounge, of course.This week we swung by the subterranean spot (hidden in the basement of Union Square’s Coffee Shop) to check out the exclusive digs. The is open year-round, but it’s especially busy during Fashion Week, when the city is brimming with all sorts of leggy creatures. Female models (that’s right ? no dudes allowed) from the top 10 agencies have access to the Lounge, and UGG’s involvement means they can snag some boots while they unwind. They can also grab food, watch TV and use the Lounge’s laptops.?The space itself is outfitted like a ski lodge, replete with faux fur throws, a working fireplace and even some creative (and animal-friendly!) taxidermy.19-year-old Kelsey Sirucek gave us the dish on what it’s like to be a model at Fashion Week. “Making sure you get to all your castings, and just all of the running around is the hardest part. But I love the runway, so it’s worth it,” she explained. And how does she get her fashion news? “I don’t really read any blogs, except for the one my agency has, and I’ve never been one of those people who reads fashion magazines. Just being in the industry, you get a feel for what’s going on in the fashion world and what’s cool.”She told us that she eats apples instead of downing caffeine to keep her energy up (a trick from her personal trainer back in Canada), lamented the city’s inexplicable subway issues (she was stuck underground for 45 minutes that morning) and confessed she was glad she wasn’t living in one of those infamous model apartments this week (“They can be total disasters during Fashion Week ? everyone’s running in and out, and nobody even has a chance to clean up after themselves.”) Oh, the life of a model. Now, if only we could get UGG to sponsor a blogger lounge… Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?NYC Boutique Busted For Selling Fake Burberry… Again by 3:20 pm, August 17th, 2010 We’re not sure how this happens once, let alone twice, but here goes: Burberry is upscale New York City boutique — which has outposts in SoHo and the Upper West Side — for selling counterfeit product. Just one year ago, in June 2009, the brand busted them for the exact same thing.According to court documents — which, we should point out, is all about the — Burberry found jackets, raincoats, shirts, and pants, along with the corresponding labels and packaging, to be “not authentic.”Couple that with the 2009 case in which the brand found 86 fake items for sale at Veriazioni and you can understand why Burberry has slapped the store with a $2 million lawsuit.But what we can’t wrap our heads around is how (or why) Veriazioni keeps purchasing counterfeit product in the first place. As New Yorkers — and former residents of the Upper West Side — we can safely say that though it might not be the first place we spend our paychecks, we’d certainly consider it a reputable boutique.But you know what they say: where there’s smoke, there’s a fire, and while Veriazioni could have played the first bust off as a mistake, the fact that they were caught with counterfeit merchandise twice seems to indicate they knew exactly what they were doing. In light of HauteLook.com’s Cartier , what does this mean for the way consumers purchase luxury brands going forward? Hopefully they’ll learn to forgo the deal in order to guarantee the merchandise — but Veriazioni wasn’t even selling the product at a discount. Our words of advice: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. ?Victoria Beckham Joins Twitter, Is Nominated For BFA by 11:35 am, September 2nd, 2010 We never thought we’d see the day. No, really. We never thought we’d see the day when deigned to update the masses on her whereabouts, thoughts, and dreams in 140 characters or fewer, but it’s finally here. The designer formerly known as Posh Spice has joined Twitter. , Beckham will be tweeting from the handle , news which coincides nicely with her British Fashion Award for Best Designer Brand.Beckham’s nomination is certainly a coup — her brand is up against Burberry, Mulberry, and Pringle of Scotland — but of all the so-called “celebrity lines” we’ve seen launch in the last few years, she’s certainly . More than anything, Beckham appears to be keeping the “celebrity” aspect of it decidedly under the radar, while designing modern, classic styles which no shortage of celebrities seem willing to wear. We wish her luck, but we’re more curious about her tweeting habits. Her first update, from 16 hours ago, reads:Finally!! Leaving for UK tomorrow “Airport is my runway!!!” Can’t wait for fashion week! In love and light x VBCall us crazy, but we can’t quite picture Beckham actually doing the tweeting. Though, there are worse jobs than being paid to follow Victoria Beckham around while feverishly typing mini-missives on a BlackBerry keyboard… right? ?PHOTOS: Rachel Zoe, Georgia May Jagger, And More Turned It Out For Vogue by 11:59 am, April 21st, 2012 Last night, British Vogue hosted a soiree in association with?Vertu to kick off the Vogue Festival. What is the Vogue Festival, you ask? Well, according to , it’s “a unique event?where you can?see and hear?some of the?biggest names?in the fashion industry, including international designers, models, photographers, broadcasters and journalists.” Translation: panel discussions, parties, and pretty, pretty people.Yesterday’s guests of honor were none other than Net-A-Porter’s Natalie Massenet, fashion illustrator David Downton, and designer , who participated in a round table discussion on the topic?”Does Technology Shape Desire?” moderated by British Vogue editor in chief and Vertu president Perry Oosting.?The conversation actually it was rather fascinating, but unfortunately we are one very large pond away from the host city, and thus will have to settle for looking at all of the red carpet pictures from the event.Chanel brand ambassador Caroline Sieber wore Chanel, natch, while?Pixie Geldof rocked a very Eighties Versace-esque black-and-gold look and model/Vogue contributor Laura Bailey sported a fab Burberry number. Also present were many well-dressed British models, actresses, and socialites who you may or may not have heard of.?Our vote for best in show, however, has to go to Erdem, just for being adorable (hey, no one ever said this was a precise science.) Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow. ?10 Important Things We Learned Last Week: February 20-26 by 12:54 pm, February 27th, 2011 1. The royal wedding just isn’t that fancy, though we assume the Philip Treacy-designed will be (maybe there will even be !). Alas, Kate Middleton‘s dress is .2. Beyonce posed in for L’Officiel, but the didn’t see it as such.3. The Burberry show was unreal! The coats, the music, the snow ? we could over and over again.4. Justin Bieber and donated the discarded locks to charity. Relatedly, Dolce & Gabbana have .5. Andrej Pejic modeled? for Zeit Magazin, which he thinks is better than .6. Diane von Furstenberg is embarrassed but not sorry about , though she is embarrassed and sorry a? walked in her fall show.7. In current celebrity scents, Fergie‘s is an Avon best-seller. In upcoming celebrity scents, Dita Von Teese‘s will have “a dash of vulgarity” and Lady Gaga‘s will smell of .8. Stefano Pilati Yves Saint Laurent, despite . So many !9. A preview of the Met‘s Alexander McQueen was shown, and Anna Wintour talked about the designer’s?.10. John Galliano was alegedly involved in an anti-Semitic , so Dior him. Soon after, came to his . In response, Galliano filed a against his accusers. ?10 Important Things We Learned Last Week: July 10-16 by 12:02 pm, July 17th, 2011 1. Emma Watson was a bronzed beauty at the of Harry Potter, and admitted she got once to David Letterman.2. Kanye‘s fashion line was . He might even be at New York Fashion Week.3. The fashion world is really into this whole vagina dentata . No, .4. Kate Middleton made her first in McQueen, but wore something a bit more downmarket on her in the States. Rachel Zoe . Unfortunately, so do . Also, Princess Diana‘s would-be sister-in-law just bought Kate’s .5. Justin Bieber likes and selling an obscene amount of .6. Betty Ford passed away, and we .7. Liv Tyler is shilling for , Rihanna is fronting?, and Elle Fanning is the face of . Relatedly, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley got super naked for .8. Carla Bruni is definitely , and Victoria Beckham to a baby girl.9. Sarah Jessica Parker is suddenly relevant again ? she , Vogue, and with Halston ( left Halston, too).10.?. That is all. ?10 Important Things We Learned Last Week: October 16-22 by 12:08 pm, October 23rd, 2011 1. Zombie Boy put on a lot of makeup in what might be . Meanwhile, Little Miss Eden Wood from Toddlers and Tiaras finally .2. had a ! And she , too! Mazel tov!3. Muammar Gaddafi was when he died. We repeat: Muammar Gaddafi was wearing a wig when he died.4. Miss Piggy got styled by some of the of the moment for InStyle, then had her makeup by the people at MAC. Also she has a new movie coming out, so, you know, start being jealous.5. Lindsay Lohan skipped a probation appointment to , and when she showed up to court, she was wearing some .6. Here’s what you need to know about Versace for H&M: The women’s and home stuff is ! The men’s stuff might just induce .7. says dressed in a when he was a kid. Klein also dressed who went to Elle‘s Women In Hollywood party.8. got for not letting a soap opera use her wedding dresses. Meanwhile, Kate Middleton‘s famous wedding dress didn’t have a on the bridal industry.9. Another online store wrote a product description for a t-shirt suggesting . Everyone got mad, but no one got madder than the people at . Yes. The Tetris Company.10. What’s on the Christmas Wish List for the 1%? and a . Also, Hipster Cop, the star of Occupy Wall Street, thinks the 99% , which is just not true. ?What To Do When People Question Your Fashion Quirks by 2:47 pm, April 2nd, 2010 “I tuck my neckties into my pants — always have and probably always will. It’s a neat tuck, extending only about an inch below the waistline. This practice results in some weird looks, but I dig it, and I see it as a throwback-type thing. Still, it seems that only really old dudes do this, and I’m in my mid-30s. Assuming it’s not the worst offense imaginable, give me a good style-savvy retort to use when people question it. Up until this point, the best I could do was quote Isaac Mizrahi, who I once heard say that everyone should have one goofy style thing they’re known for.” Well, Mr. Mister let me just say, you are awesome. Fashion quirks are only worthwhile if you are willing to own it and keep it consistent which it sounds like you are doing. Quirks keep it interesting. For instance, the guy who wears the impeccable Tom Ford suit but pairs it with striped pink and green socks or the guy who wears the same Woody Allen-esque mustard corduroy blazer with the now retro John Kerry pin every day during the Fall. (I shall not name names). The best advice for those trying to defend their quirks is to not take fashion so seriously and I, personally, think the ‘retro tie tuck’ is a win. As for a style-savvy retort, I give you this. If it is a guy who throws a dig, I would simply reply, “Really? Cause that’s not what your girlfriend said.” Zing! Okay, okay okay. for real. I love the Isaac Mizrahi quote. I would also throw out Coco Chanel’s “Fashion fades, only style remains” — or perhaps even go with “It’s my thing.” I mean, at this point the whole staff at Styleite has your back and we are fashion ninjas. Where can I get an affordable and cute trench for spring? Imma let you finish, Burberry — but Target has the cutest, cheapest trenches of all time. Seriously though: has an array of trenches from for under $35 and they are super cute. While khaki trenches are a staple, for this spring season, the olive green and navy trenches are the way to go. Urban Outfitters has an for only $68. Happy Spring! How do you feel about all these ‘cut out’ bathing suits I have been seeing? Also are one pieces passe?How do I feel about them? Or how do they make me feel? Well, they give me a ton of anxiety in a “I should start doing spin class twice a day” kinda way. But that is neither here nor there. Style factor? They are highly editorial, definitely photograph-able, and very cool. Practicality factor? Ridiculous. A friend of mine was actually showing me her tan from this , and let me tell you: it was not cute. However, I do think there is a time and a place for them, like pool parties or BBQs where your goal is more to have fun than it is to tan. I am a huge fan of one pieces! Passe, puh-lease! More like sashay shante. That retro goodness is making a comeback in a big way. My favorites this season are all from J.Crew — like this adorable and this . Work it girl! E-mail your questions to info@styleite.com!***Jaclyn Johnson is a Los Angeles based style blogger and freelance marketing consultant. She currently blogs at . You can learn more about her at . ?‘William & Kate’ Lifetime Movie Was Semi-Accurate, Mostly Hilarious by 5:49 pm, April 19th, 2011 We could not wait for the premiere of Lifetime’s “William & Kate,” which aired yesterday evening. DVRs were set, snacks were assembled, and tissues were placed close at hand. Though we’re certain that you canceled any and all plans to watch the movie live, here are the highlights, just in case:The cast: Wills and Kate, played by New Zealander Nico Evers Swindell and native Briton Camilla Luddington looked, if not totally spot-on, similar enough to the real-life couple to be convincing. Luddington (despite an uncanny resemblance to NYC Prep’s ) was particulary well-cast ? we couldn’t help but notice that her hair was as full and shiny as the real, live Kate Middleton’s! Not so lucky in the casting department, however, were Princes Charles and Harry. Ben Cross played Prince Charles as a sort of doddering, kindly grandfather type who takes an immediate liking to Kate. Justin Hanlon seemed to think he was playing Prince Harry as “arch,” but it registered more as “evil pixie” in his single scene.The plot: Spoiler alert ? it works out! The movie managed to cover Kate and William’s entire relationship (up to the proposal) in under two hours. It hit all the major milestones: Kate’s infamous sheer dress at the fashion show, the tabloid coverage of the relationship, the breakup, the proposal. Some things were a little too much for us. For example, we’re not 100% sure that the real life William didn’t serenade Kate in a ski chalet, but the scene in the film (he warbles “Lucky,” an original song written specifically for the movie! In front of everyone!) was way too silly to be credible or romantic. Also silly: the proposal scene, in which the green-screened Kenyan sunset was so distracting that we almost didn’t notice that all of their dialogue was totally muted. Come on, movie! We wanna know what (you think) he said!!!!!!The clothes: Impressively, Luddington’s Kate wears several outfits reminiscent of now-iconic outfits worn by the real princess-to-be. There is the aforementioned sheer dress (which, sadly, was not at all reminiscent of the), but she also wears a red coat with a black belt in one scene that closely resembles to celebrate St. Andrews’ 600th anniversary in February, and she wears a beige coat in another scene that looks an awful lot like the she wore in March during a visit to Belfast. They’re obviously not the same pieces, since we doubt that was in Lifetime’s budget ? and we will get to that later ? but they were strikingly close to her real-life ensembles.The set: “William & Kate” was made very quickly… and it shows. St. Andrews, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the United Kingdom, has a dining hall in the film that looks like a multipurpose room in New Jersey. We saw folding tables. Additionally, the exterior shots of Prince William’s home were clearly still photographs of the palace, and the rest of the royal family is absent from the film.Our verdict: Awesomely campy, and terrible in a totally expected and forgivable made-for-TV movie sort of way. The only drawback? It’s done nothing but whet our appetite for the real thing. At least we’ll have to comfort us for the next week and a half! ?CATWALK JUSTICE: WTForever21 Is Back Online by Charles Colman 5:01 pm, July 1st, 2011 After doing , I decided I kind of like the format. Styleite decided it kind of liked the format, too. So this week, we’re trying an experiment: this writer, one Charles Colman of , will brief Styleite readers on the more colorful happenings in fashion law over the past week. Let us know what you think (unless you don’t like it, in which case, you can just go ahead and leave for vacation.)? In , well, ever, Rachel Kane of WTForever21 that she would resume blogging about Forever 21′s “design disasters” despite the retailer’s legally baseless threats about the blog’s supposed trademark and copyright transgressions. Admittedly, I may not be completely objective here, as is representing Kane in this dispute; fortunately, the appears to agree that Forever 21 has no ground to stand on here. As far as what we lawyers call “,” Rachel’s use of Forever 21′s website images to critique the company’s fashion missteps is clearly ; Forever 21′s trademark claims are frivolous for reasons too numerous to mention. Plus, just as a matter of common sense, if consumers can’t use company trademarks in their commentary, or borrow images of a company’s products in order to criticize them, it would be to express one’s opinion on the activities of any corporation. On a side note, as more than one media outlet has observed, there is unmistakable irony in the attempted vindication of (bogus) intellectual property rights by a company that had been called “notorious for ripping off designs.” By the way, if you get a threat from a big, scary corporation for your “gripe site,” head ; unfortunately, this situation is more common than one would hope.? Despite with in April, I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for the who has now been besieged by no fewer than of both tangible and intangible theft. At the risk of pissing off my gracious host, I must take issue with Styleite writer ‘s assertion that Gaga “almost had a right to” the Tumblr account “Amen Fashion” because “it was her song title, after all.” As I explained in my of the already barely-dressed Ke$ha last month for her ridiculous legal threats against the manufacturer of the iPod Nano accessory marketed as “Tik Tok,” trademark claims based on song titles can be a very tough sell.? Louis Vuitton and Burberry scored a in a Canadian court this week against Vancouver- and Toronto-based fakeries (like bakeries, but cooking up counterfeit goods instead of snickerdoodles.) The judgment of $2.5 million (Canadian) in damages may be the largest such award of its kind in Canadian legal history, according to Ashlee Froese, an Ontario-based fashion lawyer whom I on my blog earlier this week.? Finally, at opposite ends of the piety spectrum, Rihanna has been () for allegedly lifting copyrighted imagery to use in her music video for S&M, while The General Council of the Assemblies of God was awarded over $6 million in its suit against a website selling knockoff religious garb that infringed the trademark rights of the Pentecostal Christian ministry. For those still tethered to their desks so painfullly close to the now-imminent long weekend, you can read up on the legal issues in the Rihanna music video dispute (from the first time around); as for the church lawsuit, I’m just going to say — “the thing speaks for itself.” At least, that’s my final word on the subject for now, since my zipcar isn’t going to drive itself out of the city. Happy holiday weekend![This post is for entertainment and informational purposes only, and does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship among any individuals or entities. Any views expressed herein are those of the writer on the particular date of this post, and should not necessarily be attributed to his law firm or its clients.] ?New York Yankees’ WAGs Spend $40,000 In One Hour by 2:25 pm, July 26th, 2010 New York City’s answer to the soccer traipsing around the recent World Cup? Yankees WAGs! This past Thursday, a group of Yankee wives and girlfriends, including Laura Posada (Jorge Posada‘s wife), Erin Robertson (David Robertson‘s wife), and Joanna Garcia (Nick Swisher‘s fiancee), attended a DKNY charity shopping event and runway show. The event, hosted by Kim Girardi, Joe Girardi‘s wife, and DKNY, was held to raise money for Catch 25 Foundation — and raise money it did. These wives lived up to their WAG titles and spent over $40,000 in less than one hour at the store. Now that’s a lot of sweaters.This event is only one in a series of collaborations that DKNY and the New York Yankees will have since signing a earlier this year.[] ?Burberry Group - up 87.7pc to £11.24 IMI - up 82.3pc to 945p Petrofac - up 64.6pc to £15.87 Wolseley - up 64.1pc to £20.46 Antofagasta - 62.5pc to £16.12 Aggreko - up 59.4pc to £14.82 Worst-performing shares: Resolution - down 32.1pc to 234.1p BP - down 22.4pc to 465.55p National Grid - down 9.4pc to 553p Marks & Spencer - down 8.2pc to 369p BAE Systems - down 8.2pc to 330p HSBC - down 8.1pc to 651.1p Capita Group - down 7.3pc to 696.5p GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) - down 6pc to £12.40 Barclays - down 5.2pc to 261.65p Next - down 5.2pc to £19.75?"Admiral’s business model is highly geared to growth yet [the first-half] demonstrated how the company is coming under increasing pressure from softer UK insurance pricing, regulatory change and most importantly in our view, a decision to rein in volume growth," the broker said. "Details of the Direct Line IPO are likely in the next two weeks with the listing to occur by year end. With c.£1bn of new stock available and potential FTSE 100 inclusion, we expect technical selling pressure" in both Admiral and RSA, which slid 1pc today. Elsewhere, reports that Tanzania would review all contracts with oil and gas groups by the end of November weighed on Africa-focused explorer Ophir Energy, which lost 4.1pc on the FTSE 250. The company fell despite unveiling a gas discovery in Equatorial Guinea. ?She cited the looming change at the top of China’s communist party, which had triggered a drop-off in “gift giving” – presumably because the party faithful don’t know who to bribe with their Burberry goodies until they know who’s in charge. The US election, a slowdown in luxury travel and the usual fun and games in the eurozone had also hit sales. But all that sounds pretty vague. And, besides, everything seemed tickety-boo at rival Hermes only a few weeks back when it raised its sales targets, even if it’s yet to report on the past fortnight. Some analysts singled out China as the main culprit. But, if that’s the real reason, Burberry chairman Sir John Peace may have another problem on his hands – he also chairs Standard Chartered, which only last month had “good business momentum” in China. Burberry, which has £300m net cash, is sure all it’s experiencing is a blip – the sort that can be ridden out with a few cost-cuts. And long-term, it’s got new customers coming through as the middle classes expand in emerging economies. But it is a one-brand luxury goods group. And, even after Tuesday’s shocker, it’s still on a glamour rating of 17 times. That looks plenty for now. Even allowing for a shopping spree by Westbrook – and her rebuilt nose. Lonmin's bloody unrest provides dilemma for banks Here's a dilemma for our banks: is it legitimate to profit from dead South African miners? Sadly, that’s not a hypothetical question. But one facing the lenders to , the operator of the Marikana platinum mine where the death toll from the bloody unrest rose to 45 on Tuesday after another man was killed. Operations have pretty much ceased at the mine for a month now, making it nigh on certain that Lonmin will fail its next bank covenant test on September 30. Its two facilities, totalling $940m (£585m), include $700m from a syndicate that includes Britain’s two taxpayer-backed banks, Lloyds and RBS, as well as HSBC and Standard Chartered. The banks are apparently being “constructive” and are likely to agree to waive the covenants for now – but only in return for a fee. Business is business. And Lonmin, which has warned it faces a cash-call, might have breached its covenants anyway. But imagine how a fee might play out with the anti-banking lobby. The phrase “blood money” springs uncomfortably to mind. Old Lady needs carer - knowledge of basic financial matters helpful Wanted. . Knowledge of basic financial matters helpful, as incumbent has proved sometimes bamboozled. Duties include ensuring neither Mr Hester or Mr Horta-Osorio, nor their US banking chums, pull any fast ones with the book-keeping. Salary £300,000. Knowledge of tennis an advantage, though attendance every day during Wimbledon not obligatory. Apply by October 8. Candidates to be screened by Mr Tyrie – until there's none left. alistair.osborne@telegraph.co.uk ?“On the whole,” he writes, “I was surprised how much I liked most of the people who lived nearby. Not just the nobs and the billionaires. We took on two gipsies from the trailer park as cleaners and they fascinated me. The younger one was very pretty… she gave us all her Burberry hand-me-downs. They were kind people.” The older cleaner is “the not-so-pretty gipsy girl”. At its best, James’s prose is clean and poetic. His childlike wonder at the simple things – from herons to heaps of rubble – can be infectious. But more often he’s stating the bleedin’ obvious: “death is a downer”, trees “are a huge part of life in the country” and, in agriculture “everything is driven by cost”. Just as he once thought himself the first pop star to snort coke and shag groupies, so he now thinks himself the first to discover that the English countryside is more than just a hangover cure. And can the man whose band had its biggest hit mocking the rural aspirations of the “” who “thought to himself oops I got a lot of money” really miss the irony? All Cheeses Great and Small by Alex James 300pp, Fourth Estate T £13 (PLUS £1.25 p&p) (rrp £16.99, ebook £9.99) ?Bridgewater’s husband, the artist Matthew Rice, is responsible for several of the pottery’s patterns, and for the past two years has been the company’s managing director. Rice is equally passionate – and outspoken – about the region. Two months ago he publicly criticised Stoke-on-Trent’s 'feckless’ city planning and demanded that the council begin to regenerate rather than tear down the area’s historic buildings and factories. A few miles down the road is the Portmeirion pottery, which was founded 50 years ago by Susan Williams-Ellis, the daughter of the architect Clough Williams-Ellis, who created the village of Portmeirion in north Wales. The pottery’s success is based on its casual earthenware tableware ranges, which account for nearly three quarters of the company’s ceramic business. Williams-Ellis’s most famous designs include the Totem and Magic City coffee services from the 1960s, but Portmeirion’s singular biggest earner is Botanic Garden. The pretty floral-and-leaf-bordered pattern, based on antique botanical illustration plates, has been in production since 1972. When Portmeirion acquired the historic pottery firm Spode in 2009 (at the same time it also acquired Royal Worcester and Pimpernel, and formed the Portmeirion Group) it took the bold step of reversing the region’s manufacturing trend – it actually returned some of Spode’s production from China and Malaysia to Stoke. This was no mere marketing exercise or nod to sentimentality, but a shrewd business move. Today about 30 per cent of the products within Spode’s iconic Blue Italian range are once again being made in the same town where Josiah Spode established his company in 1770, and production is up some 20 per cent. As a result, 39 new jobs have been created and 15 of these have been filled by former Spode employees who had been made redundant when the firm collapsed. On top of this is the belief is that the reinstatement of the Made in England stamp on the bottom of a Blue Italian tea cup will bring back some of the cachet that had been lost. Spode’s Woodland pattern from 1986 is lined up as the next design to be returned to the Stoke production line. 'We are good at production,’ Julian Teed, the creative director of the Portmeirion Group, says. 'And we are prepared as a company to spend money because investment in the factory is imperative if we are going to keep production in Stoke.’In many ways the manufacturing process is the same as it was 200 years ago. In all, 22 pairs of hands will have touched each piece of pottery by the time it is packed and dispatched. But there have been significant technological developments that have increased efficiency and allowed Portmeirion to compete with other markets. In one area of the factory floor, robotic arms acquired from the car industry have been reprogrammed to move heavy ceramic pieces from machine to machine. The company has also been thinking 'green’ recently, which is somewhat challenging in an industry reliant on burning fuels in order to maintain extremely high temperatures. In the past 10 years the Portmeirion Group has cut its carbon footprint by about 40 per cent. While Emma Bridgewater, Portmeirion and Spode illustrate how it is still possible to produce relatively high volumes for the mass market in Stoke, there is an equally significant number of smaller companies that are using the expertise and heritage of the region to produce work for a very different audience. A particularly exciting example is the New English, a Stoke-based company that is more ceramics design house than manufacturer. It was set up in 2009 by Judith and Paul Bishop, who lived locally, had experience in creative and 'innovations’ businesses, and were passionate about the area and its potential. 'We could have bought a factory,’ Paul says. 'But Stoke-on-Trent doesn’t need more capacity. What it needs is more demand.’ So he set about generating it. The idea was to bring original modern designs to a local producer. Bishop sought out one of the most highly regarded fine bone china specialists in the area, Caverswall, to produce the goods. Although its reputation is excellent (it was awarded a royal warrant in 2008 and produces bone china for companies including Liberty, Paul Smith and Burberry) the Caverswall factory and its employees have had to be flexible in order to survive. For most, the working week is three to four days. But the partnership with the New English is providing an important new contribution to the workload. The New English works with new names and independent designers, applying innovative decorations to classic ceramic shapes: Crusades by Terri McGettigan uses the imagery of the crucifixion and the war plane; Inkhead by Florian Hutter is a range that is 'tattooed’ with rose and skull motifs. It may not be the place to look for a dinner service like the one your grandmother used, but it is being snapped up by design and gallery shops around the world. When Harrods decided to develop its own-brand fine bone china range, it turned to the New English to design and produce it. The result is the Knightsbridge collection, decorated in gold and platinum, which launched last month. Like Bridgewater, Paul Bishop believes that the idea of competing with foreign producers on price is wrong. 'We can’t compete with those volumes and maintain high-end production values,’ he says. 'We are not competing with Ikea. The Far East can do great things, but their approach to design has some way to go.’ What each of these companies is proving is that it is possible to make a serious business in Stoke, and it is their ability not only to make but also to innovate that is securing their future. There are other signs of hope amid the uncertainty in the area. A few months ago Burleigh Pottery – whose trademark blue-and-white ceramics are produced in the last working Victorian pottery in Stoke-on-Trent – was bought by the Derbyshire-based firm Denby. The company immediately recruited additional staff and has committed to keeping the factory going. And there is no denying the potential that a royal wedding can hold for any business with a commemorative memorabilia range in mind. Designers at Emma Bridgewater had samples ready within 24 hours of the announcement. Breaking the mould A selection of young designers who are looking to the expertise of the Stoke-on-Trent potteries to help realise their contemporary ceramic creations: Andrew Tanner produces his own collection of ceramics and is also the head of design for the Stoke-based Royal Stafford and Poole Pottery. He was named Young Design Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 by the British Council (). Reiko Kaneko is a tableware and accessories designer who adds a Japanese twist to traditional English fine bone china (). We Love Kaoru Kaoru Parry works with small independent family-run potteries to create her fine bone china pieces. Her work also includes elements that are helping to preserve dying skills in Stoke, such as ceramic flower making (). Katy Potts The appropriately named designer specialises in teapots, some of which are hand-enamelled, a finish that was common in the 1920s and 30s. Each is made in Longton – an area of Stoke known for its makers of collectable teapots ().?110 Marylebone High Street, London. The campus has a prime location in central London, sitting between Hyde and Regents Parks in Marylebone. Ease of entryWith a mix of international students the university accepts a number of different qualifications. Please contact the London campus for further information. Vital statisticsAt AIU London students can study one course and earn two degrees, one British and one American. AIU London design programmes are validated by the University for the Creative Arts to award BA (Hons) degrees in Fashion Design, Fashion Marketing, Fashion Marketing and Design, Interior Design and Visual Communication. The AIU London BA (Hons) and MBA business programmes are validated by Buckinghamshire New University to award BA (Hons) and MBA degrees.Famous Alumni Ronit Zilka, fashion designer Location Transport links The campus is situated between Baker Street and Bond Street tube stations in central London. For full details of the various ways of getting around London, see the , (TFL), website. Local bus: See the bus route map from Baker Street and Marylebone . Train: For specific details on inbound journeys to London, including prices and times, check page. The nearest station to the AIC campus is . Air: The city of London is surrounded by five major airports, providing an extensive network of routes throughout the UK, direct to Europe and worldwide through major hubs. The closest airport to the institution is , however we have provided links below to all major airports in the city. Coach: Competitive fares and travel-card schemes provides students with value for money transport. The earlier you book travel, the cheaper the prices are in and around the city. As well as all of the usual options, London has the oldest underground rail network on offer for fast and convenient travel between all major transport hubs and districts throughout the city. Marylebone has its own station, see details . Town attractions/ ambience The location of the British-based institution automatically puts fashion students studying at AIU at an advantage. Alongside Paris, Milan and New York; London is regarded as one of the 'big four' fashion hotspots and is home to some of the most famous design houses in the world, including Vivienne Westwood and Burberry. As well as being surrounded by large scale versions of the usual city commodities, students at AIU have the opportunity to explore a mass of famous tourist hotspots or simply escape to one of the largest parks in London, Regents Park, which is located within walking distance of the campus. NightlifeAIU London’s campus is situated in the heart of the West End. Student accommodation is a short bus ride from Islington’s Upper Street. Within Marylebone there are plenty of award-winning bars and clubs to choose from, catering for all music tastes. However within a short walking distance, or an even shorter tube, bus, or taxi transfer, you can be at some of the capital's most famous nightclubs. As well as this, London offers plenty of theatre, movie, shopping and live entertainment options, many of which run throughout the night. Facilities and finances AccommodationAIU London's student accommodation (Bloomfield Court) is located on Holloway Road in the desirable North London borough of Islington. Bloomfield Court is a 10 minute walk from Holloway Road Underground Station (Piccadilly line) and approximately a 30-minute journey via public transport to our Marylebone High Street campus. Student rooms have 3/4 size beds and en-suite bathrooms. The rooms are available in blocks of 6, 7, 8 and 9 with a shared kitchen. The property has an onsite laundry, bike storage, common room and outside courtyard seating. There are also a limited number of studio flats available. Tuition feesUndergraduate: £3,000 per term for Home Students (UK & EEA). £4,260 per term for Non-Home StudentsGraduate: £5,580Other costsLocal restaurant meals ranging from: £12 – £20 Average cost of beer: £3.00 Average bottle of wine: £10 Food and toiletries (per week): £30 Education facilitiesAIU London’s library provides electronic access (on and off campus) to its collection catalogue. The library also subscribes to over 150 periodicals that are all related to the school’s academic programmes. The campus also houses lecture rooms, Mac and PC computer laboratories and art, design, photography and video production studios. Contact informationTelephone: 020 7467 5650 Email: admissions@aiulondon.ac.uk Website: Address: 110 Marylebone High Street, London, W1U 4RY • To update any of the information in this profile, please email uniguides@telegraph.co.uk?She reinvented herself as a theatre actress, playing an acclaimed Jane Eyre at the Gate in Dublin last year, and appeared in the Olivier Award-winning Dancing at Lughnasa at the Old Vic in London the year before. She is coming up to her second wedding anniversary to Brett Desmond, a hedge-fund manager and son of the Irish billionaire Dermot Desmond, whom she married (in front of celebrity guests including Bono) at a golf club in County Clare. And, after an unsuccessful solo release left her feeling she never wanted to sing again, she’s recorded a new album. The album in question, 'Lifelines’, is a collection of covers of songs from different eras, from John Lennon to Kirsty MacColl. It takes courage to cover Billie Holiday’s I’ll Be Seeing You, and it takes soul to sing it with as much emotional impact as the lady herself. Corr’s version is shockingly good. She is playing it to me on the top-floor studio of the north London home of her producer, John Reynolds. Afterwards we wander through the high-ceilinged rooms trailed by Reynolds’ enormous mastiff. Corr is feeling relaxed, enthusiastic, and – a word she uses many times during our interview – liberated. Both her part in Brian Friel’s play Dancing at Lughnasa and the role of Jane Eyre required her to be plain. Corr, experiencing an emotion that perhaps only the truly beautiful can understand, was thrilled with the idea of looking drab. Did they have to use special ugly make-up? 'No, I just wore very little make-up. There’s a plain girl in everybody. 'I remember when I did a shoot for the poster for Dancing at Lughnasa, the girl who was doing my hair said, “I’m sorry, this isn't going to be very flattering.” And I thought, “Oh good!” I really wallowed in that lack of vanity.’ Perhaps what was liberating was being freed from the world’s expectations and idea of Andrea Corr. Perhaps it felt good to be seen as capable instead of pretty. Lughnasa is about three sisters in 1930s Donegal. 'I was playing a woman who had a child out of wedlock, which was heavy jelly in Ireland in the 1930s. 'They were generally sent off to work with the Magdalenes – the nuns – or something. They would never see their children for the rest of their lives.’ Corr clearly took to the theatre. 'It was a great experience,’ she agrees. 'We finished [Jane Eyre] at the end of January and now it’s gone forever. That’s what I love about it. It isn’t recorded. Even if it’s a brilliant night it will disappear. 'I thought that was a perfect counterbalance to this world.’ She means the world of music which, with its relentless marketing and categorising, has perhaps not treated her so kindly. 'After the last record [Ten Feet High, which she released in 2007] I was doing other things. I learnt French just because it’s a beautiful language. I wanted to step out of recording so that I could be enthusiastic about singing again,’ she says. Ten Feet High was well received – critically, at least. 'Unfortunately, I don’t think it was heard. I suppose you can’t have everything,’ she says. 'I felt that we made a good record. I was happy with it, as was Nellee Hooper [the producer, who also works with Björk, Gwen Stefani and Madonna]. 'But I don’t think the record company believed in it. They wished that the record was Andrea-turns-into-Karen-Carpenter as opposed to the record that I did, which was a lot more edgy. 'I have had a lot of commercial success in the past. But this record came out when James Blunt was everywhere,’ she says with a faint shrug. Unlike Blunt’s pining love songs, Ten Feet High was raw and confrontational. 'After that I felt disillusioned. I didn’t even sing in the shower anymore. I lost my…’ She pauses as if she can’t quite put the loss into words. 'I thought, “I’m not going to do anything until I have my enthusiasm back, and if I don’t, I don’t. 'I’m just going to be living my life.”’ But then she met the producer (and Sinéad O’Connor’s ex-husband) John Reynolds, about a year after the release of Ten Feet High, at a tribute record recording for the singer and guitarist of the Dubliners, Ronnie Drew. 'John asked to meet me afterwards,’ she says speaking fast and earnestly. 'He said, “I love your voice and I’d love us to work together. There are some songs this generation hasn’t heard that are amazing.” 'I said, “I only do my own songs,” but he talked more about it and I thought, “Actually, it might be a joy to sing and not have someone asking, 'Where are the hits?’” It was liberating. Total freedom to enjoy singing.’ The songs on the record are all 'songs that helped me do something, or songs I fell in love listening to, or helped me get through a break-up. That’s the wonder of songs, the way they can be a vehicle to a past emotion.’ The album takes its name from a Harry Nilsson song. 'It might sound a bit dramatic but songs can be lifelines. 'You hear something and then you don’t feel so alone, you feel you’re not the only one suffering – so maybe you’ll stay alive another day.’ She laughs a little darkly. There’s no doubt that Andrea Corr is tough. I remember her telling me once that she fell down the stairs, fracturing her ankle. 'I didn’t want to feel it,’ she said at the time, 'so I pretended in my head that I didn’t have [the injury].’ When she was a child her mother saw that her head was swarming with nits. 'I didn’t feel anything,’ says Corr. 'I didn’t want them to be there so it was mind over matter. 'I would let my socks fall down so they were under the balls of my feet. I would walk around like that instead of pulling them up. I have a high tolerance for discomfort.’ It seems she’s always wanted to prove that she isn’t fragile. Even when her mother died of a rare lung disease when Corr was 25 her reaction was determinedly stoical. 'I thought, “Nothing is going to hurt as bad as this and I’ll be able to cope with other things better now.” And to a certain extent that’s true. I think things get better. 'Life does throw some hard stuff at you as you get older, much harder. But you are more able to deal with things.’ It’s not for nothing that she chose to cover Donna Summer’s song State of Independence. She has hinted in the past at having felt steered by her siblings during the glory days of the Corrs; perhaps being the youngest made it difficult for her to assert herself. She doesn’t seem to feel that lack of control anymore. 'Those years were the most self-conscious and self-critical of my life,’ she says of the height of the group’s success. 'I was always hiding under my hair.’ The tabloid interest in Andrea became particularly intense after her siblings married and she became the only remaining available Corr. In one short period she was supposed to be seeing Robbie Williams, Mick Jagger and Simon Fuller. None of the stories had any truth to them. 'The Simon Fuller one was a really big spread and I remember going, “Whose story is this? Is that me? Where is that?” They had pictured us both coming out of the Brit awards. 'But there are much harder things in life than what tabloids are writing about you,’ she says. 'If you love what you are doing you cope with that. You can’t live in your own secluded world. If you’re not on the Tube, on the bus doing normal things, how can you relate to people?’ She lives in a flat in west London with her husband. She’s still close to the other Corrs but there’s unlikely to be a revival. 'Sharon put an album out last year and she enjoyed doing that. It’s not all about the commercial success. She has two children. That’s the best creation. Jim’s doing his own thing and has one child. And Caroline has three kids and she’s really happy.’ Does that make her want children? 'Yes. I look forward to that time. I do hope to have children.’ Is she ready? 'I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. And from what I’m told you’re never really ready. You can’t say you’re not ready for ever, so you might as well go for it. If that happens that would be a priority. 'I’m not not allowing it to happen, if you see what I mean. I’m leaving it to He Who Knows Best, and she, my mother. I believe she’s up there working away. I think she looks after me. 'It’s funny,’ she continues with a smile. 'With retrospect I’m glad Ten Feet High didn’t work because I wouldn’t have done this album; the record company would have loved me and I’d be making another album with them and I wouldn’t be having my own creative journey. 'I’d be being manoeuvred. And manoeuvring doesn’t work at all.’ She says she is a cat person. 'We had 11 when I was growing up and I remember feeding the kittens and their eyes were all closed. My husband doesn’t like them; he likes dogs. 'But the thing about dogs – and this is not a good thing – have you noticed when you step on a dog’s foot it sort of looks up and apologises? 'But if you step on a cat they’ll let you know it. I like that edge. I don’t want to apologise if someone stands on me.’ She shakes her head and laughs. 'That would be awful.’ Buy from ?Six million viewers tuned in to BBC One over Christmas to see the adaptation, which starred Gillian Anderson as an unusually youthful Miss Havisham while Douglas Booth, a 19-year-old Burberry model, played the role of Pip. Mr Davies’ planned BBC adaptations of Dombey and Son, one of Charles Dickens’ less-read novels, and of the Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope, were both scrapped in 2009. At the time he blamed a “new breed” of executives who were too populist. Davies’s latest job for the BBC is set during a very different period. He is adapting the Quirke crime novels, written by John Banville under the pen name of Benjamin Black, which are set in 1950s Dublin. Gabriel Byrne will play Black, an alcoholic pathologist with a complicated private life. Davies, who has also written film scripts including for Bridget Jones’s Diary, said he often turned down offers to adapt books. Mr Davies told an audience at the in Cartagena, Colombia: “I’ve declined quite a few – never classics. I’m glad nobody has asked me to adapt Wuthering Heights because I think I would make a mess of it. Everybody makes a mess of it. I think the Bronte Sisters are mad. “I would love it if anyone gave me the job of adapting The Great Gatsby, but nobody ever does.” Asked why the majority of his work is for the small screen, Davies said: “The writer in movies is about as low as you can get and you really are a hired hand. You are paid a lot of money to be treated like dirt. “In television, I get the opportunity to see the rough cut, I get consulted about casting, everything is fine. In a movie, quite often I find that I have been sacked from the job and they haven’t even bothered to tell me.” Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, an anniversary that is being celebrated with a series of cultural events. The British Library and the Museum of London are mounting Dickens exhibitions, while the British Film Institute is running screenings of . ?In Tuesday's Autumn Statement, the Government announced it would review the apprenticeships system to explore how to make the scheme more useful for employers. The scheme was criticised recently after it emerged thousands of new apprenticeship places went to existing employees over 25, instead of creating new jobs for young workers. Experts have also warned the Government's targets mean nothing unless employers actually ramp up the number of schemes they offer – currently just one in eight companies runs the scheme. Job vacancies and at ?"Architects were upset because all they have been doing is glass boxes, and agents still want floor-to-ceiling glazing because it's what they are used to and it's what they prefer to show chief executives looking round a space," Mr Shuttleworth told Building magazine."Companies no longer want to be seen spending that type of money on their HQ building, as it doesn't look good. Buildings need to reflect the time they are in. "Efficiency is the most important thing. We've been designing more and more complicated glass boxes for 30 years, to try and reduce energy load … rather than just accepting it should be a solid wall with a window in. "That would be much more efficient, much cheaper and easier to maintain."The architect criticises Shard London Bridge, which, with 72 floors, will be the tallest building in Europe when it is completed next year. "I just don't get it," Mr Shuttleworth said of the entirely glass skyscraper, which was designed by Renzo Piano, the Italian."I don't understand it. I was there the other day and I can't see how they are going to make it work, environmentally. "It's, basically, glass all the way around, and extra-white glass, too, not the green glass we usually use, so it's even higher light transmission."?Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, said: "The Adzuna survey data clearly indicates that men & women in Britain today have very different career aspirations. With clear evidence that there is a positive link between women in leadership positions and business performance, the data suggests that we could be doing more to encourage young women in Britain to aspire to great things & positions of seniority in the workplace." A report earlier this year revealed mothers are being held back from top jobs, however. The study, from the Cranfield School of Management, found while more women are being appointed to board-level roles, the : that many women cannot climb the career ladder as many feel they have to give up work to look after their family. The Government is trying to address the barriers women face in the workplace. Earlier this year in the Queen's Speech, the Coalition announed that to care for their children under family-friendly laws. From 2015, mothers will be able to return to work earlier and transfer their maternity leave to their partners under moves to help both parents share the burden of child care. The Coalition is also looking to offer more opportunities for flexible working which parents can request throughout their son or daughter’s childhood. However, some equality groups have raised concerns that will force mothers to return to work earlier than they want to, as employers will lean on them to get them back to work sooner as the changes would mean they no longer are entitled to a minimum of 26 weeks. Is childcare the number one problem holding women back in the workplace, or are many women simply content to look after their children at home? Are women more or less career-hungry than men? Despite a number of high-profile women at the top of some of the UK's best-known companies - Carolyn McCall at easyJet, Dame Majorie Scardino at Pearson, and - there remains a significant lack of women in Britain's boardrooms. But Dr Ruth Sealy, of Cranfield, warned at the launch of her report that employers and politicians underestimated just how big an issue the cost of childcare was when trying to seat more women at the top table. "Childcare is prohibitively expensive. From a societal point of view it is still an issue," she said. "Childcare is a red herring at board director level but at the age when women want to get back to work [after childbirth] it's a massive thing. People seem to not realise how massive a thing it is." Picture gallery: ?The footballer did a photo-shoot in a bid to attract buyers but instead it only attracted ridicule for its gold-panelled ceilings and monogrammed gates and carpets bearing his 'n' hers initials. The Grade II listed building was built in the 18th century and sits on nine acres of grounds near Burnley. The attention it attracted failed to generate any legitimate interest initially, and the Nevilles were forced to reduce the price to £3.5 million just six months later. But the house eventually sold to local businessman Matthew Greensmith for £2.6 million in cash. ?"Now that the central bank action has happened investors are finding that they have been left to their own devices. The focus is very much back on Europe and when the bond yields of the worrisome countries are spiking again you’re going to see the party fizzle out rapidly," said Simon Denham of Capital Spreads. The more cautious tone meant the banks were weaker, with Barclays down 4.2 and Royal Bank of Scotland 4pc worse off. The move by Australia to lower forecasts for iron ore revenues also weighed on mining shares and Vedanta Resources lost 4.2pc while Evraz shed 3.9pc in early trading. Among the mid-cap stocks, Ocado was the worst-performer and fell 5.8pc ahead of a trading update on Thursday. ?Secondly, those UK companies will be exposed to economies and industries that are growing faster than those in the UK. The UK is expected to grow by just 0.8pc this year. More importantly, these companies will be exposed to the dollar – and if my theory is correct, that is due to strengthen. A strong dollar means that overseas earnings recorded in dollars translate into more pounds sterling, and that helps the earnings of UK companies. So we are likely to get upgrades in estimates of profits – and that is what makes share prices go up. It is no coincidence that the most upgraded stocks for earnings estimates year-to-date include stocks from the sectors mentioned above. Earnings expectations for these sectors this year have been increased by between 4pc and 13pc, according to Artemis’s calculations. So why is the dollar likely to appreciate? It’s all about fracking – or a lot of it is. Fracking (recently given the go-ahead in the UK) is a new way by which Americans are extracting gas and, increasingly, oil from previously unexploitable reserves hidden beneath the earth in shale. It uses water pumped at very high pressure deep below the ground to release untapped hydrocarbons. This has been so successful that the US gas price has fallen dramatically in the past year. The US now has a “gas glut” thanks to fracking. Together with the success of fracking for oil in parts of the US, the import of energy into the US is likely to fall, and with that so is the balance of payments deficit. Some commentators argue that the US will be self-sufficient in energy by 2020. It’s not difficult to see why. The US demand for oil is 19m barrels per day and domestic supply is 8m barrels per day. The balance for the moment is made up by imports. The Bakken Field in North Dakota entered 2012 producing 500,000 barrels of oil per day and, from what we are led to believe, there are more fields out there to explore. The US only needs to find 20 more fields like The Bakken. In addition, although a tough one to call, an increase in the US domestic supply of oil may weaken the oil price (although a different beast), just as it has the gas price. History tells us that a weak oil price strengthens the dollar. The IMF recently upgraded US GDP to 2.1pc and this may mean the Fed increasing interest rates a bit – also good for the dollar. Quite apart from these factors, the lack of further QE in the US is also likely to help things significantly – unlike the potential QE that may be forced upon Europe in response to its continuing financial crisis. So, with the eurozone set to decline by 0.3pc this year and there only being a smidgen of growth in the UK, it really makes sense to be betting on overseas growth, overseas earnings and the dollar. There are plenty of stocks in the UK to exploit this opportunity. The question remains: which ones? Tim Steer is a partner at Artemis LLP and manages the Artemis UK Growth Fund?@danielmaier Alongside the 'Dead of The Year' reel, it would be lovely if they did a 'Hurray, They're Still Alive!' one 22.59 And that's our lot. Typically eloquent closing remarks from Stephen Fry remind us of the escapist role that film can play in even the darkest times. Ain't that the truth. We then get a whistle-stop round-up of the lower-profile awards presented earlier this evening - mainly more recognition for Hugo, Senna and, naturellement, The Artist. The Iron Lady gets Best Make-Up and Hair - you mean that blonde beehive wasn't natural? 22.54 Lovely tributes paid on films by Christopher "Saruman" Lee and Robert De Niro (yes, we're talking to you), before a montage of some of the finest films of the past four decades: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Th King Of Comedy, Casino, Gangs Of New York, The Departed... Quite the CV. And the Bafta Fellowship, of course, goes to... Martin Scorsese. The diminutive director arrives on stage to a huge ovation and makes a lovely speech, full of the genuine love of film that informs and characterises his own great work. He pays tribute to Powell and Pressburger, and generally plays a blinder. Well done sir. 22.49 And now the evening's last golden mask gong: the Bafta Fellowship, to be presented with appropriate gravtias by venerable great actor Max Von Sydow. Rather inappropriate to play him on with Coldplay, though. Give the guy some dignity. 22.47 And the Bafta for Best Film goes to... The Artist. No surprises there after the night it has had but still lovely to see. The silent black and white film was the unanimous bookies' favourite for the big award. Can it translate its huge success here to the Oscars later this month? 22.44 Time for the penultimate award, Best Film, presented by an A-list Aussie duo of Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe. The pair perform some repartee that, surprisingly for one of these things, isn't too painful. Well played, chaps. 22.42 And the Bafta goes to... Jean Dujardin for The Artist! Of course it does and rightly so. A note-perfect performance. Uffie the dog will be wagging his tail with pride. Another thoroughly charming speech from a Frenchman too. Dujardin even namechecks William Webb Ellis and Benny Hill. Unfortunately, a line of scantily-clad women don't chase him off-stage, while slapping him on the head. 22.39 And now the gong for Best Actor, presented by Penelope Cruz. Another tightly contested one. Could Oldman, Fassbender or Clooney steal it from under The Artist's silent nose? 22.38 Streep gives a nod to her Lincolnshire ancestry at the end of her speech, there. She's one of ours. A bit. 22.35 And the winner is... Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady. Thatcher, Thatcher, Bafta snatcher. The lady's not for turning this award down. You can have those headlines tomorrow, tabloids. It's Streep's first Bafta for precisely 31 years. She takes to the stage in a black Vivienne Westwood gown with power-shoulders and, shall we say, some impressive cantilevering. Breathless, luvvie-ish speech from La Streep. 22.33 And now one of the biggies. Best Actress, presented by last year's Best Actor winner Colin Firth, who notes that he's been "grievously overlooked" for this one. Ooh, Mister Darcy. 22.31 And the Bafta goes to... Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist. Bradley Pitt The Younger does a fine job at pronouncing that surname, as Michel goes on to mention. 22.28 These films about the Best Picture nominees are rather like glorified trailers aren't they? Still, ther're doing a decent job of building anticipation for the big gong later on. Drive getting the treatment now. Very cool. And our next presenter is some ugly character actor called Brad Pitt, dishing out the gong for Best Director. 22.24 Now the award for Best Adapted Screenplay, presented by - female population sit bolt upright on their sofas - John Hamm aka Don Draper from Mad Men. He looks as dashing as ever despite his face almost being obscured by an outsized bow tie. and the Bafta goes to... Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, its second major award of the evening. Lovely to see. Let's hope Peter Straughn's got enough speeches prepared. Neat gag there where he thanks The Artist for not being adapted from a book. Then a touching tribute to his late wife Bridget O'Connor, who we've just seen on the Those We Have Lost montage. A sobering moment. 22.21 Time for the traditional montage of those in the film industry we've lost over the past year. Jane Russell, Ken Russell, Nicol Williamson, Hugh Martin, Ben Gazzara, Shelagh Delaney, Steve Jobs, Sidney Lumet, Liz Taylor and, hastily added, Whitney Houston... RIP. 22.13 Next up is the golden mask for Best Documentary, presented by actor Paul Bettany. And the award goes too... Senna, the astonishing film about the Formula One - not that you need to be a motorsport fan to love it, as I can testify. Great documentary with lots of v-va-vroom. 22.00 And now the award for Outstanding British Contribution for Cinema. It goes to, of course... John Hurt, a well-deserved award after decades of exemplary acting in all sorts of landark films. Hurt comes up on stage ery humbly. That's either his chest bursting with pride or an alien's about to explode out. Touching speech that even seems to move host Stephen Fry. 22.11 And now the award for Orange Rising Star. A slightly controversial one, this, as the shortlist was all-male - as if there aren’t any promising actresses around. And the winner is... Adam Deacon - the Hackney-born talent who rose to fame in Kidulthood and Adulthood, then went onto co-writing, directing and star in Brit comedy Anuvahood. Slight surprise winner but very well deserved. 21.49 A scarily strong shortlist, but the winner is.... Octavia Spencer for The Help. Hurrah! She seems properly surprised, which is refreshing, not to mention slightly out of breath after dashing to the stage. Bless her. Worthy winner. 21.45 Best Supporting Actress now, presented by Harry Potter. Sorry! Daniel Radcliffe, the boy wizard. Oops, I mean, the proper actor. 21.43 And the Bafta goes to... Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Deservedly so and hopefully not the classy, beautifully nuanced and superbly acted spy film's last moment in the spotlight this evening. Popular winner in the room. 21.40 And now the cockle-warming, heart-stirringly patriotic gong for Outstanding British Film, presented by a pair of Bond girls whose names I won't attempt to spell, if you don't mind awfully. Blimey, we've turned out some gems this past year. 21.36 And the Bafta goes to... Hurrah, Christopher Plummer. Who isn't there but sends a touching little notelet. 21.34 And now the award for Best Supporting Actor, to be awarded by Helena Bonham Carter who gets a gloriously verbose intro from the thesaurus-swallowing Fry. Christopher Plummer is my choice, but Jonah Hill and Kenneth Branagh are in the building, if that means anything. 21.32 One of the nominees there reminds me of my favourite cinematic joke du jour... A War Horse walks into a bar. The barman asks, "Why the long film?"21.30 The amazing Viola Davis from The Help awards the Bafta for handsomest film to... Hugo, the ravishing Martin Scorsese film. 21.29 Good pop at the Hollywood branch of Bafta by Fry, followed by a clip of tonight's hot favourite The Artist. And now it's the award for Production Design. 21.24 And the Bafta for *deep breath* Outstanding Debut By A British Director, Producer or Writer goes to... Paddy Considine and Diarmid Scrimshaw for Tyrannosaur. A popular winner in the room, especially as the marvellous Olivia Colman was tragically overlooked for a Best Actress nod. Well-deserved for a visceral, frequently hard-to-watch but brilliant film. 21.20 And now it's the gong for Outstanding Debut, presented by two stars from superb comedy Bridesmaids. Awkward skit alert. 21.18 And the Bafta for Special Visual Effects goes to *cue whizzy little gold mask icon*... Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows. How absolutely wizard. A British win. 21.15 Perhaps I spoke too soon, as Fry refers to "that dread bitch whore, time" and "Usain bleeding Bolt". That's more like it, sir. First award is for Special Visual Effects, to be presented by Cuba Gooding Jr - wearing a suit by Hackett, fashion fans. Gooding makes the first reference of the evening to Whitney Houston, who sadly died last night. 21.12 Montage o'clock. The magic of the movies right there. Not a vintage monologue from Fry, I didn't think. He seemed nervous and playing it rather safe. 21.10 Brad Pitt didn't look too delighted about being asked to blow a kiss into the camera there. He's a SERIOUS ACTOR, you know. 21.08 Sir Fry look very dapper and welcomes "lords, iron ladies and assorted media scum". He makes a wisecrack about how this is the most eargerly awaited global event in London this year. Sadly, there's no cut to Sebastian Coe. Some impressive stats being wheeled out about what a great year it's been for the British film industry. Makes you proud doesn't it? 21.05 Tom introduces Stephen Fry, who enters to much applause. Clearly big QI fans in Hollywood. 21.04 Wasn't Shirley Bassey available? 21.02 We kick off with Tom Jones crooning the Thunderball theme tune, to celebrate the Bond film's 50th anniversary. Still got a fine set of pipes, boyo. 21.00 And we're off! Red carpet montage. Claudia Winkleman voiceover. Early nod to The Artist there. An omen? 20.59 OK darlings, eyes and teeth. We're about to go to the Royal Opera House in London's glittering Covent Garden for the awards... 20.55 Five minutes until showtime. Miss Piggy was on the red carpet, interviewing celebrities. The publicity for The Muppets movie has been relentless hasn't it? Kermit and that porcine glamourpuss have been inescapable this past fortnight. The frog even introduced Football Focus yesterday. Very clever PR. Wonder who's, ahem, pulling the strings? 20.45 How's Top Gear/Call The Midwife/supper/the papers working out for you? Fifteen minutes til curtain up on the Beeb. Plenty of time to don a dinner suit or designer frock. Or, you know, not. 20.34 Half an hour before the BBC One broadcast, hosted by Sir Stephen Of Fry with his velveteen tones and gorgeous way with a word. The Artist is still hot favourite to sweep most of the gongs, but I've got sneaky feelings for Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Christopher Plummer and Octavia Spencer in the actorly categories. How about you? 20.23 And I agree with this too... @nevpierce Lack of a live Baftas broadcast is rubbish. The BBC should make this an event, as Sky does the Oscars. They've got enough channels 20.19 And this... @taraking Edith Bowman starstruck and babbling about her thermal undies to George Clooney. How embarrassing 20.15 Time for a mini Tweet round-up... @jonronson Rooting for Peter Straugn to win a Bafta for Tinker Tailor, as would you be if you had a soul inside that body of yours 20.10 Must say, it was nice to see some of the stars of Downton Abbey on the red carpet alongside the Hollywood set. It's easy to get carried away with the glamour of cinema but let's not forget that we make some of the finest television in the world here in Britian. Something to be proud of. Sorry for that sincere interlude. Normal facetious service will resume shortly. 20.03 By the way, in case you were wondering, I'm wearing checked shirt by someone or other, trousers by Levi Strauss, shoes by Converse and socks by Marks & Spencer. If only I had access to E! channel's stiletto cam, I could prove the latter two. You'll have to take my word for it. 19.59 And that's it for now on BBC Three. We now have an hour's wait for the BBC One broadcast of the ceremony to start at 9pm. So please let me know your thoughts so far by tweeting me (@michaelhogan), emailing michaelhogan100@hotmail.com or leave some words of wisdom in the comments box below. I'll report them while we wait. 19.58 Brad Pitt now, nominated for Best Actor for Moneyball. He slips in a cricket reference, which makes him fine by me. 19.56 Edith is conducting her interviews in front of a giant Bafta mask. Is it just me or did its eyes move a moment ago? 19.55 And here's gorgeous George himself. Phwoar. Again. Lovely chap, though. Put your tongue away and keep it together, Edith. 19.53 Last of the Best Film nominees now, magnificent family drama The Descendants, starring George Clooney. Phwoar. Etc. 19.51 A fashion montage now. Inb short: everyone looks fabulous. Here's the brilliant Michelle Williams, star of My Week With Marilyn and probably Meryl Streep's main rival for Best Actress tonight. She's wearing a custom-made dress by high street brand H&M, amazingly. Well done her. 19.50 I know what you're thinking: where's Uffie the dog? Well the adorable Jack Russell has apparently been ill recently so has temporarily retired from promotional duties. Feeling a little ruff, eh? A bit pawly? Get well soon, Uffie. 19.48 A look at The Artist now, the ravishing homage to the black-and-white silent movie era that has an incredible 12 nominations tonight. We may be hearing about this film later... 19.47 A chat with the lovely Viola Davis now. She's wearing Valentino but, get this, made from recycled bottles as part of Livia Firth's Green Carpet Challenge. I couldn't see any wine bottle labels or R White's Lemonade lids so I can't help but feel disappointed and cheated, frankly. 19.44 A look at the next nominee now, The Help. In which white people liberate black people from racial discrimination. Go white people! 19.43 Oh I see. The men don't get asked what they're wearing. Tut tut. 19.42 A chat with Michael Fassbender, nominated for Best Actor for Shame. I happen to know he's wearing Armani. Wonder if he's about to admit that very fact? 19.41 Christina reveals that she's wearing Vivienne Westwood and that her co-star Ryan Gosling is "a really nice person". Hold the front page! 19.39 Second of the Best Picture nominees now: noir heist thriller Drive. It's the rank outsider but immensely cool. Prepare for Christina Hendricks from Mad Men talking about it on the red carpet. Her face is up there. 19.37 Harry Potter now. Sorry, Daniel Radcliffe. He's moved on from that role, you know. Oh yes. TEN POINTS HUFFLEPUFF! Sorry, it just slipped out. 19.36 Incisive questioning from Edith there. "It must be exciting? Congratulations." Woodward and Bernstein, watch out. 19.35 Time for the first look at the Best Film nominees and it's our own Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It's up for 11 awards tonight, second only to The Artist's 12 nominations, and should win a few thanks to the partisan British vote. Rightly so. What a story. What a cast. 19.33 Eddie Redmayne from My Week With Marilyn and TV's Birdsong on the red carpet. He's a nicely-spoken young man who says things like "Ken Branagh" and is wearing velvet Burberry. Partly because, as a Burberry model, he's paid to. 19.31 It's Edith Bowman! Who seems to have dressed for a Nativity Play! 19.30 As the announcer man says: it's a MASSIVE night for UK cinema. Even though The Artist will probably win everything and it's Americans who will monopolise the column inches. MASSIVE. 19.28 Switching to BBC Three any minute now. Please come with me. It'll be fun and there might be nibbles. 19.26 Oh and literally everyone is honoured and excited to be here. Who knew? 19.25 Here's a few things I've learned so far from following the red carpet inanities: George Clooney works the crowds like a pro and renders all journalist lobotomised. Brad Pitt looks long-haired and a tad greasy but is sat at the end of the second row - an indication he might be a winner? Jean Dujardin from The Artist is thoroughly charming but no TV presenter can pronounce his name. Celebrities generally are TINY. 19.20 Inside the Royal Opera House, the ceremony is underway and Sir Stephen Of Fry is doing his opening monologue. The BBC coverage is two hours behind, so be careful if you're planning to follow that and don't want spoilers on the winners. Turn off Twitter. Avoid news channels and radio. Just stay with me right here. Where it's safe. And warm. And sounding slightly creepy. Apologies. There's a red carpet show over on BBC Three shortly, so let's watch that together and discuss what everyone's wearing. 19.15 In the interests of fairness, the red carpet reports on BBC News 24 weren't much better. More stilted than, well, someone on actual stilits. 19.12 The one good thing about the E! coverage is their "stiletto cam" - a rather grand name for what's essentially a camera placed on the floor - so celebrities can show off what shoes they're wearing. This is Pulitzer Prize-worthy stuff. I hope Panorama is taking note. 19.10 So has anyone been following the red carpet coverage on the E! channel? It was live at 5pm and is being repeated (as if it's live, confusingly) right now. And blimey, it's awkward. Fearne Cotton and Dermot O'Leary seem nervy and starstruck. There's frantic filling - in fact, at one point a mic was left on and either Dermot or critic James King murmured "that's what's I beleive they call filling". Embarrassing. 19.05 Hello! Just a bit of housekeeping because some people have asked: this blog is a view from the sofa, NOT from inside the ceremony. So if you're following it on the BBC, there will be no spoilers here. Clear? GOOD! I'm glad we got that sorted out and, you know, remained friends. 19.00 Welcome everyone to the Telegraph's live coverage of the 2012 I'm Michael and I'll be live blogging the entire evening, from 7pm to 11pm. I'd love to hear your thoughts, so please chip in on Twitter, where I'm @michaelhogan, by emailing michaelhogan100@hotmail.com or by using the comments box down below. There's 30 minutes to go until the stars start arriving at Covent Garden's Royal Opera House for what promises to be a glamorous and gripping awards ceremony. TV red carpet coverage is on the E! channel right now, before switching to BBC Three at 7.30pm. There's an hour's break while attendees pretend to eat their dinner and practise their gallant loser smiles, before the main event on BBC One at 9pm, hosted by Sir Stephen Of Fry. Almost all the high-profile showdowns will this year feature British talent, with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy largely to thank for that. But The Artist, which pays homage to the black-and-white silent film era, might well dominate proceedings as it did at the recent Golden Globes. According to , the current odds for the main categories are: Best Film: 1/6 The Artist, 5/1 Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy, 7/1 The Descendants, 16/1 The Help, 20/1 Drive Leading Actor: 4/5 George Clooney (The Descendants), 9/4 Gary Oldman (Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy), 11/4 Jean Dujardin (The Artist), 20/1 Michael Fassbender (Shame), 28/1 Brad Pitt (Moneyball) Leading Actress: 2/7 Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady), 4/1 Viola Davis (The Help), 6/1 Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn), 20/1 Tilda Swinton (We Need To Talk About Kevin), 25/1 Berenice Bejo (The Artist) ?Mr Davies’s planned BBC adaptations of Dombey and Son, one of ’ lesser-read stories, and of the Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope, were both scrapped in 2009. At the time, he accused the BBC of being too populist. His latest job for the BBC is set during a very different period. He is adapting the Quirke crime novels, written by the Irishman John Banville under the pen name of Benjamin Black and set in 1950s Dublin. Gabriel Byrne, the star of the acclaimed drama In Treatment, will play the eponymous lead character, an alcoholic pathologist with a complicated private life. Mr Davies, who has also written film scripts including Bridget Jones’s Diary, said that he often turned down offers to adapt books. He told an audience at the in Cartagena, Colombia: “I’ve declined quite a few – never classics. I’m glad nobody has asked me to adapt Wuthering Heights because I think I would make a mess of it. Everybody makes a mess of it. I think the Bronte sisters are mad. “I would love it if anyone gave me the job of adapting The Great Gatsby, but nobody ever does.”Asked why the majority of his work was for the small screen, Mr Davies said: “The writer in movies is about as low as you can get and you really are a hired hand. You are paid a lot of money to be treated like dirt. “In television, I get the opportunity to see the rough cut, I get consulted about casting, everything is fine. In a movie, quite often I find that I have been sacked from the job and they haven’t even bothered to tell me.”Dickens was born on Feb 7, 1812, an anniversary that is being celebrated with a series of cultural events. The British Library and the Museum of London are putting on Dickens exhibitions, while the British Film Institute is running screenings of classic Dickens film adaptations. Television adaptations and the bicentennial celebrations have led to a marked rise in sales of Dickens novels. Sales of Great Expectations doubled in the week the drama was sold — the highest weekly figure since records began in 1998, according to The Bookseller, the trade magazine. In January, more than three million people watched BBC2’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a story that Dickens left unfinished when he died in 1870. Gwyneth Hughes, the scriptwriter, developed her own ending for the story. WH Smith and Amazon.co.uk have also reported increased sales of his books. ?Ben Martin Ben Martin is a Telegraph City reporter and writes daily market reports, covering which companies are in demand with investors and which are out of favour. He was previously a reporter at Bloomberg News.?A cast blessed with devastating good looks, including Burberry model Eddie Redmayne and In Bruges’s Clémence Poésy, sensitively plays out Faulks’s tale of a love affair that straddles the cataclysm of the Great War. Scriptwriter Abi Morgan, who also has two major films opening this month with The Iron Lady and Shame, has spliced the love story that takes place largely before the war, in 1910, with episodes from the conflict itself. These sharp shifts from the lyrical and languid scenes of hero Stephen Wraysford (Redmayne) and his French love Isabelle Assaire’s (Poésy) romance, to the mud and blood of the trenches where Stephen later finds himself, movingly juxtapose the optimism of passion with the despair of war. “This book is about the most extreme things you can experience in life,” comments director Philip Martin. “Either in love or war, everything is 10 out of 10.”?The FTSE 100 edged 22 points lower as nervous investors looked ahead to tomorrow's key ruling from the German constitutional court on bailout funding, with early fears the decision could be delayed initially weighing on sentiment. A profit warning from Burberry, which was the stand-out blue-chip faller, also had traders concerned about the implications for the Chinese economy. ?“Brands are royally screwing up on social media. People use Facebook to talk to people, not to talk to brands. Those brands who continually fail to get this are tomorrow’s spam and will be screened out… forever,” says Roger Warner, Managing Director of Content & Motion, the company behind Majestic Wine’s recent award-winning social campaign. In many ways this attitude is reminiscent of the mobile industry five years ago. Brands and agencies at the time knew they should be doing something in this new channel but were only using it as an adjunct to their other marketing efforts, not as an integrated element. Five years on it’s clear that those who incorporated it into a clear strategy are the winners, not least in the mobile ad sector where consolidation means companies are now being sold for hundreds of millions of pounds. At this point it’s difficult to see how social media is going to make billionaires of anybody. Big retail brands such as Gap and J C Penney have recently and to great fanfare announced the closure of their Facebook stores. Others are scaling back and (some would say wisely) using the mobile marketing channel as a more effective way to grow their revenues. Jim Dowling is Managing Partner at Cake, an agency that handles social media for the likes of Sony and IKEA who believes that the relatively low-cost of social media campaigns may be to blame for brand and customer disillusion. “It’s [still] new. One effective way of agencies taking money off clients is to play on the client paranoia that says ‘we must do something’ with this new thing social media. It leaves them vulnerable to a bloke with MacBook walking in waving a Starbucks logo, saying ‘you could be as good as them’. If he's only asking for 20 grand, it's worth a punt,” he says. Compared to the cost of marketing campaigns across billboards, TV and film this is undoubtedly true. Others, however, think this is a marketing issue, and not purely a social play as Chris Binns, Managing Partner & Head of Planning at MediaCom UK explains. “People do feel overwhelmed by the tyranny of choice (via social media) and are looking for curators to help them smooth over this complexity. The truth is that marketing has failed these people; it has failed to systematically try and understand what value a given brand can create in someone's life and then act on that in a distinctive manner,” he says. Others are more succinct. “If social media users even perceive 'brand messages', something's gone wrong. However, if you give them something good such as an amazing film, a laugh or money off, then you might just be rewarded with a Like, or even love,” says Graham Hodge, Head of Branded Content at LBi. Then there’s the new kid on the social block, Pinterest, yet another social channel that brands (probably) need to engage with, but are already struggling to understand properly. “Consumers want great content and Pinterest enables them to access that great content and share it too. But while I’m finding out I’m about to be Maid of Honour for my best friend and my friends are liking it, a fashion brand is telling me that they have yet another sale on. Cue social-junk fatigue,” says Heather Healy, Head of Social Media at Stickyeyes. So, referring back to the monkey analogy at the beginning of this piece, it really is a jungle out there. Lots of noise, lots of messages, lots of media and a lot of money being spent. Time will tell whether it’s the old adage that if you pay peanuts then you indeed get monkeys, but treating social media as a form of ‘gorilla’ marketing is probably not only a pun too far, it is probably the worst way to treat a customer. ?When the company floated in July 2002 at 230p, it was valued at £1.15billion. The company is now worth £1.93billion. Nick Hollingworth, chief executive of Austin Reed, another traditional UK fashion label, said: "I'm surprised by her going. I am full of admiration for Burberry. They took a brand that was only used on umbrellas and macs sold to Japanese and turned it into one of the leading global brands. If only we could do similar things for our business." A spokesman for Burberry refused to confirm Ms Bravo's departure. She said: "We've always said that Rose Marie's role would evolve. Indeed it has evolved over the last couple of years as the board has strengthened." Finance director Stacey Cartwright, appointed last year, has taken on the extra responsibility of improving the company's supply chain. She is one of the most likely candidates to take over from Ms Bravo, along with operations director Brian Blake, who joined from fashion house Gucci last year. Ms Bravo, an American who was previously president of Saks Fifth Avenue department stores in New York, has earned £10.6m in salary and bonus and at least £12.7m worth of shares since floating the company. Next summer she will be entitled to pick up a further 2.5m shares, worth £10.1m as part of an executive share plan. She will also be entitled to options, which would generate a profit of £548,000. In December GUS, the retail conglomerate that still controls 66pc of Burberry's shares, plans to demerge its Experian credit checking business as well selling its Burberry shares. Richard Ratner, analyst at Seymour Pierce, said most GUS shareholders were not the same holders of Burberry stock. "I'm worried that there will be a lot of Burberry shares sloshing around in December," he said.?Labour-bashing is an easy sport and no longer has value. Except, that is, for the lessons those years can teach us. Luckily, companies are not now calling on the Coalition for financial aid (although JLR did point to the benefit of low interest rates yesterday). Balance sheets are healthy. But they are pleading for grown-up policies on how the economy is allowed to work, so-called supply-side reforms. These are numerous but chief among them is education. The state sector in particular is failing to provide children with an education relevant to the world we live in. Unskilled jobs in this country are becoming ever scarcer. Universities need to work more closely with business to produce suitably educated graduates, although this process is likely to be encouraged by the reforms on how courses are funded.Employers such as JLR and Burberry don't want government to provide them with the nation's money – they want government to provide them with the nation's talent.?Explorer-with-a-difference, David de Rothschild crossed the Pacific in a catamaran made of plastic bottles to draw attention to pollution by the material, which, it is estimated, kills at least a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles each year. The 31-year-old scion of the banking family and nine companions made the 8,000-mile journey in 128 days after he was inspired by a report on the state of the oceans by the United Nations Environment Programme. Some 12,500 plastic bottles went to make up the sailing boat, with a mast made of a reclaimed aluminium irrigation pipe, and electronic navigation equipment powered by solar panels, windmills, turbines towed behind it in the sea and even a “bicycle generator”. He plans to start “Plasitiki Pod” programmes on the ecological issues affecting the islands – such as in Kiribati, Western Samoa and the New Hebrides – visited on the voyage.David NichollsDavid Nicholls’s novel One Day has been the word-of-mouth hit of 2010. Since its release in the summer of last year, the book – which follows the tangled romance of Emma and Dexter, who meet every year on July 15 to compare their lives’ divergent paths – has been passed round offices, taken up by book clubs and recommended online (nearly 300 five-star Amazon ratings). It sold 50,000 in hardback and when it came out in paperback early this year sold 30,000 copies a week. Forty-four year old Nicholls, who works in the unpretentious yet smart mould of Nick Hornby and Jonathan Coe, has managed to pull at the heartstrings of British readers – both male and female. One Day is set for further success next year, when the film version starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess is released. So if 2010 was the year David Nicholls broke through, expect him to be even more famous this time next year.Phoebe PhiloThis has most definitely been Phoebe Philo’s year. First, the young British designer and mother of two changed the shape of global fashion with her second and third “clean and lean” collections for the French house of Céline, which consolidated the rise of the New Minimalism. Then, she was awarded the title Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards, and, wearing a super-chic black, strapless all-in-one, accepted her trophy from Bianca Jagger. “I wanted something that felt honest, that was a mixture of what I want to wear and how I want to live,” Philo has said of her vision for Céline. “I felt it needed to be quite simple and very real.” The fashion world has needed little persuading.Graeme SwannSuccess has not come easy for Graeme Swann, whose cricketing triumphs in 2010 are a tribute to his personal character and fortitude. First chosen for England 11 years ago, he blew his chance and gained a reputation for tomfoolery and a bad attitude. Returning to the county game, it took a decade of hard graft to win the favour of the England selectors once again. But when he did so, he grabbed his chance and over the last 18 months he has been the finest off spinner in Test cricket. Shane Warne describes Swann as “the most improved cricketer in the world”. Whatever the outcome of the Fourth Test in Melbourne, and indeed the Ashes series, Graeme Swann has enjoyed a fantastic year.Zaha HadidThe Baghdad-born, British-based architect has for years been better feted abroad than at home, but that changed when she was given this year’s RIBA Stirling Prize, the most prestigious architecture award in the UK. Hadid, who had been shortlisted three times before, won for her MAXXI Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome – “a mature piece of architecture, the distillation of years of experimentation, only a fraction of which ever got built”, the judges remarked. Noting her previous near-misses, Hadid said in her Stirling acceptance speech: “People ask me why I stay here in Britain and I tell them it is because of the Architectural Association, the great engineers, the amazing people and London – it is a fantastic city.” The capital will see evidence of that affection in Hadid’s swimming and diving centre for the 2012 OlympicsLord JudgeLord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice and head of the judiciary in England and Wales, continues to pepper his rulings and utterances with the sort of common sense observations that the public had begun to despair of ever hearing again from the senior judiciary. He assumed office in 2008 with a reputation for being more of a traditionalist than his recent predecessors and less keen on modernisation and reform. He he has tended to concentrate on matters that most affect the people who are the victims of crime: the general public. Recently, Lord Judge, 68, was critical of the amount of new criminal justice legislation introduced in recent years, though there are hopes that the pace will slow markedly under the Coalition. In April, he complained that courts were basing too many of their decisions on European human rights legislation, rather than centuries-old English common law. He is doing much to help restore public trust in the judiciary. Christopher BaileyNot only has Burberry’s share price almost doubled over 2010, but the label’s chief creative director, Christopher Bailey, has blazed a trail online. Luxury goods do not necessarily fit in with the “online space”, mainly because shoppers want the experience of a physical store. However, Mr Bailey has used the web to create a global buzz about Burberry. This year Burberry beamed its London Fashion Week show live to VIP parties in 25 of its overseas stores, from Mumbai to Beverley Hills. Attendees could browse the collection on iPads, or download the songs from a Bailey-curated compilation on iTunes. Burberry’s Art of the Trench social network website continues to grow, and next year it will launch an online “design-your-own” trenchcoat service. The West Yorkshireman – the son of a carpenter and a window dresser for M&S – has the golden touch. Christopher HitchensA diagnosis of oesophagal cancer has done nothing to blunt the dazzling verbal talents and formidable insight of one of Britain’s finest writers, albeit one lost long ago to America’s shores. In a series of articles and interviews, he approached his illness with the same verve, elan and humour that has marked his career, and found the time for a vigorous, sell-out debate about religion with Tony Blair. He has shown an illuminating courage and dignity in the face of adversity – and the debilitations of chemotherapy – that may give succour to fellow sufferers everywhere. The dedicated atheist accepted with good grace the prayers of the devout for his well being, while noting that many were praying for his salvation as well as his recovery. “Please do not trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries,” he wrote in Vanity Fair. “Unless, of course, it makes you feel better.”Ann WiddecombeA prediction made in January that Ann Widdecombe would appear on our television screens in a sequinned frock, being swung around a dancefloor by Anton Du Beke, would probably have been met with incredulity. But the former MP for Maidstone and the Weald was a surprise star of 2010, making it all the way to the quarter finals of Strictly Come Dancing, despite referring to herself as a “dancing elephant”. The woman who once said Michael Howard had something of the night about him proved herself to be a dark horse, with her refusal to take herself too seriously enamouring her to a public who previously knew her as a strict Catholic and Conservative. ?“Winning and keeping customers is harder than ever,” said Stephen Yap, Group Director, Technology, TNS UK. “The online world undoubtedly presents massive opportunities for brands, but choosing the wrong channel, or simply adding to the cacophony of online noise, risks alienating potential customers and impacting business growth.” Where Britons do write about brands online, 42 per cent offer advice. More people praised companies than complained about them, the study found, with 17 and 11 per cent respectively. Overall, most engagement, 61 per cent, was driven by a special offer or promotion. Just 22 per cent, however, said social networks were a place to buy products.?Encouraged by the results of its survey, Credit Suisse upped its rating on Burberry to “outperform” from “neutral” and the shares – also boosted by a rise in profits at rival, Prada – jumped 68p to £13.92. Burberry’s bounce was mirrored by the wider market, which powered ahead after China revealed a surprise cut in interest rates to shore up economic growth. The FTSE 100 gained 63.68 points to 5,447.79, while the FTSE 250 climbed 161.36 points to 10,745.12. Banks were among the main beneficiaries, with Royal Bank of Scotland up 11.2 to 224.4p and Lloyds Banking Group adding 0.96 to 28p. Other financials in favour included Legal & General, up 3.8 to 115.7p and Hargreaves Lansdown, 13.6 higher at 488.1p. The promise of a special dividend spurred Johnson Matthey, maker of catalytic converters, up 107p to £23.04. GKN, maker of car and aircraft parts, motored up 5.7 to 183½p. But miners missed out as they succumbed to profit-taking. Randgold Resources dropped 335p to £56.45 and Fresnillo lost 30p to £14.42. Defensives were out of favour, too, with Severn Trent 26p lower at £17.35 and United Utilities down 9½ to 668½p. Joining them was Sainsbury, even though Philip Dorgan, an analyst at Panmure Gordon, said he expected the supermarket group to post “another good quarter” when it updates on first-quarter trading next week. He is predicting that like-for-like sales will grow by just over 2pc and that its figures will include the benefit of the Jubilee weekend. But Sainsbury’s eased 0.4 to 289.1p. After Tesco shocked the City with a profit warning in January, Mr Dorgan said he was “not looking for any fireworks in Tesco’s first-quarter statement”, which is due next Monday. He added that Tesco’s like-for-like sales for the period, which will not include the Jubilee, are expected to fall by 1pc. “The bears may devour the continued underperformance relative to Sainsbury but, in truth, we have not been expecting a swift rebound,” he said. Tesco rose 2.3 to 303½p. Housebuilders continued to benefit from a bullish note published by Liberum earlier this week. Barratt Developments added 7.2 to 127.8p and Taylor Wimpey put on 0.93 to 44.54p. Liberum also helped the oil explorers yesterday. The broker upped its rating on Premier Oil to “buy” following recent share price weakness, although reduced its price target to 436p to reflect lower oil prices. Premier, which benefited on Wednesday from a discovery of good quality oil in the North Sea, climbed 6½ to 359.7p. Among the blue-chips, Tullow Oil, which said it had found oil off the Ivory Coast, rose 30p to £14.68. As its hotel rival, Club Med, warned that European bookings were down as consumers reined in their summer holidays, InterContinental Hotels added 37p to £15.07. That rise came even though Panmure Gordon voiced concern about there still being plenty of hotel rooms available in London during the Olympic Games later this summer. Their “unscientific survey” found there were still rooms available, including in Stratford – the location of the Olympic stadium – and worried that if this situation continues, sentiment could turn negative towards hoteliers with London exposure. Panmure calculated that London accounts for around 5pc of InterContinental’s profits and 10pc of profits at Whitbread, owner of Premier Inns. Whitbread climbed 34p to £18.77. Analysts argued there could be plenty of room at the inn because the London organising committee for the Games block-booked 40,000 rooms many years ago but in January returned around 8,000 of these rooms to hotels. “This unexpected increase in supply, combined with prohibitively high headline pricing – typically double what would normally be charged for July and August in London (source, hotel.com) - has resulted in a number of unsold rooms,” said the broker. Trades tumble on LSE as punters sit tight If proof were needed that the festering debt crisis was keeping investors away from the market, then it was perhaps provided in the shape of the London Stock Exchange’s monthly market report. There has been talk that deal flows through brokers’ share trading arms are drying up as punters sit tight, and the bourse’s figures showed that the average value of shares traded on its UK electronic order book last month had indeed slipped. During May, the average daily value of shares traded on its UK order book was £4.3bn, down 6pc month-on-month. Compared with May last year, the value is down 20pc; and compared with two years ago, when the daily average was £7bn, it is down 39pc. The average daily number of trades fell 4pc to 759,666 in May. ?Virgin Rail, Stagecoach’s joint venture with Virgin Trains, lost the West Coast franchise, and the broker said it did not “see sufficient upside in non-rail businesses to support a materially higher valuation”.Other companies also missed out on the risk-on rally. BSkyB slid 24 to 720p, the worst-performing blue-chip, as investors continued to digest the news from earlier in the week that BT Group, down 3.8 at 233p on profit-taking, had won English premiership rugby television rights. Pace dropped 17½ – or 9.7pc – to 162½p following a report its set-top boxes for YouView had been rejected by BT. Pace said that talks with BT over the YouView contract would have “no material impact” on its earnings. Elsewhere, Daily Mail & General Trust shrugged off a downgrade to “sell” from “hold” on valuation grounds at Peel Hunt and finished the day in the green, closing up ½ at 493¼p.?Meanwhile, Lloyds Banking Group slipped 0.4pc after broker Liberum Capital voiced concerns the lender may become ensnared in the Libor scandal, which has already led to the ousting of the Barclays chief. “As one of 16 banks submitting daily Libor rates, Lloyds is exposed to material litigation risk,” Liberum said. “The 2011 annual report states that Lloyds is a defendant in several Libor related class action lawsuits.”The broker cut its recommendation on the lender to “sell” from “buy” with a target price of 28p. Gold and silver miner Polymetal also joined the losers and fell 3.5pc after analysts at UBS cut their recommendation on the group to “neutral” from “buy.” ?Vodafone shares also moved lower today as Nomura estimated the group has to make £20bn in spectrum investment during the next 10 years and raised questions over future dividend payments.Analyst James Britton cut his recommendation on the group to “neutral” after previously advising clients to “buy” the shares, which slipped 2.65 to 174p on the downgrade.Analysts were also putting some pressure on G4S with the suggestion that the tough times may not yet be over for the security group. The company, which will negotiate with the London Olympic Games organisers to secure the rest of its contract fee for the sporting event, could be in line for reprisals from political circles, according to analysts at Espirito Santo.“We believe a period of political retribution (lost renewals and new contracts) is still possible for G4S as a result of the London Olympic contract failure, despite the group’s acceptance of liability and recompense,” they wrote in a note to clients. G4S edged down 0.1 to 255½p, after earlier dipping as low as 252.3p.There was further bad news for ICAP, one of two companies that are to be relegated from the FTSE 100 this month. Morgan Stanley was running the rule over the inter-dealer broker and decided to cut its recommendation on ICAP to “underweight” from “equal weight”, while Tullett Prebon was lowered to “equal weight” from “overweight”. The analysts forecast that the lack foreign-exchange volatility and persistently low rates will continue to act as headwinds for the companies, as well as the uncertain regulatory environment. ICAP shrugged off the downgrade and index demotion to add 0.2 to 338.4p and Tullett Prebon rose 3.4 to 311.9p Fund manager Ashmore, down 2.9 at 328.1p, is the other group dropping out of the top flight, FTSE Group confirmed today. Wood Group, 1 lower at 854p, and Melrose, up 1.9 to 256.3p, are moving into London’s benchmark index. While Wood Group has been in the FTSE 100 before, most recently last year, engineering buy-out group Melrose is entering the index for the first time. The company listed on Aim in 2003 with a market cap of £13m, but is now valued at about £3.2bn. The changes to the index were based on the companies’ market caps after the close on Tuesday and will be implemented later in the month.Elsewhere on the FTSE 100, the two state-owned British lenders Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group were strong throughout the day, boosted by the decision by the German constitutional court. RBS, which rose 10 to 274.7p, was also helped by a price-target increase at Liberum Capital as well as speculation of an imminent launch of the Direct Line initial public offering. Lloyds Banking Group was 1.44 better off at 38.505p.Other blue-chip risers included software group Sage, which climbed 9½ to 315.3p, reaching the highest level since 2001, on persistent bid speculation. Miner Evraz added 7.9 to 269p, helped by news that it had approval to acquire a 51pc stake in a Siberian iron-ore project. Anglo American slid 53½p to £19.01½ as labour unrest in South Africa further disrupted mines operated by Anglo American Platinum, which is majority owned by the London-listed group. Lonmin, which was caught up in the first bloody clashes last month, lost 36 to 575p. The disruption sent platinum prices climbing, which helped fellow miner Aquarius Platinum add 2.58 to 40.7p – the best performer on the FTSE 250. Aquarius, however, will lose its place in the mid-cap index this month, as will Avocet Mining, Cape, Gem Diamonds and JPMorgan Asian Investment Trust. Pace, Playtech, SuperGroup, Unite Group and Workspace will all move into the FTSE 250, which ticked up 30.63 to 11,811.05 today.Elsewhere, Falkland Oil and Gas jumped 10¼ to 73¼p in anticipation of drilling results from its Loligo prospect in the next few days. The shares are also recovering from a 26pc tumble on Monday, when the group said operations at the site were delayed by about five days. Other Falklands explorers rose in tandem. Borders & Southern Petroleum put on 1¼ to 23¼p and Argos Resources ended the day 1 higher at 22¼p. One dealer said he had heard vague bid talk around North Sea explorer EnQuest, which added 4½ to 123.7p, although others had not heard the speculation. Broker Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which on Tuesday removed the company from its so-called least-preferred list, is also likely to have helped the shares.?Interparfums, which also makes fragrances for Jimmy Choo, has produced Burberry-branded perfume and aftershave under an exclusive licence since 1993 but Angela Ahrendts, chief executive of the UK retailer, is keen to increase its exposure to the lucrative global perfume and cosmetics market. In May the group signalled its intention to “intensify” non-clothing sales, describing last year’s release of its Burberry Body perfume as its “most successful fragrance launch to date”. It has nine perfumes in total. Burberry is a fledgling player in the global cosmetics market, having launched its make-up range in 2010, but analysts see plenty of opportunity for growth. Other design houses such as Chanel and Christian Dior have significant cosmetics operations. Analysts estimate Burberry's fragrance business accounts for only about 2pc of the British group's revenue but for about half of Interparfum's net sales. Burberry's share price was down 0.7pc from 1269.00p yesterday to 1278.00p at 9.15am today. Shares in Burberry dipped 11p £11.97 but analysts were relatively relaxed about the news, saying the retailer could either take its fragrance operation in house or strike an agreement with another producer. Last week Burberry warned that the rate of its expansion in China had eased, raising fears over whether the company’s stellar growth was coming to a halt. ?Burberry Group Burberry Group: latest news and analysis for Burberry Group. ?Richard Newboult, an analyst at stockbrokers Panmure Gordon, said that a slight slowdown in existing store sales had been offset by an acceleration in new selling space. Burberry has increased its opening programme from around seven shops a year to add 13 or 14 new stores every year, with a particular focus on expansion in the US. "The strong headline figure may provide a temporary boost to the share price, but we think that decelerating same-store sales growth, currency headwinds and a relatively high valuation will continue to provide a drag on the shares during the summer," said Mr Newboult. Burberry shares closed down 9.5p at 665.50p.?Clifford’s Chinese whispersMax Clifford’s expensive services have scarcely worked wonders for the image of his client Simon Cowell in recent weeks, but does the public relations man have bigger fish to fry? Mandrake hears that Clifford, who helped to bring down John Major’s government with his tabloid exposés of “Tory sleaze”, is on a business trip to China this week, where the Communist Party could do with some assistance on its PR. “Max has been invited over to Beijing by the mayor of Beijing,” his assistant tells me. Could Clifford be advising one of those involved in the scandal over the death of Neil Heywood, the British businessman, who became too close to the Communist chief in Chongqing, Bo Xilai? “I don’t know if he will be visiting Chongqing or not,” she says. “It’s not down on the itinerary, but that is not to say that things could change.”Arlene Phillips waltzes backMuch missed on Strictly Come Dancing, Arlene Phillips has, gamely, agreed to act as a judge in a contest based on the BBC series that will take place in Hereford on Saturday night. She will be joined on the panel by Sir Roy Strong, the noted aesthete, and Larry Lamb, the actor. “Theo Fennell is Brucey,” says Christopher James, one of the organisers of the event, for the Hereford Cathedral Perpetual Trust. Surely, Sir Roy doing the tango with Arlene would be an even bigger draw? Sir Ranulph Fiennes scales new heightsSir Ranulph Fiennes, the celebrated explorer, was unable to find his way into a school in Shropshire, where he was due to give a talk. “Being the type of man that he is, he simply climbed the main gates, much to his and our amusement.” says Nick Pettingale, Ellesmere College’s director of development. ?The move was announced as Burberry updated investors on current trading. The group announced that demand for luxury-branded handbags and accessories helped to lift sales growth into double digits. Retail sales, which account for 70pc of its total revenue, were up 13pc on a comparable store basis.?Jaana Jätyri, chief executive of fashion trend forecaster Trendstop.com, said: "Another bumper set of results for Burberry, which has perfected democratic luxury brand positioning. While positioned above the struggling high street, it is more affordable and more accessible to aspirational buyers - democratic luxury is in high demand."However, as budget-conscious shoppers keep a close eye on spending, Ms Ahrendts said she remained "vigilant" about the current retail environment. Burberry revealed that its retail/wholesale operating margin will be lower in the six months to September than in the same period last year, but expects this to recover in the second half. The company opened 23 mainline stores and 25 concessions during the year, closing 10 and 16 respectively. It expects to open a net 15 stores in 2012/13. Growth in China, where Burberry has 63 stores, was "well over 20pc". However, it took a £10.2m charge on a put option linked to the 2010 Chinese acquisitions. Meanwhile, the £2.5m operating profit from the discontinued Spanish operations was offset by restructuring costs. Burberry raised its full-year dividend by 25pc to 25p. The shares fell 4.8pc to £13.20 in early trading, giving Burberry a value of £6bn - £500m more than Marks & Spencer.?A confident trading update from John Wood Group, which provides support services to the energy industry, saw the shares rise 1.1pc.Meanwhile, Tesco was once again at the foot of the FTSE 100 following its first-half results on Wednesday, which confirmed a drop in profits. The shares fell 1.5pc in early deals today.British Land, down 1.3pc, and Land Securities, 0.5pc lower, both lost ground after broker Goldman Sachs cut its recommendation on the companies to "neutral" from "buy".? Luxury goods retailer Burberry has announced that underlying sales rose 10pc in the first half of this year, boosted by demand for the pricey Manor bag, featured here in the Autumn 06 - Winter 07 ad campaign.?Even China, it seems, is not immune to the global slowdown. As manufacturing growth slows in the country (albeit to levels the West can only dream about) investors are growing increasingly concerned about the effect on China's inflated housing market and the knock-on effect that could have on consumer confidence among the country's burgeoning "middle class".Burberry's own advisors haven't helped. On Monday Morgan Stanley published its closely-watched Global Exposure Guide. The annual research is just as useful for those bearish on a region's prospects, as those that are bullish.Topping the list of UK stocks with exposure to Chinese consumer expenditure was Burberry, with 15pc of estimated 2011 revenue expected to be generated in China.A week on Wednesday Ahrendts will post second-quarter numbers. She knows she will have to give the performance of her career if she is to restore waning investor confidence.Ahrendts (and her predecessor Rose Marie Bravo) have spent many years persuading a sceptical City to value Burberry as a luxury goods company rather than a retailer.It is not an academic debate. Luxury goods companies can be valued at roughly 17 times annual earnings. High street retailers struggle to command a double-digit rating. It has not been easy – and not just because Burberry is a "one trick pony" reliant on a single brand, unlike rivals such as LVMH. The group's historical reliance on lower-margin clothing sales (as opposed to high-margin accessories) has made it easy for bears to argue that Burberry should trade at a discount to other luxury goods groups.The fear for Ahrendts and her advisers must be that as investors re-evaluate Burberry's prospects in China they also ask themselves again whether they really should be rating Burberry as "high-end high street", rather than a pure luxury goods company.Tesco juggernaut is still firing on all cylindersIt's not exposure to Asia that is worrying investors in Tesco, despite the fact that the group generated £8.8bn of sales in South Korea, Thailand and China alone last year.It is problems a lot closer to home that have spooked investors.Tesco is expected to announce its weakest UK performance since 1991 on Wednesday morning, with a fall of up to 2pc in like-for-like sales. But should we really be surprised that Tesco is finding the going tough? For the first time in almost two decades there is no weak player for Tesco – or anyone else – to steal market share from. Then there is the huge amount of new space being built. "Proposed, with planning consent or under construction space" in the UK now amounts to 41m sq ft, according to CB Richard Ellis. That is an all-time high that equates to the equivalent of another Tesco (and then some).The UK is proving tough. But it is a little bit early to be writing Tesco off. Despite the hopeful talk of rivals the Tesco juggernaut is still firing on all cylinders. ?Mr Cable said: "Investing in skills is central to our drive to boost business and productivity and make the UK more competitive. “By radically expanding the number of degree-level apprenticeships for young people, we will put practical learning on a level footing with academic study. This is an essential step that will help rebalance our economy and build a society in which opportunity and reward are fairly and productively distributed.” In Tuesday's Autumn Statement, the Government announced it would review the apprenticeships system to explore how to make the scheme more useful for employers. The scheme has been after it emerged thousands of the new apprenticeship places actually went to existing employees rather than create new jobs for young workers. Experts have also warned the Government's targets mean nothing unless employers actually ramp up the number of schemes they offer; currently just one in eight firms runs apprenticeship schemes. In recent weeks, Mr Cable has announced a £1,500 training incentive to encourage small firms to launch apprenticeship schemes, and measures to ease red tape in the system. The Government is also allowing employers to bid for a slice of the £250m apprenticeship pot to take on apprentices and recruit local colleges or training providers for the support they need. By 2014-15, the coalition wants to see 400,000 apprenticeship starts a year in the UK – up from last year's figure of 279,900. Experts have warned the Government not to focus on targets and instead develop high-quality places which are fit for employers' needs. ?Many retailers believe that we are in the calm before the storm and that any complacency about the strength of the recovery would be misplaced. As the cuts start to bite and the possibility of interest rate rises moves ever closer, wallets and purses are likely to snap shut a little more quickly than they have to date.The evidence is already starting to build. Last week the monthly Distributive Trades Survey revealed that sales volume in the UK had fallen to the lowest level since May 2009, when the UK was in the teeth of the financial crisis. The "sales balance" - that is the percentage difference between retailers reporting higher sales and those reporting lower sales e_SEnD fell to -18 in May, compared to +13 for April. The report also revealed, possibly more worryingly for UK businesses, that the volume of orders placed with suppliers fell sharply to a balance of -24 from +1 in April.It is into these headwinds that Mr Cameron announced plans to raise CGT from the present 18pc to a figure closer to the 40pc higher earnings income tax rate. Last week The Daily Telegraph and launched a campaign against the increase, which will see savers and entrepreneurs unfairly penalised.Furthermore, the public might not have much love for our friends in the private equity business but this tax change - coming after the Government acquiesced to the new European Union hedge fund directive earlier this month - will certainly push revenue-raising City firms towards Switzerland and the Middle East.With due regard to the rules of the Laffer Curve, the more tax you raise by this method, the more you risk Government revenues and the more money you take out of consumers' pockets. That, as I'm sure Sir Stuart, Sir Terry and Mr Cheshire will tell the Prime Minister, means people will spend less in shops.The day before the Distributive Trades Survey was published, the British Retail Consortium revealed a study on the impact of a rise in VAT to 20pc. The BRC said that such an increase, widely expected to be in George Osborne's first or second Budget, would cost the UK economy 163,000 jobs and reduce consumer spending by £3.6bn. Mr Cameron - who still claims he is an instinctive tax cutter - is in danger of strangling economic growth by taking on the mantle of a tax-raising Prime Minister. Of course, we've had one of those before. He was called Gordon Brown and he lost the last general election.The ridiculously disproportionate impact of a CGT increase is revealed today in an analysis for this paper by BDO accountants. Assuming an increase to 40pc, a second-home owner could see tax on sales increase by 122pc, investors could see taxes on share sales increase by the same amount and entreprenuers would see taxes on selling stakes in their own businesses increase by 58pc. Stephen Herring, of BDO, said that too high a CGT increase will "reduce the Exchequer's tax take" as the number of taxable transactions will fall dramatically.Of course, the Conservative-Liberal coalition is in a honeymoon period - leaving to one side the fact that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury appears unable to keep his own expenses in order. Mr Cameron, though, has to be careful. We need a Government that is pro-business and pro-growth. I am sure he will reminded of that during lunch today.AIG has a bird in the handFinally, after expending just about as much effort as was humanly possible attempting to persuade investors that the $35.5bn (£24.5bn) price tag for AIA was reasonable, Tidjane Thiam has admitted that the price will need to be cut or the deal is dead.This weekend the chief executive of Prudential is locked in negotiations with AIG. The price range Mr Thiam has put on the table is somewhere between $30bn and $33bn and he has made it clear that if AIG and the US Treasury do not agree to new terms he will either withdraw the sale (the "common sense" position according to one person close to the deal) or shareholders will vote it down. Either way, the American tax payer will not be repaid a portion of the $132bn it pumped into the stricken US insurer to save it from collapse.The ball is now in AIG's court. It is highly unlikely that it could float AIA now given the volatility of the markets. Even if it did, AIG only ever planned to float 45pc of AIA, realising $15-20bn at most. Autumn might be possible but in their present state, equity markets are anything but stable.AIG and the US Treasury need to realise that they have the classic "bird in the hand" dilemma. Whatever Mr Thiam and AIG agree - if anything - this weekend, it will need to be approved by both the AIG board and the US Treasury. The thorny bushes of "no deal" do not seem very appetising.AIG needs to realise some assets given its atrocious performance during the financial crisis. At $31-33bn at least Mr Thiam has a chance of getting shareholder approval, though given the rockiness of this whole process this is still nowhere near certain. AIG should agree to a cut with a future upside payment if AIA performs as well under Prudential as the CEO believes it will. It will then be for shareholders to decide on the fate of a deal and, indeed, Mr Thiam.?THE MENColin Firth, 51 Eye-Q: Male wet T-shirt contestant who sent female pulses racing when emerging from a pond in Pride & Prejudice. Also, looks good in awards-night tuxedos. 16/20 IQ: Formal education ended at Barton Peverill Sixth Form College, Hants, but speaks Italian, is very politically active, has Oxbridge-level wit and an honourary degree from the University of Winchester. 15/20 Dumb Move: Supporting the Lib Dems at the last election. Terrible post-coalition disillusionment has since led him to quit the party. -3 Beauty IQ: 28 Dominic West, 42 Eye-Q: Has dark, Irish good looks that can veer, in true actor style, from conventionally handsome to menacing, to goofy, to bespectacled geek. 15/20 IQ: Schooled at Eton, graduated from Trinity College Dublin (where is Patron of the Philosophical Society) and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, has an honourary degree from Sheffield Hallam University. 17/20 Dumb Move: Once spent three weeks dressed in a gorilla suit as part of a clown course. -4 Beauty IQ: 28 George Clooney, 51 Eye-Q: Ridiculously handsome silver fox with deep brown eyes and winning smile, twice voted Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine. 19/20 IQ: Attended – but did not graduate from – two modest US universities. Has since established himself as a Thinking Actor, and become the Bono of Hollywood with his political activism. 15/20 Dumb Move: Once sneered tastelessly that Charlton Heston, then head of the National Rifle Association had “announced again today that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s”. -6 Beauty IQ: 28 Frank Lampard, 33 Eye-Q: Tall, super-fit and only marginally jug-eared, footballer Lampard has modeled for GQ but is no David Beckham. 13/20 IQ: Has an A in Latin GCSE. When the Chelsea players had their IQs tested, Lampard’s score was one of the highest ever recorded by the company conducting the tests. 18/20 Dumb Move: On 12 September 2001, joined Chelsea players in drunkenly abusing stranded American tourists grieving at Heathrow airport. -5 Beauty IQ: 26 Hugh Grant, 51 Eye-Q: Floppy-haired, stuttering Four Weddings persona charmed millions, but the real Grant is a much less nervous operator. 16/20 IQ: Represented Latymer Upper School on the TV quiz Top of the Form before going to Oxford to study English Lit. Offered a PhD at the Courtauld Institute. Has recently emerged as a driving force exposing the phone-hacking scandal. 18/20 Dumb Move: Asking Divine Brown to get into his car: “I did something dishonorable, shabby and goatish.” -4 Beauty IQ: 30 Brad Pitt, 48 Eye-Q: A classic American blue-eyed boy. An entire generation can still feel their pulse race at the thought of the young, shirtless Pitt in Thelma and Louise. 19/20 IQ: Quit college just before graduating, but is now becoming a significant force in architecture, involved in an 800-room Dubai hotel, hundreds of New Orleans homes and designing his own home in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright. 15/20 Dumb Move: Justifying his passion by saying, “I want to do something hands-on rather than just play golf, which is the sport of the religious Right”. -4 Beauty IQ: 30 John Hamm, 41 Eye-Q: Absurdly tall-dark-and-handsome actor, alias devilishly seductive, sharp-dressed ad-man Don Draper in Mad Men. 18/20 IQ: Acquired a BA in English and worked as a teacher. Rants that “being a f***ing idiot is a valuable commodity in this culture” 14/20 Dumb Move: Decided to support West Ham because of their name: now condemned to a lifetime of faded dreams and burst bubbles. -3 Beauty IQ: 29 Sir Mick Jagger, 68 Eye-Q: Rubber-lipped, snake-hipped rock’n’roll sex god, with implausibly brown hair. Still remarkably trim, though his face is distinctly dessicated. 16/20 IQ: Grammar schoolboy who left the LSE before graduating, but is formidably sharp, well read and sophisticated. Inspired to write Sympathy for the Devil by the Bulgakov novel The Master and Margarita. 17/20 Dumb Move: Neglecting to injunct the Keith Richards autobiography that claimed Mick had “a tiny todger” – a lifetime’s mystique gone in a single phrase. -3 Beauty IQ: 30 Prof. Brian Cox, 44 Eye-Q: One of the few boffins to make 'world’s sexiest men’ shortlists, the boyish Cox looks more like the indie rock star he once was than the physicist he now is. 16/20 IQ: The clue is in the world 'professor’. Got a First, an MPhil and a PhD in Particle Physics, and not only teaches at Manchester University but is also (among a hatful of other honours) a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. 20/20 Dumb Move: Cox’s band D:Ream let their biggest hit, Things Can Only Get Better, be New Labour’s anthem. -3 Beauty IQ: 33 THE WOMEN Nigella Lawson, 52 Eye-Q: Luscious, bountiful, pouting, purring, finger-sucking domestic goddess and gastroporn starlet who can serve up a hot, tasty dish. 16/20 IQ: A troubled pupil at multiple schools before studying Medieval and Modern Languages at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. 16/20 Dumb Move: Outraged anti-fur activists when told the BBC’s One Show that “if I could go out into the woods and kill a bear myself, I would then wear it proudly as a trophy”. -5 Beauty IQ: 27 Gwyneth Paltrow, 39 Eye-Q: Super-slender ethereal, long-limbed, distinctly upmarket blonde in the Grace Kelly style. Hitchcock would have loved her; Chris Martin does. 17/20 IQ: Attended New York’s super-exclusive Spence girls’ school, studied (but did not graduate in) History of Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Fluent in Spanish. 14/20 Dumb Move: Insisting that, despite glaring evidence to the contrary, “I’m just like any other regular mum; cooking, cleaning, wiping butts, being a wife and helping the kids with their homework”. -6 Beauty IQ: 25 Lily Cole, 23 Eye-Q: Has the ginger locks, round cheeks and pinched mouth of a taller, less bearded Mick Hucknall, yet is one of the world’s top supermodels. 11/20 IQ: Graduated from King’s College, Cambridge in 2011 with a double-first in History of Art. 19/20 Dumb Move: Posed semi-nude for French Playboy, her wide-eyed schoolgirl look outraging some – but turning the heads of once-sceptical men. + 4 Beauty IQ: 34 Brooke Shields, 46 Eye-Q: At 14, was a Vogue covergirl and Calvin Klein jeans mode. Now a glam 6ft supermum with endless legs and smile. 17/20 IQ: Graduated from Princeton University in French Literature, getting solid A and B grades. 16/20 Dumb Move: For a bluestocking brunette can sound very dumb-blonde. Once said: “Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.” -8 Beauty IQ: 25 Emma Watson, 22 Eye-Q: Cinematic schoolgirl grew up to be a gamine, Burberry-modelling beauty whose radically short hairdo divided opinion: we approve. 16/20 IQ: A-star exam results took her to Brown University in the US, but she’s currently spending a year at Oxford. 16/20 Dumb Move: In danger of falling into the Paltrow trap of faux-normality, to wit: “Hermione uses all these big long tongue twister words. I don’t know what she’s going on about half the time!” -3 Beauty IQ: 29 Christy Turlington, 43 Eye-Q: The prettiest of all the 90s mega-models: a green-eyed beauty with high cheekbones, dazzling smile and utterly kissable lips. 19/20 IQ: Possibly the brainiest model, too. Graduated cum laude from New York University. Now campaigns to improve maternal health around the world. 17/20 Dumb Move: Once mused: “I think most people are curious about what it would be like to be able to meet yourself – it’s eerie.” -3 Beauty IQ: 33 Rachel Weisz, 42 Eye-Q: A model at 14, now a global ambassador for L’Oréal, could be Nigella Lawson’s slimmer, even more beautiful sister. Pulled 007 and is now Mrs Daniel Craig. 17/20 IQ: A solid 2:1 in English Literature from Trinity hall, Cambridge, where she also founded an award-winning student theatre company. 17/20 Dumb Move: To listen to Rachel, her entire career is an exercise in dumbness: “You have to be quite stupid to act.” -4 Beauty IQ: 30 Victoria Pendleton MBE, 31 Eye-Q: A lingerie-clad cover-girl for lads’ mad FHM, the World and Olympic cycling champ is super-fit with slinky, cellulite-free thighs that could snap a man in two. 16/20 IQ: Brings an intellectual rigour to her sport, with a degree in Sport and Exercise Science from Northumbria University. 14/20 Dumb Move: Fell in love with GB cycling team sports scientist Scott Gardner, which provoked serious friction with jealous teammates who feared she’d get preferential treatment. -3 Beauty IQ: 27 Claire Tully, 27 Eye-Q: A Page 3 model and, thus, very pretty, blonde, blue-eyed, petite, but generously endowed. 18/20 IQ: She has a First in Biochemistry from Trinity College Dublin and aims to do a PhD at Oxford: “I was born a scientist. At some point I’ll put my bra back on and get back into the lab.” 18/20 Dumb Move: Says: “I’m only 5’2”, which means I have a low centre of gravity.’ Tut-tut! That’s not a function of height, but of weight distribution. -3 Beauty IQ: 33 ?Even while en route to Antarctica aboard Terra Nova, the team couldn’t resist stopping off on small islands to collect worms, spiders and sponges.Whereas Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian who beat Scott to the Pole by 34 days, had only one aim, Scott’s remit was much wider. As Charles Wright, a physicist with the team, wrote: “If Scott had not been a Naval man he would have been a scientist.”The exhibition brilliantly drives home the lengths the scientists went to. Antarctica, the world’s highest, windiest and, of course, coldest continent (-89.2C is its lowest recorded temperature) is hardly the most hospitable open-air laboratory. One group of three men made a 140-mile round trip in constant darkness, temperatures so cold that their teeth cracked, in order to collect five emperor penguin eggs. When they were eventually analysed back in Britain — the First World War inconveniently getting in the way — they did not show the hoped-for link between dinosaurs and birds.A more exciting discovery was found with Scott’s body: a fossilised fern-like plant, Glossopteris indica, which was known to grow in the rather more balmy climates of India, Africa, New Zealand and Australia. It gave weight to the theory that, 250 million years ago, all had been part of one supercontinent, now called Gondwanaland.Tellingly, Scott and his exhausted companions preferred to lug 35lb of fossils, notes and film than jettison them and potentially increase their chances of survival.For all the scientific intrigue in this exhibition, however — and here is everything from microscopes to thermometers to rocks — it is the human drama that really stays with you, its impact heightened by being viewed through a new lens.In chronological order, you are briefly taken through the history of Antarctic exploration, incorporating such household names as Ernest Shackleton and such wonderful ones as Thaddeus von Bellingshausen. Its focus, however, is very much the Terra Nova Expedition, for which the preparations were herculean.Scott worked with everyone from Heinz baked beans to Burberry to secure freebies in return for advertising promotion. Everything from original biscuit tins to cocoa boxes is on display.The exhibition is excellent on the minutiae, displaying letters, diaries, newspaper cuttings, toothbrushes, wooden skis and an odometer that measured the distance travelled by the sledge.The curators have also cleverly recreated a scale representation of the wooden-hut base camp at Cape Evans. As well as providing living quarters for over 20 men — their bunk beds are marked out on the floor — it contained laboratories, a small library, a gramophone, a darkroom and a kitchen (seal liver was a special breakfast treat).These glimpses of domesticity lend pathos to what you know is coming. On November 1, 1911, 13 days after Amundsen, Scott, clad in reindeer fur, set off for the Pole. Whereas Amundsen travelled with 52 dogs and four companions, Scott had three teams of 16 men, dogs, ponies and motorised sledges, which soon broke down. Amundsen pioneered a new route, fortunately finding a glacier opening up in front of him. Scott trudged in the footsteps of Shackleton.Both killed and ate their animals, supplementing a diet of pemmican, a combination of fat and ground meat, biscuits, tea, butter and chocolate. And as they walked they left depots of food for their return journeys.On December 14, 1911, Amundsen planted the Norwegian flag at the South Pole. When Scott arrived there on January 17, he wrote in his diary: “It is a terrible disappointment. Now for the run home and a desperate struggle.”On February 17, Petty Officer Edgar Evans was the first of the five to die. A month later Captain Lawrence Oates, suffering terribly from frostbite, stepped outside the tent for the final time. On March 29, when Scott wrote his final diary entry, they were only 12 miles from the next food depot.Scott’s legacy has been buffered to and fro like the Antarctic wind over the past 100 years. In the aftermath of his death, which was not known about back home for almost another year, he was hailed as a hero by a declining Empire desperately in need of one. In later years, he has been traduced as an incompetent, indecisive amateur. This exhibition finds a happier ground somewhere between the two, emphasising his team’s scientific discoveries and the extreme conditions they faced, without either condemning or cheerleading.Regardless, it is difficult not to feel a small Edwardian lump rising at the back of your throat when you read one of the final diary entries: “Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.”?Popover is an American term. Our translation would be, 'What an incredibly weird place for a Yorkshire pudding, the cheese doesn't have much impact and that biscuit/batter interplay works ferociously badly without some honest gravy.' Or maybe I'm just being a stick in the mud. P had the special of the day, which was a plate of radishes with butter (£5.50). He only got away with this, reader, because I assumed they'd sourced some fantastic radishes, and I assumed they'd do something fancy with the butter, maybe mash an anchovy into it. Oh ho, no such effort; they hadn't even scrubbed the radishes. Some of them tasted of nothing at all. The dirty ones did have some of that peppery kick, but it was hard to enjoy with dirt in one's mouth. He carried on with the bone marrow, also intended as a starter (£6.50), and this was meagre in size – even for a starter – and confusingly slight in flavour. It just didn't have any oomph, at all. I had the lamb chop with aubergine and sundry Provençal vegetables (£24.50). I've seen some awfully tired vegetation travelling under the name Provençal, so I have at least to give this its due that it looked authentic and summery. The aubergine, especially, was fat, juicy and bursting with health. The lamb was faultlessly cooked – pink, perky, but just not that interesting. It's the kind of dish that, if you'd had it on holiday in 1980 – before gastropubs and celebrity chefs, before anyone in this country could identify a basil from a bay leaf, before the great food revolution that has, frankly, changed all our lives and to go back to the way we were would feel like slavery – if you ate this then, you'd feel as if you were climbing out of black and white into glorious Technicolor, like restaurant Wizard of Oz. But in this modern era, it was inoffensive and meaty enough, but it was insufficiently special, for the price or to save the rest of the dishes. P had the crème brûlée (£6), which was absolutely fine. I can't fault it. There was nothing different about it. If there had been anything different about it, probably hordes of the faithful would protest that it wasn't French enough. I'm certainly not going to complain about their not fixing something that wasn't broken. My cheese (£9.50) was boring. The roquefort was OK, but the tête de moine was sweaty and tasteless, and there was a soft cheese that I didn't even commit to memory; it had the waxy coarseness of a reblochon but none of that rufty-tufty flavour If you're in the centre of town with a total francophile you could do worse. But Chabrot could do better. THE REAL FRENCH Comme Ça 67 Broyle Road, Chichester (01243 788724) The chef draws inspiration from his native Gers region for such starters as confit duck and pork rillettes, and from Normandy for his seafood dishes. He serves the Dover sole simply with maître d'hôtel butter (£34.95 for three courses) La Grillade 27 Wellington Street, Leeds (0113 245 9707) Boudin noir, crevettes thermidor, yes, even frog's legs – the menu in this simple dining-room hung with colourful paintings is Gallic to the core. Try the foie de veau, pan-fried calf's liver topped with bacon in a sage sauce (£16.80) L'Eglise 196 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex (01273 220868) The charcuterie, especially the juniper-scented jambon noir (£5.95), is a must at this busy bistro, as are the duck-fat chips (£3.50). Well-priced main courses include joue de boeuf crepinette, slow-braised beef cheek with baby onions (£12.95) ?Many of the designers claimed they were going to 'go trad' this year - perhaps a canny move in recessionary times when design commissions are scarcer. Out of all of them all, West was perhaps the most unlikely contender for the Rosemary Verey memorial prize for back-to-the-1980s planting - but it is West who has has won best in show at Chelsea with a super-traditional garden of romantic plantings and plenty of pink. The fine execution of the stonework and overall detailing will have tipped him into top spot in a year when there was no clear winner. Sarah Price should be delighted with her gold medal first time out. There was a feeling that her garden got ever so slightly lost in the middle area of the plot, a complex geometric design of stone and water which perhaps did not leave quite enough room for the delicate plantings to produce a strong sense of rhythm which is one of her trademarks. Interesting and individual work in a year when it was felt there was a certain same-iness to much of the planting design. Watch this space. Joe Swift's massive wooden arches are a coup de theatre which could have gone very wrong but instead went very right -- helping him earn gold in the process. Fun planting, and not too much of it, but it was generally felt his garden got a bit 'messy' spatially towards the back. The critics' choice at Chelsea yesterday had to be the Korean DMZ garden, a perfectly pitched executed evocation of the no-man's-lands land between north and south in Korea. Many of the Korean plants died in transit and it looks rather English-cottagey in places, but the tone was felt to be right nevertheless. Word on Main Avenue was that this garden nearly lost its main sponsor, leaving the contractor footing the bill or facing eviction. Volunteers were deployed and the hard work has paid off: gold. Arne Maynard's garden for Laurent-Perrier, an over-the-top symphony in pinks and purples, is rather like gorging on a whole box of rose and violet cremes in one go. It won gold, but was probably a little too overstuffed to win best in show. Andy Sturgeon's crazy pop-art bubble garden divided opinion, though most admired its panache and brio. Too few gardens at Chelsea make the visitor smile in the way this one does. His planting also won plaudits for its muscularity and control, though Chelsea judges tend to prefer a much more complex 'tapestry' approach. It must have been a close-run thing between Sturgeon and West. The orgy of gold-medal giving at Chelsea continues unabated -- nine awarded this year out of 16 gardens in total. Surely this is grade-inflation? Once again eyebrows have been raised at some of the golds dished out. Perhaps the RHS should consider creating a platinum award? (That was a joke…)Cleve West's garden at Chelsea Flower Show 201212:30 Here's some final tips from our roving reporter on the ground Louise Gray: Buy shares in sun hats! The stalls along Eastern Avenue are going a roaring trade as bemused Brits purchase something to keep this strange thing called sunshine out of their eyes. Also queues for water and Pimms, which many claim is far more refreshing. Finally Chelsea is looking a lot more like a festival with sun out, though some flowers will droop...12:15 Watch Sarah Price, designer of this year’s Telegraph garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, pay tribute to all the people who helped her win a gold medal at the event. 12:00 A pretty pink foxglove that flowers for eight months called 'illumination pink' has won Chelsea Plant of the Year. 11:00 Garden designer John Brookes was not particularly impressed by Chelsea this year. He writes: After nearly 50 years of Chelsea visiting, this was not a memorable one. Designs seem to be going back to traditional, the moderns (except the roof garden [Patricia Fox for RBS], which I liked), looked very dated. On the Telegraph stand the rocks and birches at the back were lovely, but the middle didn't seem to work.The front planting was the same eco-herbaceous (my new phrase), as everyone else had, or nearly. I am pulling out Queen Annes Lace and buttercups like crazy here! Diarmuid Gavin and the RHS need a good smack for that awful attention-seeking tower.Cleve West's garden I liked, Andy Sturgeon's a bit tired?! Arne Maynard's rose garden OK, but all that copper beech hedging was a bit heavy.10:45 Louise Gray caught up with a very surprised Cleve West who told her that he did not expect his garden - which cost at least £250,000 - to win Best In Show. "The topiary makes it traditional but as you come closer the modern planting brings you into the present," he said. The allotment gardener still said he is happiest growing veg as part of the community - although he admitted he could probably now afford his own garden. "Ideally I would like a big garden," he said. "Although I do enjoy the sense of community."He even used a root vegetable scorzonera for its purple flowers. "Whenever I have a chance I go down to the allotment like a shot," he said. "It is not just because there is a lot to do, it is proper gardening, not showy gardening. It is a good place to wind down. It is very special."Sophie, Countess of Wessex, at Chelsea 10:33 Sarah Price, designer of this year’s Telegraph garden at Chelsea Flower Show, cites Dutch heemparks, Henk Gerritsen’s Priona garden in Schuinesloot in the east of Holland and the Welsh Black Mountains as inspirations to her work. The salt pans on Gozo, a small island in the Maltese archipelago, were a specific influence on her Chelsea Flower Show garden this year. She explains: The layout of the Telegraph garden was influenced by square swimming pools that jut out into the sea, as I've seen at Margate, and also the square salt pans I’ve seen in Gozo. And quarries, with their abstract line of stones cut and waiting for delivery, are another image that feeds into my design. Salt pans in Gozo Louise Gray reports on Sarah's garden from Chelsea: While other gardens concentrated on clipped hedges and exotic plants, the Daily Telegraph garden recreated a 'damp meadow in May' with wild flowers like red campion, meadowsweet and even cow parsley to take the viewer back to the countryside of their childhood. Miss Price based the garden on holidays in Dartmoor and family picnics in the Black Mountains. The judges praised the “charming beauty” of the garden that scatters rare magenta orchids and yellow globe flowers over clover and grass.10:22 Joanna Fortnam, the Telegraph's gardening editor, explains why she admires Sarah Price's Telegraph garden and has some tips for readers heading down to Chelsea this week: This was a very close run year, at least everyone could agree on that. On the Telegraph garden we were treading a difficult line between defending a record three consecutive Best in Shows with the awareness that, having proved our mettle, we still need to bring original talent and a newsworthy garden to the Show. Our designer Sarah Price is young and brave enough to take on the challenge. She created a garden that is a stand alone, take it or leave it evocation of the British countryside that has got better and better every time I look at it. Other designers at the show and many plantspeople have been especially appreciative of it, but anyone with a feeling for wild Britain will enjoy this garden. If you're going to the Show, make a point of walking to the back and take in the whole site - there are so many different dimensions here - damp meadow, water and rock, shady woodland. The garden won Sarah the respect and admiration of her peers: Tom Stuart Smith and Dan Pearson both stopped by to congratulate her, and even her fellow exhibitiors, Andy Sturgeon and Cleve West, told me they wouldn't feel too bad if they were beaten by her garden. In the end it was Cleve who got the Best in Show 2012 - and congratulations to him, it couldn't happen to a nicer garden designer.10:16 Louise Gray has emailed some more details about Cleve West, now Britain's leading gardener and winner of the Best in Show at this year's Chelsea Flower Show. The 53-year-old, who spent his 20s as an athlete hoping to compete in the long jump at The Olympics, was thrilled to win in the year the Games comes to London. However the garden almost did not happen after a work shop where the stone and gates for the garden were stored almost flooded. All the elements nearly sailed off a few weeks ago when the storage area adjacent to the River Severn was threatened by the banks bursting. Mr West admitted it has been a tougher build than usual after a drought in March, floods in April and frost in May. His garden, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Brewin Dolphin, did not spare any expense with stone sentinels topped by flamed shaped finials holding up intricate iron gates that lead onto an enormous 300-year-old mill head mounted on the wall. Beech hedges, only slightly held back by the recent cold weather, surround warm stone paths fringed by colourful flower beds. Yew hedges cut into slightly differing forms give a sense of humour and celebrate a return for the 19th Century fashion for topiary. Cleve West10:05 The Telegraph's Deputy Property and Gardening Editor Ed Cumming found his first Chelsea prize-giving a bit "haphazard". All the designers, garden builders and sponsors stand around their gardens from about six in the morning, drinking bad coffee and waiting for the results. Then all of a sudden a gang of RHS apparatchiks in high heels come haring round the corner, pursued by burly men with cameras, to thrust a little certificate into the hands of everyone who's won. The order is seemingly random - the group will run past your garden, only to double back on themselves minutes later. For onlookers the whole thing is bizarre and even a bit comic, but it must be nerve-wracking for the designers. Still, very pleased for Cleve West winning for the second year in a row, even if he's not with the Telegraph this time around. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke, and his planting was as lovely as it was last year. The word on the street had been that his hedges might let him down, but the judges obviously didn't mind. Also good to see the Koreans winning a gold medal for their DMZ garden. You couldn't put it in your own garden (and wouldn't want to), but it was an impressive installation recreating one of the most politically fraught - and botanically rich - places in the world. Joe Swift's Homebase garden got people's hackles up, probably because he's on TV a lot, but he answered his critics by turning in a garden with real depth and originality. He got gold, and good for him. And finally, massive congratulations to Sarah Price on her first Chelsea gold. I think designing a show garden has been pretty exhausting for her; she seemed a bit relieved that it was all over, as well as delighted to have won. But she delivered an gorgeous garden, praised to the hilt by everyone from Tom Stuart-Smith to Derek Jacobi, and can now enjoy a well-deserved holiday. DMZ Forbidden Garden10:01 Steven Lacey, the Telegraph columnist, believes "Cleve West must have just pipped Andy Sturgeon to Best in Show. Everyone seems to agree that this was a very hard year to call, it was so close". More from Steven: I've been talking to quite a few people about Sarah's garden for the Telegraph and it seems to polarise people. They either love it or think it's a load of weeds and walk away. If you can see the beauty in it then it grows on you. The more you look at it the more it draws you in. But it doesn't have the instant wow factor that's the norm at Chelsea. I thought the DMZ Forbidden Garden was brilliant and I'm very glad it won gold. 09:50 Here's opinion from Val Bourne, top gardening expert. Val has been a committed organic gardener all her life, eschewing the use of all chemicals in her productive Cotswold garden full of fruit, vegetables and flowers. She used to work in vegetable research, but is primarily a plantaholic: she serves on the RHS floral and dahlia panels judging the trials. Cleve West for Brewin Dolphin wasn't my favourite garden, I thought his red poppies rather killed the rest of the planting, the subtlety of the Euphorbia martinii, for example. Arne Maynard for Laurent Perrier needed sun, all those pinks looked very cool blue under the dull light and some of the flowers hadn't opened up enough. Joe Swift for Homebase was the garden that really stood out for me. He used very restricted planting, and both the colour and the use of wood was very good. There is a tendency to overplant everything at Chelsea, but this was very restrained and the excellent plant quality against the strong features and curves was very good. Andy Sturgeon's 'Clair de Lune' peony was beautiful, in fact I think he had the best planting at the show this year. The aguilegia 'Chocolate Soldier' was a find. Sarah Price's planting in this garden had real authenticity, many plantspeople told me how much they admired it. At first the DMZ Forbidden Garden reminded me of the allotment at the bottom of my road when I was a child, but it grew on me. Once you got past the barbed wire, inside was a very calm environment, and the blackbirds were already in it. I'm very disappointed Thomas Hoblyn for Arthritis Research didn't get a gold. Perhaps it had too much landscape in relation to the planting. The landscape dominated rather, although the planting was very good. 09:44 Here's that full list of winners for you. 09:15 We've got reaction coming in now from our gardening experts. Louise Gray is still at the site. She emails: Bit of a shock that Thomas Hoblyn got silver gilt for his garden for Arthritis Research UK. Apparently he has been trying for gold for some time. Just overheard someone comment on Diarmuid Gavin getting Silver Gilt: "pretty good for a load of scaffolding". Ouch. Diarmuid Gavin's Westland Horticulture Magical Tower Garden 09:05 With 16 show gardens vying for our attention, Tim Richardson identifies theof 2012. 08.49 Jonathan Sibun, the Daily Telegraph's Deputy City Editor, was at the swanky gala do last night. Here's the skinny: All the great and the good of the business world filled Chelsea's gardens last night for the show's gala opening. If there's one place to be seen over the summer season, it's here. Those present read like a who's who of corporate Britain. Topshop tycoon Sir Philip Green, Carphone Warehouse founders Charles Dunstone and David Ross, and RBS chief Stephen Hester to name just a few. There was even a little glamour - Christian Candy, the property entrepreneur, turned up in a foursome with socialite and Burberry model Cara Delevingne. The mood was upbeat - there was little sign of the eurozone crisis among the carefully manicured flower beds - though the huge number of City bankers present did suggest there was little to be done in the way of deals in the real world.Cara Delevigne was at Chelsea Flower Show08:41 Stay posted for a full and details list of results but here are the winners of gold medals for show gardens: Brewin Dolphin Champagne Laurent-Perrier Furzey Gardens Homebase Lands' End L'Occitane en Provence M&G Investments Muum The Daily Telegraph 08:31 A couple of the awards haven't gone down well with our environment correspondent Louise Gray. She writes: Bit of a disappointment Jo Thompson's Celebration of Caravanning for the Caravan Club was just Silver Gilt. But it is always difficult for designers to win when they have a prescriptive brief from the sponsor. Though she does make caravanning look wonderful. Are you serious? Easigrass - so not really grass then has won a gold medal in the new Fresh category. I know this is meant to celebrate innovation. But this is the Royal Horticultural Society - you can't go handing out awards for fake grass! She's got a point. Jo Thompson's Celebration of Caravanning 08:20 Joe Swift's Homebase garden for Teenage Cancer Trust won gold. Louise emails: "he must be pleased after giving up the opportunity to present earlier in the show because of BBC rules." Here's more from our . BBC presenters who designed gardens at this week’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show were banned from covering the event because of “conflict of interest” concerns. The ban covers three gardeners, Joe Swift, Chris Beardshaw and Andy Sturgeon, who are all entered in the main “show garden” category. Swift, who has designed a garden for the DIY chain Homebase, has covered the show for the BBC for ten years and is usually one of two main presenters, along with Alan Titchmarsh on the main evening programme. This year, his place alongside Titchmarsh will be taken by a roster of other presenters. Joe Swift's gardens 08:15 The amazing Korean garden designed by Jihae Hwang also got gold. The Quiet Time: DMZ Forbidden Garden is based on the demilitarised zone beween North and South Korea. 08:12 Louise Gray emails "Oh dear, but Diarmuid Gavin's 84ft Tower garden for Westland Horticulture was just a Silver Gilt. Perhaps the judges didn't try the slide?"08:03 Former winners Andy Sturgeon for M and G Investments and Arne Maynard for Laurent Perrier, both hotly tipped to win, also got gold. 08:00 The Telegraph Garden designed by Sarah Price wins GOLD! There's Sarah below on the right collecting her prize: Here's gardening writing : This year’s Telegraph Garden is an evocation of the British countryside, its flowers, woods, streams and rocky hillsides. “It is inspired by many walks and family picnics, especially on Dartmoor and in the Black Mountains,” says its designer, Sarah Price. “I want to distil some of the atmosphere of those wild and mysterious places, and try to capture the magic of those sudden encounters you get with wild flowers, which might be cowslips in a field or daisies in a London street.” 07:54 Ian Cowie, the Telegraph's head of personal finance, explains why fund managers are so well represented at the Chelsea Flower Show. "Gardening and investment have more in common than you might imagine," he writes and suggests Here's the first: Be patient. Don’t expect instant results from plants or your investment portfolio. Jamie Matheson, chairman of Brewin Dolphin – another sponsor of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show said: “Gardening is one of the most popular pastimes among our clients and fits well with our investment philosophy of taking a long term view, being patient through cold winters and ultimately being rewarded.”Check out the blog to learn more. 07:50 Here's the cartoon from the Daily Telegraph's comment pages today, inspired by the Chelsea Flower Show. Cartoonist Adams explains the fun behind it on his . 07:38 Tim Richardson, Telegraph Columnist and Director of the Chelsea Fringe, was suprised Cleve West turned to topiary. No one would have guessed that he was going to branch out into the world of topiary, but that is what he has done with his predominantly green-and-white garden for Brewin Dolphin (MA15), replete with sculpted 8ft-high yew sentinels. The garden cunningly reprises West’s winning formula from last year – remember those classical columns? – in that it features stonkingly bold forms (including an old French ironwork gate and drystone gate piers halfway down the space) juxtaposed with natural plantings. But the feel will be more dewy Gloucestershire than sun-baked Libya this time. 07:32 OK, we have the first result! Cleve West has won the prize for Best In Show for his Brewin Dolphin Garden. Well done Cleve. The winning show garden Cleve West, the veteran Chelsea Flower Show gold medallist, won Best in Show at Chelsea 2011 with his unusual design for the Telegraph. That garden was inspired by memories of a family holiday to Libya, where he saw the ruins of Roman cities. He managed to turn this memory of a timeless, romantic place into a contemporary garden with a sunny, relaxed quality 07:22 The best dressed award so far definitely goes to our Queen. She matched a creamy lavender suit with elegant white gloves and 50s buttons topped by a net hat with almost a touch of goth about it. Dotted with black flowers, it set off her pearls and diamond brooch with brio. Our page has the latest on the the regal rave weekend. Her Majesty the Queen07:21 The 32-year old Sarah Price is making her main show garden debut at RHS Chelsea Flower Show; as well as this project, she has also designed some of the planting for the Olympic Park. Delicate wildflowers lie in the shade of birch trees, around cool granite pools. After the wettest April on record, Sarah's mossy garden is a celebration of the recent rain. 07:16 The fad for, warned Professor of Horticulture James Hitchmough at the Chelsea Flower Show. Louise Gray reports: The trend for wildlife gardening and Government targets on 'biodiversity’ means that traditional horticulture such as herbaceous borders full of exotic flowers is frowned upon. Instead local authorities are encouraged to allow 'wild areas’ full of nettles and weeds for insects and to plant native species in wildflower meadows. Speaking at the Royal Horticultural Society President’s Lunch at Chelsea Flower Show, James Hitchmough said planning officers are 'editing out’ horticulture. “They are redefining the public landscape away from horticultural design to something dominated by native species,” he said. Wildflower meadows are more popular than formal horticulture07:13 Her Majesty the Queen toured the garden yesterday evening. To commemorate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, a number of growers unveiled new varieties of flowers. In rose grower David Austin's installation, the pale pink Royal Jubilee romped with the fiery Fighting Temeraire and white Tranquillity varieties. 07:05 Our today pays the annual Royal Horticultural Society flower show as it opens to the public: For gardeners, Chelsea is one of the high points of the year, a chance both to show off and put one over the opposition. The show has commercial as well as horticultural rationale. But also, in the midst of a double-dip recession and a euro crisis, gardens offer a haven from the unremitting sense of foreboding. Even in these most difficult times, our penchant for gardening is strong: climate, temperament and love of tradition combine to make the British natural gardeners07:00 Good morning and welcome to Day Two of Chelsea Flower Show. Today we'll be bringing you the results of the winners and reaction and opinion from the gardening world. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17:05 That's all from us today. We'll be back in the morning with news and comment about the winners. Here's a selection of the weirdest and most wonderful images of the day. 16:25 There are some extraordinary exhibits in the Artisan gardens category. The Satoyama Life garden is a peaceful space which underlines the importance of co-existing with nature in modern times. Adam Woolcott and Jonathan Smith's garden is inspired by the Dorset countryside immortalised by Thomas Hardy in Far From the Madding Crowd. Tracy Foster's Brontës’ Yorkshire Garden celebrates the rugged but beautiful Yorkshire landscape which inspired the famous Bronte sisters. . 16:00 Yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur has been driving around the site in a tiny electric car, a Renault Twizy. She said of the show: "What surprises me is the variety. I find myself asking engineering questions about how they make some of the things. "I'm not a flower gardener but I do like growing things." 15:37 Joining the wrinkly rockers brigade is an altogether more fragrant Jerry Hall, enjoying herself at the Thai exhibit: 15:20 One of the categories in the Chelsea Flower Show is the Children's Wheelbarrow. Liz Dobbs sends in a picture of one of the finalists. Inspired by the perhaps? 15:00 Here are some top notch daffodils: 14:48 I'm not sure what's going on with this crazy flower hoop but it's very pretty. More details to come when I have them. 14:40 Amanda Holden wore a pink wraparound Dolce & Gabbana dress and leopard print high heels to Chelsea today. Miaow. She revealed that David Walliams, her new co-judge on Britain's Got Talent, is a "feeder": He's got a very dark, sort of weird sense of humour. He's a feeder, he's constantly giving you chocolate and cake and all sorts of beautiful things. Amanda Holden at the Chelsea Flower Show13:57 The sun has just started to come out at Chelsea finally. Here's a violinist playing in a rose garden. 13:46 Rock and roll royalty have been busy looking around the gardens today. The Who frontman Roger Daltrey was at the Homebase Teenage Cancer Trust Garden as a patron of the charity. Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr formally opened the event's WaterAid garden so here's that lovely Beatles track Mother's Nature Son for Ringo "swaying daisies sing a lazy song beneath the sun". 13:00 We're getting more information and images of particular plants and flowers now. Liz Dobbs has sent through this beautiful picture from Chelsea of Interspecific hybrid lilies. "They are so fragrant and will grow in any well-drained soil," she says. She's also sent through this lovely stand and which contains "plenty of planting ideas on this stand no matter what size of garden". 12:43 Bridging the gap between sport and nature, top British fencers James Honeybone and Alex O'Connell fence through the foliage at the 2012 RHS Chelsea Flower Show during a Beazley British Fencing Photo Shoot. The exhibit, entitled Duel and the Crown, brings the sport to life through plant and garden design, as well as featuring live fencing demonstrations throughout the week from GB international athletes. 12:39 Taxi! Hailo, the genius black cab app, is celebrating Chelsea Flower Show with bespoke ‘Flower Power’ cabs. Ian Drummond, Chelsea Gold Medal winning garden designer helped create them. They will be driving passengers to and from the Chelsea Flower Show and around London during the week, with keen amateur gardener cab drivers at the wheel. 12:16 Of course Chelsea Flower Show is not just about the show gardens. There's tons of other stuff to look at. One of the most interesting things so far is the Korean garden. Telegraph columnist Mary Keen says it's "totally wild". 12:08 Ed Cumming's just had a chinwag with Piers Morgan: "I'm just off back to New York, but I'm here for a flying visit before. I just saw Cliff Richard among the begonias. It's that kind of event, isn't it?"Spotted: Cliff Richard amongst the begonias12:06 There are some great spots to eat around Chelsea. Here's a My personal tip is Manicomio - the food is divine. Or Bibendum for oysters and sweet peas. 12:04 Louise Gray has been speaking to Ricky Gervais, an avid fan of nature. Gervais was avoiding the "celebs" by viewing the more under stated artisan gardens. It seems the comedian is an unexpected gardening fan who comes every year. "It sends a chill down my spine when you see something done so well," he says. "I think nature is unconditionally perfect and beautiful and anyone who takes on the task to make it even better is amazing."11:51 Celebrities are arriving thick and fast. Louise Gray has spotted suave fox Nigel Havers "looking very smart in a dark suit but a bit out of place amid more casual look favoured by most gardening types". She's also been speaking with Floella Benjamin. Floella Benjamin looking very summery in pink says Chelsea is all about uplifting our spirits. She insisted the designs this year are less extravagant than usual to take account of austere times. "I have a few ideas for my garden already..."Here's Nige in I'm a Celebrity..11:42 Ringo Starr spoke about, legend of the Bee Gees who died yesterday following a battle with cancer, at the flower show. Robin Gibb (left) with Barry (centre) and Maurice in 1979The ex-Beatles star told of his admiration for the Bee Gees' vocal talents as he visited the Chelsea Flower Show. Starr said: "God bless him and God bless his family. "The Bee Gees from our era were quite important, especially the harmonies. "I didn't know him that well, I knew Maurice more than the other two, but he had a great voice and they wrote great songs." (PA) First Donna Summer. Now Robin. It hasn't been a great week for disco. 11:40 Louise Gray has been speaking to Alys Fowler, the BBC Gardener's World presenter. She has been admiring the Daily Telegraph garden by Sarah Price. She admitted the naturalistic planting would be tough to reproduce in an ordinary garden but hopes to see more meadow-like spaces in parks. "Chelsea is about inspiring new kinds of gardening. "I would love to see these native plants and flowers in my local park."11:38 ***Celebrity Spots*** Piers Morgan and Ringo Starr are touring the gardens. Admiring this pensioner pyramid no doubt: Pensioner pyramid on Diarmuid Gavin's garden.11.20 Louise Gray, our environment correspondent, is having a whale of a time: Glad to get here early to go down the slide from Diarmuid Gavin's 84ft tower garden. There was quite a queue of journalists and even Mr Gavin's 79-year-old mother going down - even though it is quite fast! Now Chelsea pensioners are exploring the garden and at least some will be quite happy to use the slide. One gets the impression the RHS are fairly relaxed about health and safety...11:00 Here's a picture of the Telegraph's Garden. It's going to look even lovelier when the sun comes out. , according to the weather forecast. Louise Gray says: "ther'se is a real buzz here & the Chelsea pensioners are cheerful & warm in their coats."10.54: Dorothy Hughes one of the first lady Chelsea pensioners about to go up westland magic garden. She says to google her if you want to know more! 10.49: Celebrities have been decorating pots in aid of charity. Dame Judi Dench, Joan Collins, Rob Brydon, Pixie Lott and Fearne Cotton are just some of the famous names who have painted pots to be auctioned online. The money will go towards the Royal Horticultural Society's scheme to help more schools teach children how to garden. Sue Biggs, RHS Director General, said: Mary Berry decorated her pot with cupcakes, Joan Collins painted big lips and Fearne Cotton's is intricately decorated with small jewels. Julian Fellowes painted characters Matthew and Mary, to celebrate his Downton Abbey seres and Hug Bonneville also sent us a pot which he decorated with flowers.Fearne Cotton decorated her pot with jewels10.44: Telegraph garden designer and gold medallist Cleve West reflecting on his decision to return to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. He explains how last year's winning garden was inspired by memories of a family holiday to Libya, where he saw the ruins of Roman cities. He managed to turn this memory of a timeless, romantic place into a contemporary garden with a sunny, relaxed quality. 10.39: LIz Dobbs adds this picture of a garden that celebrates the beauty of acid-loving plants. She writes: "The rhododendrons were lifted from the Furzey Gardens and will be returned there. "Chris told me 'rhododendrons are like the elephants of the plant world when it comes to flowering they move slowly and purposefully so you just have to sit and wait for them. "Luckily they have responded to the cooler conditions and several have been in flower for three weeks."Great to see a garden with shrubs! 10.30: This Rose is Reine des Violettes and, says Liz Dobbs, will have a good fragrance once it warms up a bit. : 10.18: Ed Cumming picks out some from this year’s inaugural Chelsea Fringe festival. 10.08: Liz Dobbs sends in a picture of Andy Sturgeon's garden 09:57 Ed Cumming sends in a picture of the Arthritis Research garden, designed by Thomas Hoblyn. Doubt anyone will be tempted to take a dip today. Brrrr. 09:50 The slide at Diarmuid Gavin's garden is a hit with the ladies. Louise Gray Tweets: There is a q of lady gardening journalists waiting 2 go down slide from #DiarmuidGavin's tower garden. I predict an incident... #RHSChelsea Wooosh! 09:45 Caroline Spelman is touring the gardens today. She's been promoting a drive to make gardeners more aware about the "foot and mouth of tree diseases" Sudden Oak Death (sounds like a horror film to me). Here's more details from our : In Britain the disease, officially known as phytophthora ramorum, spared oaks and jumped to rhododendrons and Japanese larch trees. It has swept the country wiping out whole larch plantations, including more than 120 Forestry Commission sites, 20 National Trust properties and two Woodland Trust reserves. Already 4 million trees have been felled or marked for destruction. 09:34 Our environment correspondent Louise Gray emails to say: Jekka McVicar, the queen of herb gardens, just tweeted she has just finished.... At around 2am. Talk about last minute! Looking very pretty - you can almost smell it: 09:31 Our Telegraph columnist Mary Keen emails me to say it's topiary year. Cleve West, winner of last year's show-garden, is "stunning" and he thinks Sarah Pryce's entry is the most original. "I love it," says Mary. 09:28 Have you been to the Chelsea Physic Garden in London? It's a real gem and does lovely cake. Here's a fascinating with the head gardener on the many ways we depend on plants. He talks about their Perfume Garden, Edible Garden and patch which is waiting for a cannabis licence. Ed Cumming quips: Nick explains by an empty patch of ground. Hemp has been used as a fibre for millennia, but you can’t help suspecting that visiting schoolchildren will be eyeing it for other reasons09:26 Our roving reporter on the ground has been speaking to Diarmuid Gavin: Here's Diarmuid Gavin in his spectacular Magical Tower Garden. "I'm doing good," he says. "Tired, but good. I always find today a bit difficult, but it all came together ok."Liz Dobbs has more details: I've just been shown around an urban pleasure garden. It's on many levels with plenty of chill-out places. You get a lift to the 5th floor then you have to go up ladders. I then came down in tunnel/slide and it was very invigorating. Great fun and great views09:25 After drought in March, floods in April and frost in May, gardeners were yesterday . Sarah Price, who is designing the Daily Telegraph show garden, admitted many of her plants have been delayed – but because she is using delicate native species it is difficult to force them to come out artificially. Instead she is relying on the nature to make up for the loss. “I have a spread of plants so there is always something coming into bloom over time.”09:17 The Telegraph's Deputy Editor of Property and Gardening Ed Cumming is at Chelsea now. He sends me a picture of Sarah Price, the Joan of Arc of the horticultrual world who "strikes fear into the breasts of gnarled old male designers" apparently. She's been talking to our writer Stephen Lacey in her garden. "There's always more you want to do, and edit, but you get to the point where you have to just walk away from it."Sarah Price chilling, or perhaps that's 'chillaxing', in the Telegraph garden09:09 ***BREAKING***: Outbreak of weed in the gardens! Emma Townshend, musician and gardening expert, writes from the event: I enjoyed yesterday an outbreak of faux weeds. That kind of thing just always really makes me laugh. Mimicking a high June garden is one thing, mimicking self-sown verbascum might be taking it a bit far for me! Her favourite sight so far has been the "rusty back of a shipping container, the front of which has Tony Heywood's mosaic octopus lady in it. But the daisy meadow out the back of it was also rather lovely..."Weeds near the Telegraph garden08:55 Some of the gardens to watch today are Cleve West's Brewin Dolphin Garden, Diarmuid Gavin's Westland Horticulture Magical Tower Garden and Jo Thompson's Celebration of Caravanning. Peter Dowle's Corsican-themed L’Occitane Immortelle Garden is below. 08:50 Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of Chelsea Flower Show 2012. It's press day today so the journalists, high profile celebrities and, most importantly, the judges are prowling the gardens. Her Majesty the Queen will be walking around later meeting the show-garden designers. The big question today is whether the Telegraph Garden can win again, for the fourth time. Watch this space for all the gossip, news, pictures and comment from gardening experts from this highlight of the British gardening year ?Chemring underperformed the wider FTSE 250, which slid 61.08 points - 0.5pc - to 11,780.42. The FTSE 100 fared better and ended the day just 1.01 lower at 5,792.19, as traders waited for tomorrow’s ruling by Germany’s constitutional court on European bail-out funding. Burberry, which issued a profit warning, was the worst-performer on the benchmark index tumbling 287p to £10.88, which at 21pc is the biggest ever fall in the company’s shares. The warning prompted a host of broker downgrades, including a cut to “neutral” from “buy” at Nomura, and spurred one trader to float the theory that the group’s open share register, combined with today’s tumble, could now leave Burberry vulnerable to a bid. The warning also drew attention to other luxury goods companies and fashion group Mulberry lost 57p to £13.01. Vedanta Resources, which majority owns India’s biggest private-sector exporter of iron ore, Sesa Goa, was also weaker after the State of Goa suspended all mining until further notice. The move follows the discovery by a panel established by the Government of “serious illegalities and irregularities” in mining operations in the state. Vedanta shares fell 24½ to 978½p.Some other miners came under pressure following price target cuts from JP Morgan. Anglo American, down 46½p to £19.55, and ENRC, which was 2½ lower at 339.9p were among those companies that had their targets trimmed. Elsewhere on the blue-chip index, British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco rallied after suffering last week on worries that Russia would implement a smoking ban in public places and France would enforce stricter packaging rules. BAT added 57½p to £31.82 and Imperial gained 21p to £22.71. Both shrugged-off price target cuts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Sage Group also put on 1.4 to 305.8p after Galvan Research identified the software business as a potential takeover target earlier in the week. Royal Bank of Scotland, however, topped the FTSE 100 with an increase of 11.7 to 264.7p, despite revealing Paul Geddes, the head of RBS-owned Direct Line, and John Hourican, who leads the investment banking division, had sold a combined total of 233,407 shares in the lender. Among the second-liners, RusPetro took the wooden spoon falling 14.7 -13pc - to 100p. One dealer said the group was on a roadshow this week and suggested the share move was a negative reaction to the investor presentations. A spokesman for RusPetro decline to comment. At the other end of the FTSE 250, spread-better IG Group, which posted first-quarter sales of £81.5m, was in demand and climbed 28.3 to 461.7p. Numis analyst James Hamilton boosted his recommendation on the company to “buy” from “add” on expectations of a stronger finish to the year. “We believe it will be [the second-half] when the underlying growth of IG starts to manifest itself again,” he wrote in a note to clients. Hilton Food Group was another company updating the market with its latest numbers, although the meat-packing business had rather less luck with investors than IG. The shares fell 16½ to 281¼p after reporting first-half pre-tax profits of £12.54m, slightly lower than the £12.57m recorded a year earlier. Higher meat prices crimped Hilton’s earnings, and the results prompted Numis and N+1 Brewin to cut their recommendations on the stock. Elsewhere, Ceres Power surged 2½ to 13.875p, after gaining an eye-catching 47pc on Monday. However, the group, which is looking to raise funding, was at a loss to explain the move and said it “is not aware of any significant change” since its last market update in mid-August. ?Despite a number of high-profile women at the top of some of the UK's best-known companies - Carolyn McCall at easyJet, Dame Majorie Scardino at Pearson, and Angela Ahrendts at Burberry - there remains a significant lack of women in Britain's boardrooms.But Dr Sealy warned that employers and politicians underestimated just how big an issue the cost of childcare was when trying to seat more women at the top table. "Childcare is prohibitively expensive. From a societal point of view it is still an issue," she said. "Childcare is a red herring at board director level but at the age when women want to get back to work [after childbirth] it's a massive thing. People seem to not realise how massive a thing it is."Parents are paying up to £15,000 a year in nursery fees, a report by the Daycare Trust revealed last month. On average, families with a child aged under two are being charged more than £100 a week for part-time care, rising to £300 at the most expensive nurseries, the report found.Dr Sealy explained that it was often the highest earner that returns back to work after childbirth, which in "nine out of 10" cases meant the mother stayed at home.If she later wanted to get back on the career ladder, she had to contend with significant childcare costs, which may not be affordable.By the time the children had grown up and gone to school and the mother returned to work, she had often missed her place on the career ladder with very little chance of catching up and making it to board level, Dr Sealy said.The Daycare Trust report revealed some 44,000 fewer families were getting help with childcare costs since a tax credit cut in April last year, with growing calls for the Government to reverse the cutbacks.Elsewhere, Dr Sealy said there were other barriers preventing women's rise to the top. Among them, was a "bias" from some FTSE 100 chairmen against promoting women into executive roles, Dr Sealy said.Most of the new female board roles created over the past year have been "non-executive" – suggesting chairmen felt there weren't enough women out there to take up core roles. In the FTSE 100 in the past year, 26pc of all non-executive directors appointed and 9pc of executive directors appointed were female. In the FTSE 250, those figures drop to 24pc and 7pc respectively, the latest figures show.Dr Sealy said: "The executive pipeline is much smaller but the supply has been there. There is still a lot of bias around this."Other things standing in the way of women's career progression included those companies that had one woman on their board, thinking it was job done, Dr Sealy said. "There are some companies who haven't grasped the issue," she said. Eleven FTSE 100 companies still had all-male boards.Whether that is enough to stave off the threat of mandatory targets remains to be seen, however. The European Commission would like to see women make up 40pc of boardroom posts by 2020 and has said it will introduce quotas across Europe if not enough voluntary progress if being made.In the UK, Lord Davies has warned that if Britain's publicly listed companies fall too short of his voluntary 25pc target by 2015, quotas from the British Government are a real possibility.In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph last month, he said anything below the 23pc mark would be unacceptable. But research from Norman Broadbent, a headhunter, warned last month that FTSE 100 companies would miss the 2015 target by two years, adding that the current pace of change is too slow.Dr Sealy said real change will come when more investors take the "women on boards" agenda seriously.She said there were signs that shareholders were starting to question diversity as a key measure of board effectiveness, but added there was a long way to go. ?Throw in two other things and you can see why the likes of Selfridges and Harrods are staffing their stores with Mandarin-speaking sales assistants and allowing shoppers to use UnionPay, the only domestic Chinese debit and credit card. Or why Bicester Village, the outlet shopping centre in Oxfordshire, is so keen to welcome 4,500 coachloads of Chinese visitors a year. Or why even Visit Somerset is chasing the dragon. Quite simply: the Chinese love to shop and, when they do, they spend big money, mainly on luxury brands. A recent Harris Interactive poll found the Chinese were top of the shopaholics. Why, 79 per cent of them positively “loved shopping for clothes”, with 92 per cent believing “good brand names provide better value, due to quality”. The respective figures for British shoppers were a comparatively meagre 53 per cent and 48 per cent. Not only that. Data from tax-free shopping expert Global Blue shows that in the first 10 months of 2011 the average spend by a Chinese customer on a single shop in London was £1,058, up from £872 year on year. That’s around 10 times the equivalent expenditure by a British customer, who’s also miles behind Middle Eastern and Russian shoppers, spending £851 and £696 respectively. In an upmarket store such as Harrods, Chinese spending is higher still. In a recent report, Global Blue quotes Michael Ward, managing director of Harrods, saying that each transaction from a Chinese shopper is worth about £2,520. “Four or five years ago, the rate of spending by Chinese customers was broadly 30 per cent of American spend,” he says. “Today, it’s significantly ahead. These are very serious tourists with a propensity to spend.”Culturally, too, the Chinese are different. “Chinese consumers enjoy displaying their wealth and success and not just spending on themselves but also purchasing gifts for friends and family,” says investment group CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets in a report on China’s appetite for luxury goods entitled Dipped in Gold. “Success, wealth and fame/social standing are highly regarded in Chinese culture and displaying this through watches, jewellery, apparel, cars and wine garner respect.”According to CLSA, Louis Vuitton’s biggest customers are the Chinese, while they account for about 28 per cent of Swatch sales, 22 per cent of Richemont’s, 18 per cent of Gucci’s and 14 per cent of Bulgari’s. Jonathan de Mello, head of retail consultancy at CB Richard Ellis, points out: “One legacy of the communist era is a tendency to live in utilitarian domiciles, so the Chinese like to show off their wealth in other ways.”In the search for extra kudos, however, there is nothing quite like buying the right luxury goods in the right place. In the words of Angela Ahrendts, chief executive of Burberry: “When Chinese consumers travel, they spend six times more than when they stay at home. Saying 'I bought this in London’ adds further cachet.”This, then, is the opportunity for Britain’s cash-strapped shopkeepers, who are advised by Global Blue to avoid three topics of conversation: “politics, Japan and communism”. Jace Tyrrell, spokesman for the New West End Company, which represents retailers on London’s Bond Street, Oxford Street and Regent Street, says there are two key reasons Chinese shoppers come to Britain. “Due to taxes, luxury goods are about 30 per cent cheaper here than at home and they want the brands that are genuinely coutured here – genuine artefacts,” he says. Swingeing domestic taxes on imported luxury goods and the rise of the yuan against sterling over the past two years make Britain comparatively cheap. But, as Tyrrell points out, part of the attraction is that Chinese shoppers “can go to Savile Row and get a suit made or go to Bond Street and see gems being set”. There’s another advantage of buying branded goods here: shoppers know they are not fakes, unlike the produce of China’s counterfeit industry. Both UK visitor numbers and spend are up 50 per cent in the past three years, with Bicester saying Chinese shoppers broadly divide into “young sophisticated, brand-savvy, affluent students, and 35- to 55-year-olds travelling with tour groups on a cultural tour of the UK”. Parents visiting for their children’s graduation from UK universities, ready to spoil what is usually their only child, provide a lucrative market in gifts. Bicester was just one of the retail operators, alongside Westfield, McArthur Glen, Harrods, Selfridges and the Bloomsbury Group, that VisitBritain took to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong in November. The trip was aimed, among other things, at promoting the UK shopping experience. “At a time when the domestic market for retailers has been quite flat, having Chinese shoppers spending a lot of money is very attractive,” says Patricia Yates, VisitBritain’s strategy director. China accounted for 109,000 visits to Britain in 2010, up 23 per cent, and, having seen a similar rise in the first nine months of 2011, VisitBritain is targeting 300,000 visitors by 2020. Two things could keep them away. First, Britain’s opt-out from the Schengen rules that allow a Chinese traveller to visit 26 European countries on a single visa. By contrast, Chinese tourists coming to Britain require a separate visa, adding costly bureaucracy to each visit. Second, that the Chinese economy may itself be coming off the boil, as empty shopping malls at home might suggest. But neither have yet showed any signs of slowing this growing market. A China Daily news report suggested earlier this year that there are four types of Chinese traveller: “the beibao zu, backpack tribe; the genban zu, latest-destinations trend lemmings; the ziyouxing zu, fully independent travellers, and the Gucci zu, who are after the best luxury goods money can buy.”In their pursuit of the “Peking Pound”, it’s clear which type Britain’s shopkeepers are after. ?SSE also fell 1.7pc after broker Citigroup cut its recommendation on the group to “sell” from “neutral.” Among the mid caps, Electrocomponents was the biggest riser early in the session, gaining 5.5 pc, after the group said first quarter sales were at a similar level to last year. However, Booker Group lost ground after Shore Capital downgraded the stock to “sell” from “hold” and the stock slipped 3.5pc. ?China's economy is widely expected to slow this year as woes in key export markets such as Europe and the US hit its overseas sales.The government has set a target of 7.5pc economic growth this year. China's economy grew 9.2pc last year and 10.4pc in 2010.The government this month cut banks' required reserve ratio, freeing up funds they can lend to clients, after unexpectedly low figures for April, with exports up just 4.9pc year on year and imports virtually flat from a year earlier."The BMI has been in the 48 to 49 range for several months now, so it's clear the economy remains on the sluggish side," said Zhu Haibin, an economist with JPMorgan Chase in Hong Kong."But it seems that the policy is now shifting towards pro-growth, and we expect that in the second half, the economy will perform strongly," he said.HSBC's manufacturing figures are typically more pessimistic than China's official numbers.The HSBC survey puts more emphasis on smaller companies, which are suffering more in the economic downturn than state-owned giants.Small companies have a harder time than their big counterparts securing funding from the banking system, and they are also typically geared towards foreign markets, so a slowdown in exports hits them harder. ?But trouble hit the textiles firm post-millennium as the pound strengthened and designers started outsourcing to China. For 25 years, Private White had made the Virgin Atlantic eye-catching red air-hostess uniforms, but corporate customers stopped replenishing orders. By 2008, it was making annual losses of more than £100,000 and was close to turning off its machinery. That is until Eden, Jack White’s great grandchild, abandoned his finance career in the City and bought the factory – renaming it . So has Eden, who used to work at Royal Bank of Scotland, looked back to his days of pre-bust banking bonuses? “Running a business isn’t for everyone,” he said. “But neither is working in the City and this is a lot more satisfying. You can only delude or kid yourself for so long, and a job in the City just wasn’t for me.” However, working in banking at least gave him an insight on how to talk to the financiers he now needs onside. As the major supplier of clothing company Aquascutum, the 28 year-old threw himself into the bidding war for the collapsed business. Aquascutum, famed for dressing Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Clark Gable, was until recently owned by retail magnate Harold Tillman and made losses of £24m in 2011 due to the consumer recession. But last week YGM Trading, the Asian owner of Aquascutum’s global brand, beat him to the punch, buying it out of administration for £15m. There’s a back-up plan: Eden is now in negotiations with YGM to rescue Aquascutum’s factory in Corby. The Northamptonshire site, that had been making clothes for 150 years, was shut during the insolvency, and with it 110 jobs were lost. When he scraped together savings and borrowed from friends and family to purchase Private White three years ago, his turnaround strategy was to focus on the high end market, build online worldwide distribution, and create a Private White own brand rather than just supply clothing to already existing labels. The new company was born out of the global banking crisis and the UK consumer recession. He saw many of his suppliers fold, unable to extend credit lines, and even wealthy consumers started to show signs of restraint. Despite this, sales have grown 50pc year-on-year since 2008, to £4.5m last year, aided by Eden’s vision of the “Private White man”. “Bankers, solicitors, architects, professional men who like the finer things in life and invest in their clothes. We’re also finding that people are craving a British handcrafted product.” Transforming the company’s online distribution infrastructure was vital to transforming its fortunes. It now delivers to 25 countries, with particularly high demand coming from East Asia, the US and Germany. Closer to home, Private White owns stores in well-heeled Bloomsbury and Notting Hill in London, with plans to add units in the City, Chelsea and the West End. Not to forget the North – Private White is soon to open an outlet in the company’s home city of Manchester. In Jack White’s era, as a reaction to the two World Wars, there was an emphasis on domestic industries, and Private White is now benefiting from the resurgence of interest in British products. Despite his youth and ambitious expansion plans, Eden remains cautious – he will not commit to expensive units in new locations until local appetite has been tested. To that end, Private White will open a pop-up store in New York in the autumn. As for the future, Eden’s ambition is to create a handcrafted, British outerwear brand that will outlive him – perhaps one that will be continued by his own great grandchildren. For more information please visit ?She was brought up in the north London borough of Camden by her mother, Pearl, once the singer with the Britpop bands Powder and Lodger, and her stepfather, Danny Goffey, the drummer in the band Supergrass. She talks lovingly of her parents and three younger siblings, but family life was far from settled, and not just because of touring schedules. Goffey and Pearl Lowe were linchpins of what the media came to call the Primrose Hill set, a gang of celebrities whose lives were packed with high-profile parties and constant tabloid attention. This reached fever pitch when Goffey and Lowe were accused of having wife-swapping sessions with Jude Law and Sadie Frost in 2001. Pearl has since cleaned up, moved her family to the countryside and written a tell-all memoir outlining the heroin and cocaine addiction that gripped her through this time. While Daisy insists Pearl was 'a wonderful, wonderful mother’, her drug addiction clearly had an impact on her daughter’s childhood. When Pearl’s second child, Alfie, was born it was Daisy, then seven, who woke with him every morning at five, gave him his bottle and looked after him until her mother rose much later. 'He’s my baby, really,’ she says smiling, seemingly unaware how sad this sounds. Daisy, who is extremely close to Pearl, maintains she didn’t know about her mother’s drug problem until after she had cleaned up. 'She was really lucky, because, if she had carried on for another year, I would have known. Looking back on it now, I can see exactly when she was high, but she also kept it from me very well.’ To add to the turbulence of her childhood, until she was 15 Daisy had assumed that Pearl’s ex-husband, an American naturopath called Bronner Handwerger, was her father. After a paternity test it was proved that her father was actually yet another rock star, Gavin Rossdale of the band Bush, Pearl’s close friend, Daisy’s godfather, and Mr Gwen Stefani. While many in her position might have careered off the rails, Lowe seems to have responded by becoming ever more grown-up and responsible. As a teenager she became part of a scene as much simultaneously fawned over and eviscerated by the press as her parents’ had been. Made up of musicians, DJs and models, the gang hung out in Camden, too, and photographs of Lowe at parties appeared almost daily in the tabloids. But Lowe does not talk of this time fondly. Rather she describes the pressure of always being 'the sober one’, of worrying about and looking after her friends more than herself. She found it difficult when friends took drugs. 'I would always be the one to pick up the pieces, because I’d always be sober,’ she says. 'And I’d always have my head screwed on and know how to deal with it. I’d never judge people for taking drugs but, just because they’re in that dark place, doesn’t mean that I need to be dragged into it.’A fly-on-the-wall series on BBC Two, Class of 2008, documented the loves, lives and careers of Daisy and five of her friends, including Daisy’s move to America and the temporary break-up with Cameron it prompted. Lowe winces with embarrassment when it is mentioned. I get the impression that it epitomises what she is glad to have left behind in London – too much laid bare to the media, friendships in flux and a broken heart. After she broke up with Cameron, a musician, she had a brief romance with the music producer Mark Ronson, which got the tabloids salivating. Now she is back with her ex, and clearly smitten. She talks proudly about his music projects and grins as she explains how they both needed the break-up, but that now he treats her 'like a princess’. She misses only a handful of her group from London. She relies heavily on her mother, her boyfriend and her agent, and is learning to surround herself with a support system of friends who like her for more than just modelling. When it comes to modelling, Lowe is special because physically she breaks the mould; she might be tall, leggy and slender, but she’s also blessed with proper womanly curves that are as foreign to most models as lunar soil. Given how snobby the industry can be about an ounce of excess flesh, and even the faintest whiff of celebrity, the quality and amount of work she continues to win are impressive. She has worked with fashion’s most celebrated photographers, from Juergen Teller to Steven Meisel to Steven Klein, and has walked the catwalk for Chanel, Vivienne Westwood and Burberry Prorsum – extraordinary given that she doesn’t fit into the tiny samples usually used for shows. For the first time in a long while, a model is managing to bring some real femininity to the industry. Her agent, Sarah Leon of Select Model Management, explains: 'When I found Daisy, age 15, she was not the model norm, but was incredibly gorgeous and charismatic. By most people’s expectations Daisy has the ideal body, but it’s taken the fashion business a while to accept her for what she is. I was adamant that she shouldn’t feel pressure to look skinny and bony.’ As Amy Molyneaux of the London fashion label PPQ succinctly puts it, 'Daisy is fashion as bombshell!’ For Clare Waight Keller, the creative director of Pringle, a mix of looks and personality made Lowe the right girl for their campaign. 'Daisy is ultra glamorous, but at ease with herself and has incredible sensuality,’ she says. 'In person she is a very cool girl – someone you really want to hang out with.’When we meet, Lowe is in the middle of attending castings for New York fashion week. It’s not something she relishes. 'I went to one on Saturday, and there was a gaggle of about five 6ft Russian girls who all weigh about 6st, and I’m just not that breed of a woman. Fashion is supposed to be fun and beautiful. But so much of the time it depresses so many people, because they think, “We need to lose weight.” The female form is such a beautiful thing. It should be celebrated and not put down, that’s the only reason I agreed to do the shows. I said, “I’ll give it a go to see if they’ll hire some tits and arse. If they will, then great!”’ That she says this while munching on an enormous sandwich, washed down with a strawberry milkshake, only makes it all the more endearing. She would love to do a Chanel campaign, and a beauty campaign, but says with youthful earnestness, 'My biggest ambition is to do really well, but keep being a nice person and not let it affect me. Then I can buy a house and bow out. I’m going to get old and wrinkly, and when I’m older I’m going to put on loads of weight, and I’m excited about it. I think it’s just really important to remember that you aren’t your face.’She is interested in acting and is enjoying making short films with friends, but also has more grown-up matters on her mind. Lowe is the same age that Pearl was when she became a mother. She and Cameron have talked about having children, though, sensible girl that she is, not just yet. 'I think that one of the reasons that I am on this planet is because I want to be a really good mother and I want to devote all my time to my kids. My mum did an amazing job of being able to be on tour and be with us, but it was difficult. I have never resented my mother, because we have the most amazing relationship, but I know that my way of parenting will differ from her in that I know I will want to be there.’ Lunch over, Lowe strides off across the road, ready to charm her way through some more castings she would rather not be at and try to change the perspective of another small portion of the fashion industry. But what she’s really looking forward to is what happens after that – getting home to the much more important business of being with her boyfriend, playing with her dog and perfecting her recipe for macaroni cheese. ?"What we need to happen in Britain is a rebalancing of the economy, away from excessive borrowing, financial services and consumption and towards business investment, manufacturing, making things again," the Prime Minister said, adding progress was slower than he would like. "Private sector employment is growing, the manufacturing surveys recently have been encouraging, exports to India and China are booming, so there are good signs, but frankly a rebalancing is a difficult thing to do after the debt-fuelled boom we had," he said. He added the eurozone was having a "chilling effect" on British exports but low interest rates were acting as a stimulus for business. Last night David Cameron said he will press ahead with cuts in public spending even if it costs him his job as Prime Minister at the next general election. Mr Cameron said he had a "duty" to see through his plans to reduce the deficit, even as a poll showed public doubts about the cuts. The ComRes/ITV poll showed that 59 per cent of voters say that if the economy does not improve very soon, "the Government should scale back its programme of spending cuts". But Mr Cameron told ITV News that he would stick to his plans regardless of their potential unpopularity. He said: "I would rather be a one–term Prime Minister who does the right thing than a two–term Prime Minister who does the wrong thing. That is what my view of politics and public service is all about. "You have this duty as Prime Minister, as a Government, to do the right thing even in difficult circumstances and that means sticking to the plans that we have to deliver the low interest rates and the business environment that we need to get jobs and growth in Britain."Mr Cameron also rejected suggestions that he is out of touch with ordinary voters because of his wealthy family. He said: "I don't think it matters really where you come from and what your background was. The question is that if you have the right ideas in your head, the right passion in your heart, you can lead a team to get the job done."?Mr Umunna is expected to go beyond "bank bashing" and call for an overhaul of corporate pay across the board. He is expected to say that the culture of excessive bonuses – from banks to Network Rail – has damaged Britain's society and economy. His speech is also expected to re-ignite the row over bank lending to small businesses, which Labour claims has fallen despite the so-called Project Merlin agreement between the banks and the Coalition on lending targets. ?Police attended the scene and found Miss Kobeniak in an "agitated" state outside the address. Mr Ross, 44, voluntarily attended a police station on January 5 and was interviewed under caution for two hours. He was not arrested.A Scotland Yard spokesman said Miss Kobeniak had made a "withdrawal statement" on January 7 over an allegation of assault.Hours before the alleged incident, Mr Ross and Miss Pilkington, 23, attended two Christmas parties - the first was at the Notting Hill home of Matthew Freud, the public relations consultant, where Mr Cameron and his wife Samantha were among the guests. The second gathering was at the Chelsea home of David Yarrow, a financier. Mr Ross then returned to his home with other friends.Mr Ross declined to comment yesterday on the latest developments, but has stated previously that he did not know Miss Kobeniak. He is due to host a dinner for senior Conservatives at his home later this month. A key adviser on Tory education policy, he has been tipped for a peerage if Mr Cameron becomes Prime Minister and has given £140,000 to the party.In 2008, he resigned as a director of Carphone Warehouse, which he founded with schoolmate Charles Dunstone, after securing a personal loan against shares in the company without disclosure. He also resigned as an adviser to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. The Financial Services Authority later cleared him of any wrongdoing.Miss Pilkington, an heiress and former art student, and Mr Ross, whose wealth has been estimated at £900 million, have been dating for two years.Miss Kobienak has lain low since the alleged incident. She appears on several escort agency websites as "Karina Storm", with one listing her interests as "fine wines, painting, reading and swingers' clubs". According to reports, her family in Lithuania believed she had found work in a fast food factory and were dismayed to discover her true occupation.?16.35 European markets have drawn to a close for the day, and all are positive except for London. Angus Campbell, head of market analysis at Capital Spreads, said: The week so far has been a mixed bag for equity markets with today’s session seeing the FTSE being left behind whereas its European counterparts headed higher. The London market really has lagged the likes of the German DAX and others on the continent where German stocks are printing gains of 1.1pc compared to the FTSE’s decline of some 0.1pc. Investors seem to be picking up European stocks aggressively ahead of tomorrow’s German constitutional court ruling on the legality of its contributions to the ESM bailout fund which indicates that they are fully expecting the court to rule in favour. Considering the benefits that Europe’s biggest economy has reaped from the whole euro project, such a ruling will be very favourable to Germany as well as the other members of the eurozone since they are the paymaster and therefore the entire euro project as a whole. It really is a surprise to see the FTSE struggling to gain any traction when other indices on both sides of the Atlantic are racing higher.The FTSE 100 closed down 0.05pc, while the CAC climbed 0.89pc and the DAX rose 1.35pc. Spain's IBEX gained 0.82pc and the FTSE MIB is 0.84pc higher. 15.36 Portugal has been given more time to hit its deficit goals by troika inspectors. It was previously under orders to reduce the deficit to 4.5pc this year and 3pc next year, but now has the freedom to post a deficit of 5pc this year, 4.5pc next year and 2.5pc in 2014, says finance minister Vitor Gaspar. Vitor Gaspar15.31 The job advert for the Bank of England Governor is now out, just in case any of you are tempted to submit your CV: The new Governor will lead the Bank through major reforms to the regulatory system, including the transfer of new responsibilities that will see the Bank take the lead in safeguarding the stability of the UK financial system. The successful candidate must demonstrate that they can successfully lead, influence and manage the change in the Bank’s responsibilities, inspiring confidence and credibility both within the Bank and throughout financial markets. The successful candidate will have experience of working in, or with, a central bank or similar institution; or will have worked at the most senior level in a major bank or other financial institution. He or she will demonstrate strong leadership, management and policy skills; will have an advanced understanding of financial markets and good economic knowledge. He or she will be a strong communicator, have good interpersonal skills and will be a person of undisputed integrity and standing.15.21 George Osborne has set a date for the autumn statement, December 5. 15.14 US markets are open, and they seem to have largely shrugged off news that Moody's could withdraw America's AAA rating. The Dow Jones is up 0.55pc in early trading, the S&P 500 has risen 0.38pc and the Nasdaq is 0.14pc higher. 14:58 Greek bank Emporiki is expected to be sold by retail banking group Credit Agricole within weeks. News surfaced after a presentation was posted on the website today by Bertrand Delpit, the French bank's chief financial officer. Credit Agricole is currently transfering shipping loans denominated in US dollars from Emporiki, reports , however the operation could take months. 14.23 A parodic update from the troika meeting in Athens from the fake Angela Merkel: Twitter: Angela Merkel (not) - Athens update: Government bickering steadily, Troika drinking heavily. 14:09 Our man in New York, Richard Blackden, says Moody's has warned America it could face losing its AAA credit rating unless it can get its finances back on an even keel: With the US election less than two months away, ratings agency Moody's has warned Washington that its AAA rating is in peril. Unless the new session of Congress that will begin in January delivers an agreement that lowers the trajectory for America's long-term debt, the US can wave goodbye to the AAA rating. It would be a surprise if US bonds sell-off on the warning. After all, Standard & Poor's stripped the US of its AAA rating last year and yields have been heading down since. But it is a reminder of the pressure that the pressure on US politicians to reach a compromise on the almost $16trillion of debt is growing. 13:48 Greece is looking into historical archives in order to calculate how much Germany may owe in oustanding debts from WWII, reports . A team of four has been put together yet "the matter remains pending" says Christos Staikouras, Deputy Finance Minister. He added that "Greece has never resigned its rights". However there are fears that this may create further tension between the two nations. The report is expected by the end of this year. 13.08 Protesters from communist-affiliated trade union PAME are out in the streets of Athens today, blocking the entrance of the labour ministry as a troika meeting is scheduled to take place. A government spokesperson said: We're trying to find a way to get the troika officials into the ministry.12.09 We mentioned earlier today (08.48) that the Greek government department tasked with selling off unwanted assets and property confiscated from criminals had been disbanded, leaving no way for those goods to be turned into cash. Reuters now has several pictures from the department's warehouse showing acres of valuable cars being left to rot. 11.19 Time for an update on the European markets: The FTSE 100 is off by 0.39pc, the CAC has slipped 0.33pc and the DAX is down 0.12pc. The IBEX is 0.97pc lower and the FTSE MIB is 0.86pc down on the day. 10.47 We on the eurozone crisis live blog love a good picture of a mutilated euro coin. It's our go-to visual metaphor, and we're not alone. Spiegel Online has published a wonderful piece on how and are now scraping the bottom of the barrel. Two years ago, when Greece's future in the eurozone was in serious doubt for the first time, Julian Stratenschulte showed how brittle the currency really is. He took a hammer and whacked a Greek one-euro coin. His first blow sent the central segment with the silver owl spinning out of its casing. "It was easier than I thought," he recalls. Scores of media outlets published the photo. Stratenschulte is a photographer with the German news agency DPA. He has been photographing euro coins from various angles for the past three years. He tries to convey the complex crisis in images. The problem is that the crisis won't end, which means Stratenschulte has to keep coming up with fresh ideas. 10.31 Jason Conibear, trading director at forex specialists Cambridge Mercantile, has given us his opinion on the trade deficit figures: The surge in exports will have taken many by surprise - not least the nearly 8pc jump in sales to the EU.With the wurozone crisis put on hold during much of the summer holiday period, our European neighbours bought more British goods during July. Last week European equity markets spiked after Mario Draghi drew a line in the sand. For now that confidence is holding - and the eurozone, our largest trading partner, is in a less parlous state than it has been for some time. Exports to non-EU countries leapt by 11pc in July, as the pound's relative weakness made British goods competitive in several key markets.10.15 Germany's finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says the only way to solve the crisis is for eurozone members to correct the policy mistakes of the past, reports Reuters: The causes lie in the mistakes of the financial and economic policies which member states have pursued and (the crisis) can only be solved via these. There is no comfortable way out of that, neither through pooling debt nor by casually using the bank's printing presses.10.01 Time for a quick graph: Interactive chart: Top 10 trading partners - non-EU exports09.32 Britain's goods trade deficit narrowed more than expected in July, data out just now shows. Once again, that's thanks in no small part to exports heading outside the EU. The Office for National Statistics says the deficit shrank to £7.149bn in July, down from £10.068bn in June - the narrowest since February 2011. Economists had predicted that it would fall to £9bn. The overall trade deficit narrowed to £1.517bn, down from £4.333bn in June. 09.25 The euro has risen against the US dollar this morning, climbing near to a four-month high after the German Constitutional Court said it would make a ruling on the ESM tomorrow: it's climbed as high as €1.2819 this morning. 09.11 Finnish PM Jyrki Katainen has said that, given the hard work it has put in to reduce its deficit, Spain deserves to be paying lower interest rates. Katainen is in Madrid today to meet with Mariano Rajoy. He added that he'd like to avoid further eurozone bail-outs. 09.01 European markets may be in the red, but the really dramatic tumble this morning came from Burberry. The luxury retailer had been holding up well during the financial crisis, but falling demand in China led it to warn that full-year profits would be "around the low end of expectations". . 08.48 There's trouble in Greece as PM Antonis Samaras fails to deliver the approval of his two coalition partners for €11.5bn of fresh cuts needed to secure the next bail-out payment. Meanwhile, there's an interesting report from Reuters this morning on a previous casualty of austerity which has done little to improve Greece's balance sheet: In a sprawling yard in Athens, a yellow Porsche rusts among dusty motorcycles, police cars with bullet holes and wrecked city buses - a telling image of one Greek government agency's slide into bureaucratic quagmire. Known by its Greek acronym ODDY, the Organisation for Public Property Management ran warehouses nationwide that auctioned off anything from old sofas discarded from city hall waiting rooms to luxury cars confiscated from drug dealers. A ministerial decree in November announced ODDY no longer existed, and the European Union and International Monetary Fund, which are keeping Greece afloat on condition it slashes costs, duly noted in March that the required cuts had been legislated for. But that is all on paper. Employees and government officials who spoke to Reuters have revealed that ODDY still exists in all but name, for as DDDY - no longer an Organisation, but now a Directorate - it has simply become an office of the Greek Finance Ministry. And while staffing has been cut, many costs have simply transferred from wages to pensions, and the shake-up has all but paralysed its ability to run auctions to make money. 08.29 There were fears last night that the German Constitutional Court would , thanks to a last minute appeal by Peter Gauweiler, a member of Merkel’s ruling coalition. But the court has just announced that there will be no delay and that we can expect a full ruling tomorrow morning. But the news has done little to boost European markets, which are all still in the red. Germany's Constitutional Court08.13 Germany's Constitutional Court essentially holds the fate of the euro in its hands this week, deciding whether the European Stability Mechanism can go ahead. Realistically, it's unlikely to reject it outright, but it could impose tough restrictions. Markets have slipped in early trading this morning as investors take profits ahead of the decision tomorrow (or lack of, if there turns out to be a delay). The FTSE 100 has lost 0.25pc, the CAC has dropped 0.37pc and the DAX is 0.28pc off. 08.05 A delay to the highly anticipated German court decision on bail-out funding and a rebellion in the Greek government over austerity , reports Louise Armitstead. Germany’s federal constitutional court said it might be forced to delay its ruling on the legality of the European Stability Mechanism because of an eleventh hour objection by an MP. Peter Gauweiler, a member of Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition, argued that the court decision, due on Wednesday, should take time to assess the impact of the ECB’s “outright monetary transactions”, announced last week. 08.00 Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of the eurozone debt crisis. ?21.10 UK Chancellor George Osborne said yesterday that he was willing to pour more funds into the IMF if the case was strong enough. However, last week he also said that any extra payments would "not [be] a substitute for the eurozone also taking action."Britain is currently liable for 4.5pc of all IMF funding. 20.59 Meanwhile, Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that she is exploring ways of increasing the fund's firepower. In an emailed statement, she said: The biggest challenge is to respond to the crisis in an adequate manner and many Executive Directors stressed the necessity and urgency of collective efforts to contain the debt crisis in the Euro Area and protect economies around the world from spillovers and excessive output/income contractions. In this context, they welcomed the recently announced commitment of European members to contribute to the Fund’s resources, while stressing the importance of European firewalls and other policies being sufficiently strong to respond to the crisis in the Euro Area. I welcome the recognition of the importance of ensuring adequate Fund firepower to help defuse the current global economic weaknesses and regional challenges. To this end, Fund management and staff will explore options for increasing the Fund’s firepower, subject to adequate safeguards. I welcome Executive Directors’ collective interest in resolving the crisis and securing global economic stability.IMF chief Christine Lagarde (Photo: Getty)20.44 The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, which officially determines whether a "credit event" has occurred (and credit default swaps (CDS) triggered), yesterday published an update to : The possibility of retrospectively applying Collective Action Clauses (CACs) to existing Greek debt has been discussed of late. Would the inclusion or activation of a CAC trigger a Credit Event?The determination of whether any action constitutes a credit event under CDS documentation will be made by ISDA’s EMEA Determinations Committee on the basis of the specific facts and if a market participant requests a decision from the DC. Generally, however, the inclusion of a CAC would not, in and of itself, be expected to trigger a Credit Event. On the other hand, the use of such a clause to effect a reduction in coupon or principal or one of the other events set out in the definition of the Restructuring Credit Event could trigger if the other requirements of the Restructuring Credit Event were met (for example decline in creditworthiness), as its effect would be to bind all holders of the relevant debt.Collective action clauses will allow a majority of bondholders to pass a debt restructuring deal that is binding for all, preventing a minority of creditors from holding out. 20.38 Deutsche Bank chief Josef Ackermann has told reporters in Frankfurt that he could not rule out that Greek debt swap talks might fail. However, he said he still felt a deal could be reached. Yesterday in Berlin, he told Bloomberg: I think we are in a situation where everybody is trying to get the most out of it, but in the end we’ll come to an agreement.19.56 The controversy started when Mr Orbán used his two-thirds majority in parliament to pass a law that allowed his government to appoint more deputy governors to the country's central bank. Critics say this undermines its independence. The bank raised interest rates to 7pc in December to curb inflation. But the government wants to keep interest rates low to boost growth. The EU and IMF want Hungary to change its constitution. If Hungary doesn't, a new deal with both parties on a standby loan worth up to €20bn is in serious doubt. Mr Orbán has one month to respond to the EC. Ministers met earlier today in Strasbourg to agree a legal challenge against Budapest over its new constitution (Photo: AP)19.42 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is back! Tonight, his eye is on Hungary, and the against the country over new laws brought in under Viktor Orbán's government. He writes: Hungary's defiant premier Viktor Orbán has no hope of securing vital funding from the EU and the International Monetary Fund until the dispute is resolved, leaving him a stark choice of either bowing to EU demands or letting his country slide into bankruptcy. Yields on Hungary's two-year debt jumped to 9.17pc on Tuesday, an unsustainable level for an economy in recession with public debt of near 80pc of GDP. Hungary's debt was cut to junk status by rating agencies last week. Capital Economics said Hungary must repay €5.9bn (£4.9bn) in EU-IMF loans and raise external funds equal to 18pc of GDP this year, the highest in Eastern Europe. Two-thirds of household debt is in Swiss francs, leading to a lethal currency mismatch as capital flight weakens the forint. "Hungary is playing with fire," said Lars Christensen from Danske Bank. "The EU is not bluffing. It will let Hungary go over the edge to make the point that EU countries must play by the rules. Our worry is that Hungary's government has not yet got the message." 19.16 He added: There are some people out there concerned that we are facing a coming period of inflation, with central banks untethered, if not actively inflating away government debt. These concerns are unfounded [...] The challenge for monetary policy will be to keep inflation expectations anchored in the face of real rather than nominal volatility, coming from both sustained long-term movements in relative prices [...] and shorter, sharper real shocks.19.01 Mr Posen compared the economies of the late 19th century with the present day: We have seen before a world in which global economic integration proceeds against the background of international relations somewhere between a clear hegemon and outright conflict. This kind of multipolar world is what existed in the late 19th century, roughly between 1870 and 1910 [...] I am asserting that this international situation has much in common with the situation in which we find ourselves now and that, I believe, is likely to persist for the next couple of decades.18.52 The Bank of England's arch-dove . A cheerful start... While overt financial panic has ended, and economic recovery is underway in the US and the major emerging markets, there remain significant risks for the West and its economic and thus foreign policy leadership. Moreover, the global financial system, including but not limited to US-based entities, has not yet been sustainably reformed.The growth rates of the G7 economies and the ability of their governments to finance responses to future crises, both military and economic, will be meaningfully curtailed for several years to come given the debts incurred.Adam Posen is a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (Photo: Rex)18.11 The chap purporting to be ECB chief Mario Draghi today may have been outed as a fake (See 12.48), but that hasn't stopped a new "Super_Mario" emerging. The Twitter account of bills itself as: "The Real Spoof account. In a battle with @Anglea_D_Merkel [sic] for control of the Euro Zone."Twitter: Angela Merkel - Raised my long-term outlook from Depressed to Cynical Twitter: Super_Mario - Another phone call from Trichet. Man is at a lose end these days. Like to leave him on hold, listening to 17.18 Investors' fear of eurozone default (at least within the "core" eurozone countries) also eased. Credit default swaps (CDS) - a type of insurance against default - saw spreads largely narrow. The exception remains Portugal, where CDS spreads widened 21 basis points to 1,190bp. This means it now costs £1.19m to insure £10m of Portuguese government debt. Gavan Nolan, director at Markit, said: The S&P induced drama of last Friday almost seems a distant memory. Spreads have recovered with apparent ease from the widening late last week [...] Even the French sovereign is back to its pre-downgrade level after rallying for a second successive day. Of course, France, Austria, Italy etc were already trading at levels far worse than their ratings indicated so it could be expected that they would bounce back from the kneejerk negative market move. A solid bond auction from the EFSF also provided support to the rally [...] it was no great surprise that the bill auction was successful; the real test will come when it tries to sell longer-dated debt.17.05 Europe's markets have closed. The FTSE 100 in London finished up 0.65pc at 5,693.95, while the CAC 40 in Paris rose 1.4pc to 3,269.99 and the DAX 30 in Frankfurt ended the day up 1.8pc at 6,332.93. 16.51 Hat tip to Brussels correspondent Bruno Waterfield for noticing this: Twitter: Bruno Waterfield - Very, very important new prez has own staff of 36! - incl 3 "ushers" MT : Check out Schulz's new site From what I can see on its website, are a bit like well-heeled bouncers: Quick as a flash they will know which MEP is authorised to enter the chamber or a closed session meeting [...] Not everyone is authorised to enter the chamber during a plenary session. The ushers who are present at these sessions therefore act as go-betweens for MEPs and their colleagues. Sometimes their job is trickier. Upon the request of the President of the session, they are transformed into parliamentary police officers when, as occasionally happens, an MEP persists in disrupting the debates.Action-packed I'm sure. 16.49 The European Parliament has elected a new President today. His name? Martin Schulz, who has been described by AP as "a German socialist known for his fiery rhetoric". The President's signature is required for enacting most EU laws and the EU budget. Germany's Martin Schultz addresses the European Parliament on Tuesday after being elected its new president in Strasbourg (Photo: AP)16.34 And as James Nixon at Societe Generale highlights, even if Greece does reach agreement with its creditors, the road ahead is long, and very bumpy: Even after private sector involvement, Greek debt-to-GDP will be close to 150% of GDP in 2012. Still mired in recession and running a budget deficit, debt continues to grow. Greece will require official funding for a very long time. Returning Greece to positive GDP growth and securing very low interest rates holds the key. Even in the immediate future, Greece needs to secure a near 100% participation in the debt swap. If a significant segment of investors holds out then additional funds will be needed to meet their redemptions. This is especially true with €32bn of bonds falling due this year. Ultimately Greece will need official financing for many years to come and the current €130bn estimate for the new bailout package is simply insufficient.Even if Greece does manage to write-off 50pc of its debt through PSI, Greek debt-to-GDP will be close to 150pc in 2012.16.15 The IIF, which is negotiating a writedown of Greek debt on behalf of banks, has said it will return to Athens tomorrow to resume talks "with a sense of urgency". In an emailed statement, it said: The Co-Chairmen of the Private Investor-Creditor Steering Committee for Greece, Mr. Charles Dallara, IIF Managing Director, and Mr. Jean Lemierre, Special Advisor to the Chairman, BNP Paribas, confirmed that they will be returning to Athens on Wednesday to resume discussions with the leadership of the Government of Greece. They reiterated their commitment to seeking an agreement on a voluntary debt exchange for Greece and encouraged all parties to work in good faith toward this end with a sense of urgency. Yesterday, Mr Dallara said that talks had broken down because some officials wanted creditors to accept "completely unreasonable" interest rates on new bonds. 16.06 The Bank of Italy added that the economy could recover in 2013, but only if long-term borrowing costs decline from current levels of around 7pc, to below 5pc. 15.55 Meanwhile a gloomy forecast from the Bank of Italy has spelt-out one direction the country's economy: Recession. The central bank said it expects a deeper economic contraction in the fourth quarter of 2011, after it contracted by 0.2pc during Q3. The bank added that Italy's economy was expected to shrink by 1.2pc this year but recover to grow by about 0.8pc in 2013. 15.35 Fresh from his meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday, Spain's PM Mariano Rajoy has been having a jaw-jaw with European Union President Herman Van Rompuy. In a statement, Mr Van Rompuy said: We are both convinced that restoring confidence in the euro zone is key to bring the whole Europe back on the path of economic growth. The euro area has taken decisive action on all fronts to rise to the challenge posed by this crisis. These initiatives push forward the necessary fiscal consolidation and structural reforms in our Member States, address the fragilities of the banking sector, reinforce our financial backstops and strengthen our economic governance. The recent EU decisions, combined with action by the ECB, have been instrumental in easing tensions in sovereign bonds markets. In this context, I should like to commend the important decision taken by Spain when adopting, by overwhelming majority, the so-called "Golden Rule" to keep future budget deficits to a strict limit. The consensus reached in Spain on this issue is an example of determination of the Spanish democracy to act to solve the debt crisis.Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (right) and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy arrive to give a press conference after their meeting at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid on Tuesday (Photo: AFP).15.30 Citigroup's loan portfolio improved late last year, partly because Americans were better about paying down credit card debt. But choppy financial markets hurt its investment banking profits. The bank said today that profit fell 11pc in the last three months of last year. A year earlier, in the fourth quarter of 2010, Citigroup made $1.3bn on revenue of $18.4bn. 15.09 The US markets have opened for the day, shooting higher as investors were cheered by upbeat economic data from China and Germany. The Dow Jones is up 0.95pc, the S&P 500 rose 0.99pc and the Nasdaq is 1.06pc higher. 14.59 We covered Mervyn King's appearance at the Treasury Select Committee earlier on, here's the video: 14.45 There are all sorts of metrics that you can judge an economy on, but sometimes the simplest ones tell the story best of all. For instance, Americans are holding onto cars and trucks for longer as the economy worsens, and the average age of a vehicle is now a record 10.8 years. Unemployment and the sour economy have caused people to put off buying new, according to a report out today from Polk. 14.29 Canada's central bank kept its key lending rate at 1pc today, saying Europe faces a "deeper and longer" recession than previously expected and a worsening debt crisis: The sovereign debt crisis in Europe has intensified. The recession in Europe is now expected to be deeper and longer than the bank had anticipated in October.14.13 Portugal has dropped plans to extend the official working day, abandoning a key labour reform aimed at helping jumpstart its economy. After 17 hours of tense negotiations with unions and employers, the government of PM Pedro Passos Coelho gave way on adding 30 minutes to the private sector working day. But it didn't all go the unions' way. In exchange, the government secured agreement on other reforms including the cancellation of four public holidays, the reduction of annual holidays by three days and the easing of rules on working hours. Economy minister Alvaro Santos Pereira said the deal was "important for the image of the country". After months of intense negotiations, the country now has an agreement that reinforces the national economy's competitive standing.13.49 From one spoof Twitter account to another. It seems that the fake Angela Merkel was taken in by the fake Mario Draghi. Twitter: Angela Merkel - Goddamn Twitter fakes. Just sent the password for the Bundesbank current account. 13.34 More bad news for Slovenia: unemployment remained at an 11.9pc high in November, unchanged from October, according to the Slovenian statistics office. S&P downgraded the eurozone member last week, citing concerns about the handling of the bloc's debt crisis. Steadily rising unemployment is an unlikely ingredient in a successful reform recipe. 13.19 A survey by Thomson Reuters claims that gold could hit $2,000 an ounce by early 2013, pushed up by wary investors and rising demand for jewellery in India and China. 12.56 Breaking news on Mario Draghi's Twitter account (see 12.48)... It's a fake. Shame. But didn't stop many people retweeting "his" posts. 12.53 The eurozone rescue fund, the EFSF, needs a "reinforced" lending capacity to make it more convincing, Amadeu Altafaj, a spokesman for the EU executive, has said. The call came a day after the €440bn suffered a knock-on downgrade, its long-term rating cut from AAA to AA+ after credit ratings giant Standard & Poor's penalised nine of the 17 eurozone states. Altafaj, spokesman for the European Union economy commissioner Olli Rehn, told a news conference 12.48 The ECB is apparently looking into whether @MarioDraghiECB is a spoof Twitter account. I hope it's not. 12.40 The quote of the day came from Andy Haldane, executive director of financial stability at the Bank of England: Bank capital buffers are there to be used when it's a rainy day and at the moment it's pouring. 12.32 Mervyn King has finished speaking to the TSC. Just a quick recap of what he said over those two-and-a-half hours: • Financial oversight should be performed by a committee that does not include executives of the Bank of England • BoE should be accountable to Parliament • Nationalisation of Northern Rock was the only option • Rather than distribute a great deal of money in dividends or pay, banks should plough it back into balance sheet • Public authorities should be seen to rely far less on ratings than they do. Central banks are at the heart of this • UK banks have a lot of liquidity. I believe banks will be happy they raised extra capital • "Baffled" by EC moves to restrict ability of countries to impose higher capital requirements on their banks • Quite astonishing that UK is able to issue 35-year debt at negative real interest 12.31 We are hearing reports that S&P will begin downgrading tens of European banks and insurance companies as soon as today. 12.16 King: Quite astonishing that UK is able to issue 35-year debt at negative real interest rate. The world economy is very vulnerable if low real interest rates move up sharply. 12.10 Sir Mervyn King to TSC: We need to reform regulation of banks. We have led the charge in Europe for higher capital requirements, and it's some of the core countries that have done their best to water them down. He says he is "baffled" by EC moves to restrict ability of countries to impose higher capital requirements on their banks. 12.07 BREAKING NEWS...Finland has said it will not raise EFSF guarantees. 12.05 Telegraph's Banking Editor Harry Wilson at TSC: Twitter: Harry Wilson - Haldane says EBA use of capital ratio target in stress tests has "shot itself in the foot".12.02 UN study sees world growth at 2.6pc in 2012 and 3.2pc in 2012. 12.00 Michael Cohrs:UK banks are very vulnerable if you have a default in some eurozone countries. This comes after a director at Fitch said that Greece is insolvent and will default. 11.58 Andy Haldane, executive director of financial stability: bank capital buffers are there to be used when it's a rainy day and at the moment it's pouring. 11.56 Elsewhere, the euro has spiked to $1.2783 and stock markets have strengthened after strong German confidence figures. The influential think tank ZEW said investor sentiment rose by the largest amount ever recorded in January - its monthly poll of economic sentiment rose to -21.6 from -53.8 in December.] Apparently, this was due to optimism over policy response to the European debt crisis and the ECB's offer of unlimited, cheap three-year loans and robust German growth of 3pc and positive data from the US. ZEW economist Michael Schroeder said: We have better figures from the US, that is one reason. The second reason is that it seems that the worst of the euro zone crisis might be over due to the reaction of the central bank and the rescue mechanism.11.55 TSC: UK is seen as a safe haven at the moment, but we want the eurozone to get act together. If it does we will no longer be a safe haven. King: That will benefit us. Our exports will go up, growth will rise and deficit will come down. 11.49 King: ECB has gone a long way to ease immediate pressures on eurozone banks but cannot change underlying problems. Creating yet another liquidity system provides more time but in the past this has not been used well. UK banks have a lot of liquidity. I believe banks will be happy they raised extra capital. 11.47 TSC: We have rogue traders, could a rogue rater exist? King: No suggestion of criminal behaviour in rating agencies. They got carried away by hubris surrounding financial sector before crisis, then rushed in to be the first to downgrade. Public authorities should be seen to rely far less on ratings than they do. Central banks are at the heart of this. We should be reasonably encouraged that market response to France ratings downgrade has been muted. We should focus more on sovereign debt spreads than on ratings agencies. 11.42 Harry Wilson of the Telegraph at TSC: Twitter: Harry Wilson - Robert Jenkins: "Every billions pounds less of bonus would support £20bn of new lending." Suggests FPC could be very tough on City pay.11.41 Sir Mervyn King: The focus on executive pay risks overshadowing arguments on how banks lend. 11.39 Bob Jenkins, external member of the interim Financial Policy Committee, Bank of England: It is completely bogus for banks to say regulation pressures are constraining lending. He adds that investors should not decide which bank executive gets what bonus. 11.34 Michael Cohrs: It's not acceptable for a senior RBS banker to receive £4m remuneration. 11.31 King: Banks will be very well advised to improve resilience of their balance sheets. Rather than distribute a great deal of money in dividends or pay, banks should plough it back into balance sheet. Reputation of UK banks will be affected if they award very substantial compensation while share performance is less than stellar. 11.27 King: We are far ahead of other central banks. The Fed and ECB don't even have a court. 11.15 Sir Mervyn King tells the Treasury Select Committee on financial stability that the Monetary Policy Committee displays a lack of "group think": "There is no MPC in the world that has demonstrated a greater variety of views than ours. Most MPC members would not want an increase in the number of people in it."11.13 EFSF sells six-month bills at 0.27pc and below. Bid to cover 3.1. 11.04 King accused of throwing his toys out the pram over who has powers when it comes to use of public funds. 10.58 King: My responsibility is to go to Chancellor and say I am worried about parts of financial sector and it may pose threat to banks. I will do it early. We don't wait until the last minute. TSC: When will we be clear when you go to Chancellor? King: Not for me to say when Chancellor takes control of things. But he will be aware of my views. That is seperate to when certain powers will be vested in the Chancellor, but MoU will make that clear. TSC: So the power is in your hands to tell Chancellor if there is a serious risk to financial sector? King: I would feel under obligation to tell Chancellor if there are substantial risks to public funds. If I didnt do it then committee could bring me here and I would tell you when I told Chancellor about Bank X or Bank Y. 10.57 King: You may be pleasantly surprised by MoU. We're close to finalising it. I sent it to Treasury a week ago and they had no comment on it. We should discuss it when it is finished. 10.55 King: Using public money is the decision of the Chancellor and the memorandum will make that clear. TSC: Why is it better to have an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) rather than the Chancellor taking over during a crisis? King: MoU may well incorporate exactly that. 10.52 TSC: Clear at the time that no one felt accountable for Northern Rock. King: I dont think that's quite right. Nobody had accountability for resolution mechanism. We were the only G7 country without one. Nationalisation was only alternative. TSC: Will memorandum of understanding ensure that someone is in charge [if this happens again]? King: Memorandum not yet final. But your objective will be met by memorandum. Bank has a duty to ensure Chancellor is always informed during crisis. TSC: That didn't happen. 10.46 TSC: We didnt find out about £60bn loan to RBS until after it had been repaid. Sir Mervyn King: I was led to believe that the chairman of the court was told. He was not. There was a risk to the bank if we had disclosed it before it was time to do so. 10.42 Harry Wilson, Banking Editor for the Telegraph, is at the TSC: Twitter: Harry Wilson - "That is not good enough, Governor," says Tyrie in response to King assertion about Bank choosing to respond to reasonable requests for info10.38 Michael Cohrs, external member of the interim Financial Policy Committee, Bank of England: "We are trying to learn what we go through. Bank will want to learn, will co-operate with oversight committee. You dont want second guessing."10.35 Fitch Ratings managing director Ed Parker: Greece is insolvent, it will default.10.34 Telegraph's Harry Wilson: Twitter: Harry Wilson - "I find your view quite extraordinary," says King after tells him that the BoE's oversight plans are inadequate.10.29 King: "We should be accountable to Parliament. It was difficult for you to hold the FPC to account. Why have an MPC or FPC? Their role is to look at how decisions are made."10.28 There's now a row between Jessie Norman MP and Mervyn King over the role of the oversight committee in reaching their judgments on the Bank of England. 10.27 Ed Conway from Sky: Twitter: Ed Conway - Mervyn King getting v hard time from TSC for giving them only a day to mull over new Oversight Committee ahead of hearing today10.26 TSC: How much internal review has been done? King: "We have published reviews, we moved faster than most members of this committee were aware of. We could have done better to draw your attention to this. We had no direct responsibility for bank failure during the crisis, that was for the FSA. Our responsibility was to act as a lender of last resort."10.17 King: "Oversight committee can commission outside people to produce report on policy. Committee is to get involved in how decisions are made not to second-guess what those decisions are."10.12 Mervyn King: "[Financial] oversight should be done by committee that does not include executives of the Bank. Surprised that it is suggested that executives should be responsible [for this]. Should be either oversight committee or Treasury, if needed, would appoint external people. When it comes to oversight, executives should leave the room."10.11 Ed Conway from Sky is tweeting: Twitter: Ed Conway - The Bank of England has proposed setting up an internal watchdog - the Oversight Committee - to monitor its role as fin regulator10.09 TSC: Should the Bank of England investigate its own role in crisis? Michael Cohrs: "Probably". 10.07 EU CPI 2.7pc in December versus an expected 2.8pc. This is down from 3pc in November. 10.02 Sir Mervyn King, Bank of England Governor, has just sat down in front of the Treasury Select Committee on Financial Stability. He is there with Andy Haldane, executive director of financial stability; and Bob Jenkins and Michael Cohrs, external members of the interim Financial Policy Committee, Bank of England. It is being streamed live on the . we will have the latest updates here, too. 09.52 BREAKING NEWS...Spanish bond auction has been completed. Country has sold €3bn of 12-month bills at 2.15pc (down from 4.05pc) and €1.87bn of 18-month bills at 2.49pc. Bid to cover is more than three for both, down from five previously. So demand is waning but still a positive bond auction. 09.46 Reaction to those positive UK inflation figures (see 9.33): Chris Williamson at Markit said: Further falls are likely in coming months, reducing the squeeze on incomes seen last year and therefore providing a much-needed boost to economic growth in 2012. The data therefore add support to the Bank of England's expectation that inflation will drop below its 2pc target by the end of the year. "Importantly, that should alleviate some of the squeeze on real incomes that was evident throughout last year, which was in turn seen as a key factor holding down consumer spending and adding to the fragility of the economic recovery. However, unemployment - currently at a 15-year high - looks set to rise further in 2012, and widespread job insecurity, low pay growth and uncertainty about future finances mean even those in work are likely to remain reluctant to spend.Philip Shaw at Investec said: No huge surprises here. The sharp fall in the headline measure is entirely consistent with the MPC's forecast and should help to pave the way for further QE next month. While the targeted measure remains well above 2pc, we do expect an aggressive series of falls through the first half of this year, and whilst we may not see 2pc inflation in 2012, we nonetheless expect subsequent asset purchases to be sanctioned in May as well as in February.09.45 French finance minister Francois Baroin insists that France can pay its debts and that nobody doubts the quality of the country's debt.09.33 BREAKING NEWS...UK inflation figures are out. CPI fell to 4.2pc in December versus 4.8pc in November, in line with expectations. The biggest slowdown since April 2009 was driven by a slowdown in petrol, gas and clothing prices. (For a bigger version of this graph, click the right-hand-side of the picture at the top of this blog)Decmber's RPI was 4.8pc, down from 5.2pc, versus a forecast of 4.7pc. 09.29 Update on the markets: FTSE 100 +0.9pc CAC +1.4pc DAX +1pc IBEX +1.1pc MIB +1pc Burberry is the biggest faller on the FTSE 100 so far today, down 2pc. This is despite great trading update earlier this morning. 09.03 Regling is still tallking from Singapore (see 8.37), where he is meeting investors. He claims that Asian investors took 25pc of the last EFSF bond issue versus 40pc previously. He states that the bailout fund has never had a problem selling bonds and reiterates that no country will be forced out of the euro area. 08.41 Here's a great graph that shows how much ECB deposits have risen (see 8.14). (For a bigger version of this graph, click the right-hand-side of the picture at the top of this blog)08.37 Klaus Regling, head of the EFSF bailout fund, is in Singapore today to meet with large investors (not a good sign). He said today that European nations are tackling their problems and have plans to bring down their budget deficits. Ireland is a success story, Portugal is on track, even as Greece is a “difficult” and “unique” case, he said. He denies the eurozone will break up and claims that investors have probably lost confidence in policymaking in Europe. He believes there won't be much impact from the as long as Moody's and Fitch don't follow suit. 08.28 Nowotny is still talking on the eurozone debt crisis (see 7.50). He believes eurobonds cannot be discussed in isolation, and that only after discussing increase of fiscal solidity can the dicussion of eurobonds begin. 08.22 Back to Greece, and Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO - the world’s largest bond fund - says that only a haircut greater than 50pc could restore medium-term debt sustainability and growth for Greece. What is absolutely critical for Greece and its official creditors, including the ECB, is to ensure that the objective of a sustainable debt stock is paramount. There are operational alternatives. For example, in order to avoid an explicit haircut, the ECB bonds could be transferred to an EU balance sheet, old or new, and treated similar to the procedures for the Paris Club. Also, the maturities could be extended in order to provide for the benefits of a debt reduction to Greece. "There is a risk that several of the things that reportedly are being considered right now would end up triggering a credit event. Unfortunately, there is no first best solution given the severity of the situation in Greece. What is critical here is not to put the threat of a credit event above everything else. The key is to be able to do something that is credibly associated with medium-term debt sustainability and economic growth. The benefits of getting this right far exceed the cost of a credit event.08.14 Another day, another new ECB deposit record - €501.933bn. Remember, European banks are being charged to park money with the ECB, but they would rather do that than lend it to other banks that they don't trust. 08.11 Telegraph City Editor Richard Fletcher's brings you up to date with the big events every morning. Today he leads on those inflation figures. Not much is going Sir Mervyn King’s way at the moment, but at least inflation appears to be heading in the right direction. Economists expect today’s data, which is released at 9.30am this morning, to show a marked fall in December. A rare piece of good news for the Bank of England governor, who has always insisted that the recent spike was temporary. CPI is expected to to fall from 4.8pc in November to 4.2pc, while RPI is forecast to dip from 5.2pc to 4.7pc, partly thanks to all those high street sales in the run-up to Christmas. 08.02 European stock markets have opened. The FTSE 100 is up 1.1pc, the CAC is up 1pc, the DAX is up 1.3pc, the IBEX is up 1.1pc and the MIB is up 1.4pc. The markets are shrugging off the last night, which was expected after S&P downgraded nine nations on Friday. Chinese GDP data has also helped. 07.58 Busy day for Sir Mervyn King today, as he is also giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee on the Financial Stability Report. We'll have the latest here. 07.54 Meanwhile, back in the UK, the key release today is likely to be December’s inflation figures. Bank of England Governor Sir Mervyn King has hinted that he is keen to see how quickly inflation retreats from its peak before further policy adjustments. Investec expects to see CPI inflation "having moderated sharply from 4.8pc to 4.3pc". The bank adds: If we are right, this would add even further weight to our view that the Monetary Policy Committee will raise the QE target by a further £50bn to £325bn in February. The pace of UK recovery has weakened over recent months and we now consider the UK economy to be back in recession.07.50 Ewald Nowotny, president of the National Bank of Austria and a member of the ECB’s governing council, has said that the ECB is looking at alternatives to sovereign bond buying. He adds that the need for intervention is widely recognised but within the council there is still scepticism over buying bonds. He has also highlighted the bank's clear steps in cutting rates and boosting liquidity, with the ECB now opting to wait to see the results of these actions before deciding on further steps. Nowotny says that "we need to consider if a AAA rating is necessary for the ESM". When asked about QE, he believes the ECB has a responsibility to guard against price stability threats "from both directions" and to use "appropriate instruments". But he believes emerging Europe will grow faster than EU average, but convergence will be at a slower rate. Nowotny adds that higher growth is the only way to stabilise budgets, but that the risk of sudden deleveraging has to be addressed. "Supervisors need to assess bank capital plans to avoid restrictive impact on lending," he states, adding that changes at the top of the ECB don't change its orientation towards price stability. Now he is moving on to Greece, saying that the country is a problem for Greek and European governments, not primarily for the ECB. 07.40 However, not everyone feels that the debt crisis is doom and gloom. Alan Wilde, head of fixed income and currency at Barings, said: There is some optimism in the market. Policymakers seem to be going in the right direction and the three-year loans offered to the banks by the European Central Bank have settled nerves.07.39 The is leading its comment page on a piece by Gideon Rachman. He says America cannot douse the flames of the economic crisis raging in Europe. America's dearest hope is that the management of the euro crisis can be subcontracted to Germany. Then, if Europe gets on top of its debt crisis, the EU can also do more to manage global problems. The trouble is that the Europeans - and the Germans in particular - keep disappointing. For its own domestic reasons, the German govenment has been unwilling and unable to provide the overwhelming financial resources that Washington keeps urging Berlin to deploy. The Germans have also proved to be disappointing partners in other global crises. One frustrated Pentagon official exclaimed recently: 'I told a German Colleague: "The world is on fire, where are you going to help?" And he just shrugged.' In 1947, when a conflagration in Greece was threatening the world, the fire trucks set off from Washington. In 2012 they are being sent from Berlin and Brussels - late and under-equipped. As a result, the fire rages on. 07.27 Let's bring you up to date with the latest corporate news this morning. AIA, Asia's third-largest insurer, is exploring making an offer for Dutch ING's roughly $6bn Asian insurance operations, sources told Reuters. Burberry sales were up 13pc in its third quarter. However, UK like-for-like sales at Dixons (which owns PC World and Currys) fell 7pc in the 12 weeks to January 7. Premier Foods (which makes Hovis, Mr Kipling and Bisto) is to cut 600 jobs. 06.48 Jeremy Warner has written a great piece for the Telegraph on (or lack of them). Before the crisis, most advanced economies boasted this top-notch stamp of external approval. Erroneously, as we now know, there were also thousands of structured products similarly beatified by the rating agencies. Many of the structured products quickly became junk in the credit crunch, and with last week's French downgrade, the number of top-rated countries has shrunk to just 14. Of the four eurozone members that still belong to this exclusive club of apparently "risk-free" debtors, three are on negative watch. 06.31 This morning, China has revealed that its in 2011 amid the country's efforts to rein in high inflation. Year-on-year growth in China has slowed for four straight quarters as the government - concerned about soaring costs - had cut lending and pushed up interest rates, while US and European demand for the country's products has waned. Despite this, the fourth-quarter GDP growth of 8.9pc beat a forecast of 8.6pc by analysts. But economist Joseph Stiglitz believes China's slowing economy is a good thing: 06.52 In the corporate world, ScottishPower has become the last of the big six energy companies to announce reductions in its tariffs. The firm will cut gas bills by around 5pc. E.ON has previosuly announced a 6pc fall in electricity bills, British Gas cut bills by 5pc, SSE said it would cut the price of household gas by 4.5pc, while EDF cut gas prices by 5pc. 06.50 US economist Joseph Stiglitz has compared EU austerity with medieval bloodletting - the patient almost certainly dies. He also warned that European governments have signed a "mutual suicide pact" by imposing the austerity plans. Austerity as the solution is just wrong. There won’t be a return to confidence - quite the contrary. So the direction Europe is going is unfortunately, I think, the wrong direction.06.45 Looking ahead to what's happening later today, Spain auctions a range of medium-term debt, while Belgium holds a short-term debt sale. 06.40 This morning's business pages are, of course, leading on : 06.35 Despite US markets being closed for the day, S&P provided a bit of action late in the day when it , potentially pushing up the bail-out fund's borrowing costs, and adding to the eurozone's general woes. S&P said that the fund was only as good as its backers, and that the EFSF could face further downgrades if "additional credit enhancements" were not put in place. The head of the EFSF said the downgrade would not reduce its €440bn lending capacity, though Germany's finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has ruled out any hike in EFSF guarantees. Louise Armitstead reports on : Leaders appeared to abandon hopes for the EFSF and turned their focus on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) instead. Herman van Rompuy, co-president of the European Union, said he would assess the size of the ESM "without delay" and ensure it is operational by July. Klaus Regling, chief executive of the EFSF, said the fund would have "sufficient means to fulfil its commitments under current and potential future adjustment programmes until the ESM becomes operational in July 2012". S&P was severely criticised across the eurozone, even before the EFSF decision was announced. Olli Rehn, an EU Commissioner, said ratings agencies are the tools of "American financial capitalism". 06.30 Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of the debt crisis. ?We can't afford a situation where speculators artificially manipulate markets by buying up oil, creating the perception of a shortage, and driving prices higher, only to flip the oil for a quick profit. We should strengthen protections for American consumers, not gut them.Well, noone is going to disagree with that, but the measures the president proposes - such as raising criminal penalties on individuals and companies and for more money for the market watchdog to allow if to hire more staff - have not won any fans among Republicans. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said: It probably polls pretty well, but I guarantee it won't do a thing to lower prices at the pump.20.20 What's cheering up markets so much today? Corporate earnings reports from the US have given traders on Wall Street a confidence boost. , which beat expectations, and Coca Cola also turned in better than expected numbers. The Dow Jones is up 1.5pc to 13,118.99 while the S&P 500 added 1.6pc to 1,391. 20.00 To follow up the previous post, the Bank of Spain has approved the plans set out by Spanish banks in March for recapitalising, whcih see banks needing to raise €53.8bn, close to the €52bn estimated by the government. Spain's banks are one of the biggest sources of concern to investors - the end of a property price bubble has left them saddled with large debts, and the Spanish government's finances would be severely strained if it had to bail out the lenders. 19.40 BREAKING... The Bank of Spain says Spanish banks need additional capital and provisions of €53.8bn, and that 11 banks will take part in merger or acquisition operations. The central bank said it approved the recapitalisation plans set out by the country's banks. 19.30 German finance minister and debt crisis live favourite Wolfgang Schäuble has been speaking out, as is his wont, on the case of Spain. He dismissed any comparison between the country and Greece, Ireland and Portugal, who have recieved EU-IMF bailouts, in an interview with Reuters. Instead, Spain just needs to keep plugging away with austerity to win back the confidence of investors, he said: The fundamental data in Spain is not comparable to those in the countries that are under a programme. Spain needs to work to win confidence however if the positive developments are to continue.19.15 Time for a little bit of politics - French president Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to lose power in elections which start this Sunday (French elections have two rounds). A number of opion polls give challenger Francois Hollande of the Socialist party a lead of more than 10 points for the second round runoff (to be held on May 6), when only two parties remain. What could this mean for the eurozone? Well, Monsieur Hollande has called for the ECB to widen its remit to be responsible for promoting growth as well as maintaining steady inflation, and will also seek a renegotiation of the budget discipline pact agreed by the eurozone in December. The Germans are opposed to both of these things, and who would bet on M. Hollande over Mrs Merkel? 18.50 It's not just Japan which has been persuaded to today, with a generous $60bn contribution - Denmark, Norway and Sweden have also pledged an extra $26bn to the IMF's resources. (It's not all-new money howver, part of the figure is a pledge made by Norway in December...) Christine Lagarde said the donations "set the stage for decisive progress to be made by the time of the spring meeting later this week." She added: This strong support—which includes Norway’s early pledge last December—clearly demonstrates these countries’ enduring commitment to multilateralism.17.45 European markets have closed for the day, showing some very strong gains. The FTSE 100 rose 1.8pc to 5,766.95 points, while the CAC climbed 2.7pc in Paris and the German DAX rose 2.7pc. Wall Street is also having a good day, with the Dow Jones up more than 200 points, or 1.6pc, to 13,124.7, and the S&P 500 rising 1.6pc to 1,390.96 17.00 More from Italy - Reuters has seen a draft document showing the country's growth and debt targets, and the GDP figure is quiet dramatic. The counry is now forecasting the economy will shrink by 1.2pc this year, down from an earlier forecast of a 0.4pc fall, and then rebound by 0.5pc in 2013, up from the 0.3pc growth perdicted earlier. The country has also put back its goal for a balanced budget by a year, to 2014, according to the report Reuters has seen. 15.50 Wall Street is trading higher along with European shares this afternoon: The Dow Jones is up 1.2pc to 13,077 points, while the S&P 500 added 1.1pc to 1,385. 14.26 Our economics editor, Philip Aldrick, has been , which warns that there remains a risk of a slump that would rival the Great Depression: Despite the strengthening recovery, the IMF stressed that “concerns linger ... various fundamental problems remain unresolved [and] .... recovery will remain vulnerable to several major downside risks”. Among the more likely risks it listed were an escalation in the eurozone crisis, an oil price spike, and even a “fundamental slowing of growth rates in emerging economies”. If any were to materialise, they would know between one and two percentage points off global growth. The biggest threat, though, came from a disorderly default in the eurozone, which would trigger a “full-blown panic in financial markets” and a potential euro break-up, and “the possibility that several adverse shocks could interact to produce a major slump reminiscent of the 1930s”. 14.16 The eurozone recession will be milder this year than forecast, the IMF said in its latest World Economic Outlook report. Output will drop 0.3pc in 2012, instead of the 0.5pc it forecast in January, and grow by 0.9pc next year: In the euro area, real GDP is projected to contract at an annual rate of 0.5pc in the first half of 2012 and to start recovering thereafter. The recession is expected to be shallow and short-lived. Interactive chart: IMF economic growth projections13.45 US home starts (work starting on new houses) fell unexpectedly in March, according to the Commerce Department. They slipped 5.8pc to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 654,000 units. But, to sugar the pill, new permits for home construction surged by 4.5pc. 13.35 The governor of the Bank of Spain, Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez, says a new three-year financing operation from the ECB wasn't planned, but that anything was possible. He also stressed that Spain wouldn't need an EU bailout and said that there would be a slow recovery next year. 13.12 An unexpected rise in the German ZEW report has boosted shares in Europe and looks set to do the same in the US when Wall Street opens. Futures for the S&P 500 are up 0.6pc and the Dow Jones is predicted to gain 0.4pc. We'll bring you more on that when they open. 12.36 , writes Mats Persson, director of Open Europe: According to some accounts, in 1920, a Berlin bus ticket cost 11 marks. On November 22 1923, the same bus ticket had risen to 1.2 trillion. By the afternoon of November 23 it cost a mind-boggling 4.8 trillion. The hyperinflation that hit Weimar Germany in the 1920s wiped out the savings of every prudent German citizen – and reduced the country’s political class to an utter wreck. The rest is terrifying political history. You can hardly blame the Germans for fearing cheap money and inflation – a fear which runs incredibly deep. Consider, for example, that while British tabloids splash their front pages with celebrity gossip and The X Factor, the tabloid Bild, Germany’s (and Europe’s) biggest-selling paper, leads with huge pieces on the political independence of the ECB, in appeals against inflation.12.26 Italy's economy still faces uncertainty but its public finances are improving, the Bank of Italy says in its quarterly economic bulletin: The ratio of public debt to gross domestic product (GDP) should go down in 2013. As far as the current year is concerned, a major improvement in the public accounts is forecast despite the expected fall in GDP.12.20 Spain has tipped into recession in the first quarter of the year, says the Bank of Spain's governor. 11.56 A little bit of non-news from Fitch: the ratings agency has affirmed Austria's AAA rating with a stable outlook. 11.36 Spain doesn't need outside help, says eurozone chief Jean-Claude Juncker. He also urged the markets "to be more rational" over forcing up the country's bond yield. 11.09 A slightly more upbeat reaction from Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, to today's inflation figures: The fall in inflation has screeched to a halt with the rise in headline consumer price inflation to 3.5pc and core inflation to 2.5pc. This probably puts the brake on any further expansion in quantitative easing in May, but the inflation outlook should still improve in the second half of the year. The Bank of England’s preferred measure of broad money is rising by just 2.5pc and strongly suggests underlying inflationary pressures will remain weak. Today’s figures also showed that retail price inflation inched lower to 3.6pc, so it was not all bad news.11.01 While we've been focusing on Germany, Greece has held a debt auction - it was only €1.6bn and the yield fell marginally from 4.25pc to 4.2pc. Hardly great news, but it's a small step in the right direction. 10.45 Downside risks to Germany have decreased and the danger of a recession is just 15pc now versus 30pc at the end of 2011, says ZEW economist Michael Schroeder. The ZEW economic think tank publishes a monthly poll of economic sentiment, which rose to 23.4 in April from 22.3 in the previous month. It's a well respected index, and the jump is pushing shares and the euro upwards. The FTSE 100 is up 0.86pc on the day, the DAX has gained 1.17pc and the CAC has risen 1.46pc. The euro is up to $1.32. More on the markets here from Rachel Cooper: Although this morning's Spanish bond auction saw yields almost double, the FTSE 100 has held its nerve, rising 51 points to 5717. "Investors will have to wait until Thursday for a more concrete gauge of sentiment, when Spain sells longer-term bonds and France also conducts an auction ahead of the first round of its presidential election," said Chris Beauchamp, market analyst at IG Index.Banks are in an upbeat mood this morning, with Barclays in particular benefiting from a bullish Merrill note. But, a retreat from Burberry and Marks & Spencer has tempered the benchmark index's gains. Even though Burberry posted an 18pc rise in second-half sales, the fashion house has fallen 5pc.10.38 Andrew Lilico, an economist with Europe Economics and a Telegraph blogger, has written that : There is what seems to me to be a false debate about austerity in certain parts of Europe at the moment. Commentators ask: "If growth is very slow, is austerity self-defeating?" The thought is that by cutting back on spending and deficits, governments in Spain, Ireland, Portugal and elsewhere might be causing their economies to shrink, with the result that debt to GDP ratios rise – not because deficits are large but because GDP falls. This analysis seems to me to be deeply confused. An anti-austerity demonstration in Athens' Syntagma square.10.09 Back to Spain, where the bond auction we mentioned earlier (09.08) has taken place. Spain sold €2bn of year-long debt at an average yield of 2.623pc - almost double the rate of 1.418pc seen at its last similar sale. A further €1bn of 18-month bonds went for 3.1pc, up from 1.7pc at the last comparable auction. This is not good news for troubled Spain, which now faces far higher borrowing costs. 09.56 We're getting some reaction to the inflation figures now. Alan Clarke, of Scotiabank, says this could be the end of the decline that we've enjoyed over recent months: The sharp slowdown in UK inflation has come to a premature end. With the barrage of petrol- and budget-related price hikes coming through and water bill increases, it is very hard to see UK inflation slowing very much more from here. We are probably going to plateau. At the start of the year, most people thought we would see CPI down to 2pc by the end of the year. I don't see it much below 3pc. In the context of the Bank of England, we are not growing and certainly not growing fast enough, and that argues for more QE. But uncomfortably high inflation is a significant obstruction. So it is not going to be an easy decision for the Bank of England in May. Our latest published call is that there won't be any more QE. It's a very tough call at the moment.09.49 To put that CPI uptick into context, here's a graph dating back to the pre-crisis days. Interactive chart: UK CPI09.39 UK inflation data is out, and it shows a rise in CPI to 3.5pc in March, from 3.4pc in February - the end of a five-month stretch of declines. Rising food and clothing prices was the main culprit. Core consumer price inflation - which strips out food, energy, tobacco and alcohol - also rose to 2.5pc. At the same time, RPI dropped slightly to 3.6pc - its lowest level since 2009. 09.35 Nicolas Sarkozy has been talking again today about giving the ECB a bigger role in driving growth. He caused a fuss at the weekend by calling for a debate on having the ECB direct its exchange rate policy to prop up growth, breaching a November agreement not to publicly discuss the bank's role. It is not possible that the ECB does not participate in suporting growth, like all the central banks in the world. It is wrong to say that just because the ECB is independent, we do not have the right to talk.09.08 Slightly better news for Spain in the last few minutes. The IBEX, which was at a three-year low earlier, is now up 0.69pc on the day. And bond yields, which were above 6pc yesterday, have now relaxed slightly to 5.965pc. The country is due to start a €3bn auction of short-term debt within the hour, so we'll bring you news on that as it comes in. 08.37 Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, has called for member countries to loan the fund more than $400bn. Speaking to German daily Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, Lagarde said that if more eurozone countries need a bailout the fund will require "$400bn plus". After this morning, that just leaves $340bn for her to find... 08.31 European markets are open for the day, and they've mostly made gains in early trading. The FTSE 100 is 0.31pc, the DAX rose 0.46pc and the CAC is up 0.49pc. Spain's IBEX, though, is down 0.46pc to its lowest level since March 2009. 08.02 Our daily City Briefing email has just gone out to inboxes around the world (), pointing out that the IMF will be releasing its WEO report later today, complete with global growth data. We'll bring you more on that as we have it. Sit back, look up and prepare for the big picture. The International Monetary Fund will be releasing its World Economic Outlook later today. The figures for international and national growth are about as authoritative as estimates can be. Is the eurozone heading further down? The UK looking up? The markets will be keen to learn more. 07.43 This morning we're expecting inflation data for March: CPI is expected to be up to 3.5pc year-on-year, while RPI is expected to be up to 3.6pc year-on-year. Later in the morning we'll also get the eurozone-wide inflation figure for March. 07.15 Japan has pledged $60bn in loans to the IMF - the first nation outside of the EU to inject cash into the eurozone crisis firepower fund. Finance Minister Jun Azumi said that the announcement would be made formally at a G20 meeting later this week: Following a series of eurozone's policy responses, it is important to strengthen IMF funding and pave the way for ensuring an end to the crisis not only for the euro zone but also for Japan and Asian countries. IMF boss Christine Lagarde commented: I am grateful for Japan's leadership and strong commitment to multilateralism, and I call on the broader fund membership to follow Japan's lead.07.11 Robert Zoellick, the outgoing head of the World Bank, has written a piece for the Financial Times this morning, claiming that Europe is "distracted by endless talk of firewalls": Policy makers under pressure can get preoccupied with the fixation of the moment. For the eurozone, that idée fixe has been "the firewall". How big is big enough? Who contributes and how? Instead of quarrelling over firewalls, Europeans should add just a fraction - say €10bn - to the capital of the European Investment Bank. Under current conditions the EIB may actually have to reduce lending. Instead, the EIB could use more capital to borrow and then invest to support structural reforms, showing Spaniards and Italians that their sacrifices will draw productive investments. Firewalls have their purpose. But this debate risks becoming a distraction. Europeans and their partners need to keep their eye on the strategic Schwerpunkt: helping Italy and Spain with growth and the politics of fiscal consolidation and structural reforms that will boost business, competition and jobs.06.49 Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph's Jeremy Warner believes the : The eurozone has itself agreed some increase in the size of its bailout funds, but it is still too small to accommodate even a Spanish rescue let alone an Italian one, and it is certainly smaller than the IMF, the US and the UK were hoping for. That, in turn, makes it harder for the IMF to raise the $600bn of additional funding it was originally demanding to create a wider, international firewall that would supplement the European one. At Davos this year, the talk was of a bailout fund - eurozone and IMF combined - with potential firepower of $2 trillion or more. Only a firewall of this magnitude, it was said, would backstop Spain and Italy against further speculative attack. These hopes now looks like pie in the sky. 06.46 Back in Europe, in a radical bid to convince global investors that the nation can control its finances. Prime minister Mariano Rajoy has said no one should doubt Spain's commitment to the euro, and that it deserved support from the rest of the world for the measures it had taken, including a budget last month that the finance minister described as its 'most austere' in democratic history. The reformist project of my government has deserved the support of European and international institutions, whose mission is to oversee policies that solve the crisis with realism and decisiveness: exactly what we are doing in Spain. 06.35 Nigeria's candidate for the World Bank job complained yesterday that the selection was "". Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said: It is voting with political weight and shares and therefore the United States will get it.But she added that getting this far in the process had been a success: It will never ever be the same again. So we have won a big victory. Who gets to run the World Bank - we have shown we can contest this thing and Africa can produce people capable of running the entire architecture.06.30 We have a new head of the World Bank. No surprise, it's the US nomination . For more background on the Dartmouth College President, take a look at this . 06.02 A quick look at this morning's newspaper front pages: 06.00 Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of the European debt crisis. ?She had modelled and acted before – appearing as a soothsayer in a 2008 episode of Doctor Who: The Fires of Pompeii, in the medical drama Harley Street and the Channel 4 sketch series The Kevin Bishop Show. But nothing could have prepared her for the onslaught of Who mania. Last spring was just the start as she and the newly anointed Smith – now 28, and the youngest ever Doctor – kicked off their incumbency by touring schools, emerging from a special Doctor Who bus emblazoned with their image. In July they shared the Albert Hall stage with daleks as hosts of the Doctor Who prom. In August Gillan launched the Amy Pond doll in a Glasgow shopping centre. Does she ever feel like a cross between a Blue Peter presenter and Justin Bieber? 'Ha. It’s like no other acting job because it’s almost sometimes like being a pop star,’ she confirms. Yet she can’t afford to think about the fans – from children to legions of male admirers – when she’s acting. 'The last thing you want to do when you are about to film a scene is think, “Oh my God, so many people are going to watch this,”’ she says. And not just Brits. The première of the last series was watched by 1.2 million BBC America viewers. On an early promotional trip to New York Gillan was shocked to see fans queuing around the block to see it. 'People had been camping out and people would dress up as me. We didn’t think anyone knew what it was over there,’ she says. The new series will air simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. It opens with a double episode filmed in America, which takes the characters from the deserts of Utah to the Oval Office in the late 1960s. The Doctor even wears a stetson. For all its parochial charms – everyone from Ann Widdecombe to Sir Patrick Moore has had cameos – the show is now an international commodity. 'Apparently Spielberg said the world’s a better place with Doctor Who in it.’This can only be good news for Gillan, who has already dipped a toe in the film world. She recently appeared alongside James Nesbitt in the British horror film Outcast, a role she filmed just two months before getting cast in Doctor Who, and is set to play a New Jersey high school student in a David Baddiel rom-com, Romeo & Brittney, a sci-fi version of Romeo and Juliet. Yet she comes across more like an excitable student than a global star in the making, whether it’s discussing the joys of vintage shopping, recounting how Billie Piper, one of the Doctor’s previous companions, made the effort to approach her at an awards ceremony, or describing how she and Smith fool around on set. 'Matt has taken to hiding in my trailer and then jumping out and screaming at me, “I’m going to get you!” It’s the scariest thing.’ The pair have a teasing brother-sister relationship. He has likened her gangly physique to that of a praying mantis and nicknamed her Plural Chin for her habit of scoffing sandwiches. She says he has 'a weird head and a weird way of walking’. Making just one series of Doctor Who means working nine months, 12 hours a day, with only one day off every 11 days, so it’s no wonder they’ve become close. 'You disappear off the face of the earth,’ she says. The two live in the same apartment block in Cardiff. Evenings are spent learning lines and texting each other. Gillan says she gets just one free hour to herself. 'Me and Matt were talking about this – you have this one hour that you really treasure and we always eat these Nairn’s crackers – they’re amazing. I have this image of us shovelling hummus and oatcakes into our mouths; it happens every night.’ If that sounds a little mundane, she assures me that they do sometimes venture out. Recently, Cardiff music fans were treated to the sight of Smith, Gillan and Arthur Darvill, who plays her on-screen husband Rory, at an Arcade Fire gig. Smith was recognised but Gillan slipped under the radar. 'I didn’t have any trouble. I was dancing away,’ she says, gleefully. Gillan has been with her real-life boyfriend, the photographer Patrick Green, for five years, but is careful to keep this side of her life private. You won’t see them falling out of nightclubs, though they were once photographed by paparazzi, buying a Bonsai tree in a Suffolk garden centre. 'What’s strange is that my boyfriend’s from Ipswich so they were following him and I just happened to turn up, so that was really… bizarre,’ she says. Her taste in music veers from the poptastic (the Spice Girls and Britney Spears) to the classic (Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, American gospel), the latter influenced by her father, John, a care worker and a regular singer at pub open-mic nights. Her mother, Marie, a housewife, doesn’t do performing in any way, she adds, sounding relieved. Gillan may appear happy-go-lucky but she clearly has Irn Bru in her veins. Growing up in Inverness, an only child, she had musical ambitions, but was cripplingly shy. 'I was one of those weird children that just couldn’t talk to people, so I kind of had to make myself be not like that because I knew it was going to hinder me. I was going on stage trying to sing but couldn’t get anything out. My voice was quivering but I knew that I just had to keep on doing it because you only get scared of stuff that you don’t know; you’ve just got to familiarise yourself with it and then it's fine.’ By 16 she had conquered her fears sufficiently to play Liesl in a school production of The Sound of Music ('Cringe!’ is her verdict today). She headed to drama school in Edinburgh, and then moved to London to attend the Italia Conti stage school. Three months later a part came up in the Scottish detective drama Rebus – to take it up she had to drop out of school. 'I was 18, I couldn’t resist the temptation but it was only one episode so I was taking a gamble.’ What happened next? 'Nothing happened,’ she says, with a cackle. 'It was terrible.’On the plus side, she got a job in a south London pub, where she perfected the art of drawing a clover in a pint of Guinness. This foray into civilian life was to prove short-lived. Scouted by a model agency, she walked the catwalk for Allegra Hicks. 'I have to wear size five shoes for heels to stay on but they’d always be a size seven so I’d be stuffing tissue in.’ Assessing her modelling career, which included a stint promoting a make-up range, Gillan becomes uncharacteristically subdued. 'I didn’t really care that much,’ she admits. I just wanted to earn some cash so I could subsidise myself to live in London and go to acting auditions.’ A friend of hers lives in a model apartment, where girls sleep two bunk beds to each bedroom. 'When it’s fashion week the local models are told, “Get out of the apartment, we’ve got some girls coming over from Russia who have nowhere to stay.” It’s a harsh world unless you’re some kind of supermodel.’One can imagine Gillan joining the ranks of Emma Watson, with her lucrative modelling contracts for Burberry and Lancôme, or Gossip Girl’s Blake Lively, the face of Chanel’s Mademoiselle handbags, but this is not in the game plan. 'That would never come if you’re not doing good work, so you’ve just got to focus on doing good work,’ she says. I ask if there’s an actor whose career she particularly admires. Her answer is refreshingly offbeat. 'Robin Williams. I want a career like his! I want to be like Robin Williams, really. It’s all the different characters he does, all the different voices.’ What about actresses? 'You know whose career I really liked? Brittany Murphy. I thought she played quite interesting characters. She was in Girl Interrupted, and in 8 Mile she had this griminess to her, this edge, which I quite liked.’ Is Gillan yearning for edgier roles? Compared to Doctors, companions can have short shelf-lives – there have even been hints that Amy Pond is to be killed off, as a mid-series cliffhanger. She says she would like to do theatre, either contemporary 'or something really bizarre like Eugène Ionesco’. Matt Smith recently veered off-piste to play Christopher Isherwood in a BBC Two drama, to much acclaim. Gillan will shortly play Jean Shrimpton for the BBC Four film We’ll Take Manhattan about the 1960s style icon’s first encounter with David Bailey, at a Vogue photo-shoot in New York. Miniskirts and it-girls? It’s not very Robin Williams, but if anyone can pull it off Karen Gillan can. Those character parts may have to wait. The new series of Doctor Who starts on BBC One on Saturday, 23 April?Speaking at the Woman's Own Children of Courage Awards at Westminster Abbey, the twins' spokesman said: "Since the photoshoots they did for Esquire and I-D magazines, the campaign offers have been flooding in." ?The female attention’s one thing (Cooper’s no Mick Hucknall – one imagines there was a fair degree of that before he became famous), and right now the money has merely facilitated a move from Corden’s spare room in London’s Primrose Hill into a house on the same street as his best friend, but the actor feels it’s being the centre of attention that’s most detrimental. “You get so used to it. I’ve seen people lose the ability to converse normally because people are asking them questions all the time. There is nothing I hate more than meeting someone who has forgotten the art of conversing. It’s something that I think it’s fundamental to fight against.” When he gets back from stints in New Orleans (where Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was filmed), or LA (where he’s currently filming crime thriller, alongside Colin Farrell), do his friends find their own lives too humble to offer up as part of a conversation? He looks genuinely aghast. “I hope not. They’re the people I’m happiest with. The majority are friends from a long time ago. And although I know that they’re incredibly proud of me, I generally just get an incredible amount of abuse from them.” From his Greenwich comprehensive, Cooper found his way to LAMDA almost by accident. “Acting was the only thing I was good at,” he says. His schoolteacher mother, Julie, and auctioneer father, Brian (his parents divorced when he was five), encouraged their son’s ambitions. Whether it was his stint as a male prostitute in Mother Clap’s Molly House at the National or his breakthrough role as Dakin in – first the play, then the film – or Phèdre in 2009 – members of his family (Cooper has two brothers, Nathan and Simon, a half-brother, James, and a half-sister, Emma) could always be found in the audience. Cooper admits that he’s ambitious, but ask him if he wants to be taken seriously as an actor and he looks appalled. “God no! Yes the arts, culture and theatre are important – but an actor is not. Nobody should expect an actor to have these wonderful ideas and concepts about the world: they pretend to be other people for a living. And yes, it’s wonderful that they’re good at it and they give a lot, as a collective group, but I can’t bear it when their beliefs are given too much emphasis.” In an era when Matt Damon was urged to run for US president and George Clooney’s political activism frequently makes the front page, does he think actors should be sermonising about Afghanistan? “I think its madness,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m sure it’s difficult to hold back when you’re constantly being asked and I do think it’s important to have an opinion, but I wouldn’t air my views outside of a pub. There is too much weight and gravitas given to people who ultimately dress up in frocks and dance around.” He pauses for a moment, wondering whether a little more diplomacy is in order – then apparently decides against it. “I always look forward to seeing actors interviewed, but ultimately I find that they just come out with the same mundane c---.” Far from them being too vocal with their views, today’s younger crop is often in danger of having their personalities airbrushed by media management. Cooper seems to have evaded that particular pitfall, but the candour of those early interviews – when he admitted to finding out that he had a half-sister from his father’s affair and described the nature of his romantic relationships in detail – is gone. “It’s terrible when a person’s character is sucked away – it really makes me want to bite my own toes off – but fame is a difficult thing to be thrown into and I’ve been burnt by it in the past.” For that reason, and because of a spate of “love-rat” headlines when Cooper allegedly cheated on his girlfriend of 12 years, Harold Pinter’s PA, Joanna Carolan, with Seyfried on the set of Mamma Mia!, Cooper now evades questions about his private life. “The rumour mill can be funny, but unfortunately it can also be really damaging.” Since he and Seyfried finally called it a day in 2009, the actor has been linked to actress Ruth Negga and Lindsay Lohan. “Sometimes the snippets are embedded in a bit of truth and other times not at all,” is all he will say. Still, all – aside from Lohan, who seems to be a rite of passage for most young British actors – were co-stars. “I have a feeling that has a lot to do with youth,” he grins, “but also because there are parts where for 12 hours on that day you are portraying someone who is so in love that they are on the cusp of insanity – so you can understand that dynamic chemistry.” And yet actors are forever insisting that sex scenes are awkward affairs involving flesh-coloured body stockings and very little real sentiment. “That’s because you’re in such an unnatural space,” he assures me. Cooper’s not exactly self-conscious, though. Scroll through his cuttings and you’ll find that a disproportionate amount of them are devoted to the actor’s bottom. He frolicked semi-naked in the surf in Mamma Mia!, rolled around with Keira Knightley in the and spent a good deal of in the raw. It’s unclear how, as a vampire hunter in 19th-century America helping the president chase down the undead, Cooper could be persuaded to strip off again, but given his back catalogue, it does seem likely. “That’s terrible,” he grimaces, “because it’s only going to get worse.” What is? His bottom? “That too. Look,” he laughs, “if it’s done it needs to be done purposefully. If you’ve got a post-coital scene and people are covering up in a way they wouldn’t be in real life, then it takes you out of the place. But if bits are dangling around everywhere when they don’t need to be, that also takes you out of the place. It’s about how comfortable you feel with your body, too. Some people feel very awkward and others prance around naked all the time, like myself.” When he and Corden lived together, did they prance around naked together? “Constantly. In fact, I’ve got a fantastic picture of James naked except for a football boot.” A shadow crosses his face. “Actually, he used to wake me up like that.” Those rude awakenings, thankfully, are a thing of the past. With a loft extension just completed on Cooper’s new pad, the actor is looking forward to some interior decorating. “Is that lamp nice?” he muses aloud, scouring the room for inspiration. “What about that mirror?” In the end, he says, “It comes down to the basics – to your friends and family. Yes, I could be frolicking around LA, tanning my bottom and going to the gym eight times a day, but I want to see my godson [Corden’s one-year-old son, Max] and James, who I haven’t been able to spend time with for ages.” Although Cooper claims that he would actively dislike to be any more famous than he is now, I suspect that decision is out of his hands. Does he see himself as a brand? “Well,” he replies hesitantly, “I don’t, but I suppose I should. I suppose one has to in this business.” Perhaps, but before I go I want him to promise me one thing: that he will never use the phrase ‘body of work’ in a non-ironic sense. “I promise,” he assures me gravely. “Oh, and I promise that you won’t be seeing me in a Burberry campaign any time soon – mainly and embarrassingly because I can’t imagine the offer coming in.” Should Cooper ever tire of putting himself down, there will always be others to do it for him. “The other day I bumped into someone I used to work with, and do you know what he said? ‘Just remember that there will always be someone to take your place.’ He’s quite right, of course,” adds Cooper chirpily. “And every time the car pulls up to take you to work in the morning or someone offers to go out and buy you lunch, you have to remember how lucky you are. Because the moment you get used to it or think that you deserve it, you’re in trouble.” ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ is released on June 20 This article also appeared in SEVEN magazine, free with the Sunday Telegraph. Follow SEVEN on Twitter ?Asked about her job, she replied: “It’s very busy and great fun but I am very well looked after.”The Duchess, who had appeared alongside the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and other senior royals on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for Trooping the Colour on Saturday, was equally confident alone as she joined the Expanding Horizons primary school scheme at the Widehorizons Margaret McMillan House in Wrotham, Kent.The scheme is co-ordinated by ARK Schools, which is supported by the charitable Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry and which gives children from inner-city backgrounds the opportunity to venture into the countryside and develop confidence and team building skills.Despite the up market Wellington boots by French bootmaker Le Chameau, the Duchess dressed down for the occasion in tight blue jeans by her favourite High Street store Zara, a khaki jumper and matching shirt by Burberry and a waterproof waistcoat by outdoor clothing company Really Wild.Many of the children, from King Solomon Academy Primary School in North Westminster, London, had not been to the countryside before and she marvelled at the shelters and camp fires they had made.She collapsed in giggles as she was invited into a tipi tent by eight-year-old Zahid Shanvere, who held open the tent flap and said: “After you.”“What a gentleman,” she said, as she stepped inside with a smile.She was clearly amused as the children described how scared they had been after spending their first night sleeping under the stars.“What were you scared of? That a spider might creep in?” She asked.“A mole,” Zahid said gravely, to which she replied: “Oh no, have you never seen a mole before?”The Duchess was then shown how to make dough sticks over the camp fire, which she said were “very nice”.As the children became accustomed to their royal visitor, they began to quiz her about her new life.Asked how long she would sit on the throne, she replied tactfully: “It’s not actually my job yet!”Tigerlily Smith, eight, said the Duchess had been very friendly.“We asked how it felt to be a princess and she said it was very nice and she got to visit lots of countries but hadn’t seen as many as William,” she said.“She said William was very sweet and kind and spoiled her.”Alpha Kolajo, nine added: “We told her about our camping and how we made our shelter and she was very impressed.”After lunch, the Duchess left by helicopter for Gloucestershire where her husband, who turns 30 this week, was due play in a charity polo match against his brother, Prince Harry.?None scheduled Interim results RM Trading update Bovis Homes, London Capital Group Holding, Michael Page International, XP Power Economics Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, appears at a Treasury Select Committee hearing on the Barclays/Libor scandal, speech by Adam Posen, member of the MPC Meetings GB Group (AGM) Tuesday, July 10 Full-year results None scheduled Interim results None scheduled Trading update ASOS, Intermediate Capital Group, Interserve, Marks and Spencer, SIG, Smiths News Economics Industrial production and manufacturing output data, trade data, BRC retail sales monitor, RICS housing survey Meetings Big Yellow Group (AGM), Intermediate Capital Group (AGM), Marks and Spencer Group (AGM), Young & Co’s Brewery (AGM) Wednesday, July 11 Full-year results Brainspark, Daejan Holding, Picton Property Income Interim results None scheduled Trading update Barratt Developments, Bloomsbury Publishing, Burberry Group, Charlemagne Capital, Hays, ICAP, JD Wetherspoon, Moneysupermarket.com Group, UK Mail Group Economics None scheduled Meetings BT Group (AGM), FlyBe Group (AGM), ICAP (AGM), Rugby Estates (AGM), J Sainsbury (AGM), UK Mail Group (AGM) Thursday, July 12 • SuperGroup’s reputation as a company that is ill-suited to the rigours of the stockmarket was confirmed when, in April, it published a substantial profit warning after admitting to “arithmetical errors” in its profit and loss forecasts. Ever since floating, there have been doubts as to the company’s ability to maintain the stellar growth it enjoyed as a private company. Sure enough, it has struggled and published a number of profit warnings, some regarding its supply chain, some because of the difficult high street environment. Cannacord is forecasting sales to have increased from £234m to £308m, while pre-tax profit will have slipped from £48m to £42.8m. • Premier Oil issues a trading update on progress towards its targets of average annual production of 60,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd), with a 75,000bpd run-rate by the end of the year. Analysts at Singer Capital Markets recently called Premier one of their 'best ideas’, initiating coverage with a 'buy’ rating. Full-year results Supergroup Interim results None scheduled Trading update Associated British Foods, Ashmore Group, Centaur Media, Lavendon Group, Premier Oil Economics OBR’s fiscal sustainability report published Meetings ASOS (AGM), Aveva Group (AGM), Perpetual Income & Growth Investment Trust (AGM), Telford Homes (AGM) Friday, July 13 Full-year results Eredene Capital Interim results None scheduled Trading update Electrocomponents, Experian, Economics Construction output data Meetings Electrocomponents (AGM), Insetco (AGM) Has M&S lost its mojo? Pressure is mounting on Marc Bolland, the super-smooth Dutch man who joined Marks and Spencer as its chief executive two years ago. At his first annual general meeting he was able to stand up in front of the assembled crowd of shareholders and report sales growth in its non-food division of 6pc. This time around, he is expected to say that sales in its general merchandise business -- which contains its critical clothing department - fell between 7pc and 8pc. That will be its worst performance for about a decade. Questions will immediately be asked whether this is all down to the terrible weather, or is it because M&S has lost its mojo. It has undoubtedly been tough for all clothing retailers, especially those that concentrate on womenswear. The wettest April and then the wettest June on record has meant that many shoppers just haven’t visited the high street, and those that have aren’t exactly in the mood to buy summer fashion. But Debenhams and John Lewis have both been able to post remarkably good sales figures. The worry is that M&S has got things badly wrong. Paul Tucker to face Treasury Select Committee Paul Tucker, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, will be given the chance on Monday to present his side of the story in the Barclays/Libor scandal. He will be subject to an intense grilling by MPs on the Treasury Select Committee, on exactly what he did and did not say in a telephone conversation with Barclays’ former chief executive Bob Diamond in 2008. On Thursday the Office for Budget Responsibility will publish its 2012 fiscal sustainability report. The OBR will present its long-term view of the public finances, rather than revising its short-term forecasts for borrowing. It is expected to focus on issues including tax sustainability and long-term spending pressures. On Tuesday the Office for National Statistics is expected to say industrial production fell 0.2pc in May, after being flat in April, while economists are forecasting a 0.2pc rise in manufacturing output. ?"It shows researching your family's past can have just as many twists and turns as a film blockbuster."As we researched Emma's family, we learned that her great great great grandmother was named Frances Playle - a very uncommon surname."The Playles have been in a small area of Essex since the early 1500s."Watson grew up in Oxfordshire, roughly 100 miles from the area.The actress, who achieved straight A grades at A level in English literature, geography and art at Headington School in Oxford, is reportedly set to attend Ivy League Brown University, in Rhode Island, USA, in September. She is rumoured to be taking a three-year break from acting in order to concentrate on her studies, although she is currently finishing off work on the two-part and the Deathly Hallows. ?Despite money generated from advertising accounting for 85 per cent of Facebook’s revenues last year, and its net income in 2011 reaching $1billion, the company will have to radically change the way it cashes in on its users’ data to make good on its valuation, says digital agency heads, who see these changes as just the beginning.Facebook has also rolled out Manchester United, Burberry and Dove, have all updated their brands page on the social network to the new style, which until now has only been reserved for Facebook users.The new layout, which allows users to share their entire life history in one scrollable page, is becoming compulsory for the site’s 850 million members imminently.?Burberry’s ‘Timeline’ now includes milestones from the company’s founding in 1856 through to live streams of its latest fashion shows.While Manchester United’s page is published in 18 languages and more 300 new pieces of content have been added to allow fans to scroll through its 134-year history.Zuckerberg said that wanted people to be able to share “their entire lives” on Facebook and have “total control” over how their content appeared online. Using his own profile to demonstrate the new timeline, Zuckerberg showed photos of himself as a baby which he has inserted into the new profile page which is organized by years. However, – which is quite a dramatically different way each member displays their personal information. One user wrote: “I’m sorry but this is rubbish. I’m surprised Facebook hasn’t included a compulsory DNA profile section (default to public obviously).” Web users generally do not welcome the redesign of sites and digital services they use every day. Recently when the BBC radically redesigned its home page, the corporation received hundreds of complaints. However, it remains to be seen how forcing Facebook users into such a radical change of their most personal page on the site, will fare with the majority of members. ?That compensation package, for those who might have missed it, is almost £13m. Clearly it is not as much as the riches on offer to Xstrata chief executive Mick Davis if its merger with Glencore is approved, or even the £15.6m that Burberry’s Angela Ahrendts has been awarded, but still. ?"It is incredibly exciting. The Cutty Sark has always been important in our family and as I grew up I started to understand why there were so many pictures of clipper ships on our walls."The fire a few years ago and the recent reopening have made me realise that the Cutty Sark is important to other people as well."Miss Kennedy Clark is to be joined by her family who are travelling from their home in Aberdeen to attend the Cutty Sark descendants reunion on Thursday.In many cases those attending were completely unaware of their link to one of the most famous vessels in British maritime history while others have proudly celebrated their family ties to the 143-year-old ship.The work to track down the descendants was commissioned by HSBC, who are sponsoring the Cutty Sark, to mark the reopening of the famous vessel to the public at its dry dock in Greenwich, south east London, following a .Francis Clark, 60, Miss Kennedy Clark's father and great great grandson of Hercules Linton, said: "We are very proud of our family connection to the Cutty Sark. It is part of our family history and identity. There is a strong maritime vein running through the family – four generations of our family have been involved in the fishing industry."I even tried to give my son the middle name Hercules, but my wife put her foot down. We compromised and gave him the middle name Linton."Mr Clark, whose wife is Fiona Kennedy, the Scottish singer and television presenter, now owns one of the biggest independent fish companies in the UK, supplying many of the major supermarkets, and has turned his hand to ship building himself.Mr Clark said: "I have even built some boats as part of my business. They were just 35 metre (114 feet) fishing boats and none of them have been as successful as the Cutty Sark."The Cutty Sark was at the cutting edge of technology of the time. The people who built it and served on it were the equivalent of those who put a man on the moon."It took nearly three months for genealogist Caroline Gurney to trace the families of those who worked on the Cutty Sark. "It has been quite an exciting and challenging piece of work," said. "Every person we looked at had an interesting story and there were people scattered all over the world from Canada to New Zealand and China to Zimbabwe."Among those who will also be attending will be Annalie Riches, 43, an architect from north London, who had no idea she was related to a member of the Cutty Sark crew. Her great, great, great grandfather Joseph Gray served as second mate on the Cutty Sark for four years after signing on at the age of 21 in 1874 for wages of £5 a month.Earlier this month Miss Riches gave birth to a baby boy, Ridley, who will be the youngest descendant attending the event this week.She said: "It was a complete surprise to learn I am related to someone who had served on the Cutty Sark. I have never set foot on the Cutty Sark before so it will be strange to go there knowing one of my relatives had worked on board."Built at Dumbarton on the River Leven, the Cutty Sark was originally designed carry tea from China. At the time of her launch in 1869 she was the most advanced vessel in existence and a sleek racing yacht hull shape allowed her to become one of the fastest vessels under sail.Hercules Linton, who ran a ship building business with William Dundas Scott, designed and oversaw the building of the boat. It was not until 1885 that the Cutty Sark reached her peak, breaking many speed records under the command of Captain Richard Woodget.On his first voyage in 1885, he sailed from London to Sydney in 77 days and made the return journey in 73. In 1889 he managed to overtake the P&O steam ship Britannia, which was considered to be state of art at the time.Four of his sons also served on board and now 127 years after Captain Woodget took command, his great grandson Martin Woodget will set foot on board the vessel at the event.Mr Woodgett, 73, a retired school master from Oxford, said: "The history of the Cutty Sark runs very deeply within our family. I have been hearing stories about them all my life."Captain Woodget was highly regarded by his crew and also personally set all the rigging himself. He was quite a character – there are stories of him roller skating around on the deck. He also taught some of the apprentices to ride a bicycle, which at the time were very new."Mr Woodgett added: "Sadly I am the last male with the Woodget name and it is going to die out with me as I don't have any children."Giles Morgan, group head of sponsorship at HSBC, said: "We have people coming from all over the world to join us on the Cutty Sark that their ancestors had worked on. "What is wonderful are the stories, documents and memorabilia that a lot of them have."?Most memorably, the waist of model Fllippa Hamilton was constricted to within an inch of its life in two 2009 advertisements for Ralph Lauren - making her head look the same size as her pelvis. After an outcry from the public, the fashion house apologised, but the industry didn't learn its lesson.?However, what you don't often get with either, unless you've headed straight backstage or you're booked for follow-up salon appointments, is that close detailed view; a true second look. Believe me there have been many times when I’ve peered forward from my seat, or better yet hit pause and CTRL + to zoom in on the screen - it's not quite the same. But this is why ICB was perfect. Every look was already there in high-res jpeg form. And every detail had a dedicated picture too - the fabric textures, the handbags, the prints and the make-up choices. There were also informative notes on each piece and a video of Gurung discussing his inspirations. All can be replayed and revisited. And what's even more interesting about all this, is that the ICB show was also invite-only. Even my colleague next to me couldn't login - her email address wasn't on the list. This new exclusive online-only strategy has made me wonder - is this a step towards an anti consumer all-access sentiment? Are Gurung’s team trying to buck the trend for offering everyone around the world a "front row seat" via the web? Could this be the beginning of a backlash to the fashion industry's rapid adoption of burgeoning social media platforms? We first saw it with Tom Ford, who has a strict no photographs and no reviews policy for at least three months, and Phoebe Philo at Céline, who likewise calls for no shots or tweets from backstage at her shows. Those decisions have been met with mixed reception, but both are essentially attempting to close the gap between the hype of a new collection and the time (on average six months later) it actually hits the shop floor. ICB is adopting the same exclusive strategy, albeit with a less established brand and solely on a digital platform. “The password is just a replacement for your seat number,” said Ed Filipowski, co-president of PR company KCD, who was behind the concept. “To me, it’s not MTV, it’s not YouTube. It’s for the industry.”While the time lag wasn't enforced (I for one was tweeting as I watched), it seems, if anything, at least an attempt at rediscovering a sense of authority in the industry. Enabling the likes of Vogue and the major newspapers to be the first to comment once again, rather than your dime-a-dozen blogger is an interesting step. Likewise, the British Fashion Council is reinforcing the importance of focusing on the press and buyers who attend London Fashion Week this season. Although consumer access to the event, which kicked off on Friday, has become increasingly open over the past few seasons, and is set to be its biggest yet with , those in the trade are being prioritised once more. For the first time, their passes to the fashion week grounds provide a constant stream of live content, thanks to an ongoing partnership with image-recognition app Aurasma. By scanning them, they’re directed to live news from the London Fashion Week organisers. While that content isn’t exclusive, it is confirmation of ensuring the experts have easy, on-the-go access to everything they need, especially given the fast-paced nature of such a week. But on the other hand, London is also seeing a continuing focus on consumer-first. last September – offering those on Twitter a glimpse of each look seconds before those actually in attendance. The same is planned for tomorrow’s show, with a delayed version of the image-stream also being posted on the giant Cromwell Road billboard in London (Europe’s longest advertising outdoor space). The brand’s main focus is reach; getting out to as many of the public as possible, which is why they’ll also be live-streaming to Liverpool Street Station, as well as on mobile and tablet device. Harrods is taking it one step further again by handing the buying decision of the forthcoming Burberry collection over to its Facebook fans. On Tuesday, the day after the designer’s show, the department store will post images of every look on its . Those that receive the most ‘likes’ will be incorporated into the store’s purchases for the season. The argument almost certainly is that it’s common sense those outfits proving the most popular at this stage will end up being the ones that sell once they hit the floor later in the year (although the profile of the Harrods Facebook fan versus the actual Harrods shopper could be questioned). Similarly, back in New York and Oscar de la Renta turned to crowdsourcing, inviting consumers to become a part of his creative process by launching a virtual pinboard open for anyone to post their ideas to. The idea is similar to , the new picture-based social network, that has been attracting lots of attention of late. “” is a call for anyone and everyone to help the designer with inspiration sources for his resort collection. Both of these initiatives aren't just about providing consumers with increasing amounts of access anymore then, but actually involving them in the entire behind-the-scenes process; from concept to sales rail. Combined with ICB, the result of these conflicting digital strategies is an overwhelming sense of the fashion industry being drawn into a “whirlpool”. There is now a battle between a tightening industry grip on the one hand, and an all-access opening to consumers, on the other. Neither side is right or wrong, but there's still that gaping hole from one extreme to the other, and more importantly from the season we're seeing to the season we're buying. The question is can the industry, defined by these biannual fashion weeks, the world over, adapt fittingly while continuing to embrace the benefits of digital media? Rachel Arthur is the media and marketing editor at online trend analysis and research service , where she focuses on providing the fashion and style industries with news and analysis from across the communications world. Based in New York, she also tweets about the crossroads of fashion and technology and contributes to WGSN’s new . ?For men, shell-suits voted the worst item, while puffball skirts topped the poll for women ahead of shoulder pads.Angela Poplett, Lakeside's personal shopper, said: "When it comes to crimes against fashion, we've all been guilty of the odd misdemeanour - but there's no excuse for sloppy dressing."10 worst fashion faux pas1. Flabby midriff2. Shell suit tucked into socks with trainers3. Showing G-string above jeans4. Socks with sandals5. Builder's bottom6. A 'muffin top' over low cut jeans7. Head-to-toe animal print8. Mullet haircut9. Head-to-toe Burberry check10. Black shoes with white socks ?“Never mind,” Sam sighed. “Whenever you’re finished with whatever it is you’re doing, there’s someone here to see you.”Dave did a few sit-ups, took a shower and went downstairs to make himself a Maximuscle energy milkshake. In the hallway he ran into an extraordinary creature. It was clutching an iPad and wearing an ill-fitting suit, a Burberry scarf, a manbag with a bicycle helmet attached and a pink shirt with the cuffs undone.“Hello,” said Dave. “Are you here for work experience?”“No, I’m Craig.”“Craig David?” asked Dave, eyeing the £170 hip-hop headphones.“Craig Oliver. Your new communications chief.”“Oh, of course. Sorry. Welcome to Number 10.”“Thanks,” said Craig. “By the way, where’s Nick? Have you sent him to Coventry to punish him for last week?”“Worse,” said Dave. “Teesside. He’s touring a blast furnace in Redcar.”Both men laughed.“And is he doing much campaigning for the Barnsley by-election?” asked Craig.“Not really. Looks a bit embarrassing if you make an effort and still come in last.”Craig nodded quietly. He understood communications.“Anyway,” said Dave. “Enough about boring domestic stuff. We need to talk tough on Libya. I’m thinking no-fly zones, deploying military assets, arming rebel groups, that sort of thing.”Craig frowned. “Have you spoken to the Americans?”“No.”“And don’t you think we might look silly discussing military options the same week as we announce plans to lay off 11,000 Armed Forces personnel?”Dave sprang to his feet, scattering the paper tanks and aeroplanes he’d had the children put together.“You’ve read about Charlie Sheen, Craig?” he spluttered. “Well, I too am tired of pretending I’m not special. I’m on a drug, and it’s called 'Dave Cameron’. It’s not available because if you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off, just like Gaddafi’s when I bomb, bomb, bomb him.”“Gosh.” Craig sat back in his chair. “You know, if you’re in this sort of mood, you should think about taking on Murdoch over BSkyB.”Dave eyed his new underling coldly. “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”? Miners, who bore the brunt of the collapse as people feared global growth would come to a standstill, have risen as metals prices recovered in line with resurgent demand and, in particular, increasing demand from Asia. Barclays has recovered since fears that the bank would be forced to take taxpayers' capital led the shares to a 22-year-low. Last month, the bank reported record-breaking results with profits almost doubling to £11.6bn. The two companies to see their share price fall the most since a year ago today are RSA Insurance and Resolution. David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Index, said the market recovery is “alive and well” although he added, “the market is starting to look vulnerable to at least some sort of correction from here.”“It would not be a surprise to see further gradual drift for shares from current levels, unwinding at least some of the strong gains seen over the past month, but overall the medium-term outlook for the FTSE remains positive,” he said. As investors took profits on Tuesday morning, defensives were on the rise with utility companies and drug makers on the leaderboard. GlaxoSmithKline was the biggest riser, adding on 14p to £12.50 by 12.30. Aggreko, the temporary power supplier, was on the rise after a push from UBS who upped the company’s target price to £12.00 from 985p. Real estate group, Liberty International, was the biggest faller in morning trading following weak results and news of a demerger. Banks were also peppering the loserboard with Standard Chartered Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group all slipping back. Miners dropped back against a background of falling metals prices. Kazakhmys and Fresnillo shed around 2pc each. ?The benchmark index broke the 6,000 mark for the first time in 30 months in a pre-Christmas rally, and some analysts predict it could near 7,000 before the end of 2011.Yusuf Heusen, at IG Index, said: "After the gains seen in December, there is definitely scope for a deeper correction than we have been used to of late, but at the moment momentum continues to favour the buyers." ?“We reiterate our view that [the company] is the most attractively valued UK water stock, still trading below our 755p fundamental [price objective],” they said. “We believe a bid from a consortium seems more feasible than a bid from a single fund due to [United Utilities’] large size.” The broker added that Severn Trent and Pennon could benefit from the speculation, and shares in the former advanced 4p to £17.12, while the latter added 5½ to 745p. United Utilities, which itself gained 19½ to 727p, releases its latest trading update tomorrow. Fellow utility Centrica edged 1.8 higher to 335½p amid vague talk of interest from Gazprom, which was dismissed by sources close to the companies.Another rumour magnet, Sage Group, crept up 2.1 to 318.3p on lingering deal chatter, this time emanating from the blogosphere and centring on a sale of its US business. While dismissing the speculation as “tosh of course”, George O’Connor at broker Panmure Gordon added: “Sage could well be hawking one of its underperforming operating units – this would be very consistent with company strategy.”One takeover tale that did come true, however, was Sportingbet, which jumped 7¼ to 51p as William Hill, down 6.1 at 312.6p, and gaming services provider GVC confirmed they are looking at a possible offer for the company. Market speculation has persisted in recent weeks and, by Tuesday, shares in the online gaming group had risen more than 30pc since the start of August.Back among the blue-chips, Anglo American advanced 25p to £20.34, despite trouble near one of the mines operated by Anglo American Platinum, which is majority-owned by the London-listed company. On the FTSE 250, Lonmin, the initial focus of violence in South Africa when trouble flared up last month, agreed a pay deal with striking workers and the shares advanced 1½ to 651½p, after earlier climbing as high as 719p. The group gave up the majority of its gains as investors weighed the additional costs the agreement would bring.Fellow mid-cap company Centamin was the biggest riser on the FTSE 250, gaining 4.35 to 95p after advancing 1.95p on Tuesday. The gold miner benefited from a bullish note from heavyweight broker Merrill Lynch earlier in the week, which said Centamin was “deeply undervalued”. The broker reckons the latest round of QE in the US will continue to lift gold prices.Elsewhere on the FTSE 100, Kingfisher put on 0.3 to 273.8p despite a bearish write-up from Nomura. Analyst Sunita Entwisle, who cut the company to “neutral” from “buy”, noted that “improvements in discretionary spend have been few”. The Japanese bank also said WPP was its “top pick” among the European advertising agencies, adding that the company won the most new business during August. Shares in the group ticked up 13 to 860½p.Emerging markets fund manager Ashmore received a boost from analysts too, after Morgan Stanley started its coverage of the group with an “overweight” recommendation. They thought that concerns about the performance of the group’s funds and margin pressure were already priced in, and shares in Ashmore gained 3½ to 338½p. AstraZeneca climbed 54½p to £29.59 as Exane BNP lifted the drugmaker to “neutral”. HSBC was in scribblers’ good books, with Barclays claiming the market underestimates the lender’s earnings as well as its “dividend trajectory”. The broker expects underlying profits to grow 26pc this year, compared with 4pc in 2012. That helped HSBC advance 9.9 to 587.8p, the biggest gainer among Britain’s banks.Among the small cap stocks, Lookers drew attention after Trefick, Jack Petchey’s investment vehicle that pulled a bid for the car dealer last year, sold its entire 17.3pc stake in the group at 66p apiece. Because the holding was sold at a discount, the announcement weighed on Lookers’ share price, which dipped 3 to 68¾p. However, the sale is likely to be beneficial in the long-term. Trefick was “a bit of an unknown variable” and the transaction is likely to improve the liquidity of the stock, said Mike Allen, an analyst at Panmure Gordon. Meanwhile, Aim-listed Europa Oil & Gas surged 4.875 to 10.375p after it revealed it had found two large and previously unknown prospects off the Irish coast.?Bart Becht, chief executive of Reckitt Benckiser, came first place, taking home £92.6m in total pay. The huge payout was driven by the crystallisation of share awards, accounting for £88m of his total pay package. Next on the list was Tony Pidgley, executive director of Berkeley, taking home total pay of £36.4m, followed by Xstrata's boss Mick Davis, taking home £25.5m in the last financial year. "Total boardroom pay at Reckitt Benckiser looks enormous, but only because of Bart Becht's share incentives: his total pay alone makes up over 90pc of the board's total remuneration. Mr Becht has overseen considerable success at the head of Reckitt Benckiser and his pay – and that of his executive colleagues on the board – reflects that. "Strip out the incentives for executive directors and boardroom pay at Reckitt Benckiser is below the average for FTSE 100 companies, which really shows that this is a company that believes in rewarding performance." Burberry's Angela Ahrendts was the best paid female chief in the FTSE 100, with total pay of £6.1m, the Telegraph report found. However, unions were shocked at the levels of pay at a time when workers suffered real cuts to their wages. Paul Kenny, general secretary of GMB, said “This is scandalous at a time when workers up and down the land are suffering real cuts in their pay and to their services." ?Royal Bank of Scotland was another blue-chip riser following the announcement of the long-awaited initial public offering of insurer Direct Line. The lender added 3.6pc this morning. On the FTSE 250, Chemring ticked up 5pc on confirmation buy-out group Carlyle had secured an extension to its "put up or shut up" takeover deadline, reassuring investors the private equity company remains interested in a deal for the defence equipment group. The deadline would have expired today. ?Investec analyst Andrew Gollan advised clients to "sell" BAE shares, which climbed 10.6pc yesterday. "Given that yesterday’s price movements weight the combined market caps similar to the proposed dual-listed structure (EADS 60pc / BAE 40pc), the market is effectively pricing the merger terms efficiently," he wrote in a note. "Hence, simplistically, bid-related upside to the BAE share price is limited in our view."On the FTSE 250, Apple supplier Imagination Technologies slipped 5.3pc, despite reporting strong shipment volumes and the launch of the highly-anticipated iPhone 5. Liberum Capital recommends selling the shares and said "licensing revenue remains steady, but customers are cautious, creating unusual uncertainty over the timing of deal closures". ?London's blue-chips are now heading into positive territory after US manufacturing unexpectedly expanded in August, showing that the two-year economic recovery may be sustained. The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index fell to 50.6 last month, the lowest level since July 2009, from 50.9 in August. That helped America's Dow Jones Industrial Average put on 62 points to 11677 while the FTSE 100 gained 42 points to 5436. Data also showed applications for US employment benefits fell by 12,000 to 409,000 last week. But investors are looking ahead to tomorrow's monthly jobs report, which will provide further evidence as to the strength of the recovery in the world's largest economy. 1.40pm: Miners retreat on contraction in eurozone manufacturingThe FTSE 100 was down just 5 points - or 0.09pc - at 5389.66 at 1.23pm. Miners remained out of favour, with Xstrata and Fresnillo both slipping 3pc after eurozone manufacturing activity contracted for the first time in almost two years in August due to a sharp downturn in output and new orders. The Markit Eurozone PMI survey, which gauges changes in activity levels across thousands of eurozone manufacturers, fell to 49 in August from 50.4 in July - a figures below 50 marks a contraction. Investors were worried that the slowdown appears to be spreading, with German factories, which have supported growth in the bloc for some time, hitting the brakes while France's manufacturing sector contracted for the first time since July 2009. Chris Williamson at data provider Markit said: Final PMI data for August were even worse than the disappointing earlier flash numbers, signalling an end to the manufacturing recovery which began in October 2009. Commodities trader Glencore fell 3pc after South Africa's Optimum Coal confirmed that it was part of a consortium interested in buying it for around $1bn. The consortium include prominent South African businessman Cyril Ramaphosa. Reports that banking reforms for Britain's biggest banks will be delayed continued to buoy the sector. Gary Greenwood, analyst at Shore Capital, said: Overall, we expect regulators to adopt a pragmatic approach to implementing regulation, although we do harbour concerns that the UK remains somewhat out on a limb in terms of the intensity with which it wants to implement change. This goes some way to explain why the domestic UK banks continue to trade at such a distressed valuation multiple, both in absolute terms and relative to the wider sector. The banking sector has lost more than 23pc in 2011, enduring its worst year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 as investors' worries have grown over the state of their balance sheets. 10.47 Blue chip rally endsLondon's blue chip index struggled on Thursday after a two-day rally fizzled out with a fall in new export orders in China weighing on sentiment. Although the wider market is on the wane, with the FTSE 100 falling 20 points to 5373, banks are continuing to stage a recovery following their recent rout. Royal Bank of Scotland has bounced 6.7pc and Lloyds Banking Group is up 5pc. Barclays has risen 4.8pc. This morning, the lenders have been helped by speculation that Britain's biggest banks are set to escape any immediate restructuring following the Independent Commission on Banking's final report on September 12. The as saying business secretary, Vince Cable, has acepted it may be impossible to implement extensive banking reforms before the election. However, the legal framework for the changes would be put in place before the poll. Senior politicians and financiers have warned that the ICB's recommendations could imperil Britain's banks. Andrew Tyrie MP, the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, he was worried that pushing banks to take on more expensive funding could damage them at a time when they are ill-equipped to deal with it. 8.45am: FTSE rally fizzles, with miners leading fallersThe FTSE 100 opened up 0.17pc at 5,403.64 points, but this was short-lived and within half an hour it was trading down. Miners led the fallers with Eurasian Natural Resources, Fresnillo, and Lonmin slipping by around 1.8pc. Investors were unsettled by manufacturing data in China and a warning from China's Premier Wen Jiabao the debt problems in Europe and the US could hurt Chinese exports. He went on to say that the world economy is still fragile. A weaker-than-expected reading of German manufacturing, highlighting increasing sluggishness in the eurozone's largest economy, added to worries. Bank shares remained a bright spot, with Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and Barclays gaining 7pc, 6.1pc, and 5.3pc respectively. Shares in wealth manager Hargreaves Lansdown jumped 6.5pc after it said it was bucking the market turmoil of recent weeks, with new business in July and August are a third ahead of the same period last year. Among the FTSE 250, Charter was the top riser after Melrose sweetened its bid for Charter by around £40m, bringing it close to landing the £1.44bn takeover of the UK engineering group. The increased offer comprises 553p in Melrose shares, 297p in cash and an 8p-a-share interim dividend, . Charter said: On the basis of the increased proposal, and in light of the heightened recent economic uncertainty and market volatility, the company has commenced discussions with Melrose about its proposal and, in the meantime, has agreed to grant Melrose access to company information to allow Melrose to complete its confirmatory due diligence.Recruitment company Hays added 4.4pc after unveilling a strong rise in full-year profits (before tax and execeptionals) of £106.6m, up from £71.1m a year earlier. 06.30 Asian market get lift from Wall StreetAsian stocks rose on Thursday following gains on Wall Street, with technology and consumer shares outperforming. Slumping exports slowed factory activity in some of Asia's biggest economies in August, although China managed modest improvement thanks to solid domestic demand, a series of surveys released on Thursday showed. Brazil shocked investors by slashing its key interest rate to 12pc from 12.5pc, citing concern over the mounting global slowdown as well as weaker growth in Latin America's largest economy. But investors cautioned that gains would likely be limited ahead of key US manufacturing and jobs data due later this week. Signs of a weakening economy have led to speculation the Fed will step in with a new round of monetary expansion. Yutaka Shiraki, senior equity strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, said: The China PMI data gave some immediate relief to the market, but the U.S. data, particularly the employment numbers, are still to come.In Japan, the Nikkei gained 1.1pc to clear the key 9,000 level for the first time in two weeks to close at 9060.8, while the Hang Seng added 0.8pc and China's Shanghai Composite fell 0.4pc. China's official PMI offered some reassurance about the pace of growth, rising on Thursday to 50.9 in August from a 28-month low of 50.7 in July and signalling some stabilisation in the manufacturing sector on solid domestic demand. However, the result was just below expectations and the sub-index for new export orders dipped to 48.3 from 50.4, suggesting that exports may weaken in the future. South Korea's Kospi edged up just 0.3pc after inflation accelerated to a three-year high in August while exports eased and manufacturing output shrank, feeding expectations of a possible cut in interest rates. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.3pc. Earlier, in the US, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 0.5pc at 11613.53, while the S&P 500 ended the day up 0.5pc and the Nasdaq gained 0.1pc. Thursday's market report Wednesday's market report Tuesday's market report Friday's market report Thursday's market report Tools: ?Analysts pointed out that falling house prices would affect the banks, including higher loan losses as collateral values fall and subdued mortgage loan growth. They believed Lloyds was the most exposed and as a result, expect 2012 profits to be 21pc lower than consensus. 3.15pm: Wall Street weakens on job figuresAs Wall Street weakened, London's blue-chips sank further into the red. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 112 points to 12457 following weak private sector job growth numbers that were sharply below market expectations. The FTSE 100 was off 56 points to 5933 while the FTSE 250 lost 31 points ot 12029. Amongst the second-liners, AZ Electronic Materials took the sharpest fall. The speciality chemicals company shed 8.25pc as its private equity backers, Vestar Capital Partners and Carlyle Group, sold 80m shares. UBS places the shares at 302p each. 11.05am: Ex-dividend stocks weigh on large-capsLondon's large-caps looked somewhat lacklustre in morning trading with Marks & Spencer, National Grid and Vodafone all trading ex-dividend. The FTSE 100 was virtually flat, off 2 points to 5987 while the FTSE 250 edged up 9 points to 12070. Yusuf Heusen, senior sales trader at IG Index, commented: "It is the cautious attitude out there at the moment that is tempering yesterday’s exuberance. Burberry is the top performer today as the luxury goods company once again finds favour with its plans for international expansion of the brand. It had followed the broader market lower in recent weeks but still remains a firm favourite for investors, this time targeting a move to fresh all time highs at 1400p. However, the reality is there is little to choose between the biggest gainers and losers today."Burberry was up 2.3pc, closely followed by security services company, G4S. The latter rose almost 2pc as analysts at Espirito Santo started coverage with a "buy" rating. Analysts said that G4S's growth recovering growth profile is not yet fairly factored into the group's valuation. They added emerging economy activity accounts for a third of group profit and looks set to expand at double-digit rates. 8.35am:FTSE slips in early tradingThe FTSE 100 slid 5.5 points to 5985.02 in early trading. Investors awaited US ADP employment figures for the month of May, due at 1.15pm, a harbinger for Friday's all-important non-farm payrolls data. Recent US macro data has signalled a slowdown in growth. Miners gained, helped by comments from Xstrata chief Mick Davis who voiced confidence in the medium- and long-term outlook for a range of commodities despite recent turmoil that sent key sector stalwarts like copper into tailspins. Rio Tinto, Lonmin and Anglo American rose between 0.6pc and 0.9pc. Property group Hammerson was the biggest riser, up 1.48pc. Dragging on the market were National Grid (-3.75pc), Vodafone (3.1pc) and Marks & Spencer (-2.5pc). Asian stock markets posted muted gains on Wednesday as investors weighed an easing of severe supply shortages in Japan against the prospect of more weak US economic indicators. Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 0.3pc to 9,719.61 after Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said in a speech that supply and electricity disruptions caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami were easing. The economy could stage a moderate recovery starting in the second half of fiscal 2011, he said. "Production has declined very sharply due to supply constraints caused primarily by the destruction of capital stock, disruptions in supply chains and a shortage of electric power," Mr Shirakawa said in a speech. "Those constraints are, however, being relaxed more quickly than expected initially as a result of strenuous efforts by firms."The better outlook helped raise shares of companies expected to benefit from the reconstruction of northeastern Japan, which was devastated by the twin natural disasters. Elsewhere, South Korea's Kospi index gained 0.1pc to 2,145.34 after the government announced that the country's inflation rate eased for a second straight month in May, to 4.1pc. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was 0.1pc higher at 4,711.90. Sentiment was contained, however, by US economic data that is expected to keep pointing to slowing growth. Markets expect headline manufacturing to drop three points when the Institute for Supply Management releases its manufacturing index for May in Washington later Wednesday. On Wall Street, the stock market ended higher Tuesday on signs that Germany might drop its demands for an early rescheduling of Greek bonds, paving the way for a deal that could prevent Greece from defaulting on its debt. The S&P 500 gained 1.1pc to 1,345.20. The Dow Jones added 1pc to 12,569.79, and the Nasdaq composite rose 1.4pc to 2,835.30. These gains came in spite of a grim report on the U.S. housing market. Home prices in 12 of the 20 cities tracked by the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index dropped in March to the lowest levels since the housing bubble popped in 2006. Thirteen economic indicators, ranging from personal spending to manufacturing orders, have been weaker than economists had predicted, a sign investors and analysts say indicates that high gas prices are slowing growth more than anticipated. Monday's market report Friday's market report Thursday's market reportWednesday's market report Tuesday's market report Tools: ?ARM’s mid-cap peer, Imagination Technologies, also came under pressure. Earlier this week, the microchip designer announced that its finance director was stepping down at the end of June. That prompted analysts at Evolution Securities to cut their rating on Imagination to “neutral” from “buy”. The broker advised investors to lock in profits, which sent the shares down 29.1 to 469p. 3.50pm: Wall Street slips backAs Wall Street slipped back, London's large-caps continued their decline. The FTSE 100 fell 101 points to 5981 while the FTSE 250 fell 106 points to 11908. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 112 points to 12694, following European and Asian markets lower as disappointing new data on job creation last month dented sentiment. 12.45pm: SABMiller slips as finance director retiresThe FTSE 100 slipped ever further into the red, dropping 57 points to 6025. The FTSE 250 shed 64 points to 11949. Amongs the fallers was SABMiller. The brewer of Peroni and Grolsch slipped 45.5 to £22.30.5 as it announced that its finance director, Malcolm Wyman, will retire at the end of August. He will be replaced by internal candidate, James Wilson, who is currently finance director at SABMiller Europe. The news did raise speculation about when SAB's chief executive, Graham Mackay, might decide to retire. Although Reuters said that according to a person close to the company, the 61-year-old "shows no sign of stepping down". Mr Wyman leaves SAB after 25 years. He became chief financial officer in 2001, around two years after the group's listing in London. Slipping back too was ARM Holdings. The designer of microchips for gadgets such as the iPad shed 26.5 to 575.5p amid fears of competition from rival, Intel. The US company is set to make an announcement later today, and there is speculation it may unveil a new processor which could be a competitive threat to ARM. Outsourcers were out of favour too as a BBC report claimed that leaked documents suggested ministers have decided that “wholescale outsourcing” of public sector would be politically “unpalatable”. As such, the government is apparently scaling back its plans to use the private sector to deliver public services, instead opting for using more charities, social enterprises and employee-owned “mutual” organisations. That provoked concern amongst investors in the likes of Capita and Serco, large-cap outsourcers who have pointed to the opportunities offered by the Government’s efforts to cut the deficit. Capita fell 2.7pc and Serco slid 2.5pc. 11.15am: Aquarius Platinum jumps on dealWhile large-cap miners came under pressure, it was a different story for mid-cap Aquarius Platinum. The world's fourth-largest primary platinum producer jumped 24.3 to 360.1p as it bought part of the mineral rights for Northam Platinum's Booysendal property for $179m. That has increased its current resource base by around 24pc. Aquarius will buy the mineral rights attached to the southern part of Booysendal, which is adjacent to Aquarius' own Everest mine. Analysts at Liberum Capital, who have a "buy" rating on the stock, said: This is a transformational deal that has long been coveted by Aquarius' CEO Stuary Murray. Given existing mine infrastructure and more favourable topography at Everest, it has long been stated that development via Everest could realise significant capital and operating synergies.However, the FTSE 250 as a whole was in the doldrums, slipping 33 points to 11980. The FTSE 100 fell 33 points to 6049. Simon Denham, head of Capital Spreads, commented: Risky assets are just taking a rain check this morning and the failure once again by the FTSE to meaningfully take out its 2011 highs is a concern for the bulls. Clients have been right to short the FTSE around the 6100-6080 area as this morning’s weakness brings us down to the 6030 area. The FTSE continues to struggle around 6100/30 and looks dangerously to have formed a double or even triple top around the level having attempted to break above in January, then February and again in May.9.25am: Miners lead blue-chip fallers as FTSE slips backThe index of leading shares was trading down 46 points - or 0.8pc - at 6037.02. Yesterday it edged up just 0.2pc after stalling just short of a near-three year high above the 6,100 earlier in the day. Miners led the blue chip fallers as weaker base metal prices, a 14pc plunge in silver prices, and a lower-than-forecast manufacturing growth reading in China weighed on the demand outlook for the sector. Antofagasta was the biggest faller, down 6.5pc. Part of this was down to the copper miner trading ex-dividend. Overall ex-dividend factors knocked 5.53 points off the blue chip index, with Barclays, G4S, GlaxoSmithKline and Kingfisher all trading without the attraction of a payout. Oil prices continued to slide on fears of falling demand, pushing BP down 1.3pc. Banks fell back too as investors' risk appetite waned. Standard Chartered dropped 1.6pc as the lender flagged a rise in cost pressures and recorded double-digit income growth in the first quarter helped by strong economic growth in its core Asian markets. Next topped the FTSE 100 leader board, up 4.1pc as the fashion retailer raised its guidance after its first-quarter sales beat expectations, up 5.2 percent boosted by exceptionally warm weather over Easter and spending ahead of the Royal Wedding long weekend. This lifted other retailers with Marks & Spencer and Kingfisher, owner of B&Q, both gaining 2.2pc in early trading. 06.30 Asian markets fell after a batch of weaker-than-expected earnings ended a two-week rally on Wall Street and a sell-off in commodities spooked investors. Sentiment for riskier assets was further knocked by worries about potential terrorist attacks following the killing of Osama bin Laden over the weekend. The market welcomes the good news, but it worries about whether this news will lead to higher short term uncertainties on the concern of revenge activities ... the known unknown, will linger and will only dissipate with time, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a report. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index dropped 1.2pc, while South Korea's Kospi was 1pc. Australia's S&P ASX 200 slipped 0.8pc and indexes in Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and mainland China also incurred losses. Markets in Japan were closed for a holiday. This week's 14pc plunge in silver prices and a lower-than-forecast manufacturing growth reading in China have made investors nervous about holding big bets ahead of the European Central Bank meeting on Thursday and the April US payrolls report due on Friday. On Wall Street on Tuesday, the earnings rally that had lifted the stock market over the past two weeks paused after a batch of weaker-than-expected results. Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, posted lower-than-expected quarterly results. Clorox, Molson Coors Brewing Co., and Beazer Homes also slipped after announcing weaker earnings. The Dow Jones industrial average gained less than a point to close at 12,807.51. The S&P 500 index fell 4.60 points to 1,356.62. The Nasdaq composite fell 22.46 points to 2,841.62. Brent crude fell to near $122 a barrel as a report showed US crude supplies rose more than expected last week, suggesting demand growth could be waning. In currencies, the dollar continued to strengthen. The dollar has fallen over the past few weeks as investors expected the Federal Reserve would keep interest rates low. Central banks overseas are raising interest rates. Higher rates tend to make currencies more attractive to investors seeking higher yields. Wednesday's market report Tuesday's market report Thursday's market report Wednesday's market report Tuesday's market report Tools: ?Banks are leading the way following the publication of the Independent Commission on Banking, which was not as harsh as some market practitioners had expected. Barclays is top of the leaderboard, rising 3.1pc, and Royal Bank of Scotland put on 2.1pc. Elsewhere, a better-than-expected trading statement from GKN helped the business climb 2.5pc. Harry Philips, an analyst at Evolution, said: “This is a very punchy interim management statement and considerably ahead of our rather tentative estimates.”BHP Billiton rallied 2.4pc after Credit Suisse’s commodities team upgraded their metal price forecasts. Accelerating momentum in China in the second half and improved risk appetite will be positive for underlying demand, metal prices and the forward rating of the mining sector, said Credit Suisse. As a result, the broker upgraded BHP Billiton to “outperform” to reflect cheap valuation and strong earnings momentum from oil and bulks. Traders also thought some dealers may be closing out short positions on BHP Billiton following its denial of reports it is poised to launch a bid for Australia’s Woodside Petroleum. Typically, hedge funds and dealers will be long of the takeover target and short of the acquirer if a deal is about to be announced. Mining stocks were generally in vogue as Nomura talked up the possibility of contruction recovery in Russia. Vladimir Zhukov, an analyst at Nomura, said: “As the domestic consumption of flat steel in Russia in 2010 almost returned to pre-recession levels, we are now waiting for the consumption of long steel (construction) to catch up because we expect an acceleration of construction activity in the second phase of economic recovery in 2011-12.” Xstrata rose 1.5pc. On a less positive tack, WPP drifted 1.7pc lower as UBS published a bearish note on marketing communication companies. “The agencies face the double jeopardy of over 30pc of revenues from Europe and 50pc from FMCG/Autos. We argue that there is heightened downside risk to sentiment over the second quarter,” said analysts at UBS. Some consumer stocks were sold off after Nomura said it remains “heavily underweight” the sector. Ian Scott, an analyst at Nomura said higher commodity input prices are putting pressure on margins, while a greater share of household spending looks set to be directed towards essentials such as food and energy. Burberry fell 2pc. 10:00 The FTSE 100 was flat in early trading with a relief rally in banking stocks offset by fears over a high oil prices and another strong earthquake in Japan's northeast on Monday. Banks jumped after there were no surprises in the interim report by the Independent Commission on Banking. Even Lloyds was up because although they have to dispose of branches, the ICB did not recommend demerging HBOS. Barclays rose 3.25pc, RBOS +2.58pc and Lloyds +0.66pc. These were the banks with most to fear from the report. HSBC dipped 0.3pc and Asia-focused Standard Chartered rose 0.4pc. The FTSE opened up but was trading down 0.05pc a 6052.57 at 10am. Asian markets mixed05.45 Asian stock markets fell on Monday as investors continued to worry about soaring oil prices and earthquake-hit Japan. Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average fell 0.5pc to 9,719.70, while South Korea's Kospi edged down 0.3pc. Benchmarks in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, Singapore and India also fell. Earlier markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai were up after the country reported its first quarterly trade deficit since 2004 over the weekend as surging prices for commodities pushed up its import bill. Oil prices hovered at 30-month highs near $126 a barrel Monday in Asia as traders eyed a wobbly US dollar and fresh Middle East tension. In New York Friday, stocks were weighed down by oil prices as well as the threat of a government shutdown. But that risk was averted late Friday when lawmakers agreed to a last-minute deal to cut about $38bn in federal spending. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 29.44 points, or 0.2pc, to close at 12,380.05. The S&P 500 index slipped 0.4pc and the Nasdaq composite lost 0.6pc. Friday's market report Thursday's market report Wednesday's market report Tuesday's market reportMonday's market report Tools: ?Even defensives, which might have been expected to make gains on a risk-averse day, were out of favour. They were not helped by analysts at JP Morgan Cazenove advising investors: “don’t overstay your welcome in defensives”. The broker did not think the recent run in some stocks was the start of their sustained outperformance and advised remaining “underweight” on telecommunications, utilities and pharmaceuticals. Drug company, Shire shed 26p to £19.35. 3.30pm: London and Wall Street claw back early lossesLondon's large-caps pared some of their earlier losses as Wall Street clawed back some of its earlier declines. Having slipped back in early trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off only 11 points at 12584. The FTSE 100 fell 20 points to 5906, while the FTSE 250 shed 78 points to 11920. In New York, although European worries were weighing on sentiment, Fifth Third Bancorp led banks higher after analysts advised buying the shares. Back on this side of the Atlantic, miners were in demand as traders moved in following recent heavy falls in the sector. Antofagasta, Anglo American and Rio Tinto climbed 3.6pc, 1.7pc and 1.6pc resepctively. Analysts at Citigroup reckoned the miners’ recent retreat in line with sliding commodity prices could provide a chance to buy into the sector. “We are anticipating a broad slowdown in commodity consumption but not a crash, which we think is beginning to be priced into commodity and commodity equities,” said the broker. Analysts said this “sell-down” was an opportunity to “purchase high-quality names in the mining sector”, with their preference being for Xstrata and Rio Tinto. Xstrata put on 1.3pc. They also upped Antofagasta to “hold” from “sell” following its recent share pice fall. 1.25pm: LSE led higher as Canadians attempt to thwart TMX tie-upThe London Stock Exchange was in demand after revelations over the weekend that a consortium of Canadian banks and pension funds has approached TMX Group with a proposal to thwart the London bourse's planned merger. Dubbed 'Maple', the group has proposed a C$3.6bn (£2.3bn) cash and shares offer that trumps the LSE's all-share merger, which valued the Toronto Stock Exchange-owner at around C$3.2bn. Should the Canadian consortium win out, traders reckon the LSE could become a bid target itself. That came as Nasdaq and OMX said they were withdrawing their bid for rival exchange, NYSE Euronext, saying it became clear they would not win approval for the deal from the US Department of Justice's antitrust division. Manoj Ladwa, senior trader at ETX Capital, said: LSE has obviously been trumped by the Canadian pension funds, and I've seen the whole Nasdaq thing fall through with regards to the New York Stock Exchange. That all of a sudden makes the LSE a little bit attractive for Nasdaq to potentially do a deal. That helped the LSE put on almost 7pc, but the wider market was on the slide. The FTSE 250 shed 108 points to 11890 while the FTSE 100 lost 37 points to 5888. 10.30am: FTSE slips back amid Eurozone anxietyLondon's index of leading shares was trading down 42 points - or 0.7pc - at 5883.86 by mid-morning. Bourses in Germany and France dropped 1.1pc and 1.4pc respectively. The arrest on IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn over allegations of sexual assult and its effect on the negotiations over eurozone bailouts also unsettled markets. The sell off is by no means serious this morning and the FTSE seems to be finding its usual strength in the support levels around the 5900 area, which it has done on several occasions in the past few weeks, said Simon Denham, head of Capital Spreads Miners, which has been hard hit by a sharp commodities sell-off in the past two weeks, made slight gains. Anglo Amercian and Rio Tinto each edged up around 0.2pc. We would view this sell-down as an opportunity to purchase high-quality names in the mining sector, said Heath Jansen, analyst at Citigroup. Kazakhmys, the world's 10th largest copper miner, climbed after announcing plans to complete a secondary listing in Hong Kong by the end of June, a move that will boost its presence in China - the world's biggest copper importer. Autonomy was the biggest riser, up 3pc, after it entered into an $380m deal to buy cloud digital assets from Iron Mountain. A stronger dollar and global growth concerned pushed oil prices lower with Brent crude trading down $1.64 at $112.19 a barrel and hit energy firms. Petrofac dropped 2.4pc and Centrica, the owner of British Gas, 1.8pc. Banks fell back ahead of a meeting of eurozone finance ministers, who are likely to back a bailout package for Portugal and pressure Greece to announce more austerity steps to secure further emergency funding. RBS was the biggest faller in the sector down 2.5pc. Aggreko, the company that provides temporary power, dropped 2.7pc. 6.15am: Asian stocks slide on euro debt woes, Wall Street A loss of momentum on Wall Street, dropping commodity prices and worries over Europe's debt problems caused Asian stock markets to sag Monday. Oil prices in the US fell below $99 a barrel as crude became more expensive for investors with other currencies amid gains in the US dollar. Japan's Nikkei 225 index dropped 0.9pc to 9,560.46 with banking shares incurring losses following comments last week by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano suggesting that Tokyo Electric Power will need help repaying its debts. Doubts about the strength of the US economic recovery have weighed on Wall Street and markets elsewhere in recent weeks. After sailing through their best first quarter since 1998, US stocks are starting to lose some momentum. The S&P 500 stock index, a broad market benchmark, is up just 1pc this quarter after jumping 5.4pc in the first three months of the year. That weaker performance is in large part because of conflicting data about the health of the US economy. Sluggishness on Wall Street was a sign that "investors continued to worry about slowing global growth and European debt concerns," said Ben Potter of IG Markets in Melbourne. Meanwhile, the arrest Saturday in New York of International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn on attempted rape charges was unlikely to directly affect Asian markets. But the incident might prove a distraction in Europe, where the the IMF and Strauss-Kahn have been heavily involved in trying to resolve debt crises in countries such as Portugal and Greece, said Jackson Wong, vice president at Tanrich Securities in Hong Kong. Elsewhere is Asia, South Korea's Kospi lost 0.5pc to 2,110.99, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 1.2pc to 23,000.44. Benchmarks in Australia, Singapore and Taiwan were also lower, while those in New Zealand and the Philippines rose. Falling commodities prices were keeping stock investors at bay, said Wong. Oil, for example, was nearly $114 a barrel at the end of April but is now below $100 per barrel. A slump on Wall Street on Friday also weighed on investor nerves. On Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 100.17 points to close at 12,595.75. The S&P 500 fell 0.8 percent to 1,337.77. Friday was a day of two halves for the UK market, which ticked up during morning trading as dealers were heartened by better-than-expected economic growth in France and Germany as well as a rally in commodity prices. But after a slide on Wall Street amid tepid American inflation figures, the benchmark index turned tail. With traders reluctant to take risky positions going into the weekend, the FTSE 100 shed 19.09 points to 5925.87, although the FTSE 250 climbed 32.11 points to 11999.22. Friday's market reportThursday's market report Wednesday's market report Tools: ?Vodafone, which fell on dividend concerns last week, was down another 2.2 at 173.65p following a Bloomberg report it may make provisions to cover a potential $2.2bn (£1.35bn) tax bill in India. Admiral Group also slipped lower after Espirito Santo raised growth concerns, also citing the potential impact of the forthcoming Direct Line flotation by Royal Bank of Scotland. “Admiral’s business model is highly geared to growth yet [the first-half] demonstrated how the company is coming under increasing pressure from softer UK insurance pricing, regulatory change and most importantly in our view, a decision to rein in volume growth,” the broker said, cutting its recommendation to "sell". “Details of the Direct Line IPO are likely in the next two weeks with the listing to occur by year-end. With c.£1bn of new stock available and potential FTSE 100 inclusion, we expect technical selling pressure” on both Admiral, down 5p at £11.18, and RSA, which slid 1 to 120½p. RBS, which confirmed the launch of the Direct Line float last week, was also among the fallers after Investec analyst Ian Gordon cut his recommendation to “sell” from “hold”, commenting that the shares were now overvalued. RBS had gained more than 23pc since the start of the month, but today shed 4.6 to 274.4p. Among the blue-chip risers was Unilever, which put on 23p to £22.68 after UBS boosted its recommendation on the consumer products giant to “buy” from “neutral”. Analyst Alan Erskine thought the market was under-estimating the changes occurring at its food division and added that “for the first time, a clearly defined food strategy is being put in place”. On the mid-cap index, Africa-focused explorer Ophir Energy was one of the worst-performing stocks, down 33 at 608p following reports Tanzania will review all contracts with oil and gas groups by the end of the November. That overshadowed the announcement of another gas discovery in Equatorial Guinea. Ocado also crept 0.45 lower to 73.6p ahead of the release of a trading update on Thursday. Pessimistic Panmure Gordon analyst Philip Dorgan reiterated his view that the group’s days as a public company are “limited” and cautioned investors “we don’t think that the equity is worth very much”. A downgrade to “sell” from “neutral” at UBS also pushed Apple-supplier Imagination Technologies towards the bottom end of the FTSE 250. The broker noted the company’s valuation “is currently not discounting the competitive risks facing the business” and added that competitors such as ARM Holdings, 2½ higher at 584½p, have grown market share as well as scale. Imagination ended the day 21½ lower at 568½p. Elsewhere on the FTSE 250, Killik &Co. liked the look of Sports Direct International and said any deal for JJB Sports “could be materially accretive over the medium term”. Shares in Mike Ashley’s sportswear retailer ticked up 5½ to 344½p. The return of vague bid talk around Man Group helped the shares add 1.1 to 89.6p, while more concrete deal news, that Cable & Wireless Communications is in talks to sell assets to Bahrain Telecommunications, sent the London-listed group climbing 1.72 to 38¼p. Aquarius Platinum, however, topped the FTSE 250 with an increase of 4.2 – or 8.6pc – to 53p after the group resumed mining at its Kroondal site in South Africa, following labour unrest in the area. Among the small-caps, newspaper publisher Johnston Press rose 1½ to 7¾p, an increase of 24pc, amid heavy volumes. The move was thought to be due to buying from institutional investors, which the company has met recently. Trinity Mirror followed in Johnston’s wake, adding 5¾ – or 12.4pc – to 52p. ?“It is precisely as Asian economies become richer, that hundreds of millions of people will want to buy the things that British companies can sell them,” the Chancellor said. “The wealthiest will become consumers of Rolls-Royces made in Sussex, and Bentleys made in Crewe, dressed in Burberry clothes manufactured in Yorkshire. “And, like a generation of Japanese tourists, they will want to travel. And when they do, I want them to fly here on the wings of Airbus planes made in North Wales.”?Glorious Goodwood: Model Edie Campbell triumphs on Ladies' DayEdie Campbell, the model, triumphed in a charity race on Ladies’ Day at Glorious Goodwood yesterday in the course’s first all-female race.?Goodwood Racing 2012 Read the latest news and betting tips, plus Marlborough analysis on Glorious Goodwood, 31st July - 4th August. ?Twenty-five per cent of all Google employees’ annual bonuses were then tied to the success or failure of Google's social strategy in 2011. Arora also said that the underpinning of the modern web was going to be social rather than information-based. And that because of this shift, users were going to have to provide more personal information about themselves and their preferences to internet companies if they were to take full advantage of socially-drive services. “Clearly there is a fine line about this [how much information to share with web companies],” Arora said. “There is a huge conversation around how much information... is OK to store with any one company and what should be out there on the web.” “And that’ s the choice we are going to have to make as consumers based around trust and convenience. [We can say] I trust you [a web company] to have this information about me because you are going to make it convenient for me to use a service and i don’t trust you to have other information.”Google+ has attracted in excess of 40 million users. However, it is not yet known how many of those users are active. In 2004, it took Facebook 10 months to reach 1 million users. The Facebook rival is expected to reach 100 million users by the end of the year, according to technology analysts’ estimates. ?Scacchi was, nevertheless, prepared to bare all on stage again, in the West End play Bette and Joan. “It’s completely different,” she insists. “I am exposed and vulnerable. You can see that I haven’t done anything to try to pull things in or shape things up. I am as I am.”Red dawn at 10 Downing StreetChina may, according to security sources, be in a state of undeclared cyberwar with this country, but its prime minister, Wen Jiabao, will be granted a rare tribute by the Government on Monday.A Foreign Office spokesman confirms that the Communist Party official will be given a military Guard of Honour before he meets David Cameron. “While a head of state would be given one, this is unusual for a mere politician,” says my man in Whitehall.Tories’ East End knees-upConservative MPs’ staff were excited to be invited by Downing Street to a summer drinks reception. They were, however, shocked when they saw the venue: not Number 10, but Shoreditch town hall in east London.?The group said that licensing revenue was up 5pc, boosted by the Burberry London women's fragrance and watch sales. Stacey Cartwright, chief financial officer, said: "We have seen outstanding gains from fragrances and watches and for the second half we're excited about the launch of our new eyewear collection." Ms Cartwright added: "Accessory sales have been outstanding. The key to the collection's success has been the Manor bag, priced at £795. We've already seen the initial delivery sold out." She said that within the clothing range, a cropped quilted jacket for women and leather and cashmere coats had been big sellers. Burberry said the expansion of its retail outlets would gather pace, with five new stores and five concessions to be opened in the second half. It said this would increase selling space by 14pc in the second half of the year. Sales in Europe, excluding Spain, grew to £127m in the first half from £115m while in Spain, sales were £87m compared with £86m the year before. Sales in North America rose to £80m from £74m while Asia Pacific grew to £98m from £80m.?Pashes are, of course, the point. I have conducted serious, po-faced interviews with industry luminaries such as John Galliano, Luella Bartley, Antonio Berardi, the Rodarte sisters, Matthew Williamson, Helmut Newton et al; yet my overwhelming feeling is that clothing should be a joy, a fillip, an exhilaration – a preoccupation in which the pleasure principle reigns supreme. I cannot be the only one who, in low moments, consoles themselves with a mental catalogue of their finery: the heels, the paste, the pelts. If I can’t sleep, I count baubles and bouclés rather than sheep, mentally curating my own wardrobe. Recently I’ve been developing a Bettsian style theory. Actually I came across it in a magazine. Nevertheless, so fanatically have I embraced this dictum that I feel I have made it my own. It is simply this: the essence of a person’s style should be explicable in just three words. Think haiku, rather than novella. As youngsters we tend to be promiscuous, lemming-like experimenters. As adults, these random acts of fashion coalesce into some sort of style. Knowledge, as ever, is power, and once one has cracked this three-word formula, dressing becomes both a cinch and a joy. The scheme can be applied to celebrity and civilian, chapess and chap. My friends, have presented me with the following triads to sum up their own style: clean, chic, effortless; sleek, monochromatic, androgynous; faded, English, unshowy; linear, gamine, ballsy; ageless, flattering, North London; borrowed, given, stolen; martial, Italianate, caped; preppy, urbane, librarianesque; mad, vintage, crafted; unbigoted, blackshirt, chic. And, finally, the mantra of my brother Bim, whose resplendent “ruthless, senseless, northern-flash” translates as “utilitarian, military, the (very) odd sequin”. My own style trinity would run something along the lines of: retro, witty, feminine. Regarding retro, I can never look anything other than Forties with a touch of costume drama, à la The Wicked Lady heroine Margaret Lockwood (my nickname in my twenties). These days I tend to get “Dita-ed” by optimistic paparazzi, although, happily, Ms Von Teese has also been mistaken for me. Under “witty”, I take in camp and/or theatrical. I want my clothes to amuse me, whether it’s correspondent shoes, or over-the-top rocks. By “feminine”, I embrace cleavage (unavoidable), and what my gay friends would refer to as “tranny” or “lady-boyish” tendencies; my academic pals as “female homovestism”, that is, women getting a kick out of dressing as women. I may be a feminist, but I am good with pantomime femininity. This not only means skirts and heels, but an addiction to scent and slap, key components in any personal style. If I’m not sporting rouge and a leather chypre (an animal-like, mossy perfume), then I ain’t leaving home. Apart from a brief undergraduate lurch towards conformity, this formula has remained consistent since I hit puberty. The hems may have dropped a couple of inches, the sweaters softened into cashmere, but, at 39, I dress much the same way I did at 29 and 19 – and, to an extent, nine. Regardless, becoming conscious of my three-word motto has proved a liberation, whether in terms of detoxing or replenishing my costume cupboard. Armed with the trinity principle, my wardrobe looks spick and span because at long last it makes sense. This winter, I disposed of three black bags of wares: some sold, some gifted, most passed to charity. Out went anything that failed to correspond with the three-word axiom, that could not be tailored to fit, was being kept out of sentiment, looked shoddy, or felt in some way depressing. Even if I adored a garment, if it failed to reflect “trio me”, then it must find a happier home. And, you know what? The more hardline fashionistas are right: less really is more. There is a glorious wood-from-the-trees aspect to my culled clothing. Any gaps can be perceived and duly filled. My shopping style – always manlike in its efficiency – is now positively hit and run. And the time one might have spent shuffling aimlessly about the shops can now be deployed in fantasy: building costume castles in the air, lost in contemplation rather than kleptomania. All this feels timely. Thanks to eco anxiety, economic despond and a distaste for the blingier excesses of our fatted years, contemporary style is as much about what you don’t buy as what you do. Such reticence chimes with the British ambivalence about fashion. On the one hand, there is a Protestant resistance to ornamentation. On the other, no one can compete with us for craftsmanship and street-up style. Lamentably, although the rag trade is our second biggest employer, we allowed ourselves to be diverted by lowest common denominator frippery; leaving our tailoring and our textiles to impeccably clad continentals, while we skulked about in so much leisure wear. Fortunately, we appear to be over our Primarkian hysteria, once again favouring quality over quantity and renouncing a slavish devotion to labels in favour of lasting worth. It’s a sartorial change in which small hands are replaced by adult, artisanal ones, we shop less and think a bit more; where wearing is as much a focus as buying, and we are less compelled by fashion than by style. If all this sounds a tad joyless, then fear not. The return to discernment is no less a return to being passionate about what we do invest in, whether high-street or haute. It is about embracing one’s own fashion narrative and being inspired by other peoples’. My tips? In the first instance, in my mighty role as Weekend’s new style columnist, I recommend Radio 3’s week of fashion essays, Listener, They Wore It, nightly at 11pm, beginning this Monday. Five writers will explore the resonance of garments or accessories within particular works of art, from Singer Sargent’s infamous black dress to the two red coats in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973). Next step, indulge in a little light musing over your own style icons. Mine include: Elizabeth I, Marie Antoinette, Beau Brummel, Coco Chanel, the heroines of Annette Tapert’s The Power of Glamour – the lovely Norma Shearer and Dolores Del Rio especially, Diana Vreeland, the divine Audrey, Kristin Scott Thomas, Julianne Moore and the Prince of Wales. Consider your own inventory. What about these individuals enchants you? Which qualities merit emulating? Finally – brace yourselves – a bibliography. More than any other month, January is not a time for sprees. It is a moment for bean counting, abstemiousness, brooding and list-making; a time for burying one’s nose in an inspirational style manual while reclining in an oily bath, conjuring three words out of the scented air. Rest assured, there will be eruptions of lavish consumerism to follow, but, for now, let us strategise rather than spend. Meanwhile, write in and tell me your own fashion narratives in their three-word or three-page guises. And, should you spot a pale woman in a ruff beaming a fashion benediction, then do stroll over and say: “Hello.” My first column appears next week. Until then, let us consider this the beginning of a sublimely stylish relationship. Style bibles A couple of these beauties are out-of-print so you will have to use your wits. The Power of Glamour: The Women Who Defined the Magic of Stardom, by Annette Tapert (Aurum Press). A paean to Thirties allure, with screen goddesses including Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Dietrich and Garbo. Tapert tells of transformations born of stardust and solid graft. Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life, by Justine Picardie (HarperCollins). Where evangelicals ask: “What would Jesus do?” so style mavens inquire: “What would Coco wear?” Picardie provides the answers. A book that eats into one’s sleep. D.V. by Diana Vreeland, edited by George Plimpton and Christopher Hemphill (Da Capo). The autobiography of the 20th century’s most formidable arbiter of elegance, source of the axiom: “Pink is the navy blue of India.” Audrey Style, by Pamela Clarke Keogh (HarperCollins). Hagiography setting Hepburn’s impact upon the way we dress in the context of her charming personality. Ravishing images prove her agent’s remark that: “Audrey would look good in it.” The Classic Ten, by Nancy MacDonell Smith (Penguin). Dip-into essays charting the history of – among other classics – jeans, the little black dress, the trench coat, high heels and lipstick. ?We went one bitterly cold but dazzling morning and met a merry group of Manchurians in traditional full-length scarlet coats and fur hats, dragging each other around on wooden sledges. Later, as it grew dark, we went to the Ice-Lantern Garden Party in Zhaolin Park, which houses Harbin’s international competition for ice sculptors. Throughout the park are big blocks of ice, on which keen amateur sculptors can set to work. These are stunning enough, but the work of the real artists is on display in a tented pavilion. Here ice is chiselled into sinuous and complex shapes – a Thai dragon with finely etched scales, arrow-sharp tail and long tongue; Alice’s face through an ice looking-glass; a stag with elaborate antlers fighting off a leopard – the craftsmanship defies belief. Harbin still feels like a frontier town, despite its 10 million population and its determination to put itself on the global tourist map. Restaurants and cafés aimed at foreign visitors are virtually non-existent and the huge Japanese restaurant next to the ice city turned out to be a dismal empty hall with some enterprising young people selling snacks from plastic boxes. In the ice city itself, people were offering to take photographs of us for money but there were no hot drinks for sale, as if the fine details of this enormous endeavour had yet to be worked out. But Harbin is built on a solid industrial base of coal, oil, chemicals and aeroplane parts and is growing steadily. It is said that China devours enough steel and concrete annually to build seven New Yorks and driving out of Harbin, it’s easy to believe. There are more cranes than you can possibly count. On the streets, new wealth is clearly in evidence – there is plenty of sleek fur trimming the fashionable puffa jackets of the young and warmly cloaking the elderly, while designer handbags and the latest mobile phones are much in evidence. In the modern Shangri-La Hotel, where we stayed and ate one night in the restaurant, tough-looking businessmen in new leather jackets talked over deals in private dining rooms. Though Harbin feels as if it is on the cusp of establishing itself, it was a Manchurian settlement as early as the 10th century and is steeped in history. At the beginning of the 20th century, Jews fleeing persecution in Russia began crossing the border, helped by the completion of the East China Railway. They bought or established coal mines, sugar refineries and oil mills and soon Harbin was a flourishing centre for European culture, full of theatres, concert halls and sturdy mansions. At one time there were around 25,000 Jews in Harbin. Though many left for Israel in 1948, Huangshan remains the largest Jewish cemetery in the Far East and Harbin’s synagogue (China’s biggest) houses a fascinating display of photographs, showing groups of finely dressed European Jews outside their mansions and factories or in their banks or stores. Some of this European legacy also survives in the fin-de-siècle architecture along Central Street. Built in 1898, the street is one of Asia’s longest and widest pedestrian thoroughfares, and is still home to the once glamorous Modern Hotel. Hoping for iced vodka and caviar, we went to dinner in its Russian Restaurant. In a dismal, violently over-lit ballroom, heavy square tables stood in rows among marble pillars. Maroon velvet curtains hung at windows, dusty and fading. It was practically deserted. A waitress sauntered forward and eventually brought huge laminated menus with photographs (no caviar in sight). Under the chandeliers, we resigned ourselves to frozen, microwaved food and were subjected to blaring Muzak – pop tunes Rachmaninov style. We left via a corridor lined with neglected glass cases displaying tarnished silver cutlery, elaborate samovars, porcelain and crystal from a long-gone era when the hotel was the fulcrum of Harbin’s glittering social scene. While this was a throwback to Harbin’s past, much else in the city looked forward. I had not been to China before and Harbin was an ideal starting point from which to understand the country’s ability to adapt and embrace change. But even leaving this aside, along with the city’s cultural heritage, the Ice Festival alone is enough to justify the long journey – a glowing emblem of China’s extraordinarily inventive and continually evolving spirit. China essentials GETTING THEREVirgin Atlantic (0844 209 7777; ) flies from Heathrow to Beijing from or Shanghai; British Airways (0844 4930777; ) flies from Gatwick and Heathrow to Beijing or Shanghai; China Airlines (020 7436 9001; china-airlines.com) flies from Heathrow to Beijing or Shanghai. China Eastern Airlines (020 7935 2676; ) flies internally to Harbin. PACKAGESBales Worldwide (0845 057 0600; ) offers a seven-day trip to Shanghai and Harbin from £2,275 per person based on two people sharing. The price includes all flights, private transfers, two nights in Shanghai and three in Harbin at Shangri-La properties, a full sightseeing programme and several meals. Far East tailor-made specialists Bamboo Travel (020 7720 9285; ) offers a 12-day/10-night China’s Ice Sculptures & Landscapes tour to the Harbin Ice Festival from £2,795 per person, including international flights, accommodation and sightseeing with a private guide. THE INSIDE TRACKDo not to miss the “winter sports” in Stalin Park, a bizarre and hilarious display of resilience as Harbin’s hardiest citizens strip down to their bathing suits and dive into an icy pool and then roll around in the snow (10am and 1.30pm daily; 20 yuan/£2_. Harbin’s subway is not expected to be finished until some time next year so traffic is heavy all day, particularly around Central Street. If you hanker after fur, this is the place to buy it 10,000 to 40,000 Taxis are plentiful and cheap, costing 9 yuan (about 85p) as a starting price and then 2 yuan for every kilometre after that. Taxis will stop for you (especially when it’s cold) even if there are other passengers on board. Good hotels will provide big, warm coats so check before you go, but take warm boots, plenty of thermal layers, thick gloves and a hat. WHAT TO AVOIDTHE BEST HOTELSBeware of “fake” branded hotels like the so-called Sheraton downtown and stick to reliable, international brands like the Shangri-La, where we stayed, which was comfortable and excellent. Shangri-La ££Harbin’s finest; a five-star, 404-room hotel; sleek, modern and luxurious, with excellent, English-speaking service and great views over the river. The food is good, especially during the festival when the Ice Palace is open (86451 8485 8888; ; from £150). Sofitel Wanda £Further from the Ice Festival but in the business district next to a plaza full of shops and restaurants, this 322-room hotel boasts a spa, a pool and three restaurants, including a good Japanese and several fun bars (0871 663 0625; ; from £60). Holiday Inn City Centre £Fairly basic and has been undergoing recent refurbishments. Its main advantage is that it is right in the city centre, a 15-minute walk from Zhaolin Park and the staff speak good English (0871423 4896; ; from £45). THE BEST RESTAURANTSThe Ice PalaceThe Shangri-La Hotel builds its own Ice Palace during the Festival and serves a variety of vodkas and delicious Hot Pot dinners in fun igloo surroundings and the ice bar is definitely worth visiting. The Shang PalaceThe Shang Palace in the Shangri-La specialises in North-East cuisine and Cantonese home-cooking – it’s a bit brightly lit but the food and service are good (86451 8485 8888 ext 21; ) Shang Dong Restaurant Beyond the international hotels, good restaurants are few and far between but Shang Dong in the Dao Li District is clean, light and airy with good, reasonably-priced food, friendly staff and helpful photographs of the food to guide you (85 Shanghai Road, Dao Li; 8663 9333 ) DID YOU KNOW? Harbin is twinned with icy Anchorage, in Alaska, and not-so-icy Sunderland, in Tyne and Wear. ?The fans at the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 world premiere reserved their loudest screams for Emma Watson and chanted her name as the actress, who plays Hermione Granger, embarked on a marathon autograph signing session along the length of the red carpet. Picture: GETTY?"The central character of Willy the Wizard is not a young wizard and the book does not revolve around a wizard school." The publishers say Rowling had never heard of Jacobs, or "seen, read or heard of his book" until the claim was first made - seven years after the first Harry Potter book was published.The estate also claims that Jacobs approached Christopher Little to be his literary agent, and Mr Little later went on to represent Rowling. On Monday the estate of Adrian Jacobs issued proceedings in the High Court for copyright infringement. The claim alleges that JK Rowling 'copied substantial parts of the work of the late Adrian Jacobs, The Adventures of Willy the Wizard-No 1 Livid Land, and that Bloomsbury in selling the books have infringed the Estate's copyright."The estate is also considering including Rowling in the action. It claims Willy in Jacobs' book and Harry Potter in Rowling's, who are wizards, who compete in a wizard contest which they ultimately win. Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures, "the merpeople" in Harry Potter. Many other alleged similarities are described in the Claim filed by the Estate, which include the idea of wizards travelling on trains, famously referred to in Harry Potter as the Hogwarts Express. It is alleged that all of these are concepts first created by Adrian Jacobs in Willy the Wizard, some 10 years before JK Rowling first published any of the Harry Potter novels and 13 years before Goblet of Fire was published.Mr Jacobs' book was published by Bachman and Turner in 1987. However, following a stock market crash, Jacobs became bankrupt and died penniless in a London hospice in 1997. Paul Allen, the trustee of the estate, said: "Adrian Jacobs did not live long enough to see the massive success of the Harry Potter books and films."He cannot fight this battle personally so his estate is bringing this action to ensure that his voice is heard. The action, if proved, will ensure the rights of authors everywhere, even posthumously."The estate is seeking for either the book to be withdrawn or for a share of the proceeds from the Goblet of Fire. ?August 23, 2000: Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe attend a photocall to present the new cast of the Harry Potter films, in LondonPicture: GETTY?Are there certain rules that hat-wearers should follow? “Definitely. I remember doing a home economics class when I was young, when we had to look at different body shapes and give each character clothes that suited them. I think more people could do with that kind of training, especially with hats. “If you have wide cheekbones and big eyes, then you can get away with most styles. If you have a long, skinny face you should go for wide brims; if you’ve got a round face, go for an asymetric brim. A crown should be equal to the length from your eyes from your chin, and you should be able to fit two fingers under a brim.” Pagan is often asked if there is much demand for hats in our increasingly informal society. “My answer is always yes. New York never stopped wearing hats. I think it’s different in Britain, where bespoke millinery is much more expensive, but here there’s a lot of demand - and not just for big events, but for everyday wear too. "The shop’s been especially busy since the recession started. It’s like the lipstick effect: people don’t buy new dresses, but they do buy hats and other accessories which will brighten up old outfits.”Pagan also thinks that hats are increasingly fashionable among the younger generation. “I’d say most of our clients are rather like myself when I started the shop - educated, intelligent women in their twenties or thirties, who are stylish without being interested in high fashion. "There's a real vogue for old-fashioned dressing among these women - they're incredibly well-dressed. What we call heritage brands like Burberry have made a big comeback, and people like Sarah Jessica Parker, who wear a lot of vintage, have had an impact too.”Sarah Jessica Parker is, of course, one of the many celebrities who patronise Pagan’s store, but she politely says she doesn’t discuss them. “That’s what they come to my store for, discretion.” What she will say however, is that none of them have ever asked for a discount or a freebie. “That’s a big dirty secret in New York. We hear so many stories of designers just giving away their stuff, and it’s lethal for small businesses - you can’t work for free.”Pagan has lived in Soho for many years, and sees herself more as a Soho-ite than a New Yorker. “Living in Soho is like living in a small Italian village. Everyone knows everyone’s business, and I have door keys scattered around all my neighbours' homes. Many of my neighbours never go uptown at all - when they go out of the door in the morning, they always turn left.”Finally, a question that must be asked - what is Pagan’s favourite hat? “The stove hat,” she says, with childish glee. ”I don't know why. I must have been born in the 1600s or something.”It is a tall hat like this, of course, overshadowing the face of an elegant woman, which is The Hat Shop’s logo. “I like that logo,” Pagan says. “But I was horrified when we had it animated for the website, and you got to see the woman’s eyes. For me, that wasn’t the point. You just can’t know who The Hat Shop woman is. Every woman is meant to think she’s her.”The Hat Shop, 120 Thompson Street, New York, ?“This is a very good demonstration of the value that can be created by combining great science, supportive investors and a commercially driven management team,” he said. Kenneth Mulvany, Proximagen’s chief executive, added: “This deal demonstrates that the UK biotechnology sector can, with supportive investors, bring together scientific excellence and business acumen and generate significant returns for shareholders.”Proximagen was founded as a spin-out from King’s College London in 2003 and its investors include IP Group, which backs university spin-outs. Shares in IP Group, which will get a 35-fold return on its investment, gained 3.6 to 144p.But the wider market was not looking quite so healthy as uncertainty ahead of this weekend’s election in Greece, and the potential repercussions for the country’s presence in the eurozone, kept up the pressure. After an uneven day’s trading, however, the FTSE 100 managed to edge up 10.07 points to 5,483.81. However, the FTSE 250 dropped 22.57 points to 10,538.59.With nervous traders sticking to the sidelines, mining shares were among those weighing on the benchmark index. Vedanta Resources dropped 24 to 915½p and Xstrata sank 50 to 920p. Commodities trader, Glencore International, slipped 11.85 to 355p. Precious metal diggers fared better, however, with silver miner Fresnillo 58p higher at £14.87.Slipping back, too, was IMI. A warning from SKF, the Swedish maker of ball bearings, that it would see weaker demand in the second quarter of the year dented confidence in the British engineering group and it fell 25 to 844½p.Handbags were also out of favour, with Burberry retreating 29p to £13.41. Last week, shares in the luxury fashion house were spurred by analysts talking up the cachet of Burberry’s brand. But, the purveyor of trench coats and other gladrags slipped as HSBC lowered its price target to £15.50 from £16.00.While Burberry remained a “great story”, analysts thought that the brand still seemed “to be in an over-investment mode”, curbing margin growth. But the broker acknowledged that a potential takeover bid – Burberry has long been mooted as a potential target – could present a risk “to the upside”. Defensives were once again in favour, with drug maker Shire 27p perkier at £19.04. Utility company SSE – the electricity and gas supplier formerly known as Scottish & Southern Energy – rose 28p to £13.88 as Barclays Capital analysts predicted a return to the “good old days”. Citing factors such as a recovery in the British power market, the analysts said that “after five years of sluggish growth, we believe SSE is poised to return to its heyday of double-digit earnings growth”. An upgrade from UBS had initially roused Resolution but the insurance vehicle later closed up only 0.8 at 196.1p.Oil explorers spurted higher after Cairn Energy – down 3.2 to 288.7p – opted to buy North Sea oil business Nautical Petroleum – up 164¼ to 462p. That prompted a rise among other North Sea players, including Valiant Petroleum, up 25 to 410p, and Ithaca, up 2.5 to 108p. Falkland explorer Desire Petroleum also edged up, ¼ to 23¾p, following a “buy” note from Seymour Pierce.Voucher war worries weigh on MorrisonsTraders lost their taste for Sainsbury’s following the supermarket’s first-quarter figures and rival Wm Morrison was left on the shelf, too, falling 2.4 to 277.8p.Dragging on the latter were worries that it might have joined the supermarkets’ voucher war, in an attempt to lure in customers.Citing reports that Morrisons was engaged in a trial to introduce discount vouchers to customers, following the lead of all its big rivals, Shore Capital analysts suggested that this might not bode well for returns.“If Morrison does engage in material voucher activity post the trial, activity we believe has not been budgeted for, then that in itself is likely to pressurise returns,” said analysts. The broker was worried that Morrisons “seems to be losing customers” but kept its “hold” rating. ?Certainly not Harvey Nicks’s regulars, women of taste and means. For them, picking up the flyer would have felt like opening their beloved Country Life to discover that the editor of Loaded had taken over: that the famous girls in pearls had given way to Page Three models and the glossy property spreads to advertisements for Rampant Rabbits. Thanks, but no thanks, the Harvey Nicks regulars will say, as they cut their store cards into tiny pieces. And I don’t think the marketing men had the Wags in their sights, either. Colleen Rooney and co may have a penchant for bling jewellery and flash cars, but I suggest that even they might draw the line at this kind of vulgarity.No, the “damp patch” gag is aimed at another group of clients altogether. It’s the same people who find binge-drinking girls so funny, and mud-wrestling women a turn-on – a loutish cohort obsessed with celebrity and consumerism. In their rush to be a star, or to buy a Burberry coat, they have no time for sensitivities or subtleties: only the boldest, grossest and loudest can grab their attention. Hence the new, unrestrained, unashamed and larger-than-life vulgarity.The Left thinks that this kind of criticism is about the imposing of middle-class morality on everyone else. It’s not. It’s about that sizeable proportion of the country raised on a diet of Big Brother incontinence, in which everyone lets everything hang out. It’s about a leering, sneering approach to sex, drink, drugs and swearing. Children are not exempt: today’s nursery comes not with Beatrix Potter murals, but sexually explicit clothes and violent video games. Why would their parents mind “Eat My Cherry” being embroidered on their little girl’s knickers when they themselves are steeped in crudity every day?Lavatorial humour of the “damp patch” kind fits right into this chav model: as offensive and clumsy as a drunk at a wake. In comparison, the refined and restrained world of the original Harvey Nichols would seem insipid. As would the choir at Westminster Abbey, or even the royal procession during the Jubilee.The advertisers – and much of the media – encourage us to ditch propriety and discipline. Neither, after all, plays well on the telly dreadfuls that we seem to rate, or characterises the celebrities we ape. Thanks to their efforts, and to the fact that self-indulgence is a lot easier than self-control, laddishness has become the new norm. Politicians have taken it up to appear “ordinary”: watch them raise their arms at football matches and proclaim their passion for the latest foul-mouthed rappers. Journalists and broadcasters have spread it about: watch them crash cars and throw punches to prove their worth.I’ve seen the same coarsening take place in my native Italy, where within 20 years the laddish premier and media mogul, Silvio Berlusconi, managed to turn the proud nation of Dante and Michelangelo into a trashy backdrop for soft-porn starlets and bunga bunga parties. If it could happen in the cradle of the Renaissance, why not here?Gags about wetting yourself are just the beginning. Harrods could sell its wares by bringing to automated life its statue of Diana and Dodi. The Archers could turn the air blue with scripts riddled with four-letter words. And weathergirls could deliver their forecasts in a pair of “Eat My Cherry” knickers – bought, needless to say, at Harvey Nicks.?She was 17 or 18 when her father sat her down for the “money conversation”. Until then she had been living on an allowance of just £50 a week. “By the third or fourth film, the money was starting to get serious,” she said. “I had no idea. I felt sick, very emotional.”?Around £5 billion worth of children’s clothing is sold in the UK each year. Within this, an estimated £500 million is spent on luxury designer fashions for children. This latter category is growing at an estimated 25 per cent a year.Designer clothes for young boys are seeing particularly strong growth. Fashion experts have put this down to increased media coverage of famous sons such as Brooklyn Beckham and Rocco Ritchie, the sons of David and Guy respectively.Lynne Crook, childrenswear buying manager at Selfridges, said: “The epitome of mini me fashion happened when Victoria Beckham took young Harper with her to New York Fashion Week. And Victoria is not the only one ensuring that their offspring get their fashion grounding at a young age.”?Sitting opposite Omond in the bedroom of her flat in the terraced house in Kilburn, west London, that also serves as the Climate Rush headquarters, taking in the student-digs like décor, I can't help but wonder if this is what a modern day Emmeline Pankhurst would look like. Goofily sexy, lean-limbed and boyish, one knee hitched up to her chest, Omond has all the androgynous appeal of a Burberry advert, which may explain why she has featured in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar – and was last month named in the Pink List as "one of the most influential gays in Britain." Her eyes engage with mine in an intense, feline stare, while her low, rasping voice is broken up by fits of nervous laughter."It was because of Pankhurst that we decided to storm the Houses of Parliament last year, in honour of what thousands of the suffragettes did a hundred years previously. I thought it would be great to do something sassy and stylish, so we dressed ourselves up in Edwardian costume and demanded an end to airport expansion."Unfortunately, the event meant breaking bail terms from a previous parliamentary protest, leading to Omond being arrested and incarcerated for twenty hours in Holloway prison. "Yes," she laughs, "that was frightening. But what was good was that the police were blind sighted by the fact that we were dressed as suffragettes and therefore not at all scary. They were actually very sweet to us."Non-violent protests about all things ecological is what Climate Rush, the campaign group Omond founded last year, is all about. Some of their pranks are as inoffensive as blasting loud aircraft noise through the then Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly's letterbox, others are more perilous – notably storming Heathrow runways and handcuffing themselves to the front of private jets. "You do put yourself in danger. With the private jet, there was a big fuel tank above us and the guys had to saw through the handcuffs on our arms – there were sparks flying everywhere." Does she get a strange kick from that? "No," she insists. "I am quite boring about breaking the law, oddly." Her mother Sarah and painter father John, she admits, "were probably horrified at first, but now they are, weirdly, quite proud of me."It is not so hard to believe. Grand ecological ambitions aside, and if only for the impressiveness of her convictions in a conviction-light world, Omond is a fascinating character. With her looks and background - she was at Westminster School before going on to get a first class honours at Trinity College, Cambridge - she could have chosen an easier path, even become an MP, and had the power to make a difference from within. She flinches at the suggestion: "I think I might be a bit too much of a loose canon for politics."A nonconformist from the start, she trained for a year to be a priest at St Mary's Church in Primrose Hill, north London after leaving university. "It is still in my life plan to do that," she maintains. But one day Omond says she woke up "to where we are now and recognised that this was one of those crisis point moments which come after people have been walking around blindly for a long time."I point out that hers is a luxurious moral position to take, reading out a few caustic lines by Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, deriding Climate Rush "for not understanding the basic facts about climate change" and accusing her and her group of "blue blood, posh names and limited intelligence" but she merely shrugs. "There are so many different facts and figures out there but the bottom line is that nowadays, nobody can deny that climate change exists and that it is going to be a huge problem for our future. Thirty years ago environmentalism was all hippies up trees, Swampy and worthier-than-thou characters who you wouldn't want to be sitting next to at a dinner party. I'm a normal twenty-four year old girl, and I think it helps people to see that. I go to parties and spend a week worrying about what I'm going to wear like everybody else, but what I really want is for environmentalism to be as much a part of a woman's gender as shopping is. You don't have to change your identity to get involved with something like Climate Rush. There used to be this idea that ecological campaigning was for people who had the liberty to act in a certain way without having to care about the cold realities of life." Which is exactly what lots of people still think about someone like her, I tell her bluntly. "Well look," she says warily, "I'm lucky enough that I can write a piece and then fund myself for two weeks. I wish I had lots of money – everyone thinks that I do but I don't. I get by and I'm very low maintenance but my parents don't give me any money, and the funding we get is less and less now that there's a recession."Comparisons to another high-profile environmentalist and prospective MP, Zac Goldsmith, displease Omond. "If he could give us loads of money I wouldn't mind being compared to him, but we both gave talks at our old school two weeks ago and apparently he just completely disowned me in his, saying: 'I don't condone any kind of illegal action in the name of climate change and I'm really boring and a Tory... blah, blah, blah'."In September, Omond and her group are starting a tour of Britain, Climate Rush on the Run, to spread their various messages. "It's crazy how ambitious I am," she says pink-cheeked with fervour. "Or rather how ambitious these projects are. I will keep doing this, and I will keep doing it because it's kind of working." And you believe that she believes in her beliefs implicitly.'Rush! The Making of a Climate Activist' by Tamsin Omond (Marion Boyars Publishers) is available from Telegraph Books for £7.99 + 99p p&p. To order, call 0844 871 1515 or visit ? is one of Britain's most successful brands, first appearing (along with their signature tartan) in 1856. They’ve since dressed fashion conscious individuals who want a classic look, without any stuffiness. Their traditional double-breasted mac is reinvented every season. Available from their Bond Street flagship, , and Just as iconic, but offering a very different aesthetic is . Their country-style wax jackets have now been adopted by fashionable types, but the range is a stylish and sensible option for the unpredictable weather. Try their shops on Fouberts Place, Covent Garden and Regent Street. For clothes straight off the catwalk, look to on Bruton Street in Mayfair before heading across to the Burlington Arcade to visit - where you can accessorise to your heart’s content. And you can easily go over the thousand pound mark for a bag - all of which are still hand made in Somerset - but choose your style wisely and their soft-as-butter leather will last forever. They’re widely available across London, not least in Heathrow airport where there are a number of small shops. There are also some high-street options.Forget everything you thought you knew about . Not only has the main high-street collection upped its game, but they’ve also introduced a little sister label, NW3. Think quirky prints, neat fits and an especially good line in jewellery. Ditto and their flirty, summery Boutique collection. This season’s Alicia navy lace prom dress with cap sleeves and a full skirt - add a jacket or a cardigan - is perfect for a summer wedding in such a changeable season. Finally, if you’re after a slice of 1960s cool, visit Seven Dials in Covent Garden where you’ll find , and – the latter worn by everyone from Steve McQueen and Elvis to Ryan O’Neal and Daniel Craig. ?Look at the business firmament, and it's increasingly difficult to spot the twinkling of domestic stars. More than 40 per cent of London's FTSE 100 companies are led by executives from beyond our borders. Just as Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea have foreign managers, so too do Lloyds Banking Group (an American), Rexam (a Frenchman) and Vodafone (an Italian). Burberry, which promotes itself as an icon of British fashion, is run by a woman from New Palestine, Indiana.Ah, I hear you say, this is globalisation. There is a free flow of goods and services around the world, so the internationalisation of management is only to be expected. The trouble is, very few British brains are employed at the top of companies outside the United Kingdom. Sir Howard Stringer heads Sony in Japan, John Rishton has just taken over at Ahold in the Netherlands, and then there's, er… another one will come to me in a minute.In the United States, British executives have in the past made an impact at the high end of the automotive industry, notably at Ford (Alex Trotman and Nick Scheele), and on Wall Street (Deryck Maughan and Michael Carpenter, both at Citigroup). Today, however, that influence has diminished.As for Europe, forget it. Nada, nichts, rien. Lindsay Owen-Jones headed L'Oréal in Paris for nearly 20 years, but after he stepped down in 2006, the continental cupboard was bare. No Briton, it seems, is worth it. Why?It's not as though management studies is ignored by our best universities. The subject is offered as an undergraduate course by a majority of Russell Group institutions. In addition, this country is home to excellent business schools in Oxford, Cambridge, London and beyond. Yet, somewhere between the classroom and the boardroom, British leadership goes missing.One plausible reason is verbal skills: the curse of English as business's lingua franca. Whereas many French, German and Spanish speakers feel compelled to learn our language to succeed in commerce, we still treat competency in theirs as an exotic luxury. Over the past decade, the number of students in England and Wales taking modern languages at GCSE level has halved. In effect, the pipeline of business-minded linguists is drying up.At M&S, Sir Stuart told me that the company's next phase of development will be overseas, and the fact that Mr Bolland is an accomplished polyglot – Dutch, English, German, French and Spanish – was considered hugely attractive by the recruitment team. Fair enough, but there must be others factors, surely?One, I suspect, is disclosure. In the UK, where becoming the head honcho of a high-profile business involves an extraordinary degree of scrutiny by the press, shareholders and state agencies, smart British executives prefer to work in the City, avoiding the discomfort of transparency, earning far more from trading currency options than from making widgets or building bridges.Those who compiled the Walker Review of our financial services industry, published yesterday, estimate that at least 1,000 people working in British banks earn more than £1 million a year. Add to them all the domestic high-flyers employed by foreign banks, hedge funds and other investment firms located here, and you can see how the honeypot of City bonuses sucks in busy bees from conventional business. Most are able to earn fortunes anonymously – and that's precisely how they like it. In their view, the boss's job is a mug's game.Elsewhere, England's football coach is an Italian, the Archbishop of York is a Ugandan, and Gatwick airport has just been sold to a company headed by a Harvard-educated Nigerian. If any of this matters, time is running out. On current form, there is little to suggest a reversal of the tide of British heritage drifting into foreign hands. And what once seemed a positive – our willingness to trade openly and freely – has begun to worry some in Government. In a recent interview, Lord Myners, the City minister, warned: "We need to be alert to the fact that our share registers are increasingly no longer British… All things being equal, it is easier to take over a company here than anywhere else in the world."Not surprisingly, with foreign ownership comes foreign leadership. Abbey, Bradford & Bingley and Alliance & Leicester are all controlled by Spain's Santander, whose boss in the UK is, you guessed it, Spanish.But here's a thought. If, contrary to jingoistic intuition, an influx of foreign management is really a boon to Britain, why stop there? Why not clear out the muppets who are running British politics and replace them, too, with imported talent? The Canadians have done an impressive job in cutting massive deficits, how about their poaching their leader? Just imagine – we could trade Gordon Brown for Stephen Harper. It seems like a good deal to me. ?Twitter’s list trending topics is a constantly-updated roster of the most popular discussions on the microblogging site. It is often dominated by “hashtags”, which users deliberately append to different tweets to show they pertain to the same topic.?So just how has Bravo, a workaholic from New York with a booming laugh, transformed the company? And can Burberry maintain its momentum without her? Observers say that Bravo almost single-handedly led to a revival in the once-ailing UK luxury goods sector. Eight years on, imitators can be found everywhere. "After Bravo joined, Burberry led the way in UK luxury goods. It was a bagel in a tray of onion rings," says one executive in the sector. "What she has achieved has become a reference point now. People talk about 'doing a Burberry'," says Guy Falter, a friend of Bravo and deputy chairman of Walpole, an association that represents British luxury brands. In the mid 1990s Burberry was a non-core part of the sprawling empire of Great Universal Stores, the catalogue retailer that also owns the Argos and Homebase retail chains. GUS had bought Burberry in 1957, but a decade ago the division looked anomalous alongside GUS's Experian financial information arm and its retail mail-order division. The retirement in 1997 of Stanley Peacock, who had been Burberry's chief executive for 40 years, provided the perfect opportunity to bring in fresh blood. The choice of Bravo was an inspired move by Lord Wolfson of Sunningdale, GUS's then-chairman and a scion of its founding family. Bravo had transformed Saks Fifth Avenue, the US department store retailer, where she was president. Still, her appointment at Burberry was greeted with some trepidation. Bravo was known as a tough negotiator and was once described as a "one-woman Panzer division". At the same time, two highprofile female US retailers were battling to turn around UK fashion chains. Ann Iverson was failing to restore Laura Ashley's fortunes and Fiona Harrison was making little progress at the fashion division of Coats Viyella, which included the Jaeger brand. By contrast, Bravo quickly made the right moves. She axed many of Burberry's less successful licensees and wholesalers and bought out the more important ones. She exploited Burberry's history by reworking designs from the company's past - with a renewed emphasis on Burberry's famous plaid - and embarked on a programme to roll out flagship stores. More important than the minutiae of strategy, however, was the excitement that Bravo created around the brand, observers say. She hired Mario Testino, the celebrated photographer, to shoot an advertising campaign of models - notably Kate Moss - wearing Burberry raincoats and the brand actually became cool. "Rose Marie knew that one of the most important rules to follow was to create a myth around the brand," says Falter. Against the odds, the success was sustained. In 2002 Burberry bravely floated just days after Italian fashion group Prada had scrapped its flotation, and Tiffany, the US luxury chain where Bravo is a non-executive director, had issued a profits warning. However, since the float shares have more than doubled to 447p, valuing the company at £1.9bn. At the end of this year GUS will demerge its remaining 66 per cent stake in Burberry, a move that will pave the way for Bravo's departure when her contract ends in July. Bravo's success arguably kickstarted two big movements in UK retail. It led to a revival in other luxury brands after private equity houses and rich individuals saw their potential. Pringle of Scotland, Jimmy Choo and Jaeger are among the brands that were revalued in her wake. Second, Bravo's success led to a raft of top female retail directors shunning blue-chip companies to join privately owned luxury brands. Kim Winser left a top clothing role at Marks & Spencer to run Pringle and Belinda Earl joined Jaeger after being chief executive at Debenhams, the department store group. But it hasn't all been plain sailing for Bravo - there have been two stains on her raincoat recently. The first is the adoption of Burberry kit by the chav contingent, which has undermined its sophisticated image. The second has been the plight of Kate Moss, the model who was last month axed from a new Burberry advertising campaign following her outing as an alleged cocaine user. Analysts hope that Bravo's departure will not harm Burberry. The turnaround has been done. Also, Christopher Bailey, the group's creative director who joined four years ago, is impressing fashionistas with his designs, and Brian Blake, who joined as chief operating officer last year from Gucci, is highly regarded. That said, Bravo wears only the most stylish shoes and they will be hard to fill.?Splitting China's 600m strong urban population into income bands, its conclusion is that the mass market (with earnings of between £150 and £400 a month) provides the best long-term growth prospects and more reliable, structural rather than cyclical, growth too. As the mass market accounts for around three quarters of city-dwellers, boosted by millions of migrant workers in recent years, the growth potential for products such as a humble British breakfast cereal is immense. As the information overload of a week in China settles, one of my main conclusions is that sometimes we over-complicate investment. Having visited around 20 companies and spoken to many other experts on the Chinese economy, I understand the concerns about China – inflation, bad debts, over-investment – but the sheer scale of the transformation of a country of 1.3bn people from an export and investment-led economy to a domestic consumption-driven one trumps these. As one of many articulate and impressive business leaders I had the opportunity to talk with put it, "everyone says China is difficult to read, but it's actually the simplest country in the world to understand. You just have to look at the Five Year plan". The latest of these makes quite clear that the Government is guiding the economy to a slower and more sustainable rate of growth (although at around 8pc a year, one we'd certainly settle for), a much reduced dependence on infrastructure investment and a massive increase in the spending power of the ordinary worker. The minimum wage will increase by 15pc a year for the next five years, which will double the incomes of low-earners and bring a bowl of Weetabix within the reach of millions. Mass market consumption will benefit from two other factors: the ongoing urbanization of China, which has some considerable way to go, and improvements in the social safety net, the absence of which has been a driver of China's extremely high savings rate. In the five years to 2010, government spending on healthcare, for example, rose more than three-fold. As one China strategist told me, the fact that household consumption is still a small part of China's GDP merely reflects the 25pc annual growth in investment over the past nine years. China "will continue to be the world's best consumption story for everything from instant noodles to luxury cars". This does not mean that profiting from China's rapid growth will be easy. The one thing that is abundantly clear from a visit to China is that it is different – different priorities, different standards of corporate governance, a wholly different relationship between the individual and the state. That means there is no substitute for kicking the tyres on the ground and doing plenty of due diligence. I would be surprised if long-term outperformance did not make it worth the effort. Tom Stevenson is an investment director at Fidelity Worldwide Investment. The views expressed are his own. He tweets at @tomstevenson63 ?However, that appears to have changed. A slew of recent social media initiatives by some of the world’s biggest brands, including Porsche, Gucci, Hermes and Burberry, says the received wisdom might be rubbish. These uber-brands are inviting consumers into a more playful and participatory relationship than ever before, and people like it. Gucci this week launched – a site that displays photos uploaded by users onto a revolving pair of mirror-shades, while Gucci Beats - a free, iPhone music mixing app produced by Mark Ronson allows users to upload their mixes to Facebook. Porsche’s site asks owners to upload their stories and images to an interactive family tree. World of Hermes provides a gorgeous interactive gallery and invites users to contribute. Burberry’s is an interactive trenchcoat feast curated by streetstyle fashion super-blogger The Sartorialist. Visitors are invited to submit photo-portraits of themselves wearing the iconic trenchcoat. All of these brands also manage huge Facebook fan pages and some of them are tweeting hard. So, now social media actually works quite well with luxury brands. Why? Partly, of course, because there are now massive numbers of luxury consumers online but there are more subtle reasons too. Luxury brands command massive patronage, allowing them to open up without losing exclusivity. Thankfully, we’ve come a long way from the days of mechanically retrieved content and today’s Web gives rich, personal, intimate experiences that can be both exclusive and accessible The last word on access versus exclusivity must go to living luxury brand . Karl is followed by 141,991 people on Twitter, but follows no-one. As he explains in a tweet: “Don't look to the approval of others for your mental stability..”Spot on. Tim Malbon is a founding partner of digital innovation agency Made By Many, and can also be found at .?James Hall James Hall is the Telegraph's retail editor, covering the business side of the high street, consumer affairs and farming. He joined The Telegraph in 2004.?Catlin Group Share price fall since quake 9.21pc Sector insurance Reason The probable impact of the Japanese earthquake on top of the $125m loss the insurer expects to take from the New Zealand earthquake last month has made Catlin one of the largest fallers. Burberry Group Share price fall since quake 9.2pc Sector Luxury goods Reason The company was hit by concerns that demand for luxury products is likely to fall in the wake of the Japan earthquake. Beazley Share price fall since quake 8.81pc Sector Insurance Reason Yet to make any statement on the impact of the Japanese disaster, the share price has been knocked down by general market fears of the effect it will have on the insurer’s earnings. Amec Share price fall since quake 7.97pc Sector Energy Reason Explosions at a Japanese nuclear facility have led to fears that it could disrupt the UK’s plan to build 11 new nuclear plants, a project Amec was expected to advise on. Chaucer Share price fall since quake 7.36pc Sector Insurance Reason A specialist in insuring nuclear power plants, the company does not provide business interruption cover in Japan, but has said it is too early to estimate losses. InterContinental Hotels Group Share price fall since quake 7.34pc Sector Hotels Reason The company’s ANA Holiday Inn in Sendai has been closed to new bookings, while its property closest to Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is still deemed to be safe. IHG said it was keeping a “close watch on the situation” at Fukushima. BP Share price fall since quake 6.97pc Sector Energy Reason The earthquake has led to a fall in the oil price, which has added to pressure on the company’s share price. Aviva Share price fall since quake 6.77pc Sector Insurance Reason The share price has been hit by general market fears over the exposure of insurers to the tens of billions of pounds of claims expected to result from the earthquake. GKN Share price fall since quake 5.62pc Sector Industrial Reason The airplane and car parts maker has said it will have to cut production as some of its Japanese customers will be unable to take delivery of its products. About 7pc of GKN’s sales come from Japan, and Mitsubishi and Nissan are among its biggest customers. IMI Share price fall since quake 4.14pc Sector Industrial Reason As a supplier of safety valves to the power industry, including the nuclear plants, the potential meltdown of three of Japan’s nuclear facilities has led to market concerns over the impact on IMI. ARM Holdings Share price fall since quake 2.5pc Sector Technology Reason Japan accounts for about 20pc of global semiconductor production and concern over the potential disruption to supplies and its impact on royalty earnings for Arm, which designs the chips used in most of the world’s smartphones, has led to a fall in its shares. Berkeley Resources Share price fall since quake 37.63pc Sector Energy Reason The uranium miner's shares have seen the most dramatic fall of any company as the market has weighed up the likely impact of a global reassessment of the nuclear power industry in the wake of the potential nuclear disaster unfolding at three Japanese nuclear plants in the wake of the tsunami. And the risers…Aggreko Share price rise since quake 7.55pc Sector Power generation Reason As one of the world’s leading providers of mobile power generation, Aggreko is expected to find strong demand for its services as the Japanese authorities begin to clear up the areas devastated by the tsunami. BG Group Share price rise since quake 4.02pc Sector Energy Reason Days before the earthquake struck Japan, BG signed a deal with Tokyo to supply it with liquid natural gas for the next 20 years. With the current nuclear crisis, the potential for alternative energy sources in Japan is believed to be growing.?'Yeah, I left the skirts up to the Brits on that one,' chuckles Dorff, referring to Cavill and Luke Evans, who plays Zeus. 'I dodged the skirt.' He also managed to avoid chest-waxing. 'Tarsem wanted no body hair… Some of the kids were waxed, but they got this chest acne. I just did it with an electric razor.' This seasoned 38-year-old was firm with his director. 'I told Tarsem, I ain't waxing!' It's all a far cry from Somewhere. In Sofia Coppola's follow-up to her 2006 historical romp, Marie Antoinette, Dorff played Johnny Marco, a high-profile actor holed up in Chateau Marmont, the LA hotel beloved of the profession. Marco was either mired in an existential crisis, or just really, really bored. The low-key, low-drama, slow-burning film showed slovenly Marco drifting from in-room pole-dancing session to pointless party to soul-sapping promotional junket, via helicopter rides and stints tooling around LA in his Ferrari F430. When his ex asks him to look after their 11-year-old daughter, her arrival brings sudden, if fleeting, responsibility and sobriety into Marco's self-indulgent life. Despite its triumph at Venice, Somewhere received mixed reviews. 'Detail-oriented subtlety' is how Dorff describes the script, which is minimal even by the standards of Coppola's famously spare writing style. Compared with the 80-day, 15-camera, cast-of-thousands Immortals shoot, it was 'intimacy to the extreme', Dorff reflects. Somewhere was a Hollywood insider's movie, made by an insider (Sofia's father is the director Francis Ford Coppola; her cousins are the actors Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman) and starring an insider, who is also one of her oldest friends – both being the children of Hollywood professionals, Stephen and Sofia moved in the same circles in their youth. 'I just love it,' Dorff concludes. 'I love what she does. I love the experience and the partnership she creates with her lead actor. It was like nothing I'd experienced.' Friendship aside, Dorff has good reason to sing the praises of Somewhere, which restarted his life in myriad ways (not least romantically – he has been dating an Italian girl who works for Sky, whom he met on promotional duties in Paris: 'That's been interesting,' he says with a smile). In his early twenties he was seen as one of the biggest young film stars in the world. In Iain Softley's Backbeat, the teenage Californian impressed in the role of Stuart Sutcliffe, the founding member of the Beatles who gave up music for love in the band's early days in Hamburg, before dying of a brain haemorrhage aged 21. 'Stephen had incredible enthusiasm,' Softley recalls. 'He had just done a South African film called The Power of One and he asked if he could do the audition with that South African accent to show us that he was able to master another accent. 'He had this androgyny that Stuart Sutcliffe had,' Softley adds, 'but he's also very masculine. That's often something rock stars have, and Stephen had it, too.' Ian Hart, who played John Lennon in the film, says that the friendship he and Dorff formed onset remains firm to this day. 'Stephen seemed so right for the part. He had that self-assured cool, tempered with the vulnerability the character needed.' Back in Hollywood Dorff received a reported seven-figure sum to play the villain in the 1998 vampire action film Blade. He appeared on the cover of style and entertainment magazines and cultivated a moody, hard-partying, bad-boy image. He also gained an ill-deserved (he says) reputation as a womaniser. For the record, he says, Juliette Lewis was always just a friend and never a girlfriend. 'Half the people they said I dated, I never dated,' Dorff frowns. 'Milla Jovovich – she's always been my friend, too. I've never really dated actresses except when I was really young.' What about Pamela Anderson? Yes, he confesses, they dated. 'Pam I went out with six years ago for a few months. That was interesting. Scared the shit out of my mom.' Girls Aloud's Sarah Harding? 'We dated for a minute!' he says laughing. They met when Dorff was in Britain promoting the 2006 Sky mini-series The Hades Factor. 'We had, like, two dates. We're still text buddies.' But his early promise didn't build into leading-man status. He was considered for Titanic but lost out to Leonardo DiCaprio. He auditioned for Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker, but Matt Damon beat him to the part. None of his other early, supposedly promising films – the generation-X film SFW, which satirised the cult of celebrity, or the apartheid drama The Power of One – was a critical or commercial hit. He worked solidly throughout his twenties and thirties, yet without much fanfare, in films such as Blood and Wine, City of Industry, I Shot Andy Warhol and World Trade Center. Dorff concedes that he has been given a 'second wind' by Coppola. 'Sofia gave me such a great part and turned everything around,' he says. 'And I just haven't really stopped since that movie.' Aside from working constantly in the past year, 'I've done all the fashion magazines again – I've been photographed for the V Mens and the L'Huomo Vogues, and all these ones I didn't even know about.' Stephen Dorff grew up in Los Angeles, where his father, Steve Dorff, worked as a composer in the film industry. One of the actor's earliest experiences of movie-making was visiting the set of Clint Eastwood's Every Which Way But Loose, on which Steve Dorff was working. (Stephen's younger brother, Andrew, a songwriter in Nashville, followed their father's career more closely.) He was a child actor in sitcoms (including Diff'rent Strokes), and made his big-screen debut aged 11 in a horror movie, The Gate. Dorff's parents separated when he was 21, a traumatic episode that coincided with his first flush of fame. Behind all the club-hopping good times lay personal anguish, and Ian Hart remembers that Dorff lived for a while in the Chateau Marmont, 'and saw first hand the "goings on" '. Little wonder, then, that Somewhere's narrative was familiar to Dorff. Yet the film and its success have deeper resonance still for him. Dorff received news that the part was his on the first anniversary of the death of mother, Nancy, from a brain tumour at the age of 59. She had been keen for her elder son to find an acting job that would show his more 'emotional, sensitive' side. Somewhere demanded that of him, and he's self-aware enough to admit that he was in a position to deliver, still reeling as he was from her death. 'Johnny Marco was a character that was very vulnerable and trying to figure his life out at the same time,' he says, adding that he's still 'working through' his grief. 'When you lose a parent…' He stops. 'It added a lot to my life, my career, my focus, to what's important, to what's not important. And I'm still getting through it. I haven't totally cured myself. It was only three and a half years ago.' He stretches on the bench and reaches for another Camel Blue. 'I've been working so much I haven't had a chance.' Has that been his way of processing the loss – forging ahead with professional commitments? 'Yeah, well, in a weird way that's what happened when I was losing my mom.' Michael Mann offered him a part in Public Enemies, a Prohibition-era gangster film starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger. 'And I told him I didn't think I could do it. I said, "I don't have three months right now, I'm losing my mom." And he was a real mensch [a Yiddish word meaning 'person of integrity or honour']. He was like, "Stephen, I can have anybody I want but I want to wait for you. This is a great character part for you." And I asked my mom: "I don't want to leave you, what do I do?" And she said, "I think you should go do your movie. I think it'll make you happier, and you can always come home and see me." ' Dorff took the part, 'and the guys on that film were really sweet to me, took care of me'. Depp, as much of a music buff as Dorff – who is a keen guitarist and hopes to start writing film scores 'under another name' – was an attentive co-star and friend. 'And it was actually, in retrospect, good that I went to Chicago for those five months. Because if I was just sitting in LA that would not have been good for me…' His mother, it seems, had led by work-focused example. 'When my parents got divorced, she used that midlife crisis and went back to school for 11 years,' he says of Nancy Dorff's retraining as a psychologist. 'That blew my mind. And that's why life is sometimes not fair – my mom could have helped so many people with her degree and being a doctor. Then she got sick…' Dorff wears his heart on his sleeve, and his feelings on his skin: his mother's name and the dates of her birth and death are two of a dozen or so tattoos on his arms and back. Another, inscribed over his right biceps, is a saying dear to his mother: yesterday is history, tomorrow's a mystery, today is a gift, that's why they call it the present. Dorff fingers the tattoo. 'It's also a saying that's in the Kung Fu Panda movie, as I later found out,' he says ruefully. 'Which I don't mind, I can take it for what it means to me.' When his parents divorced he sided with his mother and was 'really pissed off' with his father, who 'went off with the young woman'. Now his relationship with his father is fine, and he's a doting big brother to his half-sisters, 11-year-old Kaitlyn and 10-year-old Callie. Kaitlyn, like many American adolescents, is a keen customer of Kitson, and Dorff recently took her and a friend shopping at the chain's Malibu outlet. Dorff, like many a man before him, spent the time mooching around outside the shop, smoking fretfully. 'Kaitlyn picked up a ton of stuff, $100, $200 items,' he says, 'then she said I had to get her friend stuff, too.' He capitulated and emptied his wallet. 'So anyway, that's become my life. I love it, though – it's nice to have these little girls in my life.' It's a long way from his mean-and-moody early twenties, when he criticised his own films in the press and wore sunglasses 24/7. 'I was… outspoken,' he admits. 'I used a lot of my anger and things in my personal life in the press that I shouldn't have done. I learnt my lesson from that.' But, really, he wonders, in the Hollywood bad-boy scheme of things, was he that off-the-rails? 'I've never been arrested!' he exclaims. 'I said this to my agency a while back. After I got Somewhere, they said, "This is our new Robert Downey Jr!" And I was like, "Come on, guys. Downey's a genius, but I've really never done anything that bad. Smoked some pot along the way but what the f***, guys?" That was funny. 'But God bless,' Dorff says, sparking up a final cigarette. 'I love it when guys that have had issues come back. And luckily I haven't had' – he knocks on the wooden picnic bench – 'those kinds of issues. I've just had some things to deal with like family stuff, you know, lost my mom. Which is the most difficult stuff I've gone through. But it's just normal human stuff.' 'Immortals' is released on November 11 ?Saba Mozakka, 28, one of six relatives on the memorial's project board which helped create the monument, said: "We think it is truly incredible and reflects the importance of the people commemorated." Ms Mozakka's mother, Behnaz Mozakka, 47, a biomedical officer, was killed on the Piccadilly line Tube while commuting to work. She added: "One of the fantastic things about the monument is that it reflects the individual and the collective and shows the connectivity of events. I think and hope people will feel passionately about the memorial when we open it." Mr Brown, David Cameron, the Tory leader, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, Tessa Jowell, the humanitarian assistance minister, and senior figures from the emergency services and representatives of other organisations attended the unveiling ceremony. Mr Johnson said: "This memorial echoes the steely determination shown by Londoners in the days following the bombings. We have done much to make London safer, but today reminds us that London's strength ultimately lies with its people." There was a relaxed atmosphere in Hyde Park before the unveiling ceremony began. A 10-piece brass ensemble from the Guildhall School of Music played while the sun shone before showers sent people scurrying under trees for shelter. Ken Livingstone, the former London mayor, was among the 700 invited guests, who included survivors and victims' relatives. He praised the striking design for the memorial, saying: "I think it's just exactly right. Often, it's very difficult to do something like this and get it right, but I think everyone has done a great job." Speaking about the actual day when the devastating bombs exploded, Mr Livingstone said: "On the day, what drives you is the work that's got to be done, but, in the weeks and months afterwards, I met many families at various memorials and it was all incredibly painful." Mr Cameron said: "I think it's very brilliantly put together. It seems also very fitting the way they've grouped the columns around the four areas where the bombs went off. "Talking to some of the bereaved, they were all involved in this design and all like it and you can see people reacting to it positively." As the families waited for the Prince and the Duchess of Cornwall to arrive, many spent time walking around the 52 stainless steel columns, running their hands over the surfaces of the metal structures and also reading the names inscribed on a plaque nearby. The Prince and the Duchess were greeted by a line of dignitaries, including Mr Brown, Mr Johnson, Mr Livingstone and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson. The Duchess, wearing a dark blue jacket and skirt with a matching wide-brimmed hat and shoes, was handed a posy by Rebekah Johnson, 10, and Ruby Gray, 11, whose fathers were killed in the July 7 attacks. She shook hands with the girls and told them: "Thank you so much, they're very beautiful. Very good curtseys." Rebekah, from Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, said she felt "excited but a bit nervous" about presenting the posy because she did not want to get it wrong. Her father, Adrian Johnson, 37, a product technical manager for Burberry, was among the 26 innocent victims killed in the Russell Square bombing. She attended the ceremony with her mother, Cathey, 40, and brother, Christopher, 13. Mrs Johnson said the memorial was "lovely", adding: "I think the designers have been really careful to accommodate everybody's needs. I think it's very fitting. Rebekah likes the way that each one is different even though they're the same." Christopher watched part of the casting process for the memorial at a foundry in Sheffield. He said: "It's very good because every one is unique, and it reminds you of how the different people are different - from different races, different backgrounds." Ruby's father, Richard Gray, a 41-year-old tax manager, was among the seven victims of the Aldgate attack. She was at the ceremony with her mother, Louise, 37, from Ipswich, Suffolk. Mrs Gray said: "This is a way of ensuring Richard is going to be remembered in a permanent place. This is more of a happy memory rather than a sad occasion for me." ?Haye’s championPunching above his weight, perhaps, Amir Khan does not feel that his friend David Haye should face a life-time ban for landing a low on Dereck Chisora outside of the ring in Munich. “David shouldn’t get banned. Neither of them deserve a life-time ban. But they should get punished as what they did is bad for boxing and show it in a bad light,” Khan, 25, told me at last night’s Burberry Prorsum catwalk show.“As a fellow British boxer and a good friend of David, I totally support him, but of course it was upsetting to see. Why did it happen? Well, he’s a nice guy, so it would have taken something pretty serious to have got him that wound up. We don’t know the whole truth of what was said. Both boxers were clearly running on an emotional high and were angry. Sometimes these things just happen.”?Miss Moss, who has had an on-off relationship with the rock star Pete Doherty, has always mixed high-priced designer items with cheap and cheerful ones. Posting a 10pc overall rise in first half sales to £392m, chief executive Angela Ahrendts said yesterday: "Continued strength in outerwear and womenswear, as well as the extraordinary consumer response to the launch of the Burberry Icons Collection of luxury handbags, have fuelled excellent retail performance across markets. "Our distinctive 150th year advertising campaign and unprecedented editorial coverage contributed to the sales momentum. As a whole, performance in the first half is consistent with expectations for the full financial year." Alongside soaring sales at its 300-plus stores and concessions around the world, including in New Bond Street, Regent Street and Knightsbridge in London, wholesale revenues lifted one per cent in the six months to the end of September. The shares rose 41¾ to a record high of 552p yesterday.?Mandrake learns that the Duke, who is the president of the Mayfair institution, invited Susan Greenfield to St James's Palace this week. "The Duke wanted to thank me for all I have done," says the glamorous neuroscientist, who was accused of wanting to recreate the "stuffy" charity, of which she was the director, in "her own image". Lady Greenfield, who was made redundant in January, withdrew her claim of sexual discrimination and unfair dismissal in April. She adds of the cousin of the Queen: "He is a very conscientious and kind man. I have got to know him very well over the years."David Miliband's wife misses concert to support her husbandWhen the London Symphony Orchestra performs its first concert of the season on Saturday night, it will be missing one of its most important violinists. Louise Shackelton has decided to miss the concert, at the Barbican, in order to be in Manchester, by the side of her husband, David Miliband, who will learn that afternoon whether he is the new leader of the Labour Party or must play second fiddle to his younger brother, Ed. "Louise is very loyal," says one of her friends. "Perhaps she could cheer him up with a solo performance if he loses." ?Keith Richards' daughter arrested in New York for graffiti The daughter of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards appeared in a New York court on Wednesday after being arrested for spraying graffiti on a building and drug possession.?FTSE 100 The latest news and analysis on FTSE 100 risers and fallers and the effect of the global financial crisis on the markets and global indices.?Over 83,000 people voted in the semi-finals of the National Lottery Awards 2012, the annual search to find the UK's favourite Lottery-funded projects, whittling the shortlist down to 21 finalists. ?Had you blinked, or gone to make a cup of tea, you would have missed it, but catwalk fashion’s micro-moment in the Olympic spotlight was 18-carat fun, and the stadium crowd whooped thunderously.It was a moment styled by Lucinda Chambers, Vogue magazine’s fashion director. Speaking from backstage she said: “How did it look? I was terrified something was going to go wrong, I can’t tell you.” She added: “It’s incredible that Britain, such a tiny country, has such a broad range of talent in fashion, and that’s what we wanted to show. We’re known for bonkers fashion, but what I hope came across is that these designers make beautiful clothes… that people would want to wear.” So go on Jacques Rogge: fashion catwalking combines elements of speed-walking, synchronised swimming and rhythm gymnastics, and its elite athletes are higher-maintenance than the stroppiest footballers. And best of all, Britain does it better than anyone else, even the Brazilians.?21.14 Daniel Johnson, the editor of Standpoint, writes that : We British can take heart from our present as well as our past. For in this nightmarish week there have been countless examples of real heroism, heartwarming kindness and bloody-minded determination to “keep buggering on”, as Churchill used to say. 20.59 Extraordinary piece by Peter Oborne, who says that as terrible as the riots were, : David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support. But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them. I cannot accept that this is the case. 20.37 Video of the Prime Minister's statement to the Commons earlier on: 20.06 1,000 police officers will be out on the streets of Birmingham tonight. 389 people have been arrested in the city, . 19.58 Tom Chivers writes that : The risk is that all of us, both Left and Right, will look at a complex situation, attach our standard filter to our mental lens, and say “This is the fault of the [Right/Left] and what is needed here is more [Left/Right]“. That’s the action of a zealot, for whom every new fact simply confirms further what they already believe. By all means condemn the rioters, but to understand them, we need to look at the complex and uncertain evidence, not the comforting, simple certainties inside our heads.19.27 Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, is to give evidence before the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the riots. Keith Vaz, the HASC chairman, said: We will be looking at police tactics, we will be looking at the operation of gangs, we will be looking at mobile communications, and we will be revisiting some of the issues we have looked at in the past, such as the inquiry into the G20 protests. This will be a thoughtful and measured inquiry which will begin on September 6. I am glad the Mayor for London has agreed to be a witness. It was a pre-arranged evidence session for him but he will start off the inquiry for us.18.58 Greater Manchester Police report that a rioter who swore at police has been sentenced to 10 weeks in prison. 18.38 Metropolitan Police have arrested 950 people so far since starts of the riots, 457 of whom have been charged, . 18.14 's name is trending on Twitter after she - apparently - said on Sky News "What we need to ask is: why are these kids not at school?" For the record, it's currently the summer holidays. 18.10 The e-petition "” has passed 100,000 signatures, crashing the e-petitions site in the process. 18.02 Our own Daniel Hannan has also blogged on the admirable Tariq Jahan - "": In all the monstrous news of the past five days, one moment stands out as an example of the kind of dignified and understated stoicism which foreigners used to associate with us. It came yesterday from Tariq Jahan, whose son Haroon had been deliberately run over as he tried to protect shops in Birmingham from looters. Contrast the humanity of this grieving father’s words with the rage of those trolls who infest so many comment threads, blaming every social ill on Islamic immigration.17.45 A 20-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the robbing of Ashraf Haziq, the 20-year-old Malaysian student who was mugged on Monday, according to the BBC. 17.41 The Guardian has a moving piece about Tariq Jahan, the father of Haroon Jahan, one of the three men who died on Tuesday night: : If Jahan's is a voice of reason then his message is of patriotism. Jahan is of my late father's generation. They belonged to the first generation of Pakistani Muslims who migrated in large numbers during the 60s, 70s and 80s to find economic prosperity in the land of their once masters. For many, the plan had been to seek the riches that they could only dream of in the villages back home and return as made men to a life of bliss.17.32 Detectives investigating the deaths of three men killed while protecting shops in Birmingham from looters have arrested three more people - two youths and a man - on suspicion of murder, West Midlands Police said. A 32-year-old man arrested on suspicion of murder yesterday has been bailed pending further inquiries. 17.14 There is an interesting sidebar to the riot story . The music magazine reports that the Sony warehouse in north London which was destroyed by fire was the main storage venue for dozens of indie record labels. It states: "While the full impact ... is still emerging, numerous indies have confirmed massive losses, including Rough Trade, Angular Records, Chemikal Underground and Rock Action. "17.08 Ashraf Haziq, the 20-year-old Malaysian student who was mugged by people pretending to help, is speaking on Sky News. Asked about the people who attacked him, he says: I feel sorry for them, but it was really strange because amongst them there were children. That shocked me. There were boys in primary school, I think, it was quite shocking. I expect it to be someone older, but then there was this boy.A reporter asks him what he feels is wrong with a country in which this sort of thing happens. He refuses to answer, saying it's not for him to say. He says he's had a lot of support, and that he knows that David Cameron has been talking about him in the Commons and that he appreciates it. 16.53 Another example of a teenager involved in the riots walking free from court: 18-year-old Hackney student David Attoh. He was caught on August 8 with two Burberry T-shirts and admitted theft by finding, but was released with a £150 fine. The judge at Highbury said: "You have a bright future ahead of you, if you get into trouble again you are going to jeopardise that future."The court heard that Attoh has completed an ICT B-Tech at Hackney Community College and was due to have an interview for an apprenticeship on Tuesday. 16.39 There has been some outcry over claims that many of the younger rioters are being let off with light sentences and having their identities protected by the courts. Earlier the Prime Minister said: "If you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishment." One example: a 12-year-old boy who stole a bottle of wine from Sainsbury's was given only a nine month referral order and given anonymity despite being widely photographed in the act. The 12-year-old boy caught on camera stealing a bottle of wine from a Manchester Sainsbury's (left) hides his face as he leaves court on Thursday. (Photo: DAILY MAIL/REUTERS)16.37 The government's has crashed under the weight of people rushing to sign up to a petition calling for looters to "loose" their benefits. 16.20 Martin Beckford sees the depressing and the hilarious at court 16.14 For a "fair and balanced" perspective on the riots from Fox News, have a look at . 15.47 Lawyer Rajinder Claire, who is representing several alleged rioters, said defendants who would normally be released on bail were being remanded in custody. Speaking outside court, he said the decisions seemed to be politically-motivated. I would fully expect many of these people to come back before the court in a week and be released on bail. The decisions seem to be being taken in a routine manner without enough consideration for the distinct factors of each case. It certainly seems to me that it is being motivated by political pressure.That echoes reports we're getting from experienced reporters who say they've never seen magistrates' courts coming down so hard. 15.37 A , an 89-year-old barber whose shop was smashed in Tottenham, has raised £13,500. 15.33 The Prime Minister earlier rejected a call by Tottenham's David Lammy for a public inquiry into the riots, saying he would allow the Home Affairs Select Committee to investigate first. Here's the exchange. 15.26 Eric Pickles, the communities secretary and government attack dog, has dismissed Labour's criticism of cuts to police numbers as an "artificial argument". I can understand why it's a temptation for some people in the Labour party to make this a big issue but the truth is that we're asking the police to take a six per cent cash cut over the whole period of the financial review - that's very manageable. Most chief constables say they can cope. 15.23 An enormous wealth of depressing information is coming out of the magistrates' courts. 15.21 Andrew Porter, our political editor, says there was a bit of a tussle between No10 and the BBC over tonight's Question Time. The government wouldn't put up a Cabinet minister and the Beeb refused to accept a junior minister. Result is no ministers at all on the panel. 15.14 There are a lot of fine speeches being given by judges and magistrates up and down the country. This is one of the better ones from District Judge Alan Berg, at Manchester Magistrates' Court. People like you, who have all the benefits of this country, which others, in other countries would pray for, you bring shame and disgrace upon the country as a whole, and upon yourselves and your families. You do nothing constructive, all you do is destructive. 15.01 The Daily Mirror's Kevin Maguire had his stopwatch out during Cameron's Commons performance 14.57 Chief Constable Chris Sims of West Midlands Police has praised Tariq Jahan, for his following the death of his son on Tuesday night. He said it had a "decisive impact" on keeping the streets of Birmingham calm last night. Those words were so powerful, so heart-felt and so spontaneous and generous that I think anyone who heard them must have been moved. I think that was a decisive intervention in terms of Birmingham not suffering tension and violence between communities. Certainly, anyone that felt that there was any mileage from continuing a cycle of violence in the name of those young men that died will have thought twice about it. 14.41 Many of the suspected rioters have found themselves inadvertently famous after their images were blazed around the internet. Turns out some of them look like famous people, according to the . 14.28 A little more detail is emerging about Richard Bowes, the man beaten in Ealing. He was found without a wallet or phone so officers faced an uphill struggle to identify him but is originally from Bournemouth. Detective Chief Inspector John McFarlane said he "clearly kept himself to himself and appears to be a very private man. I am desperate to get in touch with any of his family." He said a handful of officers, not wearing protective gear, arrived at 10.45pm to reports of looting at the Arcadia shopping centre. The half dozen officers were massively outnumbered by scores of thugs and called for back-up as they were showered with missiles, including bottles. "There was some suggestion he was attacked because he was stamping out fires that had been started," said Mr McFarlane. 14.18 Over at Telegraph Blogs, Daniel Hannan has , whose son Haroon was deliberately run over in Brimingham. He also has words of praise for residents who acted to defend their communities during the recent riots: The Turkish shopkeepers and restaurateurs who patrolled Dalston, the Sikhs who stood with drawn swords before their temple, are reacting as generations of British people reacted in similar circumstances. Rather than simply whining about the failure of the state, they took responsibility. It would obviously have been better had they not been forced into this position; but, finding themselves there, they acquitted themselves rather heroically.14.10 The 11-year-old girl who was charged with criminal damage following disturbances in Nottingham has been given a referral order by magistrates, according to the Press Association. The girl, from Nottinghamshire, appeared before a court in the city this morning where she admitted the offence, and a charge of attempted criminal damage. She was arrested on Tuesday evening after smashing windows at a New Look store in the city and attempting to break windows at a Flannels store at around 11.30pm. The girl was given a nine-month referral order by magistrates. 13.41 Detectives have been given more time to question the 32-year-old arrested in connection with the murder of three men killed in an apparent hit-and-run during rioting in Birmingham. 13.38 The Prime Minister is asked an interesting question about splitting the Metropolitan Police into two separate forces - one with responsibility for policing London and the other tasked with national priorities like terrorism. He says it would be wrong to make such major changes less than a year from the Olympics. 13.37 Cameron accuses Labour of being "intellectually idle" in their arguments over police numbers. 13.34 Our picture desk has gathered together a rogues gallery of . It's not pretty viewing. 13.31 Cameron's voice seems to be giving in a bit. He's now been answering questions for two hours, a repeat of his performance at . 13.29 The House is less gung-ho than it might have been had this debate taken place a few days ago, notes Sky News Political Correspondent Glen Oglaza 13.25 Cameron wheels on the English Defence League following claims their supporters were among gangs of , saying: "I described parts of our society as sick and there is none sicker than the EDL". 13.23 Cameron praises the as "best of British". 13.22 Jim Sheridan, a Scottish Labour MP, lays into Alex Salmond for his comments about a "different society" in Scotland. 13.16 Cameron can't resist a Flashman-style dig at Robert Flello MP, who asks a question without wearing a jacket. Has security in London reached the point that someone has stolen it, Dave croons. 13.12 A second-year university law student faces a night in the cells after she was was remanded in custody following accusations he was part of a gang that ransacked cafes and restaurants in St John's Wood, London. Marouane Rouhi, 21, from north west London, is one of 16 people charged with violent disorder after the incident shortly after midnight on Wednesday. Prosecutor Becky Owen told Westminster magistrates that the group "ransacked properties and terrorised customers" in the area around Lodge Road. 13.09 An unemployed man has become the first to be charged in connection with the rioting in Gloucester on Tuesday. Gareth Rees, 26, is accused of throwing a piece of wood as well as bricks at police during disturbances that marred the city on Tuesday night. He faced Stroud Magistrates' Court charged with violent disorder. No plea was entered. The shaven-headed defendant, who sat between two dock officers, spoke only to confirm his name, age, address and to confirm he understood the charge. 13.02 James Kirkup, our political correspondent, has blogged on . These days, most politicians are wary of the language of morality. You can debate the causes of their caution ad infinitum: from the scarring experience of Back to Basics to the wider cultural trend towards moral relativism, explanations are legion. The consequence has been a public debate that tends to shy away from talking of people and actions as “good” or “bad”. Instead of a moral failure, crime and disorder are often discussed as failure of management, bureaucracy or public policy. Arguably, this caution partly explains why a lot of people who consider themselves decent, law-abiding and hard-working feel that the political system has failed. Certainly, it’s a common feature of many of the comments left on our blogs here and those elsewhere. 13.00 Cameron goes a little further than he did in his earlier statement - saying that social networking sites like Twitter could be closed down during periods of disorder. 12.57 Martin Beckford tweets on the strain the courts are under: 12.55 Police have now named the man beaten in Ealing as Richard Mannington Bowes, 68. He is still seriously ill and detectives are still trying to contact his family. 12.52 Cameron is starting to lose patience over the constant Labour attacks on plans to cut police numbers. "It's taken an hour and a half for me to say this but there's a reason we're having to reduce costs and it's because we inherited a complete fiscal crash from Labour."12.40 Some footage now from David Cameron's statement: 12.38 We're also hearing that during the London riots, has been discharged from the Royal London hospital. 12.36 And a further update from John Bingham in Birmingham: 12.32 Leaving the Commons for a moment we have a few updates from the Westminster Magistrates' court where Richard Alleyne is keeping an eye on proceedings. A 17-year-old trainee dancer gave herself after her picture was published in the paper and on television. The girl from Croydon who could not be named was caught taking two televisions from her local Richer Sounds. Her case was adjourned. A 22-year-old estate agent up for stealing from PC world in Colliers Wood, South London. He pleaded not guilty.12.31 Cameron says there were not enough police deployed on Sunday night and there are "lessons to be learned". 12.30 We now have the . 12.28 Toby Helm, the Observer's political editor, senses the government front bench is getting increasingly isolated over police cuts. 12.25 David Miliband, the man who was a few votes short of leading Labour into this debate, asks why Cameron wants to get rid of Chief Constables and replace them with elected officials. Cameron: We don't want elected constables, we want elected commissioners. 12.13 A quick round up of the main points announced by the Prime Minister: • There were not enough police deployed in the first stages of the rioting • Police will be given new powers to remove face masks under any circumstances if they think it is being used as part of criminal activity • The role of social media in organising disturbances will be reviewed • £10 million Recovery Scheme to provide additional support to councils in making areas safe, clean and clear again • £20 million high street support scheme to help affected businesses get back up and running quickly • Homeowners and businesses will be reimbursed under Riot Damages Act • The government will consider new powers to impose curfews and to widen dispersal powers • Anyone charged with violent offences should not be bailed onto the streets • Government supports the police and does not believe it is the right time to call out the military 12.11 Jack Straw, former Home Secretary: Government must reverse "complacent" cuts to police numbers and "soft" sentencing policies. It must not cut the number of prison places. Cameron: I don't accept that there will be fewer police officers on the street. 12.09 David Lammy, MP for Tottenham: We need a public inquiry into why initial skirmishes were allowed to lead to a situation where the great Roman Road was reduced to cinders. Cameron: Let us allow the Home Affairs Select Committee to investigate first. 12.05 Sir Peter Tapsell: Why are police disturbing these thugs and not rounding them up? US government brought troops into Washington during Vietnam protests. We should use Wembley stadium to round up rioters. Cameron shrugs it off. 12.03 First outburst of partisanship in the House: Labour jeers as Cameron says cuts to police numbers will not lead to any visible reduction in police numbers on the streets. 11.59 EM: We cannot afford to move on and forget. For all the people that have been in fear this week. We owe them a duty to see no repeat of what we've seen. 11.58 EM: We need an end to the take-what-you-can culture from the benefits office to boardroom. 11.56 EM: Why are there people who think they have nothing to lose and everything to gain from criminality? We cannot solve these problems without listening the voices in our communities. 11.54 EM: Will the Prime Minister rethink cuts to police numbers? Will he rethink proposals on CCTV to ensure they don't hinder fight against crime? 11.53 Miliband: I support the Prime Minister in not calling in the army - this is a job for the police. 11.52 Miliband: People want back the most fundamental of all liberties: the right to go about their lives without fear. 11.51 Ed Miliband: The House stands shoulder to shoulder in condemning the violence around England. "Tariq Jahan is the true face of Britain - the Britain of which we are all proud."11.49 To the law abiding: We are on your side, we will protect you, the fight back has begun. To the criminals: We will find you, we will punish you. 11.48 Mentions Bill Bratton, the former police commissioner of LA and New York who he reportedly wanted to install as Met Commissioner. 11.47 Praises US and Scottish tactics against gang culture - "I want this to be a national priority," he says. Gang injunctions will be rolled out to ban certain groups. 11.46 This was about a culture of irresponsibility - not poverty, the Prime Minister says. 11.46 "Responsibility for crime always lies with the criminal. These people were all volunteers, they didn't have to do what they did and they must be made to suffer."11.44 Businesses and households that are badly damaged can defer their tax payments. Regulations that slow installation of protective shutters will be slashed. A £10m recovery scheme is being put in place to help councils clean the streets. 11.43 Any individual who lost property during riots will be compensated under Riot Act. People given 42 days to make claim, instead of the usual 14. 11.43 Police to be given new powers to make people remove face masks and the use of social media during disturbances will be reviewed. 11.41 "The Acting Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has told me he would rather be the last man left in Scotland Yard than ask for the army. That's the right attitude and one I share."11.40 Anyone charged with violent offences should not be bailed back onto the streets, Cameron says. Parliament will act if courts need new sentencing powers. 11.38 Cameron says the police treated the riots as a public order issue when it was fundamentally an issue of crime. 11.37 The Prime Minister promises the IPCC will get to the bottom of Mark Duggan's death but says "opportunistic thugs" used it as an excuse for violence. "The young people stealing flat screen televisions and burning shops - that was not about politics."11.35 David Cameron: "We will not put up with this in our country, we will not allow a culture of fear to take over our streets."11.32 We're expecting the debate in the House of Commons to begin any moment. On the political front expect Labour to try to hammer the government over cuts to police numbers. 11.30 Next man up at Westminster magistrates' court is a law student, we're hearing. 11.19 I think this is the first we've heard of tasers being used, courtesy of Lia Hervey from Sky 11.14 There will be a special BBC Question Time tonight featuring: Lord Prescott; former senior Metropolitan Police officer Brian Paddick; Camila Batmanghelidjh, the director of Kids Company; The Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu and Fraser Nelson, the editor of the Spectator. Slightly strange that no ministers are taking part seeing as the government is likely come under fire. 11.09 ITV's Neil Bradford is depressed by his time at court 11.02 Our own Henry Winter is reporting that the Tottenham home game against Everton is being postponed due to the riots. 10.50 Around 100 families have been made homeless by the riots and are receiving help from local authorities, Housing minister Grant Shapps has said. Many of them are thought to be in Tottenham where fire to shops also damaged the flats above. 10.46 Conservative MP Mark Pritchard has called for foreigners found guilty of participating in the riots to be ejected from Britain. Any rioters who reside in the UK on a student, family, tourist or work visa, who are subsequently convicted of a criminal offence, should have their visa immediately revoked. If they are guests in this country, they should behave. 10.41 An 11-year-old girl has been arrested during disturbances in Nottingham. The unnamed girl was with a group of people in their late teens and early 20s held just before midnight on Tuesday near Milton Street in the city centre. She has been charged with criminal damage and attempted criminal damage and remanded into custody. 10.34 In Manchester, Owen Flanagan, 28, has committed the cardinal sin of stealing from Liam Gallagher. He took £75 of clothing from the former Oasis front man's Pretty Green fashion boutique along with two electrical itesm. But don't look back in anger, Liam - he's been jailed for eight months. 10.27 More details are emerging of the unprecedented overnight court hearings. At Solihull Magistrates' Court, which is dealing with disturbances in the Birmingham area, five people were sent to prison while one juvenile was bailed with strict conditions including an electronic curfew. West Midlands Police also confirmed it had made more than 300 arrests since the disturbances which blighted the region on Monday and Tuesday night, with 48 people detained last night. Meanwhile in Manchester, Owen Flanagan, 28, from Levenshulme, pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary after stealing £75 of clothing from former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher's Pretty Green fashion boutique. He was jailed for eight months. 10.13 Work at Her Majesty's Courts continues apace. The latest: two men from Lancashire have been charged after allegedly posting messages encouraging disorder on Facebook. Christopher Schofield, 25, and Warren Calvert, 19, have been charged with intentionally encouraging or assisting in the commission of an either way offence, believing it would be committed. 10.11 I'm working on a running total of arrests from across England. I make these the current figures: London: 888 Birmingham: 330 Manchester: 145 Nottingham: 105 Merseyside: 74 Gloucester: 18 Thames Valley: 15 Yorkshire: 6 Cambridge: 5 Lancashire: 3 Slough: 1 TOTAL: 1590 09.29 Police believe they may have identified the man who was on Monday. For three days his name and age have remained unknown as police struggled to locate next of kin. Detectives also have a "strong suspect" they believe is responsible for the attack. Detective Chief Inspector John McFarlane said: "Through CCTV we have identified a strong suspect. I know that, on seeing these images of him, people will be able to identify him. If you know who this man is, please contact my incident room. If you are this man in the CCTV, do the decent thing and give yourself up." 09.52 UPDATE: We now have footage of the suspect. 09.50 Detectives have until midday to question a man over the murder of three men killed in an apparent hit-and-run during rioting in Birmingham. Haroon Jahan, 21, was killed alongside Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31, after being hit by a car in Winson Green, Birmingham, as they tried to protect a petrol station and nearby stores, on Tuesday night. West Midlands Police said today that detectives have until midday to question a 32-year-old man arrested on suspicion of murder, after they were granted a superintendent's extension. 09.47 PC Stanley from West Midlands Police tweets this picture of his tired colleagues. 09.40 Among those arrested so far are two 17-year-old boys detained in connection with looting in upmarket Sloane Square and Pimlico. In the early hours of Tuesday morning looters hit Hugo Boss store along with a Bureau De Change in Sloane Square before attacking shops in Pimlico Road, including a jewellers. 09.39 Police are raiding addresses across London and planning scores of arrests. The Met says officers are executing at least 100 warrants this morning alone. 09.37 Inspector Winter, an anonymous tweeting police officer, documents five days in the life of a front line cop: 09.11 Boris Johnson and Metropolitan Police Acting Commssioner Godwin just emerged from the third day of COBRA meetings to answer questions from reporters. The Mayor began with a warning to protesters: "If they disturb the peace of this city they will pay penalties they will bitterly regret." Godwin took the lead when asked about the vigilante groups that clashed with police in Eltham last night. Where you have groups of people getting together they are effectively another gang and for some people that's very scary. If you want to get involved there are ways to volunteer through local authorities and the police service but don't become another gang. 08.57 Just in case scenes of calm streets was making you a bit anxious here's some footage of joy riders on a digger in Salford. My car was stolen in Manchester a few months ago - hope they catch these guys. 08.52 Raids are taking place across London today as detectives identify and move against the rioters. from Sky reports that 55 officers are raiding the Churchill Estate in Pimlico. Two people have been arrested and cash, designer clothes and trainers still in their boxes have been recovered. 08.49 Sky's Sophy Ridge tweets that the business of government is running just as smoothly as ever. 08.44 On our comment pages, John McTernan argues that the crisis has : A crisis reveals. It challenges leaders, and exposes whether or not they have the right stuff. As we face a breakdown of social norms in the UK and a potential meltdown of the global financial system, what can we tell about our current generation of political leaders? The most obvious answer is this: these crises have exposed a shocking absence of meaningful leadership. This is not a comment on the absurd soap opera of whether the Mayor of London and the Prime Minister were going to break off their holidays. That was always going to happen, although Boris Johnson and David Cameron did ignore a basic political law, which is that if you are going to have to do something anyway, you should do it of your own free will rather than being forced to. No, that’s just froth. What worries me is that we are seeing something more fundamental revealed about the frailty, the fragility and the failings of our institutions.08.41 The wires are full of those rare stories that being "Nothing much happened last night". From Manchester to Notthingham, London to Liverpool no news has been good news for police, residents and businesses. 08.33 Benedict Brogan, our deputy editor, emails this morning on the question that will dog the government's for days to come: is it right to cut police numbers in light of what's happening? Unsurprisingly, after Boris Johnson's spectacular intervention yesterday, splits are emerging in the Tory party over police cuts. The Treasury insists this morning that there will be no bail outs for the Home Office, while on Sky News, Nick Clegg said: "savings in the police service are entirely manageable". But will anyone listen when ministers argue - rightly - that cuts had nothing to do with the events of the past few days? The PM's critics will instead ask him how he can guarantee the security of the Olympics when budgets are being reduced.08.21 Clegg was much more disciplined that Boris Johnson when he was asked whether it was a good idea to cut police numbers. He said: We need to remember it's not just a crude, simple issue of numbers. We would not be making the suggestions we are about about the savings without being confident that it's manageable and that we can keep the streets safe. The most striking thing was his tone: he took every opportunity to talk tough on punishment and on restoring order. Maybe he had been strung by suggestions in the Daily Mail's editorial that 08.15 Nick Clegg has been doing the rounds ahead of today's Parliamentary debate. Speaking on the Today Programme he was asked whether he agreed with the Prime Minister's assessment that the riots were a moral issue. The most he would say was: "Clearly there are real problems in parts of our society". 08.12 Our leader column argues that David Cameron must today . The deaths of three men while apparently defending their businesses from looters in Birmingham are the most tragic manifestation so far of the descent of Britain’s cities into lawlessness. In a truly appalling week for this country, the one redeeming feature has been the readiness of people from all backgrounds to protect and clean up their neighbourhoods – evidence of abiding and much-needed community spirit. Since it is by no means clear that the crisis has played itself out, David Cameron is right to focus on restoring peace to the streets. The Prime Minister is to be commended for getting a grip when matters threatened to get out of hand. He was right, too, in Downing Street yesterday to praise the bravery of the police. While some of the choices they have made are questionable, the individual courage of officers in the most trying of circumstances cannot be gainsaid.08.05 There was no disorder in Liverpool last night but Merseyside Police have begun rounding up people suspected of causing trouble on Monday and Tuesday. Yesterday, they arrested 24 people, aged 16-47, for a range of offences violent disorder, possession of an offensive weapon, drugs, burglary and car theft. 07.57 A run down of the day's political schedule, courtesy of • 8.30: Meeting of the government's emergency COBRA committee • 8.30: Labour's shadow cabinet meets • 9.00: Cabinet meeting • 10.00: Meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party • 10.15: Boris Johnson meets London MPs • 10.45: Meeting of Liberal Democrat MPs • 11.30: Statement from the Prime Minister 07.46 In a sure sign that the violence is calming, politicians and broadcasters are now finding time to squabble over the semantics of whether the riots can rightly be called "British", given that the disorder has been so far confined to English cities. Anita Singh reports on the BBC's . The BBC has instructed presenters to refer to "English" instead of "UK" riots in case they upset residents of other regions.In its latest dictum on how to cover the unrest, the corporation said it was changing policy "in recognition of the sensitivities involved for people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland". A BBC spokesman explained: "While the rioting and disturbances have been taking place in England, our initial approach was guided by the story's impact for the UK as a whole - for example, the UK Prime Minister returning from holiday and the decision to recall the UK Parliament. The BBC's decision has been , Scotland's First Minister. Our Scottish Political editor, Simon Johnson, reports: Alex Salmond has been accused of gloating about wave of mob violence that has swept England after claiming it is unlikely to cross the Border because Scotland has a “different society”.The Scottish First Minister said it was unfair of broadcasters to describe the lawlessness as “UK riots” because it was an English phenomenon and Scotland has “no history of this sort of disorder”. His officials contacted 24-hour news channels to demand they withdraw captions that used the UK term, with the BBC agreeing to replace it with “England riots”.07.33 Assistant Deputy Commissioner Stephen Kavanagh has just been on the BBC saying he and other officers were "disappointed" with some of the sentences being handed out rioters and that Commissioner Tim Godwin would raise the issue with the government. He was asked how long the Met could continue to flood the streets of London with officers and replied: It's a huge drain on the physical, emotional and practical resources of London's police service. It will be continued for another night and then we will review it. 07.19 Nick Clegg is on BBC talking tough ahead ahead of this morning's Parliamentary debate: If people want to protest against the government, our policies or the difficult decisions we're having to make then they should come down here to Parliament Square and demonstrate. But what we saw was people simply taking the opportunity to steal. That's wrong and they should be punished...Today is about ensuring that proper punishment is meted out. (L-R) An 11-year old from Romford, Laura Johnson, Alexis Bailey, caught looting in Croydon 07.00 One of those in court yesterday was . Tom Whitehead and Holly Watt report: The 19–year–old is a high–flying pupil who attended St Olave's Grammar School – the fourth best performing state school in the country. She is now reading English and Italian at the University of Exeter. However, Miss Johnson now stands accused, along with two others, in connection with the alleged theft of £5,000 of goods from the Stonelake Retail Park in Charlton, south London. The goods were allegedly found in a car being driven by Miss Johnson. It was claimed that they were stolen from a Comet store. Miss Johnson appeared before Bexleyheath magistrates' court where she indicated a plea of not guilty to five counts of burglary.06.54 Courts across the country have been working through the night to clear the hundreds of people arrested on suspicion of rioting and looting. The current figures for London are 888 arrests since Saturday and 371 people charged. Our own Andrew Gilligan spent yesterday at Highbury magistrates' court and . They were, some told us, the alienated poor, those without hope, lashing out in rage and despair. But as the accused London rioters started appearing in court they included university students, a rich businessman’s daughter and a boy of 11. At Highbury Corner magistrates, the custody vans queued in the street and the paperwork poured across every spare surface yesterday. They had been working all night, even as the roads fell silent and the local shopkeepers boarded themselves in. “Have you been home yet?” asked a dazed-looking court official to her colleague.06.52 This morning Parliament will meet for its second emergency recall in a month - this time to discuss the government and police response to the violence. David Cameron is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons at 11.30 and we will bring it to you live on this blog. Our political editor Andrew Porter reports that the Prime Minister will announce a . The Prime Minister will use an emergency Commons debate to set out plans to ensure that people have confidence in the justice system. He will say that severe punishments will be meted out to those responsible for the destruction and robbery of the past five days. He backs plans to ensure that council tenants found guilty of taking part in the mayhem will be evicted. Ministers are redrafting consultation documents to ensure that councils get those powers. Some councils, including Greenwich and Hammersmith and Fulham in London and Salford in Manchester, announced yesterday that they were already pushing ahead with the measure. Candlelight vigil for the three men killed in Birmingham06.42 All eyes last night were on Birmingham, which last night was mourning the deaths of brothers Shazad Ali, 30 and Abdul Masavir, 31, and their friend Haroon Jahan, 21. There were fears that racial tensions could erupt into violence but instead . At half past 10 last night a group of around 300 people gathered at the petrol station in the Winson Green area of the city, where the three men had died. They had initially planned to march the two-mile route along the Dudley Road into the city centre. But with roads in to Birmingham shut they decided to hold a vigil at the station. He said: "We need to show solidarity, that we will help whoever we see. Muslims and Sikhs must come together now to help each other and the whole community."Yesterday, Tariq Jahan, Mr Jahan's father, gave a harrowing account of his son's death: 06.37 For the first time in five nights the streets of England's major cities were last night free from serious outbursts of violence. Heavy rain and enormous police numbers are credited with restoring calm in Manchester and Liverpool, while thousands of officers from many forces once again flooded the streets of the capital. There was, however, , as Andrew Hough reports: Vigilantes defied police orders last night and vented their anger against officers as they attempted to mobilise their own forces to deal with rioters in London. Riot police were hit with “missiles” including bottles as more than 1,000 officers battled with dozens of middle-aged men on the streets Eltham, south-east London. Witnesses reported that many of the 200 men were chanting in support of the English Defence League, the controversial Right-wing group.06.30 A reminder of today's Daily Telegraph front page: 06.29 Good morning and welcome back to our rolling coverage following a night that saw calm largely restored in England's major cities after four days of violence. Follow earlier coverage of the riots here: ?We also need to recognise the need to invest in the next generation of the UK's creative talent. The Government is delivering the biggest apprenticeships programme the UK has ever seen, with funding of £1.4bn to train 360,000 apprentices this year alone. But let's not forget the leading role the creative industries have played in training up a world-class workforce. Half of the 70 designers employed by Burberry at its London base came from British design schools. Together we can ensure Britain is home to the best creative talent.Digital's rise has opened a new world of opportunities, allowing the creative industry to engage with a fresh global audience. Two years ago the Burberry fashion show was seen by 1,000 guests in a marquee in Milan. On Monday, it was streamed live from London to a global audience of millions.Britain's prosperity will be built on its success in international markets, and encouraging British firms to export must be at the heart of our economic policies. The creative industries are uniquely placed to prosper globally in a more digitally connected age and to bring the rewards back home. From the Royal Wedding, to the 2012 Olympics and London Fashion Week, the UK is in the world spotlight. And so now, more than ever, it's time to shout loudly about the successes of an industry which is a jewel in the British crown.Lord Green is Minister of State for Trade and Investment, Angela Ahrendts is chief executive of Burberry ?The ‘Tweetwalk’ show will be happening simultaneously to the Burberry show, occurring at 4pm today, allowing those following the brand’s Twitter account () to see photographs of each of the models, sporting the latest collection, just ahead of them heading down the runaway. The digital show will enable those at home to see the clothes before fashion’s elite, occupying the front row seats at the show taking part in London’s Hyde Park today at 4pm, manage to. ?At Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court, where cases were heard through the night in a bid to deal with the huge influx, a variety of defendants appeared, including one primary school worker. Chair of magistrates Melvyn Marks told the court many of the cases had aggravating features, occurring ''in the middle of a very violent riot'', which meant magistrates had insufficient sentencing powers. ''Because of the nature of this offence and because of the circumstances, we have taken the view that there are too many aggravating features on this case and our powers of punishment are not enough.'' Court staff have been working throughout the night, with cases being heard before a district judge overnight and magistrates taking over this morning. One member of court staff, who did not want to be named, said: "It's just been constant, staff are working constantly to deal with the cases." Other cases included looting at a Costco warehouse, people caught stealing clothes from shops which had been ransacked, and two men caught pushing a shopping trolley full of power tools which they claim they "found". Many cases echoed the crimes caught on camera as people looted across the capital. Student David Attoh, 18, from Retreat Place, Hackney, was caught on August 8 in Hackney, with two Burberry t-shirts. Attoh, who the court heard has completed an ICT B-Tech at Hackney Community College and was due to have an interview for an apprenticeship on Tuesday, admitted theft by finding. The student, who was fined £150, had been receiving Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) while completing his B-Tech, but over the summer was supported by his mother, the court heard. Mr Marks told him: "Don't get in trouble again. "You have a bright future ahead of you, if you get into trouble again you are going to jeopardise that future." Defendants this morning were from a range of areas across the capital, as were their crimes. Most offences related to looting, many including theft and burglary. Most defendants this morning pleaded guilty to their offences - but, despite their crimes being serious enough to be committed to Crown Court for sentencing, many were given bail, often with an electronic tag. One man who denied his charge was 19-year-old Adam Ozdas, from Hindrey Road, Hackney, who is accused of receiving stolen goods. He was stopped by police in Clarence Road, Hackney, and found to be in possession of a large bottle of Southern Comfort, a large number of National Lottery scratchcards, tobacco, £90 in cash, and confectionery, the court heard. Prosecutor Abiodun Kadri said: "He stated that he found the items on the road and that he was going to hand them into a police station." Ozdas, who, the court heard, is due to start a college course in September, pleaded not guilty and was granted conditional bail to appear again next month. ?Best for fashionistas: The Berkeley's Prêt-à-Portea Reviewed by Belinda White The Berkeley hotel has craftily targeted its afternoon tea at London’s diehard tea-takers: the fashion pack, who rarely conduct meetings over any other mealtime. Its offers everything you’d expect from a traditional afternoon tea but with a twist: each of the sugary fancies is styled after a key fashion look of the season. There was a white Burberry trench coat chocolate biscuit, a Stella McCartney polka dot sponge cake and even a miniature Valentino orange and ginger cake handbag. Charmingly, the waiter talked us through the ‘collection’ using framed catwalk pictures of the exact outfits that inspired each creation. Gimmicky? Yes, but beautifully rendered and a break from the norm. If I had one criticism, it was that The Berkeley seems to be stuck in autumn/winter 2011 when any real fashionista knows that the spring/summer 2012 collections have been available since January. It might only be tea, but still, there’s nothing worse than being so last season. Top treat: the brightly coloured Lanvin cassis bavarois with crème de mûre jelly topped with folded meringue. Address: Brown’s Hotel, Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BP Days and times: daily 1pm-6pm Cost: £37.50; champagne tea £47.50 - £54.50. Best for a ceremonious experience: Teanamu Chaya Teahouse Reviewed by Olivia Bergin Within moments of stepping into Pei Wang’s relaxing Notting Hill , it is apparent that tea, and the meticulous ritual around creating the perfect brew, is top of the agenda. With no less than 18 teas to chose from – and that’s not counting the bespoke tisane infusions one can mix and match – it’s hard to know where to start, but the black lychee variety proved a delightful and tasty choice. The self-boiling kettle on each table is essential when you consider the tiny size of the traditional tea pots and drinking cups, but the Chinese ethos is based around having just enough to drink in the present moment. Pei’s extensive knowledge and fresh, preservative-free snacks (who could resist the healthy-sounding citrus, yuzu soft-set marshmallow dusted with green tea) make this an educational and altogether less gluttonous experience than the traditional English afternoon variety. Even better, those taken with their newly discovered brew can buy packets to take away to recreate the magic back home. Top treat: The lo mai fan lotus leaf rice parcel - a sticky, tea-infused rice with braised mushrooms and sweet azuki, £3 was a revelation. Address: Teanamu Chaya Teahouse, coach house, 14a St Luke’s Road, W11 1DP Days and times: Saturdays and Sundays: 12pm - 6pm. Cost: Tea or tisane, £3.50; snacks £2-£3; minimum charge per head, £10. Best for Chinese-style tea: Grand Imperial's Oriental Afternoon Tea Reviewed by Natalie Paris Cucumber sandwiches are all very well but why limit afternoon tea to triangles of bread and butter? At the Grand Imperial restaurant at the Grosvenor Hotel, chefs are offering and specially created dim sum as a light afternoon treat best tackled with chopsticks. Our tiny sweet and savoury dumplings looked just as pretty on a three-tier cake stand as a traditional teatime snacks. We started with crispy noodle rolls of black cod and plump, steamed barbecue pork buns before trying shredded duck delicately layered onto prawn crackers. But the highlight was the unlimited refills of delectable Chinese tea, from floral varieties to a fermented option from Yunnan. Oolong Cha Wang had a heavenly white-blossom scent and a tea made from Osmanthus flowers was a hit with mother – it’s not only delicious but apparently good for the complexion too. Top treat: the unusual rich chocolate dim sum creations, a deliciously different dessert. Address: Grand Imperial, 101 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0SJ Days and times: daily midday-5pm Cost: £20; £28 with a glass of sparkling rosé Best for playful luxury: Sanderson Mad Hatter Tea Reviewed by David Nicholls Themed events usually fill me with panic and dread, but it was impossible not to be charmed by the idea of a . And what better place to have it than the Sanderson hotel, whose décor is every bit as surreal as Alice’s ‘tumble down the rabbit hole.’ And Sanderson’s website makes it clear: no fancy dress. Instead, it is the menu which takes its lead from Lewis Carol’s topsy turvy tale. Dainty sandwiches (ham, egg, cucumber and salmon) are made from a rainbow of breads baked with beet root, spinach and saffron. There is ‘Eat Me’ strawberry and cream mousse, ‘Drink Me’ elixirs made from layers of passion fruit, coconut panna cotta and ‘exotic foam’ sipped out of an apothecary bottle, and freshly baked scones served with clotted cream and jam. It was the perfect place to bring my Mum and 12-year-old niece, who enjoyed an afternoon tea that combined glamour with a bit of magic. Top treat: the scones themselves were perfection. Light, fluffy and freshly baked - they were still warm when they arrived at the table. Served with lovely thick clotted cream and divine Alain Milliat strawberry jam. Address: Sanderson, 50 Berners Street London, W1T 3NG Days and times: Mon-Fri 2pm - 5.30pm, Sat-Sun 1pm - 5.30pm Cost: £35 each Best for literary mums: Chesterfield Hotel Mayfair, tea poet readings Reviewed by Jolyon Attwooll On the second Saturday of every month, Mayfair comes with a distinctly lyrical twist. Among the gleaming brass and looming portraits of the hotel's venerable conservatory dining room, Elizabeth Darcy Jones, the Chesterfield's "tea poet", is on hand to deliver an intimate rhyming tribute to anyone with an occasion to celebrate, from birthdays, to anniversaries to Mother's Day. It's an eccentric idea that in the wrong hands could be toe-curling, but Darcy Jones, who has composed poetry to cover a range of special events, is an engaging and welcome guest when she joins tables for recitals, and has taken care for her accessible compositions to appeal even to those suspicious of verse. She will also tailor rhymes to the beverage of your choice – her ode to green tea has a particular zing to it. And the scones, cupcakes and pastries (which received a Tea Guild Award for Excellence last year) are pretty good too. Top treat: The delicious chocolate scones, spooned with clotted cream and home-made jam (only with the chocolate afternoon tea). Address: The Chesterfield Mayfair, 35 Charles Street, Mayfair, London, W1J 5EB. Days and times: Served daily from 1.30pm to 5.30pm. Elizabeth Darcy Jones will also appear this Mother's Day (Sunday March 18). Cost: £27.50 (£30.94) Chocolate afternoon tea; £25.50 (£28.69) for the Chesterfield Traditional afternoon tea; Champagne tea from £33.50 (£37.69). Figures in brackets denote price including discretionary service charge. Best for men: Sanctum/CSDR gentlemen's afternoon tea Reviewed by Andrew Baker Sanctum Soho is a rock star’s boutique hotel, and their is a heart-stoppingly unwholesome line-up of red meat, carbs and saturated fats topped off with high-octane booze and premium nicotine. You sit on shiny snakeskin upholstery to imbibe English Breakfast tea in smart china. This washes down snacks sufficient for an army of rock titans: oysters, rabbit pasties, stonking steak sandwiches, burgers and miniature hotpots, followed by a comparatively subtle chocolate fudge cake and Jack Daniels ice cream. The culmination, if your schedule and liver permit, is a choice of three varieties of JD in silver tankards, with complimentary cigars to take up to the roof terrace. The food was terrific, the surroundings swanky and the service spot-on, but how many colossi can put this away in an afternoon and still give of their best in the evening? Not Justin Bieber, I’ll be bound. Top treat: the poached oyster with Bloody Mary relish was an ideal jumping-off point: keep that down, and you'll sail through the rest of the menu. Address: Sanctum Soho Hotel 20 Warwick Street, London W1B 5NF Days and times: daily 2pm-6pm Cost: £50 Best for enjoying a cheap day out: Fan museum Reviewed by Anoosh Chakelian Taking afternoon tea in the Orangery of a Georgian townhouse is almost as indulgently nostalgic as the eclectic collection of intricate fans, or “trifles” as history has often described them, on show at the . Perched in the heart of Greenwich, it is a short but sweet little trip through history, displaying an assorted handful of its 4000-fan collection. Ranging from a 13th century Chinese fan leaf to a bladeless Dyson, the exhibits tell the story of how fans are a reflection of cultural change - having even been used to disperse evil spirits at one stage – as well as frivolous cooling devices associated with incessantly fainting ladies in corsets. A jaunt through this unpretentious and playful gallery is followed by a generous afternoon tea, with home-made cakes and two scones complete with liberal amounts of cream and blackcurrant jam made by the museum’s owner, for a fan-tastic £6. Top treat: a satisfyingly hefty hunk of chocolate brownie, moist and filled with white chocolate chunks, will banish the evil spirits even if the fans don't. Address: Greenwich Fan Museum,12 Crooms Hill, Greenwich, London, SE10 8ER Days and times: Tues 3pm-5pm; Sun 3pm-5pm Cost: £6: two scones, jam and cream, two cakes, pot of tea Best for homely atmosphere: The Tea Rooms Reviewed by Claire Travers Smith in Stoke Newington is a delightful venue for a homely afternoon tea. Bedecked with bunting, vintage china and knitted knick knacks, you’re instantly transported from the hustle and bustle of London life to somewhere else, a quaint village perhaps where the WI would provide the condiments. The staff is charming, the tea list is extensive and the vast array of cakes on offer is enough to tempt any dieter off the straight and narrow. For just £15, their afternoon tea is more than a bargain, and I challenge anyone to get more baked goods for their buck anywhere else in London. The finger sandwiches were more rustic than dainty, but no less tasty, and the miniature cakes and pastries were not only exquisitely presented but scrumptious to boot. The tour de force, however, was the light and fruity scones. I’m still thinking about them now, and how I wished I’d brought some home with me. Next time. Top treat: Their fresh, homemade raspberry jam for the scones is quite possbly the finest jam in London, a fact affirmed by my fellow tea-tasting buddy, a self-proclaimed condiment connoisseur who was somewhat crestfallen when she discovered they'd run out of jars to take home. Address: 153-155 Stoke Newington Church Street, London, N16 0UH Days and times: Mon-Fri 11am-6pm; Sat-Sun 11am - 6.30pm Cost: £15 or £17 including a glass of prosecco. A special Mother's Day tea costs £20 ?BURBERRYPRICE 1040p MARKET LSE (UK)Burberry reported record half-year profits last week – proving that for the fashion house at least, the recession is well and truly over. Pre-tax profits were up by 50pc to £118m and total revenues increased by 21pc, in the six months to the end of September. As a result of the good news, Burberry bumped up its dividend by 43pc to 5p. The share price has risen by more than 130p since American Angela Ahrendts took over as chief executive in 2006, making Burberry the third most successful listed retailer in Britain over the past five years. Emerging market sales and digital developments can be credited with this rise – sales in China, India and Brazil were up 46pc in past six months – and will fuel further gains in the future. BUY 3, HOLD 19, SELL 3MULBERRY PRICE 638p MARKET LSEAnother quintessentially British brand, leather goods retailer Mulberry has seen the price of its shares rise by 963pc from 60p in the past 17 months. Established in 1971 in Somerset – where its headquarters still reside – the majority of the bags, and now clothes, shoes and jewellery, are usually still made in Britain. Increasingly popular with Asian consumers as a way of buying into the “English country peer” lifestyle, revenue went up from £58.6m in the year to March 2009 to £72.1m in the year ending in March this year. As a result the dividend payment was raised from 2p per share to 2.2p. BUY 2, HOLD 0, SELL 0LVMH PRICE €120 MARKET PAR (France)Over the Channel, almost every luxury brand belongs to one mega-group – Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, or LVMH. Under the LVMH umbrella fashion houses nestle next to watch manufacturers, perfumeries, makers of wines and spirits, and jewellers. Among the more global names: Donna Karan, Moët & Chandon, Givenchy, De Beers and TAG Heuer. Henk Potts, equity analyst for Barclays Wealth, said: “We view LVMH as a core holding in the luxury goods sector owing to its strong management team, high-quality brands, and significant earnings growth potential in addition to its recent acquisition of a stake in Hermès.”Mr Potts said that British investors should not be put off if a stock is listed overseas. “Many execution-only brokers, including Barclays Stockbrokers, will allow you to buy stocks that are listed overseas,” he said. BUY 23, HOLD 10, SELL 2BMW PRICE €59 MARKET DAX (Germany)Bayerische Motoren Werke – or BMW as it is more commonly known – owns the motor car brands BMW, Rolls-Royce and MINI. Listed on the DAX exchange, which is made up of 30 of Germany’s biggest blue chip companies, BMW is the global leader in premium car sales. In 2009, BMW sold 1.1 million units, compared with the peak of 1.3 million in 2007 – before the credit crisis. Things are looking up, however, and luxury cars manufacturers look as if they have the worst of the recession behind them. BMW’s global sales rose by 13pc in the first six months of this year alone. Mr Potts said: “BMW holds a strong position within the luxury space thanks to the roll-out of the new series five .”BUY 28, HOLD 12, SELL 4RICHEMONT PRICE Sfr56 MARKET VTX (Switzerland)You may not have heard of this parent group but there’s a good chance you have dreamed of owning their brands. Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Piaget, Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, IWC, Panerai and Montblanc are all part of the Richemont Group. The group, which is listed on the Swiss stock exchange, announced last week that it nearly doubled its pre-tax profits in the six months to the end of September compared with the previous year, increasing from €416m to €742m. Global sales rose 37pc over this period – but sales in the Asia Pacific region rose even more with a 50pc increase. “We did great in all of the European markets except one small one,” said chief financial officer Gary Saage. “Fifty per cent of the sales were still done by travellers who [don’t live] in western Europe – but the locals are back for us, too.”BUY 13, HOLD 14, SELL 3 ROLLS-ROYCE PRICE 616p MARKET LSEThough the Rolls-Royce motors brand is now part of BMW, Rolls-Royce retains the aerospace part of the business. Last week, Rolls-Royce won a large contract to provide engines to a Chinese airline, bringing the company’s total value of deals in the country to $3bn in the past fortnight. Graham Spooner, from The Share Centre, considers Rolls-Royce as a “hold”, and considers it a medium risk stock for income and growth. “There has been a steady flow of contract wins for the group, the latest being from Aeroflot, China Southern Airlines, Garuda Indonesia and the Canadian Air Force,” he said. There has been some backlash following Qantas jets powered by Rolls-Royce technology reporting engine problems and having to be grounded. This caused the share price to drop, and the price of shares in its biggest rival, General Electric, to increase. BUY 10, HOLD 9, SELL 7TIFFANY’S PRICE $61 MARKET NYSE (New York, USA) Founded in 1837, and achieving cult status thanks to the 1961 Audrey Hepburn film, Tiffany’s is an icon of American consumerism. But last year, only half of Tiffany’s sales were made in the Americas – the Asia Pacific region accounted for a third of sales in 2009. The largest percentage growth was found in China, Hong Kong, Macao and Korea. These results were healthy enough for Tiffany’s to increase its quarterly dividend rate by 25pc, from 20 cents per share to 25 cents per share in July 2010. JP Morgan fund manager Peter Kirkman holds Tiffany’s in his Global Consumer trends fund. “Luxury goods is the best way to play wealth generation in emerging markets,” he said. Mr Kirkman did say that luxury goods stocks were not cheap at the moment, but he considers this to be a long-term play, and so price is not as important. BUY 10, HOLD 9, SELL 2POLO RALPH LAUREN PRICE $110 MARKET NYSERalph Lauren announced a higher than expected quarterly profit last week that caused the share price to jump by more than 7pc. The share price hit a low in July, but has since bounced back by 40pc as demand for the luxury clothing and home brand has increased across the world. In the financial statement, the company stated Asian operations had increased and Forbes blogger Zacks urged investors to “Buy Polo When It’s On Sale, Like Now”. He said: “Ralph Lauren has topped estimates each quarter since mid-2007. Much like its products, Polo Ralph Lauren is trading at a bit of a premium, but it is not high enough to avoid.”BUY 5, HOLD 8, SELL 0DIAGEO PRICE 1179p MARKET LSE“Diageo has a lucrative joint venture with LVMH to produce some of its drinks brands,” said luxury goods analyst Rahul Sharma. “It is easy to just think of clothing and accessories when you think of luxury brands, but the demand for quality alcohol also increases. India loves scotch and China has a high demand for cognac.”Because it is a less obvious play within the luxury goods sector, Diageo also has the benefit of being a relatively cheap share. Mr Sharma believes that the luxury goods story is far from over, in fact he considers it to only just be beginning. “We are for now, only scratching the surface of China,” he said. “We haven’t even begun to really see the impact of the Indians yet – a market with enormous wealth where logos and conspicuous consumption are only just taking hold – or Brazil.”BUY 20, HOLD 12, SELL 3INCHCAPE PRICE 338p MARKET LSELuxury car retailer Inchcape has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 1958. It sells a wide range of vehicles including those made by Jaguar, Porsche, Audi, Mercedes, BMW and Lexus. The investor can get global exposure as Inchcape operates across the UK, Europe, Hong Kong and Australia – as well as in some emerging markets, including Russia and Singapore. Mr Sharma said: “This is a less direct play on the luxury goods theme, but none the less a good way to get emerging markets’ exposure through high-end brands.”But earlier this month, Inchcape announced that it would have to make redundancies after it said it expected 2009 profits to be worse than expected. BUY 7, HOLD 4, SELL 3?The group said it had seen an excellent performance from womenswear, with particularly strong sales of raincoats. Sales of luxury handbags also gained momentum throughout the year, and account for an increased percentage of the mix of accessories sales. Burberry launched a range of handbags to coincide with its 150th anniversary which it said was "a highlight of the year". New scarf designs also helped boost accessory sales. The group opened 12 new stores, one replacement store, 13 concessions and three outlets last year. The group has completed the second year of its Project Atlas restructuring programme at a cost of £21.6m. It said the project would enter its "most intensive stage" over the next six months. Shares in the group sliipped 21, or just over 3pc, to 671.5p in mid-morning trading.?The fashion retailer's share price has risen by more than 130p since Angela Ahrendts took over as chief executive in 2006, making Burberry the third most successful listed retailer in Britain over the past five yearsPicture: AP?Chanel white snow goggles, £210 (020 7493 5040, ) Burberry ruched black leather gloves, £225 (08456 751 321 , ) Prada long tan leather gloves, £290 (020 7647 5000, ) Dents men’s cashmere-lined tan peccary leather gloves, £225 (01985 212 291, ) Chanel white faux-fur mittens, £340 (as before) Louis Vuitton long black leather patterned gloves, £830 (020 7399 4050, ) Prada long leopard-print leather gloves, £340 (as before) Giglio long red leather buttoned gloves, £119 (020 7629 9161, ) Hackett brown Union Jack men’s leather gloves, £110 (020 7939 6800, ) Further images:Vertu Constellation Quest The new Qwerty version of the world’s most expensive (and British-made) phone has 24/7 concierge service and 140 City Brief updates; from £4,800 (020 3205 1123, ) . iPad, £429, John Lewis (08456 049 049, ); knitted case, £50 (01239 614 122, ) ; ViewPad 7, £390 (020 7382 8250, ) – a less ostentatious tablet with similar capabilities, which is also a camera and a phone; and Garmin’s Nuvi 3790T satnav, £320 (0808 238 0000, ), which comes with preloaded maps for 43 countries, allowing you to drive seamlessly into Europe, too. Fuji travel speakers, £19.99 (0844 553 2323, ) – tiny, but yielding startlingly good sound at a startling price; and Proporta universal charger, £29.95 (0845 123 2848, ) , a travel essentialG Lorenzi 24-hour travel kit, £540, available from the two London branches of Florence’s Farmacia Santa Maria Novella (020 7493 1975, ), founded in the 17th century. G Lorenzi’s Milan store, filled with such miniature treasures, is pure catnip for men. Eschenburg personal manicure set, £160, Fortnum & Mason (020 7734 8040, ) – German-made to last a lifetime and avoid the risk of exposure to less-than-surgically-clean salon instruments. Red travel pouch, £140, and amber travel wallet, £275, both by Smythson (020 7318 1515, ), the go-to for beautiful small leather travel goods Globe-Trotter/Erdem vanity case, £410 (020 7529 5950, ). Inside, very good scents from: Byredo, £115; Maison Francis Kurkdjian, £95; Miller Harris, £78, Liberty (020 7734 1234, ); Amouage, £195; Penhaligon’s, £95; Dorin, £140; Occo (scrub, £25; wash, £18), Fortnum’s (as before); Roja Dove, £75, V&A shop (020 7942 2696, vandashop.com). Porsche sled, £330 (08457 911 911, ) ?Agyness, 25, who was discovered while working in a chip shop in Ramsbottom, Lancs, is now rumoured to be about to try her hand at acting – with BBC executives apparently keen to cast her in Doctor Who. Sir Tim Rice has often spoken about his challenging professional relationship with Lord (Andrew) Lloyd-Webber, so the guests at the annual Songwriters’ Hall of Fame gala in New York were not entirely taken aback when he asked them: “Would you like to work with someone who takes 75 per cent of the credit; work with a fellow who takes 75 per cent of the money and chases after every woman he comes across in the theatre?”A hush then descended on the several hundred diners. “Would you like to work with a guy like that?” he demanded. “Well, neither did Andrew.”?While manufacturing jobs have been in steady decline for the last three decades, the fall is expected to get worse in this recession as factories suffer from both the global slump in demand for products – from computer chips to cars – and from the lack of finance.Jorg Radeke at CEBR, said: "Factories tend to rely on finance and credit availability more than most. They need cash to pay their suppliers, and if banks are limiting access to finance it will hit them hard. We are already seeing that."Thousands of jobs in the manufacturing sector have been lost in recent weeks, with Corus, the steel maker; Burberry, which has a sewing factory in Rotherham; Vion, a ready-meal manufacturer and consumer electronics giants Panasonic, Philips all announcing major cuts. Official figures yesterday showed manufacturers endured their biggest quarterly slump in output for 35 years in the three months to December, with industry output falling 5.1 per cent below the July to September period.Ruth Lea, leading City economist at advisor to the Arbuthnot Banking Group, said the demise of the manufacturing sector was not inevitable."I think we will have to think very hard about building up our manufacturing base. It's not old fashioned – many factories are cutting edge – and we have to accept that if we want economic growth it can't come from financial services," she said. ?Markets A snapshot of the key market data from the FTSE 100, the FTSE 250 and global indices. ?So it will be for that boy or girl who now feels that all is lost. The truth is that flunking it will make an adult of your baby, faster than you can say tuition fees. Make an exhibition out of food and improve our appetite Once the pinnacle of naughtiness, playing with your food is now high art. The Experimental Food Society is a futurist movement whose ideas range from staging an architectural jelly banquet (St Paul’s in orange jelly) to making a landscape tableau with contrasting strips of Parma ham. It rather makes a mockery of my experiments with Vesuvius mash, for which you use your fork to build a mountain of mashed potato, carve a deep crater then fill with gravy. The fun is in waiting to see how long it takes to break its banks. I know. It’s pathetic compared with Experimental Food Society artists who can sculpt three-piece suites out of chocolate. Society members can list clients as diverse as 10 Downing Street and the magician David Blaine. Now, an exhibition at the Truman Gallery in London in October aims to make the art of food accessible to everyone. Is there a point to this? I think so. Food experimentation is better viewed in the competitive environment of a show, where the public decide on its validity, than on a hyped-up restaurant menu. It is also a useful tool for sparking an interest in cookery. In other words, if Delia can’t get you going, maybe a jelly monger or bread sculptor will. Teenagers have a mental blockI am glad I’m not the only parent who feels like a drug pusher, following my children around the beach with a bottle of high factor sunscreen. A survey says 16-24-year-olds avoid sunscreen while on holiday, believing that a tan is cool (paradoxically). Rejecting good science-based advice follows a pattern. Teenagers believe the body takes care of itself. They hate taking painkillers or indeed anything from the medicine cabinet, and doctors tell me it is hard to persuade young diabetics and epileptics to take potentially life-saving prescription drugs. But, when it comes to partying and glugging alcopops – or worse, do they worry about the dangers? Not always, I fear. 'The Shrimp’ had taste... A face of the Sixties, 'The Shrimp, aka Jean Shrimpton is back in style as the muse for designer Christopher Bailey’s next Burberry Prorsum collection and the subject of a new BBC film. This retrospective fever prompts a comparison with the enduring supermodel Kate Moss. How do they compare? Well, if they were handbags, I’d say Shrimpton was Bond Street while Moss is a high-street replica. Inside the Shrimp’s was a one-way ticket out of the beauty game, and into the aspic of anonymous life. For knowing the real meaning of the first rule of fashion – to be a step ahead – she is the greater icon. ?SIR – The true pioneer of the raincoat was not Charles Macintosh (report, January 13) but Thomas Burberry, the Basingstoke draper. Rubberised “Macs” were sticky, smelly, easily punctured garments, which were apt to melt in hot weather and to stiffen in cold. They were crude compared to Burberry’s silky gabardine. ?The spokesman added: "Under the leadership of Alistair Darling and Peter Mandelson, we now have a stronger team in place with Paul Myners at the Treasury and Baroness Vadera at Berr (the Department for Business and Enterprise), all of whom have considerable experience of the financial world and the business world." The appointment of Mr Davies comes after months of uncertainty over the Government's £37 billion bail-out of the banks. It is likely to need a second recapitalisation in the coming weeks in order to get banks lending again. Mr Davies, who was awarded a CBE in 2002 for services to the financial sector, was one of the architects of the original banking bail-out in the autumn and his abilities are set to be called on again. News of his appointment comes as a multi-billion pound scheme to unblock bank lending to small- and medium-sized businesses is announced. The Telegraph understands that Mr Davies was personally courted by the Prime Minister and his appointment will be seen as another example of Mr Brown moving to strengthen the team under Lord Mandelson at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Baroness Vadera, one of Mr Brown's closest advisers, is already a key part of the department and has a seat at the top table in Downing Street. Mr Davies is already a member of the Business Council for Britain, which was set up as an economic advisory body by Mr Brown in 2007. It is understood that Mr Brown initially hoped he would take the job of chairman at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is now majority-owned by the Government. But Mr Davies, who already serves as head of the Prime Minister's Business Council for Britain, preferred the wider role in Government despite it meaning he will have to relinquish all his current business interests. He has told friends that he is making the move because he sees at as his "public service". Mr Davies has been a director of Standard Chartered since 1997 and has also held the position of chief executive. He has been chairman since 2006 and his departure will stun the City. Standard Chartered was less affected by the credit crunch due to its exposure to developing markets. Mr Davies will bring a welter of banking know-how to the Government including experience in China and India. The precise split of responsibilities has still to be thrashed out, but Mr Davies will be given a big role as part of the Business Department team. Mr Davies will work with Paul Myners, who was ennobled and made City Minister in October, and Gareth Thomas, the current Trade Minister. Lord Myners has helped with a number of ideas in that role but it is thought Mr Davies will be more effective. Lord Jones, one of Mr Brown's other unexpected "Goat" (Government of all the talents) appointees, stood down as overseas Trade Minister in the Cabinet reshuffle last October. His appointment proved controversial as he was not a Labour Party member and expressed concerns about plans to tax "non-domiciled" foreigners in Britain. John Peace, the chairman of Burberry, has emerged as the favourite to succeed Mr Davies at Standard Chartered. ?The Queen was 41st – one place higher than her 2009 ranking thanks to her address to the United Nations, which raised her profile in the US. Also on the list are Tina Brown (ranked 34th), British-born founder of The Daily Beast, Anna Wintour (ranked 56th) the legendary British head of American Vogue, and Julia Gillard (ranked 58th), who was born in Wales and recently became prime minister of Australia. Three women who head British companies are included: Cynthia Carroll, the American chief executive of mining company Anglo American, at number 14; Marjorie Scardino, who was born in the US, has taken British citizenship and is chief executive of Pearson PLC, at 63; and Angela Ahrendts, the American who is chief executive of Burberry, at 97. Second on the list is Irene Rosenfeld, the chief executive of Kraft Foods and a figure familiar on this side of the Atlantic after Kraft's controversial takeover of Cadbury, which resulted in the loss of 400 jobs. Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host and medial mogul, was third, followed by Angela Merkel, who has topped the list for the past four years. Hillary Clinton was fifth, praised for bringing "star power" to the State Department, although Forbes noted that she has so far failed in the "impossible dream" of brokering Middle East peace. Showbusiness figures are encroaching on the list traditionally occupied by business leaders. Lady Gaga, the attention-grabbing singer, was in seventh place behind PepsiCo chief executive Indra Nooyi and one place ahead of Australian banking chief Gail Kelly. Beyoncé Knowles, the pop singer, was ninth, while the top 10 was rounded out by Ellen DeGeneres, the talk show host and former American Idol judge. Other glamorous entrants in the top 100 include Angelia Jolie (21) and Heidi Klum (39). Sarah Palin is a new entry this year in 16th place. Moira Forbes, publisher of the rankings, said: "The women in our list, through their respective realms of power and influence, are shaping many of the agenda-setting conversations of our day, and have become dynamic catalysts for driving meaningful change across the world. They have built companies and brands, sometimes by non-traditional means, and they have broken through gender barriers in areas of commerce, politics, sports and media and cultural zeitgeist, thereby affecting the lives of millions, sometimes billions, of people."By coincidence, Barack Obama addressed a summit of female business leaders in Washington on Tuesday night. He told the audience: "I'm just thrilled to be here with some of the most brilliant, accomplished, influential women in this country. As Michelle Obama's husband, I feel very much at home."The Forbes list:1. Michelle Obama - First Lady, US 2. Irene Rosenfeld - CEO, Kraft Foods, US 3. Oprah Winfrey - Talk show host and media mogul, US 4. Angela Merkel - Chancellor, Germany 5. Hillary Clinton - Secretary of State, US 6. Indra Nooyi - CEO, PepsiCo, US 7. Lady Gaga - Singer and entertainer, US 8. Gail Kelly - CEO, Westpac, Australia 9. Beyoncé Knowles - Singer and fashion designer, US 10. Ellen DeGeneres - Talk show host, US ?The complex structures involved in investment holdings mean the ultimate beneficiaries of a company stake are not always clear. But with China’s SAFE in second place, the next biggest sovereign wealth investors in the FTSE 100 are thought by analysts to be the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, with a 0.5pc holding, and the Kuwait Investment Office, with 0.4pc. In addition to such investments, the sovereign wealth funds will almost certainly have further FTSE 100 holdings through third parties. The data underlines how sovereign wealth funds have becoming increasingly active in the UK stock market. Britain is now the leading destination for their investments in the European Union, according to industry body TheCityUK. Such funds have been growing in recent years on the back of higher oil prices. The UK Government is actively courting sovereign wealth funds, with the Chancellor earlier this year flying to China to promote investment in British infrastructure projects. But commentators have mixed views. One positive cited is that sovereign wealth funds tend to behave like private pension funds, holding stakes for the long term. However, the International Monetary Fund found that: “Some observers worry that SWF [sovereign wealth fund] investments may be motivated, in certain cases, by political objectives.”Their influence has been thrown into focus by Qatar, which has put the biggest mining deal ever in jeopardy. The Qataris have built up a stake ofmore than 10pc in FTSE 100 miner Xstrata and are demanding commodity giant Glencore pays more to merge. ?Milan Our Milan homepage features holiday ideas and travel advice including expert hotel reviews and all our latest Milan articles. ?Falconer may once have shared a flat with that grand old actor-manager Tony Blair, but he hasn’t, alas, been conspicuously successful presiding over unusual edifices overlooking the Thames. He was once, of course, “the minister for the Millennium Dome”. Abbott’s moveOusted from her perch on This Week, Diane Abbott has to take what media work she can get these days. The Labour MP has lately banked a cheque for £500 for appearing on a television programme called Pointless. Prezza’s resolutionLord Prescott has seldom been a man to pull his punches — as Craig Evans, who was in receipt of a right hook from him during the 2001 general election, would doubtless attest. On a social networking website, where Lord Prescott daily lambasts his political opponents, he has lately taken to quoting Benjamin Franklin’s words: “Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” Hopefully, this will herald a long period of silence from the man who once described me as “------- Bananaman” on account of a pale summer suit he spotted me wearing. ?In what is fast becoming “The Year of Britain”, it seems fitting that Savile Row should be celebrated and shown off to the world and that we can finally rival the men’s fashion weeks of New York, Milan and Paris. Big names such as Burberry, Ralph Lauren and Dunhill will be represented alongside exciting, up-and-coming houses such as A Sauvage, Christopher Kane and Spencer Hart. One might think in the much-touted “Age of Austerity” that high fashion would suffer, but in fact there seems to be an implementation of the adage “Buy cheap, buy twice”: as consumers economise, it is actually the frivolous end of the market that suffers; impulse buys and petty purchases. More thought is put into where to spend your money and the longevity of apparel. And as anyone next weekend will tell you, step out in a well-loved cheap suit and you look like a tramp; but in fine togs worn to tatters you look like aristocracy. ?* The Duke of York invited the Chinese ambassador to Buckingham Palace last week for private talks. A spokesman refused yesterday to disclose details of Prince Andrew's meeting with Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador, but its timing will raise speculation over concern over the death. Only last May, the Duke met Bo Xilai in China in his capacity as Britain's special trade envoy. * dramatic details emerged of blind dissident Chen Guangcheng's daring escape from house arrest to the US embassy in Beijing. Hu Jia, a friend of Mr Chen, told the Sunday telegraph how the dissident managed to evade capture in a police chase. Hours later, Mr Hu was himself detained by Chinese authorities * China and the US are embroiled in a growing diplomatic row ahead of a visit this week by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Chinese government are putting pressure on Mrs Clinton to release Mr Chen from US protection but such a move would be severely criticised in Washington. China's ruling elite has been shaken by both Mr Chen's escape and the investigations into Mr Bo and his wife, who are both accused of being at the centre of a network of multi million pound corruption. ?Alan Halsall, chairman of Silver Cross, said: “We are hoping to achieve a major presence in Asia and by opening this stand alone store we see it is as a way of showing our brand identity off to local consumers.”?“I support David Cameron,” he told reporters. “But I think the way Hester was effectively bullied out of his bonus was very negative indeed for the message it sends to the business community at large. A sad and a bad day for this country in my view.”Lord Wolfson, chief executive of retailer Next, warned that the Government’s failure to support Mr Hester’s right to a bonus had undermined confidence in the business community. He told The Sunday Telegraph: “Mr Hester was hung out to dry; this did much to undermine business’s confidence in Mr Cameron’s Government and, more importantly, nothing to address the real issue of excessive risk-taking in the banking sector.”Although the vast majority of the members of the advisory group are from the corporate rather than banking world, concerns are thought to be widespread. Mr Cameron is likely to come under pressure to articulate a coherent strategy on executive pay rather than allow policy to be reactive to events. ?He climbed to the top of the mountain on a Union-Jack branded cable car before opening the even, which showcased the "best of British" culture and business with James Bond memorabilia, a fashion tent featuring Stella McCartney and Burberry and prestige cars including Bentleys and Aston Martins. His visit has attracted huge attention in Brazil in a boost to the tourism campaign, called GREAT, which hopes to attract millions of extra tourists from him to “get the party started as only he can”. He managed to poke fun at Beckham – a friend of the Prince and his older brother – saying "That was David Beckham. Apparently he used to play football." He then added: “Thank you for a stunning Anglo-Brazilian welcome to your spellbinding city – I've got to get this right – this 'cidade maravilhosa'. "Over the years, I've seen and heard so much about this extraordinary place – in fact, ever since my father told me about a certain dance he once had with a beautiful girl called Pinah. It just seems to have stuck in his mind for some reason." The joke was a reference to Prince Charles dancing the samba in Rio in 1978 with Pinah de Beija-Flora, whom he later described as a "rather dramatically semi-naked lady". The Prince also poked fun at Prince William – with whom he has been exchanging text messages throughout the tour. He said: "Everything about Rio makes you want to dance. I'm just so thankful that my brother isn't here because he might actually do it – and that would not be cool." In a relaxed performance, he highlighted the "flourishing partnership with Brazil", one of the world's most dynamic economies, especially in sport. He is due to play beach volleyball on the sand in Rio later and said: "I can't wait for beach volleyball tomorrow morning. It's my kind of game. “I'm going to help coach Brazilians to play rugby. One plea to all Brazilians, though: please, please – if we show you how to play rugby – don't do what you've done with football, and leave us wishing we hadn't." The Prince, accompanied by Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, started his evening with a trip by cable car to Morro da Urca, a plateau on Sugarloaf Mountain where the exhibition stands showcasing the “best of British culture and business” across the technology, retail and sports sectors was hosted. More than 700 Brazilian “investors”, “artists” and “cultural leaders” attended the event. When shown the magnificent view of Rio from the top of Sugarloaf Mountain by the mayor, who pointed out all the beaches across the city, he exclaimed “Wow. You’re not short of beaches here, that’s for sure.” The £25 million GREAT campaign, is a drive to capitalise on the London Olympics and this year, aims to attract an extra 4.6 million visitors and an estimated £2.3 billion visitor spend to the UK over the next four years. Rio is one of 14 key cities have been identified for Britain’s biggest ever tourism campaign, including Mumbai, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai. Prince Harry met Chris Holmes, Britain’s most successful Paralympic swimmer, the winner of 15 medals and the director of Paralympic Integration for London 2012. In the “sport” tent, Mr Holmes showed the Prince some of the London 2012 gold medals that have already been struck for this summer’s games. Prince Harry pointed to one of the medals and said: “That one will be around Usain Bolt’s neck. Actually, it could be round my neck as I beat him the other day.” The FA Cup was also on display, although the Prince could hardly quite believe it was the genuine article. “Is that the real one?” he asked. “No, I don’t want to lift it up, I’ll just touch it,” he said, before he was eventually persuaded to brandish the trophy . Guests at the event dined on a special menu devised by British and Brazilian chefs, Marcus Wareing and Roberta Sudbrack which included traditional British roast beef and Yorkshire pudding canapés. Prince Harry also toured a presentation of James Bond memorabilia which included Odd Job’s bowler hat and the cable car that featured in the scene of a showdown between the Bond villain Jaws and Roger Moore’s Bond in the 1979 Moonraker. After his speech, the Prince listened to a live music show featuring a performance by the Brazilian singer Maria Gadu. The Rio event is the final stage of a tour which has become an unexpected triumph and makes the Prince an international star performer for the Royal Family. The Prince has also sent a thank-you note to the Governor-General of Jamaica following his three-day tour of the Caribbean island – where his hug with the country's prime minister had ended tensions over her intention to end Queen's role as the former colony's head of state. He wrote: “Wow! I have totally fallen for Jamaica and its people. The warmth that I received from the moment I set foot on your awesome island has been totally overwhelming. "In passing on your good wishes to The Queen for her, I can’t wait to tell her all about my three-day visit. “I have made lifelong friends – and cool ones at that! Please can I come back and visit … lots?” On Sunday Prince Harry will end his tour of Brazil playing in the Sentebale Polo Cup in Haras Larissa, Campinas, Sao Paulo. Prince Harry set up his charity Sentebale, in 2006 with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, in memory of their late mothers. Sentebale, which means “forget-me-not” in the Sesotho language, supports orphans and vulnerable children in the southern African country. ?While shareholders in Home Retail group count the cost of the Homebase deal, the next generation of private equity spin-offs are being polished up for sale. Reports this week suggested that the fragile rally in global stockmarkets has encouraged private equity to line up a string of flotations including Weetabix, Birds Eye and United Biscuits.The destruction of shareholder value at Homebase is a timely reminder to beware of private equity firms bearing "gifts".?Put together by actor and director Philip Franks, it was staged at the Guildhall in London, marking the bicentenary of the birth of .The Queen, patron of the Royal Theatrical Fund, wore a pastel blue wool dress and coat by Karl Ludwig.She found that at one point during the afternoon, she was not the only Queen in the room: one of the characters in the performance was Queen Victoria, played by Spiro.This was a significant moment, because Dickens is said to have snubbed Queen Victoria after a performance in 1857 - a revelation that provoked laughter from the crowd.Audience members included actors Simon Callow, Prunella Scales and Barbara Windsor, who played the landlady of the Queen Vic pub in EastEnders.After the show, Windsor said she wished she had been performing rather than just watching.She said: "I loved it. I wanted to be up there. I wanted to be Queen Victoria like Samantha Spiro."I thought it was absolutely brilliant. And to perform for an audience of actors is difficult."She added: "Not too long either. It was perfect."Windsor also enjoyed the company she found herself in and said she caught up with old friends.She said: "It was very exciting and I have met lots of people that I haven't been talking to in ages."After the performance, the Queen met people from the Royal Theatrical Fund, including Janie Dee, one of the Fund's directors, who is starring in Noises Off at the Old Vic.The director of the performance, Richard Clifford, said of putting on a show for the Queen: "It's always a great privilege particularly as she's not a huge theatre-goer."It's lovely for us to celebrate his (Dickens) bicentenary with her."While the royal couple travelled to the Guildhall for a theatrical performance, a pantomime of sorts was already happening outside when they arrived.Veteran campaigner Peter Tatchell was joined by about 14 people from Republic, an anti-monarchy group which staged a protest, prompting jeers and boos from well-wishers waiting to greet the Queen.They displayed banners which read Make Monarchy History, Sixty Inglorious Years and What the Dickens?This evening, the royal couple are set to host a reception at Buckingham Palace, where guests will include members of the Dickens family as well as stars such as Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter.Bonham Carter and Fiennes are starring as Miss Havisham and Magwitch in the latest film version of Great Expectations.Also making an appearance at the event this evening will be Rowan Atkinson, who starred as Fagin in the West End production of Oliver!Anexhibition of related items from the Royal Collection and Royal Archives will be displayed.For more information and stories on Charles Dickens see the .?This evening, the royal couple are set to give a reception at Buckingham Palace, where guests will include members of the Dickens family as well as stars such as Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter. Bonham Carter and Fiennes are starring as Miss Havisham and Magwitch in the latest film version of Great Expectations. Also making an appearance at the event this evening will be Rowan Atkinson, who starred as Fagin in the West End production of Oliver!. As part of the reception, a related exhibition of items from the Royal Collection and Royal Archives will be displayed. It is expected that Republic, a pressure group which lobbies and campaigns for the abolition of the monarchy in the UK, will protest outside the Dickens event this afternoon. For more information and stories on Charles Dickens see the .?Sandringham has been one of the favourite private homes of four generations of British monarchs since 1862. "Dear old Sandringham, the place I love better than anywhere in the world" said George V who was the Queen's grandfather.The gift shop is in the Visitor Centre is in the Sandringham Country Park which was opened to the public in 1968 and stretches across 600 acres. The park is open every day and there is no charge for entry. Sandringham has been the private home of four generations of British monarchs since 1862. The house, set in 60 acres of gardens, is at the heart of the 20,000-acre Sandringham Estate. ?The first things to note is that, despite missing estimates in the first quarter by 2pc, sales were still up 11pc to £408m. This followed weakness in Italy and South Korea. The company also made it clear that full-year guidance was being maintained. There are also market signs of a more bullish tone, as "short interest" in luxury goods makers has been falling. Short interest is an indication of how many investors have bet the shares will move lower.Markit said European luxury groups were expanding into new sources of revenue, leading short sellers to cover positions. It said the average short interest in the 27-group strong European luxury goods sector had fallen to 1.2pc, "well below highs of past year". In August 2011, short interest stood at 16pc of the sector's shares.To justify its rating, Burberry must continue to grow. This will be a challenge with strong previous year comparisons ahead. Another issue for UK listed companies is the issue of currencies. Sales growth at European peers such as LVMH and PPR will be flattered by the weak euro as currencies are translated, so headline figures from rivals could look better than Burberry.But Burberry's strategy to open bigger retail stores and invest in new markets is sound. Rising wealth in Asia in particular will see an acceleration of potential new consumers in the region.Management plans to increase its average retail selling space by 12pc to 14pc in the current year and focus on its higher end goods. It also bought back its franchises in China and is upgrading these stores – or closing the smaller ones. In the long run, China is the key. For example, although sales in Europe were up 10pc, a lot of these sales were to travellers from Asia. Should the Chinese economy implode, this would be a disaster for most luxury goods companies. However, the amount of new floor space opening in China should keep sales rising for some time.On balance, Questor thinks the shares, which yield 2.4pc, are still a hold and not a buy, because of near-term headwinds, though the evolving business model bodes well for continued long-term growth.?Mr Potter, from Portsmouth, Hampshire, said: "At first I thought it might be quite a good thing to have the same name. "But now it is like someone has cast a bad spell on me, the reactions I get from people range from making fun to plain aggressive. "Sometimes I wish J K Rowling had never used my name. "People seem to forget that I was before the character. I was nine when the books first came out. "After 12 years of it I couldn't count the amount of times I've heard 'You're a wizard Harry'. It does wear a bit thin after a while."Mr Potter, who works at Lloyds TSB, said many people think he's trying to be difficult when he tells them his name. He said: "I was playing in my Sunday League team once and the referee accused me of giving him a false name, after I made a minor foul on another player. "He asked me for my name to book me, but thought I was just playing up. He asked if I wanted to be sent off. "You can get banned from the league for giving a fake name so it was quite worrying. "I had to get my manager to come over and reassure the angry ref that I wasn't making up my name."?A consortium, which also includes McArthur Glen designer outlets and tax-free shopping group Global Blue, will meet the UK Border Agency to present its plan, which would allow Chinese tourists to submit both Schengen and UK visa applications, plus all required supporting evidence, at the same time. ?But rather than rest on his laurels, the half-Turkish designer, who grew up in Canada, is challenging himself with his latest collection. "I'm exploring things that I haven't done before, going out of my comfort zone," he says. "I'm known for dresses – last season was very much about a dress silhouette – but this season is much broader. I've been feeling oddly nostalgic at the moment about my teenage years in Canada with my twin sister, and kind of thinking about the way that she dressed with her friends, that idea of youth in extreme conditions." While his designs are often bold, with their digital prints and sculptural shapes, he is not one to forgo comfort for headline space with his clothes. "When you put on one of our pieces, I want you to feel comfortable in it, empowered almost," he explains. "It's not really about owning the skirt of the season. I've never thought of myself in terms of whether I'm plain or wacky. I do what I do. In fashion, you can make an awful mistake of mixing up the importance of proportion and how someone is actually going to function in the garment. That's an important element of what I do, and I think about that a lot. It's good to understand your customer." Emily Zak, an executive fashion editor at Vogue, believes the secret to Erdem's success is exactly that: knowing what women want. "Erdem operates with the knowledge that most women, regardless of age or background, want to look beautiful and feminine," she says. "While many designers go for shock tactics, the intelligence of Erdem's work is in his ability to make lace, rich colour and chiffon irresistible to women who would normally shy away. His clothes make you wonder how you ever got by without pretty pop florals or periwinkle cut-out lace." Emma Elwick, the magazine's market editor, is also a fan, and chose Erdem to dress her on her wedding day. "Erdem's pretty concoctions are somehow not sickly sweet, and his laser-sharp eye for colour has led to modern but ever-feminine prints that are gaining a cult fashion and political following," she says. "I've enjoyed watching the progress of the romantic Erdem fille transform into a lady laden with exquisite details." So who is the Erdem woman: is she political wife or Hollywood starlet? "Well, she's a lot of different women," says the man himself. "Look at who we've dressed most recently – Sarah Brown today, an Olsen twin last week. Our woman is someone who appreciates something that's quite special, and a woman who doesn't wear an outfit in a forced or contrived way. They wear it and look as if they've always owned it." His tip for staying on trend during London Fashion Week and beyond is simple: "My advice to any woman, young or old, is to wear what's natural to you. It's always obvious when someone wears something that isn't natural to them, and it almost looks as if the garment's wearing them. Just be yourself. Yourself is a good look." Erdem, 31, was brought up in Lake St Louis, Montreal, by his Turkish father, a chemical engineer, and his English mother, a housewife. "My mum was a real Anglophile," he says. "She had a huge amount of nostalgia for anything English, and the only English TV we could get was things like Merchant Ivory films, so I had a very romantic vision of what Britain was like." After studying fashion in Canada, he moved to London in 2000, completing an internship at Vivienne Westwood before winning a British Council scholarship to do an MA in fashion at the Royal College of Art. He graduated in 2003 and worked for Diane von Furstenberg in New York. Then in 2005, he won the prestigious Fashion Fringe award (the fashion world's equivalent of The X Factor), showing his first collection in London the same year. During the last London Fashion Week in September, Suzy Menkes, fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune, was heard remarking that Erdem was so good he should be showing in Milan, not London. So will he go the way of other British stars such as John Galliano and the late Alexander McQueen, who favoured showing their collections abroad? "No. I really love London, I love showing here, I studied here and it's where I learned to do what I do. I feel like I belong here." Erdem says he was shocked when he received a phone call in his studio informing him that McQueen had died. "It was awful, so, so sad." Despite buoyant talk last week from McQueen's backers that the label will continue after his death, Erdem believes McQueen is irreplaceable. "The brand is him. I really can't imagine it going forward without him." London Fashion Week highlights By Sonia Juttla THE PARTY: The week’s hottest ticket is for the “Love Ball” hosted by the supermodel Natalia Vodianova, which will raise money for her children’s charity, the Naked Heart Foundation. It will be held at the Roundhouse in Camden, with the artist Dinos Chapman as creative director, Lily Allen performing, and Sienna Miller and Uma Thurman in the audience. £1,500 will bag you a ticket, too. THE HANG-OUT: The Dean Street Townhouse, which brings Babington House’s Somerset cosiness to the centre of London. The fashion set should be found sipping vanilla-vodka-soaked Soho Martinis. THE HIP DESIGNER: The Canadian-born, London-based designer Mark Fast is one to watch. Fast is famous for his sexy knits and controversial shows – last year, his stylist stormed out when he insisted on plus?sized models walking down the catwalk. THE MUST-WEAR TREND: A pair of chunky clogs. Alexa Chung sports a Chanel pair (below) on the cover of this month’s Vogue; for a cheaper version, check out Swedish Hasbeens, available at Topshop. THE FRONT ROW: US Vogue editor Anna Wintour is expected at Burberry, while the uber-chic editor-in-chief of French Vogue, Carine Roitfeld, is visiting London Fashion Week for the first time. Don’t worry if you can’t be there, though – this year, many designers will be streaming their shows live on the web. ?The college proudly boasts that "it is the most concentrated community of artists, designers and communicators to be found anywhere." Undeniably, it has been behind many of the UK’s foremost creative movements – from the Arts and Crafts philosophy, Pop Art and more recently the Young British Artists, of which Tracey Emin and Jake and Dinos Chapman play influential roles. Where it's basedThe college is divided up between the painting department, the sculpture department and the moving image studio. All three buildings are located on Howie Street in Kensington Gore, south west London. Plans are afoot for the departments of fine and applied art to move to a new campus in Battersea. Ease of entryA good first degree in a relevant subject is preferred. First stage of selection is by portfolio and final offers are based on interviews. Vital statisticsThe college offers 21 different courses, including: fashion menswear; curating contemporary art; vehicle design and goldsmithing. The college has over 100 full-time academic staff, the majority of whom continue their own practice in conjunction with their teaching. The RCA's partners include Imperial College London, Tsinghua University, Politecnico di Milano, the Victoria and Albert Museum, British Film Institute, Cambridge University and the Science Museum. Famous AlumniDavid Hockney and Tracey Emin, artists Sir Ridley Scott, director of film Gladiator Quentin Blake, cartoonist, author and illustrator of Roald Dahl's books Ian Dury, musician and singer Christopher Bailey - creative director at Burberry LocationBus: High Steet Kensington is a hub for the bus network in London, as is Gloucester Road, which is a short walk away. For more information, see bus routes on the Transport for London . Train: RCA's nearest tube station is High Street Kensington, which is in Zone 1, on the Circle and District lines. You can travel to all London's main and and stations within 45 minutes Air: and are the nearest to the RCA and can be reached withion one hour by public transport. Coach: serves all of London's major stations Town attractions/ ambienceKensington is in the heart of London and a variety of cultural and social opportunities lie at the feet of RCA students. High Street Kensington is renowned for its shops, ranging from standard high street names to the more exclusive boutiques. Further along from High St Ken is London's famous Harrods department store. Nearby South Kensington is one of the most affluent parts of London with a rather village-like feel. Despite being in the heart of London, the backstreets around South Kensington are quiet and quaint. There is a distinct European atmosphere to the area due to its popularity with foreign students, its Italian coffee shops, terraced restaurants and boutique shops. Parks, sports stadium, museums, theatres and restaurants are in abundance, catering for all tastes. NightlifeOutside of the college, students can enjoy some of London's more swanky nightclubs including nearby Boujis and Public. The Anglesea Arms is a popular pub for the young crowd in South Kensington, with beautiful hanging baskets decorating the front patio beer garden and a bar that serves prawns as well as beer by the pint. The West End is within walking distance and all other parts of London a short tube ride away. The city of London is littered with bars, pubs, restaurants and clubs which cater to a very diverse range of tastes and budgets. Weekly London listing magazines advertise hundreds of nearby evening activities, including theatre performances, live music acts and comedy shows. Facilities and financesAccommodation The college doesn't provide accommodation but it does provide assistance to students via its Most RCA students live in private rented acccommodation but there are other options such as hostels, student residences or lodging with a host family. Local living costsLondon living isn't cheap, particularly in the Kensington area, and average private rents locally are upwards of £110 per week. Students should expect to pay livig costs pf around £220 a week over a 36-week academic year. Education facilitiesA drawing studio, an innovation technology centre, a moving image studio, photography facilities and equipment, and a digital media studio and training room Student unionStudents have the college's vibrant, experimental ArtBar where they can enjoy regular late nights, cocktail promotions and various parties and events throughout the year, with the grande finale being the Convocation Ball. A state-of-the-art projection system provides a good backdrop for dancing the night away. Sporting facilitiesStudents and staff at the Royal College of Art Students and Staff at the RCA are entitled to join the Ethos Sports facilities at Imperial College London, which is located on Exhibition Road and the surrounding campus. Facilities include swimming pool, gym, squash courts Other Campus facilities A college shop, a drawing studio, bar and cafe. Students are also entitled to use the facilities at Contact information Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU Tel: +44 (0)20 7590 4444 • To update any of the information in this profile, please email uniguides@telegraph.co.uk?The future king has, however, taken the precaution of asking McVitie's to bake an alternative cake, made of chocolate and broken Rich Tea biscuits. "When Prince William was a young boy he would have it for tea," says Paul Courtney, McVitie's head cake chef. Queens unitedThe Queen has a surprising viewing habit. At a party held by her cousin Lady Elizabeth Anson, she was overheard telling Paul O'Grady, the television comic, that she was a fan of his cross-dressing alter ego Lily Savage.Toff at the topAs a trio of Society models and girls-about-town, Poppy, Chloe and Cara Delevigne have been hailed as representatives of a new generation of fashionable "toffs". Do not, though, mention the term to Poppy, 26. "That's an offensive word," the model and aspiring actress declares at a catwalk show by the designer Vanessa G. "Toff isn't a positive thing to say about someone. I'm not a toff. What does that even mean?"They are the daughters of the property developer Charles Delevigne and his wife, Pandora, a Seventies socialite. ?Royal wedding The latest news on the Royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton which took place on Friday April 29th, 2011. ?DAVID WATT, SENIOR CURRENCY STRATEGIST, RBC CAPITAL MARKETSIt's no longer Geithner out there indicating the risks of a US default. The credit rating agencies are also doing the same, saying the debt situation in the United States should be under control. The whole issue of the deficit in the United States is the key focus and this just indicates the need for a longer-term solution in place. This should put the dollar under further pressure. Take note that the dollar is already at or near record lows against the major currencies.JOHN HIGGINS, CAPITAL ECONOMICSThe idea that the US public finances are on an unsustainable trajectory is hardly new news. Indeed, we warned that the US might be downgraded, or at least put on negative watch, as far back as nearly two years ago. Of course, if Congress cannot agree on how to move forward, investors may eventually start to get more nervous. That being said, investors might come to see S&P’s decision in a positive light if it prompts Congress to focus on delivering a credible deficit reduction plan. After all, the rating agency’s decision to put the UK’s AAA-rating on negative outlook in May 2009 fuelled a debate on the need for massive fiscal tightening, and the tough decisions taken by the new coalition government were eventually rewarded by S&P with the UK’s outlook being revised back up to stable in October last year.PHIL FLYNN, ANALYST, PFGBEST RESEARCHThis looks bearish for crude. The reason is that if the US government doesn't come to a budget agreement and get their spending under control then we will be forced to raise interest rates to monetize our debt. Higher interest rates would slow the economy and demand for oil and would probably put pressure on the oil price. Higher interest rates could also mean a higher dollar – a stronger dollar can mean lower oil prices. Before we jump the gun and get too excited, though, it is just an outlook. It comes at a good time. It seems that the budget talks have broken down, but hopefully this will be enough to get the politicians to come to an agreement and get our debt under control.JOHN KILDUFF, PARTNER, AGAIN CAPITAL The US debt situation got a reality check this morning from the move by S&P. Only precious metals will be seen as attractive in the aftermath of the outlook downgrade. The overall economic outlook becomes more opaque with this; equities and energies will be very much under pressure now. PAUL HARRIS, HEAD OF NATURAL RESOURCES RISK MANAGEMENT, BANK OF IRELANDThe oil market has been focused on demand destruction over the past week rather than the geopolitical risks in North Africa and the Middle East and this should go some way to cementing that view. This might cap the upside in oil prices for the moment as it's difficult to see prices pushing higher with traders refocusing on the problems in the world's largest economy. While S&P's move isn't entirely unexpected, and might well be largely priced in for the dollar, it shifts the focus and the sentiment in the market again.TOM PORCELLI, US ECONOMIST, RBC CAPITAL MARKETSWhat the agencies want to see is real steps taken to improve the situation. in the absence of that a downgrade is not far. What then Obama administration has done in cutting the 2012 budget recently is to show that he is willing to engage. The ratings agencies have to take that as a positive, but they want to see more. Our call is for the 10-year yield to go to 4pc by the end of the year on inflation and growth alone. That does not even account for issues surrounding the debt. Today may be the first day that the bond market starts to price in these budget issues.JON NAJARIAN, FOUNDER, OPTIONMONSTER.COMTraders are surprised by it. The market doubled its losses. This was unexpected. It is deserved? Probably. It shows that that many are thinking that the Republicans and the President are not addressing the major problem, which is the spending. Obviously, you have to get your spending in line. I suspect that this is what the rest of the world is worried about. In the options market, we will see a pretty rapid increase in volatility, in VIX, in S&P options, for definitely more than just a few minutes. It will be more like 24 hours. I suspect almost a 10pc jump in VIX instantly and even 20pc by today or tomorrow.PETER BUCHANAN, COMMODITIES ANALYST, SENIOR ECONOMIST, CIBCI don't think this is the end of the world in some sense because they didn't downgrade the actural ratings, but just the outlook. To some degree this is just the ratings agencies catching up with the reality where it has been obvious that the US has problems both on the deficit side and debt to GDP ratio, so S&P has decided to reflect that in their outlook.JOHN BRADY, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, MF GLOBALIt's not an issue that is going to affect us today or tomorrow but the fact of the matter is, is room going to be made or not to get the fiscal house at least in some order during debt ceiling negotiations? This is tape bomb. It doesn't come as a complete surprise to the markets however seeing it in black and white print it is going to shake the market up for sure. You see the dollar down a bit, gold getting bid...and a break of 1298 on the S&P could send it to 1285 in the course of the week.HUGH JOHNSON, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, HUGH JOHNSON ADVISORS The simple thing to say is this is a big surprise. We've all known that credit conditions in the US are borderline at best. The numbers compare with some of the more troubled countries in Europe – if you look at deficit as a percentage of GDP or debt as a percentage of GDP. So we know that they are borderline but we didn't expect S&P would take this action, at least I didn't. It is going to put a lot of pressure on the Obama administration to move faster at reducing the deficits, or cutting spending and possibly increasing taxes. So it will put pressure on the Republicans as well. There will be pressure on Washington. It is not good news and it is not good news because to move towards austerity when the US economy is not on sound footing is not a good idea. This comes incidentally right after the IMF has downgraded its view of the global economy. So it is likely to stir those worries or concerns about global growth. Not good news. They have good reason to be skeptical or worried. So this is going to put pressure on policy makers – democrats and republicans alike – to get their act together. And I'm not sure the timing of getting their act together is that good. And again, It is that idea of austerity before the economy is on sound footing.LOU BRIEN, MARKET STRATEGIST, DRW TRADING The rating is the same, but the headline has enough of a shock value. The initial reaction is that this is negative for dollar assets across the board.CHRIS DILLMAN, ANALYST, TRADITION ENERGYIn oil markets we haven't seen much reaction to S&P. This obviously could lead to a weakening of the dollar. That could push oil prices higher.KATHY LIEN, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, GFTThis is just another reason why investors don't want to own dollars at this point because not only do we have a very sluggish Federal Reserve and lackluster growth, but one of the major ratings agencies have put the US on negative watch.Even though I don't think an actual downgrade would occur, in this very sensitive or vulnerable time for the dollar, it's enough to spook investors from holding or buying dollars.?Traders also turned their attention to other takeover possibilities, with one noting renewed bid talk around J Sainsbury, which rose 5.4 to 337½p. Both Sage and Sainsbury followed the general markets higher. Despite treading water during the morning, investors later pushed the FTSE 100 up 37.84 to end the day at 5,819.92. The rise came ahead of the conclusion of the US Federal Reserve meeting. Traders seeking further stimulus measures had their wishes granted after the market close, with the central bank announcing another round of bond purchases. The FTSE 250 gained 35.48 points to 11,846.53. BAE Systems was a drag on the blue-chip index with a drop of 26½ to 337.1p as investors weighed up the company’s potential merger with EADS. There had been market rumours around BAE for a number of days before the group confirmed the details of the possible tie-up on Wednesday. Investors were also looking ahead to tomorrow’s “put up or shut up” deadline for buy-out group Carlyle, which has approached defence equipment-maker Chemring about a takeover. Shares in the mid-cap company slipped 2.4 to 327½p, with an extension to the bid deadline widely expected. Back on the FTSE 100, retailer Next dropped 259p to £33.20 as the group cautioned that sales in August and early September had been “disappointing”. That had a knock-on effect on Marks & Spencer, which crept down 5 to 369.7p, and Debenhams, which slid 1¾ to 98¼p. Those traders hoping to see a bounce in Burberry shares were left waiting as the upmarket goods group once again finished the day in the red, down 22p at £10.50. The shares have now lost almost 24pc since the company issued a profit warning on Tuesday. However, advertising group WPP was among the blue-chip risers, up 10½ at 848p on the back of an upgrade to “hold” from “underperform” by Jefferies. The highly anticipated launch of the iPhone 5 may have helped FTSE 100 Apple supplier ARM Holdings move 7 higher to 562p, but mid-cap Imagination Technologies, which also makes parts for the US giant, shed 44 to 566p. The shares fell despite the company reporting strong growth in shipments since May, with Numis cutting its recommendation on the group to “hold” from “buy”, due to the recent strong stock performance. Elsewhere on the FTSE 250, homebuilder Barratt Developments staged a partial recovery and rose 9.2 to 168p after sliding 6.4pc on Wednesday following the release of full-year results, which disappointed some investors because the group said it would not pay a dividend until next year. Premier Farnell was also on the rise after the electronics supplier revealed it had returned to growth last month. “We envisage the cyclical pick-up coming through in due course and note that year-on-year revenue growth returned at a group level in August at the nominal rate of 0.4pc,” Shore Capital said. Investors pushed the shares up 18.2p – or10.6pc – to 190p. Broker Citigroup was analysing the impact of political developments in Egypt on gold miner Centamin and decided to put the group back on an equal footing with other yellow metal diggers. “With the elections completed and enough time having passed to assess the attitude of the new authorities, we are now re-instating [Centamin] to the same valuation parameters as most of our other UK-listed gold stocks,” analyst Jon Bergtheil wrote. He boosted his recommendation on the group to “buy” from “neutral” and the shares put on 1.3 to 83½p. Another climber was Essar Energy, which gained 6.6 to 114.7p on the resolution of Indian tax issues at its subsidiary Essar Oil. The company will repay sales tax owed to the Gujarat state government, but does not have to pay about $327m (£202m) of interest which had also been demanded. Among the small-caps, traders waiting for confirmation of a deal for JJB Sports were left disappointed. The shares climbed as high as 0.8p, but settled 0.105 higher at 0.45p after the company said it was holding talks with a number of interested parties which have made offers to buy it. The sportswear retailer again warned, however, that “it is unlikely that any value will be attributable to the ordinary shares”. Lonrho ticked up 0.17 to 10p following news that entrepreneur David Lenigas had stepped down as the company’s chairman. ?Williams’s body may have suffered, but her spirit remained strong, and she will renew her war on tennis today against Tsvetana Pironkova. After the forced inactivity of the past year, she is putting herself through a grass-court warm-up tournament for the first time since 1998. Surely the highest-profile female athlete on the planet, Williams’s press conference drew a phalanx of TV cameras to the sleepy surroundings of Eastbourne’s Devonshire Park on Monday. Her entrance was typically regal, as she swept into the venue in a tailored black jacket, white tennis shirt and black leggings that showed off her muscular frame. An assistant carried her Ribena-coloured handbag, made by Burberry, which was large enough to have encompassed a Norfolk terrier. Williams seated herself, turned her best side to the cameras and addressed the gathering with a distant poise more often seen among Hollywood actresses than sportswomen. Even when ranked No 26, she is still the No 1 diva of the tennis world. A native of LA, she clearly sees herself as part of the wider world of entertainment, as her sidelines in acting and script-writing might suggest. Her critics will tell you that her commitment to tennis has waxed and waned from year to year. But Williams herself insisted yesterday that her long lay-off — stretching back to her defeat of Vera Zvonareva in last summer’s final — had whetted her appetite for the game. “This is totally different from any other comeback,” Williams said, “because there was a chance I could never have been out there again. It gives you a different perspective.” Williams’s annus horibilis began with the serious foot injury she suffered four days after that Wimbledon final, in a bar-cum-restaurant in Hamburg. In an unpleasant rewriting of the Cinderella story, she stepped on broken glass as she made her way towards the exit. “We were leaving and I was walking and I felt something,” she said. “My coach took his phone, he looked down and there was this massive puddle of blood. "I ended up fainting because I lost so much blood, and I had to have stitches in both feet — on top of one and on the bottom of the other.” Asked if she had been wearing sandals, she replied: “Yeah, and I started to wear boots. You ever see that movie Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow? "I was THIS close to wearing boots, and I got a pedicure and I thought, ‘Man, I don’t want to mess up my toes’. Go figure.” Williams needed two bouts of surgery to fix the damage. “I guess it just sliced through the ligament,” she said, “because my toe was hanging low.” But the most serious consequence may have been the lengthy immobility which surely contributed to the blood clots she suffered in March. “I was in a cast for 20 weeks,” Williams said, “and I may have been a little depressed at some moments. There were a few days I didn’t get out of bed. "So much stuff happened to me and I just couldn’t understand why, or what I had done to deserve this. But I just think it was a series of unfortunate events. "As the Bible says, there are unforeseen occurrences and unforeseen things that can take place.” After such a year, it would hardly be surprising if Williams found herself questioning her faith. In the meantime, though, the sport has hardly moved on. In contrast to the men’s tour, there is a lack of convincing contenders at the top of women’s tennis. Don’t be surprised if, by the end of Wimbledon, Williams has regained her status as the reigning monarch of the game. ?e width="" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> High Low Stock Sector Price ± Yld P/E 6471/2 4743/4 Babcock Intlm 5931/2 -81/2 1.9 18.0 515 402 BAE Systems 425 -11/2 3.0 13.8 5161/2 3821/4 Balfour Beattym 3821/4 -91/4 2.9 11.4 135 40 Baltic Oil T 431/2 -1 - - 10381/2 358 Bank of Ireland 3591/2 -293/8 13.0 3.3 4411/2 354 Bankers Invm 354 -12 2.8 N/A 7381/2 2601/2 2601/2 -91/4 12.6 4.0 967 39 Barratt Devel 661/4 -1 54.5 0.6 264 94 BBA Aviationm 991/4 -1/4 7.6 6.5 184 96 Beazley 1011/2 -53/4 5.6 3.8 1320 3773/4 m 4441/2 -141/4 9.8 3.1 339 2251/4 Benfieldm 2281/2 +31/4 5.8 13.3 1787 613 Berkeley Utsm 617 -431/2 - 5.8 1394 712 1089 -45 0.8 17.9 £22 £113/4 BHP Billiton £163/4 -7/8 1.6 N/A 563 2471/4 Big Yellow Gpm 2573/4 -51/4 3.6 23.5 1151/2 90 Biotech Growth Tst 1033/4 -1/4 - N/A 455 230 2971/2 -271/2 0.9 N/A 1021/2 761/2 Black Arrow 94 -1 2.1 - 103/4 10 BlackRock Abs St EU 101/4 -1/8 - N/A 1100 1003 BlackRock Abs St ST 1040 -3 - N/A 103/4 10 BlackRock Abs St US 101/4 - - N/A 193 1493/4 BlackRock Commod 1493/4 -31/4 3.2 N/A 1751/2 1481/4 BlackRock Gtr Euro 1481/4 -23/4 1.4 N/A 645 520 BlackRock Latin 520 -16 0.9 N/A 771/2 623/4 BlackRock New En 623/4 -3 - N/A 371 2961/2 BlackRock Small 2961/2 -11 1.5 N/A 7911/2 610 BlackRock Wld M 610 -25 0.4 N/A 2361/2 92 BlackRock Wld M Wt 92 -151/4 - N/A 187 118 Bloomsbury 1511/2 -21/2 2.6 9.6 3091/4 155 m 1791/4 +1/2 4.5 8.8 272 73 Boot, H 73 -41/2 6.5 3.2 811 292 Bovis Homesm 3243/4 -41/4 10.6 4.5 6493/4 496 BP 5241/4 -143/4 4.5 13.7 738 385 400 +10 5.4 13.0 453 2061/2 Br Polythene 210 -83/4 10.1 6.7 4351/2 34 Bradford & Bingm 483/4 -41/4 39.6 1.3 546 3751/4 Braemar Shipping 5301/2 +221/2 4.5 10.4 3451/4 167 Brammer 221 -4 3.2 10.7 1521/2 1001/2 Braveheart Inv 1001/2 -16 - - 230 98 Brewin Dolphin 102 -31/4 6.7 7.1 53 25 Brightside 301/2 -2 - - 4451/4 197 2103/4 +31/2 2.4 5.7 2049 1557 Brit Am Tobacco 1700 -6 3.9 15.1 149 1043/4 Brit Assetsm 1043/4 -2 5.4 N/A 3661/2 1493/4 Brit Insurancem 1493/4 -63/4 9.6 3.6 1367 6371/2 Brit Land 6371/2 -32 5.2 12.6 4951/2 393 British Empirem 393 -9 1.3 N/A 785 4173/4 British Energy 7151/2 +91/2 4.0 23.9 195 148 British Portfolio 148 -3 2.5 N/A 359 224 Britvicm 224 -9 4.9 10.8 4161/4 2071/2 Brixtonm 2071/2 -71/2 6.3 12.5 3121/2 2361/2 BrooksMacdonald 2361/2 -31/2 0.9 26.4 3243/4 1731/4 Brown, Nm 193 +7 4.9 9.0 4941/2 397 Brunner 397 -8 2.6 N/A 713 4191/2 4191/2 -13 3.7 18.2 520 2401/2 BSS Gpm 250 -13/4 3.0 7.6 335 1921/4 BT Group 1921/4 -93/4 7.8 8.1 681/2 36 Bulgarian Prop Dv 36* -1/2 - - 757 6101/2 645 +11/2 2.9 14.3 6781/2 3813/4 Burberry Groupm 3991/2 +21/2 3.0 12.6 4861/2 231 Business Post 290 -1/2 5.9 16.1?Art critic Matthew Collings said the challenges the six will face have only just begun.''Opportunities like this do not arise every day and in most people's lives they never arise," he said. "These artists have got to come up with something that's got to be impressive so there's a great deal of pressure that Saatchi is putting on them.'' Saatchi will eventually choose one of the artists to exhibit their work at Newspeak: British Art Now, his exhibition at The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. The winning artist will also enjoy the free use of a studio for three years. The four-part series is part of The Modern Beauty Season on BBC2 and BBC4 looking at beauty in modern art. The six artists are: :: Suki Chan - aged 32, lives in East London. Suki studied Fine Art Textiles at Goldsmiths College and completed an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea School of Art. Born in Hong Kong, her parents moved to Oxford when she was six. Although she studied fine art at college, Suki now concentrates on film, video and photography, often combining them in mixed-media installations. She works from her tiny bedroom in a flat above a shop. :: Matt Clark - aged 25, lives in London. Graduated in 2007 from Central St Martins. Art has always been his passion and was the only subject in which he was interested at school. Since finishing his Fine Art degree he has established himself in London with a studio in Brixton. He has put on a number of shows and also works part-time as an art technician for an exhibitions service. He's interested in the fantastical and a recent installation explores an apocalyptic theme. :: Ben Lowe - aged 33, from West London. Ben is a painter. He has never attended art school, but has been working successfully as a commercial artist for 10 years, carrying out commissions for places such as hotels. Ben is practical about having to earn a living to pay the bills, but wonders whether a lack of formal training has held him back in the art world. He even cancels his honeymoon to take part in the series. :: Saad Qureshi - aged 23, currently studying in London. Saad studied Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University and is currently working towards his MFA in Fine Art Painting from Slade School of Art. He became interested in art because of a inspirational teacher and he wants to become a full-time practising artist. He came to the UK from Pakistan at the age of 10, living first in Bradford then moving to Oxford. He works in mixed media, from installation to sculpture to painting, and explores issues of cultural identity. :: Eugenie Scrase - aged 20, from London. The youngest of the six is currently studying Fine Art Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art where her tutors were encouraging about the series. Born in France, she moved to Britain in the early 1990s with her family and lived in Buckingham. Difficulties with dyslexia meant she spent most evenings in the school art department. Her sculptures and installations are formed largely from found objects. :: Samuel Zealey - aged 23 from Brentwood, Essex. Samuel completed a BA in Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon College of Art last year. He is a sculptor and has established his own studio, working part time as an art technician. He rebelled against art as a youngster - his mother is a printmaker and his father a sculptor - but later made a U-turn. His installations often involve scientific ideas with one based around magnets and vacuum cleaners. ?Full list of winners: :: Best Actress - Freida Pinto :: Best Actor - Mickey Rourke :: Best Music - Kings of Leon :: Best TV Series - Gavin & Stacey :: Best TV Star - Alexa Chung :: ELLE Style Icon- Sienna Miller :: Best Model - Rosie Huntington-Whiteley :: Woman of the Year - Courtney Love :: H&M Style Visionary - Viktor & Rolf :: British Designer -Christopher Kane :: Fashion Future Award - Erdem :: Jewellery Designer- Lara Bohnic :: Outstanding Contribution - Stephen Jones :: New Designer - Peter Pilotto :: Accessory Designer - Rupert Sanderson ?“Yes, they are socially responsible but they are businesses and they work in all industries and sectors,” he said. “They are not confined to 'philanthropy’ products. They make cars, provide energy, healthcare, manufacture goods and deliver services of all descriptions. This includes software development, content management systems, cloud computing. We do not want [Salesforce] to try to legally close off any sector to social enterprises.”He added that a reassurance from Salesforce that it would not try to use the trademark in many sectors “offers us no comfort at all”. “Social enterprise is achieving so much but it is still in its relative infancy. We will not let it be destroyed by people who want to appropriate our name for private profit.”Mr Holbrook also pointed to which said Virgin founder Richard Branson and Burberry boss Angela Ahrendt will be talking about "how they are turning their companies into social enterprises" at a Salesforce event. "We have contacted them separately to see what they say about this description of their businesses. They, like [Salesforce] have strong track records on corporate philanthropy, but I think they will agree with me that this does not make them social enterprises."?Many other FTSE 100 chairmen wear a variety of hats. John Peace, the most extreme example of this, is chairman of no less than three FTSE 100 companies, Standard Chartered, Burberry and Experian, with little external noise about his performance or dedication. Although the Volvo role sounds somewhat foreboding, it is very different from that of a traditional FTSE100 chairman, and only involves a couple of days a month. Given Svanberg's lack of other extra-curricular activities, the pending new post should not interfere with his work at BP. One source even suggested that the Volvo role would be a good way of focusing his mind on matters beyond the oil giant, suggesting that it might be no bad thing for him to spend a little less time obsessing over BP. No matter. What is important is that Svanberg has the backing of the BP board – which he appears to have – and that of investors, which, despite some noises to the contrary this weekend, he should also be able to count upon. Svanberg is far shrewder and far more skilled than many of his detractors give him credit for. Don't expect him to step away from BP any time soon. ?Meanwhile, Burberry may have fallen out of fashion with some investors following its profit warning last month, which saw the shares drop 21pc on a single day, but the luxury retailer was back in vogue with traders.“Burberry rarely looks cheap, but we see 19pc upside to base case and 60pc in our bull scenario,” said analysts at Morgan Stanley, who gave a lift to the company by upgrading their recommendation to “overweight” from “equal-weight”.The shares gained 28p to £10.28, and investors’ thoughts will also be turning to Burberry’s trading update next week. Elsewhere, one dealer heard vague M&A talk around Imperial Tobacco, up 27p to £23.70. A confident update from John Wood Group, the provider of services to the energy industry, saw the company rise 22½ to 833½p.Goldman Sachs put pressure on the real estate stocks. The broker downgraded British Land, which fell to 512p before recovering to finish unchanged at 521½p, and Land Securities, up 4 at 775p after touching a low of 762½p, to “neutral” from “buy”. The bank said it had reduced its growth forecasts for London office rents through to next year.Old Mutual was the heaviest FTSE 100 faller with a decline of 4.7 to 172.4p. Concern over the future of the proposed BAE Systems merger with EADS pulled the British company’s shares down 5.3 to 328.1p. On the FTSE 250, communications group Kcom was the biggest loser and was 5.6 lower at 78¾p after reporting slower growth at its main business.?After Labour’s election rout, she demonstrated her breathtaking flair for reinvention by so convincing the Coalition of her indispensability that she secured a place on the Olympics Board. Meanwhile, despite being an acolyte of David Miliband, she has since spun on a sixpence to support his brother Ed to the hilt. “No one person is bigger than the Labour Party,” she says, earnestly. “Ed won the contest so it’s my job to do everything I can to support him and make him a success and Labour a success. Ed is really getting into his stride and discovering his mojo.”The bizarre and unsettling mental image of Ed Miliband’s mojo – about as groovy as William Hague in a baseball cap – hangs in the air for a few seconds as I gaze at Jowell, nonplussed. But she is off again, energetically rattling on about her record in office, which includes the introduction of maternity and paternity leave, four new secondary schools for her Dulwich and West Norwood constituency (which may sound leafy but includes Peckham and Brixton) and strategies to tackle the gang-gun-drug crime continuum. Then there are the Coalition’s nefarious cuts to the very voluntary organisations supposed to be providing the bulwark of Cameron’s so-called Big Society and the council elections to mull over. “Having suffered one of the worst election defeats just over a year ago, progress back to a point where people would look at us as a future government is going to be slow, but having said that, our share of the vote went up from 29 per cent to 37 per cent,” says Jowell, primly refusing to express outright schadenfreude at the Lib Dem fall from grace. “Millions of people gave expression to their sense of fury at the Tory-led coalition and the anxiety they feel about their future. Nobody won the general election and we have a government taking decisions without a mandate.”By now, she’s covering more ground than a Derby winner. Until that is, I ask if she’s seen her husband recently, when she comes juddering to an abrupt halt. “I don’t want to talk about my family,” she says, looking anguished. “Over the past few years my family has endured more scrutiny than any family should be expected to bear. As a public person I’m fair game, but my family is not. I’m now a very protective mother hen; my sister had reporters going round to her house offering her money to talk about me. My son, who is a professional golfer, had the press following him around America. They would be shouting out: 'Are you Tessa Jowell’s son?’ as he was lining up a shot.”Jowell separated from her lawyer husband, David Mills, in 2006 when she admitted being unaware that he had paid off part of their mortgage with £350,000 at the centre of an Italian bribery case involving the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. But it was an open secret that the couple – who have two children, Jess, a singer-songwriter aged 30 who has been signed to a label and is due to release her first album early next year and golfer Matthew, 27 – remained close and there were cynical accusations that Jowell’s motive in instigating a split was born of political expediency rather than any genuine sense of betrayal. Although in 2009 an Italian court sentenced Mills to four years and six months in jail for accepting a bribe from Berlusconi to give false evidence on his behalf in corruption trials, the case was thrown out on appeal last year because of a statute of limitations technicality. At that time, Jowell expressed her delight and said she had never doubted his innocence. But when I mention that she and her husband were apparently spotted at the theatre recently she looks bemused. “He must have been with somebody else,” she says, with an air of moving-swiftly-on briskness. They were also at the same high profile book launch last week. Are they back together? “David lives in Warwickshire and I live in Highgate,” she responds firmly, which, when you think about it, doesn’t answer the question. But the controversy has had little chance to die down, not least because Jowell’s phone was hacked 28 times by journalists in early 2006 – and a further attempt was made in January of this year, making her a key figure in the News of the World phone hacking investigation. “The most important thing now is that as the scale of the hacking becomes clear, everybody who was affected by it should co-operate fully with the police enquiry,” she says, steering deliberately clear of commenting on being personally targeted. The daughter of a radiographer and a doctor, Jowell was privately educated and after university became a social worker and later a leading light at the mental health charity Mind. “I moved from social work to government because it’s only in government that you can provide the big solutions,” she says. “To be a politician you have to like people and be interested in them. Holding open meetings in my constituency and taking part in regular community action days is like having a blood transfusion; you feel revitalised.”Jowell was going to move to her constituency after she and Mills split, necessitating the sale of the family home, but stayed put in north London because her children and stepchildren were so appalled that she might no longer be near them. She is a doting step-grandmother to “five grand-girls”, enjoys going to the gym and walking. Would that perhaps be in Warwickshire? “In the countryside”. Jowell was also persuaded, if reluctantly, to join Seb Coe running a marathon to mark 2012, until mercifully he baled out first because his knees weren’t up to it. Which brings us back to terra firma again, with a moment of Olympic cheerleading for Cinderella sports such as women’s football and excitement about the 400 rare newts that have been fastidiously rehomed for the duration of the Games, and will be returned, joyfully (although whether newts experience joy is debatable) to their native marshland thereafter. For all the trials and indignities of being in Opposition, populist, arch-politician Jowell finds herself in the fortunate position of having a platform to convey a note – indeed, with a fair wind behind her, a veritable symphony! – of positivity amid the barracking of the Commons bear pit, by flying the five-ringed flag. “In this country we have just witnessed the wonderful shared experience of the royal wedding, then early next year we have the Diamond Jubilee and after that the Olympics,” she says. “Work is already underway on the ceremony, but nobody should think of it alongside Beijing; that had a completely different purpose, it was a statement of power. I hope our Olympics will be a display of our national soul.”And a fine sentiment like that must surely be worth the odd cab ride. To Bicester Village perhaps, and maybe onto Shipston-on-Stour, which, as Jowell might recall, is just in the next county.?Alliance Boots, Big Yellow Group, Mitie, Robert Wiseman DairiesInterim resultsUK CoalTrading updateRegusEconomicsBank of England Annual Report 2009MeetingsBG Group (AGM), RSA Insurance (AGM)Tuesday, May 19• Vodafone is expected to buck the trend of collapsing profits in the telecoms industry by reporting a 10pc increase in adjusted operating profit to about £11.5bn. Analyst also predict the world's largest mobile phone company will report a £5bn increase in revenue to about £40bn. Vittorio Colao, the chief executive, is expected to update the market on the progress of the group's £1bn cost-saving drive. He said last November that the company planned to trim its annual operating costs by £1bn to £21bn by March 2011. He has already announced plans to cut 500 of its 10,000 British staff and could plan to reduce headcount in other countries.The group said most of the savings will be achieved by consolidating its IT and logistics operations, and reducing spending on advertising. Full-year resultsBurberry, Dairy Crest, Great Portland Estates, Homeserve, Icap, Marks & Spencer, SSL, Vectura, VodafoneInterim resultsTui TravelTrading updateCairn Energy, Keller Group, Premier OilEconomicsInflation figuresMeetingsAvis Europe (AGM), Collins Stewart (AGM), Evolution (AGM), Ferrexpo (AGM), Next (AGM), Regus (AGM), Royal Dutch Shell (AGM)Wednesday, May 20• Soft-drinks maker Britvic will report first-half results on Wednesday for the six months to April 12. Sales rose 2.1pc to £218.6m in the first quarter and the company successfully carried out a refinancing last month, giving it access to £333m of bank facilities. Britvic's UK business has held up better than in Ireland, which has seen a sharp drop-off in pub sales. Full-year resultsDe La Rue, Experian, LSE, Mothercare, Yell GroupInterim resultsBritvic, Care UK, GraingerEconomicsMPC minutes, summary of business conditions by Bank of England agents, CBI monthly industrial trends surveyMeetingsArena Leisure (AGM), Cape (AGM), French Connection (AGM), GlaxoSmithKline (AGM), Wolfson (AGM)Thursday, May 21Full-year resultsBritish Land, Cable & Wireless, Investec, JJB Sports, Qinetiq, Scottish and Southern EnergyInterim resultsDaily Mail and General Trust, Mitchells & ButlersTrading updateClose BrothersEconomicsPublic finances, retail sales figures, trends in lending, provisional estimates of broad money and lending, speech by Charles Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of EnglandMeetingsChaucer Holdings (AGM), Cineworld (AGM), Friends Provident (AGM), John Menzies (AGM), Travis Perkins (AGM) Xchanging (AGM)Friday, May 22• British Airways has already told the market to expect a £150m operating loss and a further £75m redundancy hit when it reports full-year results.So attention will be focused on the outlook for the business and strategic initiatives that include BA's protracted merger talks with Spain's Iberia, its plans for an transatlantic tie-up with American Airlines and the progress of cost-cutting talks with the unions. Willie Walsh, BA's chief executive, may also give an impassioned defence of the need for a third runway at Heathrow – given the growing political and business opposition to the controversial project.Full-year resultsBritish AirwaysInterim resultsMarston'sTrading updateNo major trading updates scheduledEconomicsFirst revision of first quarter gross domestic productMeetingsAegis (AGM), HSBC (AGM), Liberty International (EGM), Michael Page (AGM), Premier Foods (AGM) MARKS & Spencer is widely expected to slash its dividend when it announces full-year results this week. Following six consecutive quarters of sales decline City analysts argue that the retailer has little option but to cut the dividend, forecasting that M&S's total dividend payout to be cut to a consensus 17.4 pence, down 23pc, just 12 months after it was raised 23pc to 22.5 pence.Aside from the dividend investors are likely to scrutinise Sir Stuart Rose's comments on consumer confidence.In March, Sir Stuart announced a smaller-than-expected fall in fourth-quarter sales, raising hopes that consumer confidence was holding up better than expected despite the recession and wider economic gloom.The performance of the struggling food division will also be closely scrutinised, with analysts hopeful that the division's new management team has got to grips with the business.City analysts expect M&S to announce pre-tax profits of £603m, down from £1bn last year. ?Now £5,000 to £10,000 wouldn't make a family-of-three very middle class in the UK but of course life is a bit cheaper in China – for instance, the average Shanghai subway fare is about 35p and the last time a ticket on the London Underground cost that much British Leyland was at full production and the idea that a bunch of guys from Nanjing would buy Rover would have seen you committed as clearly delusional. Similarly, food and petrol prices are subsidised – the best-selling packet of cigarettes in Shanghai costs 45p for 20 – and there's cheaper if you want them. I gave up smoking a year ago and have saved the princely sum of £150.Urban white-collar wages have risen fast – the average office worker in Shanghai who received the average annual pay rise every year for the past seven years has doubled their wealth. A not uncommon phenomenon. In the same time the local taxi fare has gone up 10p – imagine earning exactly twice what you earned in 2005 but cab fares had only risen by 10p – you would, literally, be quids in and could go on a shopping binge. Which is exactly what urban white-collar middle-class Chinese punters have done, by the tens of millions.All this, of course, has been to the benefit of many, too many to name really – Tesco, Ikea, H&M, Zara, Burberry, Apple and on and on. It is not a guaranteed pot of gold at the eastern end of the rainbow, though – China is competitive both in terms of price and winning the customer.Marketing costs are higher than most brands expect and mall rental prices, department store commission rates and shop staff wages are all rising. And you need to have the right product for the Chinese shopper.Despite what some retailers apparently think the Chinese won't buy just anything. Don't believe me? Ask M&S what they're going to do with all those unsold 42in waist Blue Harbour slacks or those 38DD cup bras. They've not been flying of the shelves, to be frank.And, looking ahead, there's no reason to think the end is anywhere close to nigh for Western brands and retailers in China who have got the right product. So far Chinese manufacturers and brands have unanimously opted for the cheap-and-cheerful route to market rather than the investment in the quality and design necessary to build stronger high-end brands with longevity and the ability to compete with the European and American names. This has so far been as true of the market for trainers as for luxury handbags.In a go-go economy, with everyone chasing the fast buck, longer-term commitment to the skills, technical as well as design, required to seriously move up the fashion creativity curve to become desirable brands just doesn't seem important to many local players. Chinese middle-class aspiration will, for the foreseeable future, equal buying desirable foreign brands.Paul French is the chief China analyst at Access Asia?"If Kate wears a product, everyone wants to get hold of it."Another retailer, Best Boots, has also seen higher sales - and have even been approached by other countries who want the shop to ship them over.Derry Connors, managing director and owner, said: "We have noticed a reasonable increase in our sales, particularly in the items Kate wears."We've had a lot more interest since she was pictured in them, and even sales of a similar boot have increased."There have been a lot of enquiries for export from Australia and the US. Something like this always sparks a quake in sales figures."The so-called 'Duchess effect' has previously boosted sales of Burberry trench-coats, Issa dresses and even spaniels like her own puppy Lupo - with sales soaring immediately after she is spotted in - or with - them.The leather waistcoat Kate also wore on the countryside trip has already boosted stockist Really Wild Clothing Company's sales, despite its £415 price-tag.And it seems Kate's fashion prowess is being adopted by men too - retailer Phillip Morris has been shifting an exact male's version too.John Jones, Phillip Morris managing partner, said: "There's no doubt about it - our sales have improved since Kate was pictured in the wellies."I missed what was going and then was looking at a list of traffic on the site and was like 'something funny's going on here'."We have a segment called What Kate Wore and that was fifth or sixth on the list - behind big sites like Google and MSN, so it sparked a lot of interest."Figures across the Le Chameau range have increased. Men's boot sales are up too."There has been stuff she has worn before which has captured the imagination, but not to this extent. Festival season is starting and the Isle of Wight Festival was a quagmire so demand has gone up for wellies." Karl Waktare, managing director of LLC Ltd which imports Le Chameau products into the UK, said: "Having the Duchess regularly pictured in Le Chameau is great news for us. "The recent exposure has made the general public aware of what Le Chameau customers have known for years. Due to their build quality and enduring comfort, Le Chameau are 'the brand' of choice for true country people, like the Duchess. "All Le Chameau boots are handmade by master boot makers and whilst they are not the cheapest boots on the market, their longevity means they offer excellent value for money." ?When that arrives, I am not at my best. It is cold and dark and I have had no tea. This is a recipe for a bad day in my book and climbing into the back of a jeep wearing a coat that was probably the height of style in 1954, I am disgruntled and vaguely angry. This is supposed to be one of the highlights of the trip. I had seen this place on the website and it made me flash my credit card readily. My feelings of resentment stem from the same place as when friends tell you that the Oscar-winning film is a must-see – and you find it does not live up to its hype. The jeep rattles up through the dark and stops with a bump next to a stall selling instant noodles, tea and bourbon biscuits. We are now 20 or so paces from the lookout point at the top of Pananjakan (2700m above sea level). Things are looking up. Clutching noodles, tea and a bourbon biscuit I stumble to the top to wait. This is my kind of hiking. The light changes and there it is – Mount Bromo puffing giant sulphurous clouds into the atmosphere standing next to the utterly beautiful Mount Batok. The sun hauls its way upward and we are all mesmerised. This is the Oscar winner that did not disappoint, the big one. For the second time on this trip I can do nothing but cry. The jeep takes us back down and we are heading for the base of Bromo. I have chosen to ride up on horseback and the jeep delivers us to the savannah where we are met by dozens of crazy horsemen riding what appear to be greyhounds – like horses only smaller. I have no need to swing myself gracefully into the saddle – I can virtually step over this pony’s back with ease (but little grace). Bromo is a grey stack but less menacing than I had expected and going up the powdery lava runs ranks as one of the best rides of my life. The horsemen stop at the final steps to the top, where I set off to the summit under my own steam. Allegedly there are 250 steps carved into the crumbly rock but I think they missed a few and I struggle to reach the top. Eventually, my chest tightens from the overwhelming sulphur fumes and the fact that I have smoked for 30 years. Halfway up is a woman sitting, selling more noodles and water. I wheeze my way onto the crater ridge and collapse on the talcum powder edge to gaze at the belching steam coming from the earth’s core. Two hours later I begin the descent back to Lava View Lodge for breakfast. I have had one of the most memorable days of my life and it is only 8am. ?After studying at Oxford followed by a newspaper apprenticeship, most of which was spent as a sub-editor on The Times, Graham Greene had embarked in his mid-twenties on a career as a full-time author. Life was not easy. Sales of his first four novels were patchy, although one, Stamboul Train, was made into a film, generating a rights cheque that kept him going for years in basic rented accommodation, first in the Cotswolds, later in Oxford. In search of money, he branched into non-fiction, persuading the publishers William Heinemann in late 1934 to pay £350 upfront for a travel book about a journey through Sierra Leone and Liberia. Publicly he always said he chose those countries as a flight of fancy but, as so often in his career, other currents were at play. My research showed the Africa trip was a dress rehearsal for his later wartime service with MI6. As he prepared for the trip he sought a travelling companion and, as was common in such a large and close family, he cast his net no further than siblings and cousins. At the wedding of his younger brother, Hugh, in October 1934, he asked Barbara, three years his junior. Rather to his surprise she said yes. They later both admitted that the champagne quaffed at the reception heavily influenced the exchange. Although frivolous in origin, his choice of companion was to prove a life-saving one. Until then Barbara Greene had done little with her life. She did not study at university, opting for a nursing course, though she soon tired of a career in care. Her son, Rupert, told me she regretted frittering away her early life on London’s social scene. When later writing about the Liberian adventure she sought to camouflage this, Rupert suggested, by saying she was 23 at the time of the trip, four years younger than her actual age. Graham Greene was sufficiently well known in 1935 for a national newspaper, the News Chronicle, to send a photographer to capture the cousins’ departure by ship from Liverpool that January. Immaculate in a Burberry mac, a pair of gloves and hat, Barbara is not much shorter than her famously tall cousin. Both have brightly polished shoes. They look as if they are off for the weekend to Paris, rather than a trek through one of Africa’s tougher and more remote regions. After the sea passage to Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone, they checked in to the Grand Hotel and prepared for the train journey. At the last moment in London Barbara had brought a pair of knee-length boots, so she arranged for a local tailor to make her a pair of ballooning shorts, ones that she later described as “very brief and unbecoming’’. Self-deprecating almost to the point of masochism, she once described herself as physically “tall and hefty’’ and by nature “stolid’’. On the morning of departure, she donned the shorts and in the half-light of a Freetown dry-season dawn, walked the short distance downhill from the Grand to what was then known as Water Street Railway Station. At the off, the adventure was the property of Graham Greene. He made all the arrangements and took all the decisions, hiring a team of 24 bearers, three servants and a cook. A child of the late Edwardian era, Barbara Greene was happy to go along with this. But after crossing into Liberia and beginning the trek, a reversal took place. Graham fell ill, dangerously ill, while Barbara got stronger and stronger. They had various adventures and almost lost each other in the thick forest, but the key moment came about three weeks into the walk when his illness worsened dramatically and he lost consciousness. “Graham would die,’’ she later wrote. “I never doubted it for a minute. He looked like a dead man already … I was incapable of feeling anything. I worked out quietly how I would have my cousin buried, how I would go down to the coast, to whom I would send telegrams.’’Calmly Barbara Greene took over responsibility for the trip, settling on the route, arranging food and motivating the bearers. Having completed the same trek last year for my book, staying in the same villages and enduring the same climate, I am in awe of her achievement. And I am in no doubt that she saved her cousin’s life. Brought up in a lifestyle where servants ran her a bath and laid out her clothes each evening before dinner, she coped with a range of discomforts, including rats that ate every bristle from her hairbrush. She used pit latrines at night even when all the locals stayed trembling in their huts for fear of being seen by the village devil – the masked figure with magical powers who is the keeper of spiritual power in upcountry Liberia. Yet when the Greenes got home she was, quite literally, written out of the history of the trip. Graham Greene did not mention her by name in the first edition of his famous travel book on the adventure, Journey Without Maps. That might appear a little selfish, spiteful even. Graham Greene admitted to having been irritated by his cousin as the trek went on. Indeed, her ballooning shorts were, he said, something that really got under his skin. But I learnt from my research that the frustrations from the walk were left behind in Africa and Graham Greene held no long-term grievance. In a private letter to his mother he gave fulsome praise to his cousin’s spirit. I also found an early draft of his book in which she was not the only person to be left out. Initially he made no mention of himself, preferring instead to use the device of an alter ego called Trench. Barbara Greene also wrote an account of the trip, originally called Land Benighted and later reprinted as Too Late to Turn Back. In many ways it is a more accessible and amusing book then that of her literary cousin, and I find it a pity that today it is out of print. She went on to have an extraordinary war, trapped in Berlin as the fiancée of an aristocratic German diplomat, too in love to contemplate leaving. To survive she skivvied as a char, protected by a family friend, Paul Schmidt, who happened to be Hitler’s long-standing interpreter. She belonged to a class and a gender brought up not to make a fuss. I hope she would forgive me for seeking to make a fuss on her behalf. * Tim Butcher’s new book, ‘Chasing the Devil – The Search for Africa’s Fighting Spirit’ (Chatto & Windus) is available from Telegraph Books for £16.99 plus £1.25 postage and packing. To order, call 0844 871 1516 or visit ?Monday May 21 British Land, the owner of half of Broadgate in the City and Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield, should reveal more about the impact of the eurozone crisis on the economy. Analysts at JP Morgan expect British Land to increase its net asset value per share by 4pc to 589.5p in the year to March 31, but vacancy rates in the company’s retail properties could rise. Full-year results: BTG, British Land Company, Cranswick, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, E2V Technologies, Energiser Investments, Mitie, Ryanair, Interim results: ITE Group, SVM Global Fund, Trading update: Informa. Economics: Rightmove housing survey Meetings/AGMs: ANT, A G Barr, Cineworld , VPhase Tuesday May 22 The days when Marks & Spencer made £1bn of profit in a single year are long gone. City forecasts suggest that a combination of terrible high-street conditions and a steady rise in costs will see its annual profits fall from £714m to £694m. Marc Bolland, the Dutch chief executive, is expected to update shareholders on plans to spruce up its stores, as those with clearer signs and branding have been a modest success. However, he is expected to warn his ambition to hit annual sales of £11.5bn within three years isn’t achievable. M&S is likely to reports sales of just shy of £10bn, and analysts forecast a maintained 17p-per-share dividend. Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao will be under pressure to spell out his plans for its US joint venture Verizon Wireless at the mobile phone operator’s full-year results on Tuesday. Analysts reckon the business, in which Vodafone has a 45pc stake, could return a dividend of $13bn (£8bn) over the next year. However, many query whether the stake should be still sold. Mr Colao will also face questions about its £1bn bid for Cable & Wireless Worldwide, which is being opposed by leading C&WW shareholder Orbis. The attraction is its fixed-line network, which would reduce the sums Vodafone has to pay BT to carry its calls between phone masts. According to Nomura, Mr Colao will use the results to “showcase mobile outperformance”. They believe the company is growing more than 3pc faster than its main rivals. Analysts reckon Vodafone will deliver about £12.8bn of profit, against £11bn last time. Revenues are expected to be up marginally to £46bn. Full-year results: Accumuli, Bloomsbury, Big Yellow, Endace, E Therapeutics, Homeserve, Intermediate Capital, KCOM, Marks & Spencer, UK Mail, Vodafone, Yell Interim results: Future, Greencore, GW Pharmaceuticals, Renew Holdings, Victrex, Zytronic Economics: Inflation data, public finances data, OECD economic outlook Meetings/AGMs: Ensco, Instem, Irish Life & Permanent Group Holdings, Metalrax, Travis Perkins, Xaar Wednesday May 23 There have been concerns that the Chinese economy is about to burst, taking down a number of luxury goods companies with it. China is now Burberry’s second biggest market in terms of store numbers. Shareholders will want some reassurance that China is still producing great returns for the company. Full-year sales are expected to climb from £1.5bn to £1.86bn. Pre-tax profis are expected to climb from £296m to £376m. Liberum Capital analysts expect Great Portland Estates’ pre-tax profits to fall from £28.9m to £12.4m when it reports annual results. However, chief executive Toby Courtauld is likely to adopt a bullish tone. The fall in profits reflects a slowdown in property values due to the eurozone debt crisis, but GPE was able to sell more than £100m of property last week at a premium to book value and is pressing ahead with a series of major developments in Central London. Full-year results: Burberry, FirstGroup, Great Portland Estates, HICL Infrastructure Co, Telecom Plus Interim results: Lowland Investment Co, Paragon Group of Companies, Shaftesbury, Innovation Group Trading update: Hogg Robinson Economics: MPC minutes, retail sales data, CBI industrial trends survey, speech by Charlie Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of England Meetings/AGMs: Alliance Pharma, Henderson Global Trust, Brainjuicer, EKF Diagnostics Holdings, Guinness Peat, Healthcare Locums, Hochschild Mining, ImmuPharma, Mercantile Investment Trust, Ocado Thursday May 24 Qinetiq is due to update the market on the success of its 24-month self-help programme designed to convert the culture of the company from public sector to private sector as well as cut costs and debt. The consensus forecast among analysts is for revenues to fall from £1.7bn to £1.46bn but operating profits to rise from £145m to £160m. Full-year results: ASOS, Booker, Cable & Wireless Communications, Dairy Crest, Electrocomponents, Mothercare, Opsec Security, PayPoint, Quintain Estates & Development, Qinetiq, SABMiller, United Utilities, Young & Co’s Brewery Interim results: Britvic, Daily Mail & General Trust, F&C Capital and Income Investment Trust, The Local Shopping REIT Trading update: None expected. Economics: Second estimate of Q1 GDP, speech by MPC member David Miles, BBA mortgage data Meetings/AGMS: APR Energy, @UK, Henry Boot, Faroe Petroleum, Hydro International, JKX Oil & Gas, Moss Boss Group, PV Crystalox Solar, Robert Walters, XCite Energy Friday May 25 Full-year results: Helical Bar. Interim results: None expected. Trading update: None expected. Economics: None scheduled. Meetings/AGMs: Fairpoint, HSBC Holdings, Intercontinental Hotels, IQE, Lupus Capital, Standard Life, Turbo Power Systems, Vindon Healthcare ?3. Microsoft 4. GE 5. Nokia 6. McDonald's 7. Google 8. Toyota 9. Intel 10. Disney 11. Hewlett-Packard 12. Mercedes-Benz 13. Gillette 14. Cisco 15. BMW 16. Louis Vuitton 17. Marlboro 18. Honda 19. Samsung 20. Apple 21. H&M 22. American Express 23. Pepsi 24. Oracle 25. Nescafe 26. Nike 27. sap 28. Ikea 29. Sony 30. Budweiser 31. UPS 32. HSBC 33. Canon 34. Kellogg's 35. Dell 36. Citi 37. JP Morgan 38. Goldman Sachs 39. Nintendo 40. Thomson Reuters 41. Gucci 42. Philips 43. Amazon.com 44. L'Oreal 45. Accenture 46. eBay 47. Siemens 48. Heinz 49. Ford 50. Zara 51. Wrigley 52. Colgate 53. AXA 54. MTV 55. Volkswagen 56. Xerox 57. morgan stanley 58. Nestle 59. Chanel 60. Danone 61. KFC 62. adidas 63. BlackBerry 64. Yahoo! 65. Audi 66. Caterpillar 67. Avon 68. Rolex 69. Hyundai 70. Hermes 71. Kleenex 72. UBS 73. Harley-Davidson 74. Porsche 75. Panasonic 76. Tiffany & Co 77. Cartier 78. Gap 79. Pizza Hut 80. Johnson & Johnson 81. Allianz 82. Moet & Chandon 83. BP 84. Smirnoff 85. Duracell 86. Nivea 87. Prada 88. Ferrari 89. Armani 90. Starbucks 91. Lancome 92. Shell 93. Burger King 94. Visa 95. Adobe 96. Lexus 97. Puma 98. Burberry 99. Polo Ralph Lauren 100. Campbell's ?Luxury goods sales in China grew by 16pc to hit $10bn in 2009. This figure is predicted to almost treble by 2015, by which time China will account for more than 20pc of the global luxury market, overtaking Japan as the world's largest luxury market.One of the biggest drivers of luxury growth in the years ahead will be young self-employed or corporate executives, many of whom have lived abroad and many of whom are second-generation wealthy. This group – where the demand for social recognition is high – accounts for just 1pc of the Chinese luxury market at present but will account for 24pc of spending by 2015, says McKinsey.High web penetration will spur this growth. China had 420m internet users last year and this is set to rise to 671m by 2013. Social networking sites such as Douban and Kaixin001 (Facebook equivalents) and Sina Weibo (Twitter equivalent) are a massive influence on consumption patterns. Burberry has been growing its status on such sites in China.Last month HSBC said that the burgeoning luxury goods demand in China is not just about economics – there are social and cultural factors at play. HSBC also suggested that China's luxury growth is in its infancy."While there will probably come a time when high-end consumers will want to own niche brands and bespoke products, the present is dominated by the willingness to be among the 'lucky few' by fitting in with the local codes. If a consumer wants something formal for the evening, she will go to Vuitton, Prada, Chanel. For a more casual yet chic occasion, Coach or Burberry will work," the bank said.Some observers are more sceptical about China's current luxury "boom". Matthew Crabbe writes for Access Asia, a newsletter, and believes the hype is overdone."As with all things in China there is the mismatch between perception and reality... There are a lot of rich Chinese, this is true, and their numbers swell daily. But, in context of the whole of China, they remain a minority and the mass-market is still where the bulk of sales are made," he says.?The event itself of course, with its extraordinary global reach and honeyed coverage, created a perfect storm of product placement for a lucky few: the Goring Hotel, Alexander McQueen and Aston Martin the chief beneficiaries. The quickest of checks on Google trends demonstrates an extraordinary global upsurge in searches for each. This in the week when rumours swirled that $45m (£27m) of funding for the 23rd Bond movie would be financed by brand owners. In return, inevitably and sadly, for the heavy-handed inclusion of their products. (Whether Aston Martin now needs to write a fat cheque to the studios is a moot point: when one of your hero products has just been taken for a spin in the most photogenic of circumstances by the future King of England and his beautiful wife, paid-for placement looks like an expensive second best.)And then there are the less obvious winners, but winners nonetheless: those brands and brand owners who are peddling their Britishness to some degree, or at least the peculiar but enduring strand of Britishness at large in the royal wedding. Because whether you are selling Burberry rain macs or Silver Cross prams, any exporter whose product or service speaks to British heritage, decorum or style has just received a mighty shot in the arm, whether they choose to actively leverage it or not.Burberry, by way of example, has famously transformed its business and brand fortunes by shifting focus from selling its famous check to middle Britain (and others) to selling Britishness to a global luxury audience (and beyond). By aligning itself to the "nation brand" that is Britain, it has just enjoyed a free fillip from the royal wedding, less specifically but no less materially than the shots of Kate Middleton sporting one of its trench coats."Nation branding" such as this, planned or accidental, is a nascent science but a very real one. A sense of place has always defined brands: imagine Coke or Marlboro without their expertly annexed connotations of all-American pleasure and freedom; Bailey's or Guinness without their Irishness; BMW or Audi minus their Germanic engineering credentials.What's new is a more concerted attempt by various governments to drive this nation brand agenda in the interests of economic development. Plausible global research now provides us with a nation brand league table, with countries assessed just like product brands on the basis of their relative levels of awareness, associations and advocacy. The UK habitually finishes in the top 10, with its heritage and culture to the fore as its differentiators. And just as advertising campaigns can move product brands, so too can world events shape the fortunes of nation brands. President Barack Obama's election propelled the US back to top spot as the world's most valuable brand in 2009, while Canada's Olympics provided its moment in the sun; troubled economies and political cultures such as Greece and Italy mean their nation brands have wobbled recently. The powerhouse economies of China and India have yet to crystallise their nation brands attractively – an issue for both once they try to move to the "higher level" of consumer, rather than corporate, branding.So the combination of this year's royal wedding and next year's Olympics seem likely to catalyse "Brand Britain" in the eyes of the world, creating opportunities for British brand owners (especially those headquartered in Britain, since so many "British" brands now have overseas owners). Because, as brand consultants Futurebrand explain, "when a product, service or corporation is identified with a strong country brand it has a better chance of premium pricing, longevity and preference in emerging markets".So just as flags reappeared in force last weekend, perhaps we will see the re-emergence of "made in Britain" as a competitive weapon, a symbol of manufacturing zeal and craft, yes, but – more generally – an emotional stamp on relevant products and brands.In the end, then, the impact on British brands of the "global spot" that was the 2011 royal wedding may prove to be far more profound and enduring than the pollsters predicted.Laurence Green is a founding partner of 101?Luke: I can watch six hours of football.Dragline: Nobody can watch six hours of football.Society Red: You just said he could watch anything.Dragline: My boy says he can watch six hours of football, he can watch six hours of football.Prisoner: Hey, Babalugats. We got a bet here.I kept a diary of the day.11.30 So begins ‘Super Mega Deluxe Sunday’. Dwight Yorke is wearing what looks like a Burberry shirt and tie. Perhaps he’s heard his ex Jordan is back on the market.11.33 Already I’ve counted five mentions of ‘HD’ and two of ‘3D’.11.38 An eight-second tribute to Nat Lofthouse. Watch Sky long enough and you’ll be convinced Rupert Murdoch invented football in 1992.11.40 First three-way split-screen of the day! Split-screens are the cocaine of television. They instantly raise the heart rate, and people in the media find them incredibly addictive.12.10 To St Andrew’s. Why are there so many empty seats? Is everybody at home watching ‘Super Super Uber Sunday Special’?13.08 If they made a DVD of Alex McLeish’s touchline gesticulations, I am certain I would not be the only person to buy it.13.46 A late goal, a streaker, some crowd trouble and a smoke bomb. This is getting tasty.13.55 Full time, and to Anfield. My TV is malfunctioning. The sound is all muffled for some reason.13.56 False alarm. It’s just the treacle-tonsilled Kenny Dalglish.14.09 Anybody getting a bit tired of this Dalglish hoopla? Six mentions of his name in the first three minutes. Pity the highly-skilled cameraman, who has to spend the full 90 minutes training his camera on a 59-year-old man with one recorded facial expression, best described as ‘Puppy Lost In Department Store’.16.01 Liverpool 2 Everton 2. Super game. Super-super game? Not sure.16.06 Sir Alex completes the parade of the incomprehensible Scottish managers: “We’d wike to win the weague, so we’re wooking for weadership…”17.03 Half-time at White Hart Lane. Keys visibly flagging. Someone find this man a cold drink and a photo of his family.18.05 Full time. It was morning when I sat down; now it’s dark.Almeria v Real Madrid is tempting, but fresh air more tempting still.So what did we learn? Well, not a great deal. Instead, it was the very end of ‘Sunday, Super Sunday’ that was most telling. After the final game ended, Keys rubbed his hands and announced: “Coming up tomorrow: Brentford v Exeter on HD1. And on Tuesday, Ayr v Hibs at 7.30 on HD2.”More football? After we’ve just sat through six hours of it? But then, this is Sky’s philosophy in microcosm – to stuff you with more football than you could ever hope to watch. And hence the hyperbole. Not everything in Sky’s bottomless basket of eggs will be super, of course. But they will never tire of telling you that it is.?The FTSE 100 slipped 25.36 points to 5,868.16 and the FTSE 250 lost 147.18 to 11,933.70. The blue-chip index was also weighed down by Aviva after the insurer was hit by broker downgrades from Deutsche Bank and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. They both cut their recommendations on the group on valuation grounds, following a strong showing from Aviva shares, which have risen more than 26pc since the beginning of July as investors bought into the company’s restructuring story. “Even if management were to successfully deliver on the restructuring plans, Aviva’s capital and leverage ratios would still be less good than most peers, with lower-than-average exposure to growth markets,” said Oliver Steel at Deutsche, who cut the insurer to “hold” from “buy”. Analysts at Bank of America took the red pen to their “neutral” rating and cut Aviva to “underperform”. They said: “We do not see scope for a significant further re-rating, particularly given potentially dilutive restructuring efforts ahead.”Investors heeded the brokers’ advice and sent Aviva shares down 14.3 to 344.9p, the worst-performer on London’s benchmark index. Royal Bank of Scotland was once again among the FTSE 100 fallers as another analyst weighed in with a downgrade. This time it was Cormac Leech at Liberum Capital, who cut the state-backed bank to “hold” from “buy” after a steady rise in the lender’s share price this month. He followed Ian Gordon at Investec, who on Monday said RBS shares were overvalued and advised clients to “sell”. The lender lost 7.3 to close at 267.1p. Across the board, however, the banks were on the back foot as traders shied away from riskier stocks. Barclays shed 2.6 to 225.4p, HSBC was 5.3 worse off at 577.9p and Lloyds Banking Group slipped 0.995 to 38.855p. Standard Chartered also fell 32½p to £14.81½p, despite Investec issuing a “buy” note, following the bank’s investor day. Among the blue-chip risers, shares in Vodafone experienced a revival following concerns that the group was making provisions for a $2.2bn (£1.35bn) Indian tax bill, which knocked the telecoms group down 1.25pc on Monday. Vodafone shares also lost ground earlier this month amid worries over its dividend, but today the company added 1¾ to 175.4p, spurring hopes that the fall has bottomed out. Rehashed takeover speculation resurfaced around water company United Utilities, which rose strongly in the afternoon and closed 19 higher at 707½p – the second-best performing company on the FTSE 100. Dealers were sceptical about the rumours, that were floating around the market in August. One trader said some investors would be buying ahead of the company’s forthcoming trading update, which is due on Thursday. It was a good day for defensive companies generally, with Severn Trent up 18p at £17.08. Xstrata ticked up 4p to £10.57½ and Glencore added 2.35 to 373.2p as UBS forecast that a deal between the two is likely to be approved. Xstrata’s board has until Monday to decide whether it will recommend Glencore’s revised offer for the miner, and UBS said there is “a 60pc-plus probability that the merger will happen” because Xstrata shareholders “generally appear supportive” of the higher offer. Among the smaller companies, a profit warning from Volex prompted a 27pc drop in its shares, which closed down 67¾ at 187½p. The group cautioned that “a recent unexpected change in forecast demand” from its biggest customer, thought to be Apple, would hurt full-year profits. That had a knock-on effect on fellow Apple supplier Laird, which lost 14.1 to 229.8p, making it one of the worst performers on the FTSE 250. Elsewhere on the mid-cap index, some traders noted a report that online gambling group bwin.party is set to sell its Ongame Network to Canada’s Amaya Gaming. The news had little impact on the shares, however, which ended the day 0.3 lower at 110.1p. ?The fashion house reported a 5pc fall in pre-tax profit to £157m on turnover up 4pc to £743m. The company said the fall in profits was due to an £11.1m investment in Project Atlas, a reorganisation of its IT and supply chain. Two thirds of its suppliers will eventually be axed.?You probably won’t find them in this piece, and certainly not when dealing with Jamie Campbell Bower, 23, the star of the series Camelot. He played King Arthur, but Sir Sean Connery he is not. In Camelot, Campbell Bower has such unique acting powers he almost makes King Arthur’s sword wilt. Still, he does a good line in effeminate boys, and has appeared in Twilight, as well as Harry Potter, in which he played the young Gellert Grindelwald.This is how Campbell Bower, a model who likes to paint his nails and wear jewellery, was described by a serious journalist from the New York Observer. “His blond hair is long and tousled and surrounds a beautiful, almost too pretty face with sparkling kitten-shaped eyes (boasting just a hint of eyeliner) and pillowy lips.” The rough translation of this is: he looks as if he might succumb to consumption at any given moment.Indeed, looking at this current crop, it’s hard to see how any of them might turn from man-boys to man-men. It’s as if, slowly, the actor is evolving into the actress. Wither the blokes previous generations have grown-up with – the Richard Burtons and Sean Connerys, the Roger Moores, or the Michael Caines? Where will the next Ray Winstone appear from? Under a rock?Talented these young Burberry Boys undoubtedly are. But they are about as manly as a soggy biscuit. They probably wear their girlfriend’s jeans. They make John Gielgud look like Sylvester Stallone. And if it seems shallow to judge them on their appearance, well tough! Man up and get over it. The acting industry is based almost entirely on looks, so enough of the whingeing about being judged on them – especially when you choose to model for a fashion designer. In fact, perhaps a better tag for them should be the Not-so-Fabulous Burberry Boys.?Twitter's growing invasion of UK PlcChipmaker Arm gets the gold medal for most industrious tweeter. Burberry scoops the prize for having the most friends on Facebook and the most followers on Twitter, and BP's videos hauled in more YouTube viewers than any FTSE 100 peer in the first half of the year.?A Jaguar Land Rover spokesman called the potential job losses “speculation” and said the company was considering a range of different cost-cutting proposals.The misery was not limited to the UK after Germany’s largest retailer, Metro, said it would cut 15,000 jobs, equivalent to 5pc of its workforce in response to the downturn and to ensure profitable growth in the long term, the firm said.?Barry Murphy, international business tax partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: "You can't object to any of the principles, but stating them in this fairly non-committal way doesn't move things forward."Neal Todd, senior tax partner at City law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, said: "It is little wonder that multinationals are looking for reassurance that the UK will remain a competitive place to do business."Philip Hammond, shadow secretary to the Treasury, said: "Businesses will be rightly sceptical of Lord Mandelson's plans for business taxes when on Labour's watch our tax competitiveness rating has plummeted, we have the longest tax code in the world and high profile companies have deserted Britain in droves."The Prime Minister was backed by Andrew Witty, chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, who said Government initiatives, particularly a pledge to place a lower 10pc tax rate on income from patents, had "directly" led to its decision to build a new biotech plant in Britain. However the complexity of the UK tax system was highlighted at the conference when a representative from the Libyan Investment Authority told Mr Brown that it could invest £5bn in Britain but was unconvinced by the tax system. Other delegates included Nick Fry, chief executive of Mercedes, Angela Ahrendts, boss of Burberry and David Bonderman, founder of TPG Capital. At the conference the Prime Minister repeated the Government's commitment to high speed broadband. He told the audience that the Government would invest £1bn to extend superfast broadband to "100pc of the population." He also promised to spend £14bn on projects such as Crossrail, high speed rail and motorways. Other measures pledged by ministers at the conference included: ?The Telegraph is not responsible for the content of external internet sites?Business Bullet on an M&S update, the Bank's QE vote, UK jobs and BurberryRobert Miller with the main City and business news as Marks & Spencer misses forecasts but remains on track to meet full year profit target; minutes from the April meeting of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee likely to show there is still a 7-2 split on whether to extend the QE or asset purchase scheme; the latest jobs' data from the Office for National Statistics could show a further rise in the number of people claiming unemployment benefits and luxury goods maker Burberry breaks the £1bn revenue level.?He is not the only manager around to buck the high-charging trend. But it is radical to declare – as he did in this week's Your Money Their Hands video that "if we don't deliver, we don't get paid". What if there is global slowdown and all sectors are affected? "We are relying on the long term data – which is superb," he said. "Global slowdown is a relative thing, it will affect the worst companies way more than the best." ?Robert Miller with the main City and business news as the number of people without jobs in the UK rises to 2.6m and the Bank of England cuts its growth forecast; the European Central Bank has been forced to buy Eurozone governments bonds as investors head for the exit; the London Stock Exchange produces a healthy 79pc jump in half year pre-tax profit and Barratt Developments focuses on margins rather than volumes. ?Robert Miller with the main City and business news as UK inflation eases to 5pc but markets still fret over the Eurozone crisis even as Germany and France report third quarter growth in their economies; luxury goods maker Burberry meets all its growth forecasts and raises dividend by 40pc; property investment trust British Land sees Net Asset Value (NAV) grow by almost 13pc in the first half and no-frills carrier EasyJet boost annual pre-tax profit by 32pc and confirms total payout for the year of 45p per share.?Questor: have utilty shares had their day?Questor Editor Garry White recommended readers sell National Grid. Deutsche now says utility shares are not what they used to be. Have they had their day??Questor: invest in firms with aftercare servicesQuestor Editor Garry White talks about companies which offer some guarantee of future income in uncertain times.?Questor share tip: the Falkland islandsQuestor editor Garry White advises against investing in oil exploration, but tips another way to cash in on the drilling.?Share tips: is it worth buying stock in Mulberry or Burberry?Questor Editor Garry White looks at the prospects of luxury goods makers Mulberry and Burberry after disappointing results.?Share tips: Winners and losers from the OlympicsQuestor Editor Garry White looks at which companies are benefitting and hurting from London 2012 (including G4S), and which ones you should potentially invest in.?These days, Hanoi bears few of the scars of the most intensive bombing campaign in history, nor many signs of its 40 years as the capital of Ho Chi Minh's ruthless police state. The city centre is a gracious place, or would be if it weren't flooded by a million mopeds. The ochre colonial buildings are straight out of 1920s France. The street life is colourful and quirky: old men playing badminton in the boulevards and roadside food perhaps even the French would balk at, though pig's ear boiled in monosodium glutamate may be better than it looks.Vietnamese food is actually spectacular, and not just for the unreflectively brave. I got taken in hand by Pham Anh Tuyet, a bustling, imperious lady who is more than Vietnam's most famous TV cook; she's the guardian of the country's cultural heritage, a cross between Gordon Ramsay, Sir Roy Strong and Hyacinth Bucket.I set off with her into Hanoi's old quarter, the thousand-year-old district known as the "36 Streets". Each street once belonged to a separate merchant guild and is still pretty specialised – a street of shoes, of herbal medicines, of fake Ray-Bans.She ignored them all and led me to the market, half an acre of colour and noise and casual execution. Mrs Pham swept through it like a queen, snapping her fingers at the vegetable sellers, staring down her nose at the pork butchers and eel mongers. She pointed out the more exotic produce – such as writhing bags full of giant toads. ("Boil them alive, then fry them and serve in their own broth with green banana. Like nothing on earth.")Back at her restaurant in Ma May Street, where she showed off all her awards (including one for being "the best ear, nose and tongue cook in Vietnam"), she set us to work. Together, we made spring rolls of catfish, ginger and turmeric, honeyed chicken with lemongrass and pepper dip, and a salad from banana flowers, papaya and coriander, eating it all with fermented fish sauce. If only I had met Mrs Pham before my brief, humiliating appearance on Celebrity Masterchef, that blonde from Atomic Kitten would have had no chance.I caught up with the ghost of Graham Greene at the Metropole hotel, the old reporters' hangout and now, once again, one of the finest hotels in the East.I love luxury places that have served as war correspondents' hostels. Greene stayed at the Metropole in the 1950s, working for Paris Match and perfecting a rather poisonous cocktail of gin, vermouth and cassis. The 100-year-old French hotel, with its white colonial façade and green shutters outside, dark wood panelling inside, has been restored, and is now supplemented by a tall Opera wing behind, so you have a choice between traditional and modern. The service, even by Far Eastern standards, is sublime. The champagne girl at the airport was just the start. Book a suite and you get your own butler, 24 hours a day.The fortunes of the Metropole reflect those of Vietnam itself. When the French were sent packing it was taken over by Ho's henchmen and became pinched and dowdy. It was used to put up Comintern bigwigs and later, during what Vietnamese call the "American War", high-profile pacifists from the West. Joan Baez strummed her guitar in a bomb shelter under the courtyard as her countrymen's B-52s blew up the bridges over the Red River, a little over a mile away.The country's lowest point came after the war, when the victorious north imposed an extreme and uncompromising form of communism on the whole country. Vietnam had been the second largest rice exporter in the world, but soon half the country was starving. Australian diplomats hunted rats down the Metropole's corridors.The regime came to its senses only when the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1991. Private enterprise and market economics were allowed back and the country took off.These days, the country's communist rulers content themselves with clinging to power, creaming off everything they can, and bearing grudges. To this day, the grandchildren of Vietnamese who worked for the Americans can't get public-sector jobs. And it is not wise to stand in the street wondering too loudly why President Nguyen Minh Triet has such bad breath.Goodness knows what Uncle Ho makes of it all. He died in 1969 but he's not obviously spinning in the glass sarcophagus under his mausoleum. He doesn't even look out of sorts, but then his corpse does spend three months of the year being serviced in Moscow. When it is on duty in Hanoi it competes as the most popular tourist attraction with the extraordinary Vietnamese water puppets – a violent kind of oriental Punch and Judy show staged in a murky pool.Graham Greene would have made a lot of that.There are two other unmissable destinations in the north. One is the old colonial hill station of Sapa, high up in what the French called the Tonkin Alps, close to the Chinese border. It's an overnight train journey from Hanoi, ideally on the Victoria Express. The "express" is actually a couple of comfortably kitted-out sleeping carriages tagged on to the end of the regular train, which leaves Hanoi station most nights of the week at 9.45pm, arriving just down the mountain from Sapa early the following morning.The same organisation behind the train owns the best hotel in Sapa, also called the Victoria. It's a Swiss chalet-style place, all wooden pitched roofs and geraniums, that sits on a small hill overlooking the little town and the startlingly green valleys that fall away from it. It makes a good base for exploring the hill country, or just sitting out on your balcony watching the clouds sweep up the valleys and swirl around Mount Fansipan behind you.Sapa's main attraction, apart from the vivid green rice paddy and mountain scenery, and the relief from the summer humidity of the plains, is the picturesque hill tribes that live up there. Thanks to the wars, Sapa was pretty well derelict up until the 1990s. Mass tourism hasn't had time to turn these people into posing, preying caricatures. So the Black H'Mong still wear their tunics and kilts made of boiled hemp, stained – like their arms and legs when it rains – with indigo. You can see them spinning the stuff on foot-powered jennys in their villages.But it's a society on the cusp. The customs, dress and lifestyle are largely intact, the villages still much as they were, overrun by chickens, little pot-bellied pigs and half-naked children. But, here and there, satellite dishes poke out of the back of the huts. Chinese mopeds dash up and down the trackways and a surf of litter, inches deep, surrounds the village shops from the sweets the kids have bought with money they have begged off tourists. Get there soon.Ha Long Bay is a Unesco World Heritage site, whatever that means. It is simply one of the great natural wonders of the world – a scattering of more than 3,000 jagged limestone karsts set in the jade green waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. Approaching from Hanoi, it looks as if the sea has been seeded with dragons' teeth and it makes the Thai equivalent, where they filmed that James Bond movie, look like a garden pond.We sailed through the bay on a luxury junk and the camera's flash-card was full within the hour. The junk looked the part, even though the golden lateen sails were made of what looked like curtain material. It was certainly luxurious. Our cabin had a huge double bed and a proper bathroom and the seafood barbecue could probably have lasted us for a week.The bay is heart-stoppingly beautiful, especially at dawn and dusk, when the shadows on the forested limestone towers and the silver sheen of high summer humidity turn it into dreamland. A busy dreamland for a day trip, though, with 600 boats mainly plodding the same routes to the same anchorages. The longer, overnight cruise is better – and don't miss Hang Sung Sot cave, bigger than Durham cathedral, with a huge and extraordinarily lifelike penis-shaped stalagmite, helpfully picked out by a pink searchlight. It has been venerated for centuries by the Vietnamese, who evidently have a thing about fertility (there are more than 80 million of them).Vietnam is shaped like a dumbbell with metal fatigue. It's got more than 2,000 miles of coastline. Da Nang is the place for a beach holiday, as it was for the US Marine "grunts" during the war, who were sent there for R&R. The beach is 20 miles long – the GIs called it China Beach; the victors, with a truly communist sense of style, renamed it "T-20". The town now looks more like Las Vegas, with a strip of bars with names such as "Golden Nugget". The coast road farther south is dotted with the construction sites of new capitalist hotels. Facing them are communist propaganda posters showing square-jawed proletarian heroes staring steadfastly across the road to the beach the proletariat soon won't be able to use.We stayed in the Nam Hai, a $65-million ultra-luxury hotel on the road to Hoi An that's so stylish it hurts. In my case, literally. The villas are done out like royal pavilions. The canopied bed is on one platform, the bath sunk into another, the divans two steps down. It looks, and is, wonderful – but in the dark, looking for the exquisite bathroom, it's a death-trap.The food, the swimming pools and the spa – on a shimmering lake, with pavilions and pint-sized Vietnamese girls with fists like steam hammers – are all delightful, at a price. But in these recessionary times, I am not sure how many people actually pay the advertised $750 a night (for the cheapest villa). A good travel firm will ensure you don't, anyway.A shuttle-bus ride away, Hoi An is an almost perfectly preserved ancient merchant town. Once across the 16th- century Japanese covered bridge and into the old quarter, with its streets of pagodas and tiny wooden houses (you can touch most of the roofs), you're in a living museum of Vietnamese history.It's a trainee tourist trap, not yet overrun by visitors, but as it is charming and vibrant and has a lot to see, that's probably just a matter of time.They also seem to be able to knock up silk clothes in an afternoon (my wife bought a tailor-made, reversible silk jacket for about £18).We ended up in Ho Chi Minh City, still unofficially known as Saigon, back on the trail of Graham Greene. The old Continental hotel, made famous by Michael Caine in the film version of Greene's The Quiet American, is now a style-less barn run by the government. So we stayed next door, at the elegant Park Hyatt, where Greene's foreign correspondent would have hung his solar topee if he'd been around today (and if The Times would wear the expense).Saigon is ablaze with enterprise and engulfed in tidal waves of mopeds. Everybody's got one. The girls ride them in Burberry tartan helmets, swaddled in scarves and opera gloves to stop their skin darkening in the sun. The mopeds carry everything; I saw a family of five on one. When I told my guide, he said that was nothing; he'd seen one with a full-sized buffalo on the pillion.The war is never far away. The War Remnants Museum is a horrifying must-see. You don't need the propaganda commentary to come to conclusions about what happened to both sides when enormous power took on ideological tenacity and lost (the Americans dropped three times as much high-explosive on Vietnam as was used in the Second World War).The Cu Chi tunnels are a couple of hours out of town. They're an accessible section of a Viet Cong network that once stretched more than 100 miles from the Cambodian border to the outskirts of Saigon itself. The communist fighters – and many villagers – lived down there like rats while the B-52s carpet-bombed the jungle above. A couple of the tunnels have been widened so that fat American tourists can go down; from what I saw, the irony seemed lost on most of them.One of the most dangerous roads during the war – Highway One, down to the Mekong Delta – is now a tourist route. It blasts through the most productive rice paddies in the world (paddies Vietnamese love so much they're buried in them). The swirling brown river, strewn with hyacinths, splits into a thousand canals and tributaries and lays down millions of tons of silt picked up on its long journey from Tibet.We went in a deluxe sampan with couches to recline on while viewing the villages and the floating markets, the trip topped off by lunch in solitary splendour at a French colonial-style mansion by the side of one of the canals.Vietnam is an exciting place, with much of the charm of Thailand but less problematic and tawdry. Its terrible history has, so far, kept it mostly unspoiled by tourism and, goodness knows, is compelling in itself. Listening to north Vietnamese music on the way back to Saigon, our guide suddenly said: "There you are. It's all in the music. The north's songs were all about victory; the south's were all about the girls pining at home. No wonder we lost."In the end, I am not sure they did.Vietnam basics Climate Tropical – but this 2,000-mile-long country has three distinct climatic zones. The south is hot and humid year round, with daytime temperatures in the 80s-90s. The central area is subject to typhoons from July to November. And the far north, around Sapa, can become chilly enough from November to April for a sweater and jacket, even seeing occasional snowfall. When to go November to March is high season, but the period visitors might want to avoid is the Tet holiday, February 14-17, next year. Marking the new year (2010 is year of the Tiger), Tet sees the whole country on the move – roads clogged, hotels packed – as families reunite and celebrate. Getting there There are no direct flights from Britain. Flying via Tokyo is an option, with daily Virgin Atlantic flights to Tokyo from Heathrow from £660 in economy, including taxes and fares, and from £3,350 in Upper Class (08448 747 747, ) Vietnam Air () connects from Tokyo to Hanoi and Saigon. Black Tomato does tailormade tours from £1,999, with the itinerary Michael Buerk followed costing from £6,395pp, including flights, transfers, guide, two nights in Hanoi, four in Nam Hai, one on a junk, two on the Victoria Express, and two in Saigon (020 7426 9888, ) ?Economic week ahead It will be a lively week for speeches, with the Chancellor taking the spotlight first at the Conservative Party Conference today and the Bank of England Governor up on Wednesday. George Osborne may feel he has to address questions about whether he will miss his fiscal rules but he is not expected to commit to more austerity. The Governor is speaking on the subject of inflation targeting and may suggest that he believes a broader remit than the 2pc target is needed. Beyond the UK, global leaders gather in Tokyo for the IMF and World Bank annual meetings, where the IMF is expected to slash its growth forecasts for the world, including the UK. The euro crisis is likely to dominate the agenda again . As far as numbers go, the UK trade figures for August are likely to show the deficit widening again while both manufacturing and industrial production data are expected to show the underlying economy remains weak. Monday Full-year resultsNone scheduledInterim resultsNone scheduledTrading updateMichael Page InternationalEconomicsGeorge Osborne speaks at Conservative Party conference, Eurogroup finance ministers meetingMeetingsInterContinental Hotels Group (EGM)TuesdayFull-year resultsNone scheduledInterim resultsNone scheduledTrading updateHays, HgCapital Trust, UK Mail Group, Vedanta Resources (Q2 output), XP PowerEconomicsBRC retail sales, RICS housing survey, August industrial manufacturing, August trade in goods and servicesMeetingsMajedie Investments (EGM)Wednesday• Confectioner Thorntons issues a trading update for the 14 weeks to October 6, shedding more light on the state of the high street.The company has had a string of profit warnings in recent years as it suffered during the recession. But, at its full-year results in September, Thorntons was optimistic that it was returning to health. In the three months to the end of June it recorded its first growth in sales for two-and-a-half years and investors will be looking to see whether that has been sustained.Full-year resultsNone scheduledInterim resultsNone scheduledTrading updateThorntonsEconomicsIMF world economic outlook, Bank of England Governor Sir Mervyn King speech, IMF and World Bank meetingsMeetingsNone scheduledThursday• Burberry's trading update this week has taken on new importance after the luxury goods retailer issued a shock profits warning on September 11. Angela Ahrendts, chief executive, said like–for–like sales in Burberry's stores were flat over a 10–week period, falling in the latter part of that period. This wiped more than 20pc off the company's value and the shares have fallen further since. Analysts will be looking for an update on recent trading, with details as to where exactly sales are under pressure. Nomura analysts said: "We expect second quarter sales of £473m, with organic growth of 4.1pc and forex impact of -1.9pc in the quarter. "In retail, we forecast £292m, up 3.3pc with same store sales -1pc, space +6pc and forex -1.7pc."Given indications of a broad-based slowdown in the second quarter we assume organic growth of 2pc in Europe [compared with 16pc in the first quarter], 1pc in the Americas [compared with 2pc] and 11pc in Asia and Pacific APAC [compared with 20pc]." Full-year resultsAir Partner, WH SmithInterim resultsNone scheduledTrading updateAshmore Group, Burberry Group, DS Smith, E2V Technologies, GreggsEconomicsG7 finance ministers at IMF and World Bank meetingsMeetingsMonitise (AGM)Friday• Travis Perkins, the builders' merchants, updates on trading in the tough UK construction market. Recent news from the sector has been grim, with building products firm Hanson last week reporting the decline in volumes has run at double the rate of its expectations. Investors will want to see if Travis has been able to avoid the pain, after the company in May posted rising sales and market share.Full-year resultsNone scheduledInterim resultsNone scheduledTrading updateComputacenter, Hargreaves Lansdown, Travis PerkinsEconomicsConstruction outputMeetingsNone scheduled?Taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland will consider suing Goldman Sachs after US investigators claimed that RBS had lost £550m to a fraud committed by the US investment bank.Burberry is expected to say this week that its sales are continuing to boom in Asia. Sales in countries such as Japan have jumped by a fifth in the past three months on the popularity of expanded ranges.Some of the UK's biggest mutual insurers face a revolt over executive pay after the disclosure that bosses received inflation-busting increases last year despite the recession. The Independent on SundayA significant minority of Network Rail members are intent on blocking Janis Kong's appointment to a non-executive director role because of her association with Royal Bank of Scotland during the tenure of Sir Fred Goodwin. She was a member of the bank's remuneration committee when Goodwin's pension rose to more than £20m.Associated British Foods, the owner of fashion chain Primark, is expected to announce this week that it made annual pre-tax profits of almost £700m. Analysts believe that sales will increase to around £10.1bn. Primark is the biggest profit generator, although the chain must prove it can expand overseas. The Sunday TimesThe Financial Services Authority, the City watchdog, has launched an investigation into the London operations of Goldman Sachs after claims that the giant bank orchestrated a $1bn (£650m) fraud against investors.Encore, the theatre and visitor attraction ticket agency, will be sold in a deal that will bring a windfall for Cameron Mackintosh, the entrepreneur, and Edgar Wallner, the theatre producer.The former finance director of Northern Rock is being investigated by the City watchdog over claims that he helped to cover up bad debts at the bank. Sunday ExpressHigh Speed One, the rail line that carries Eurostar trains into London's St Pancras station, is set to be put up for sale after its owner issued a tender for financing. State-backed London and Continental Railways hopes to fetch between £1.4bn and £1.8bn for the line.Game Group, the retailer, is expected to announce this week that pre-tax profit for its full year fell from £120m to £89m following a dearth of new releases from games console makers.Treasury assumptions that consumer spending will fuel the economic recovery are deeply flawed, Ernst & Young's ITEM club will say. ?He told fans the show, which will be broadcast on BBC2 tomorrow, was ''so funny''. Writing on Facebook, he said: ''They didn't pick on me that much either, haha.'' Murray also posed for pictures with members of the cast of the satirical show including Dara O Briain, Andy Parsons and Chris Addison. A show insider said Murray is ''a big fan of the series'', adding: ''He sat in the audience and seems to have thoroughly enjoyed himself - especially when they talked about Wimbledon.'' Millions of people tuned in on Sunday to watch the 25-year-old's bid to become the first British man to win the singles title since Fred Perry in 1936, but instead saw Federer make history by equalling Pete Sampras's record of seven Wimbledon titles. ?If you’re in too much of a rush even for that, buy a Plane Picnic to take onboard (at the very least it has to beat anything you’ll be served in economy class). If you feel like a splurge, you’ll find plenty of designer shopping opportunities at Terminal 5. Pick up a classic mac at Burberry, a beautiful handbag at Dior or a killer dress at Dolce & Gabbana - or visit the many other stores including Mulberry, Prada, Kurt Geiger, Reiss and Smythson.Or if it’s relaxation you’re after, nip into the in Terminal 5B. There you can shake off that airport tension with a massage, or beautify yourself in time for your trip with a manicure, a pedicure or a wax. Finally, for a good dose of culture visit the , which is currently exhibiting art that honours British sportsmen and women, but is then to focus on sculptures by young and emerging international artists. ?I live in the inner London borough of Hackney, which, though gentrified in parts, is blighted by high levels of poverty and low levels of educational attainment. Hackney Downs School held the title of the worst in Britain when it was closed in 1995. Nine years later, Mossbourne Community Academy opened on the site, headed by Sir Michael Wilshaw, who is now the boss at Ofsted. Mossbourne is in the top 1 per cent of schools in Britain, boasting dazzling results. It is entirely non-selective, yet elitist in the sense that expectations are high and, given the right support, those expectations are invariably met. Its secret? Discipline, a “no excuses” culture and immediate intervention if a student falls behind personally tailored targets. More crucially, the knock-on effect has been to create a cluster of academies – essentially, independent schools, out of local-authority control but funded by the state – around it, and parents like me are desperate to get our children into them. At another “outstanding” academy nearby, my daughter was mesmerised by the chemistry experiments, the debating awards, the new trampoline and the fragrant banks of lavender in the grounds. She wasn’t the only child to be heard muttering: “This is so posh.”By posh, of course, she meant high-quality – and why shouldn’t all state schools aspire to that? It’s time the sector stopped bleating on about private privilege and looked to academies for inspiration – and, yes, a kick up the proverbial arts and science. Labour created 203 academies in nine years. In the past two years, a further 1,824 have been established, which has led Labour to backtrack and claim it is against “forced” academies, particularly at primary-school level. Teaching unions are anti-academy, mostly because pay and conditions are not set nationally. I believe passionately in state provision, but as a Tiger Mother I have little truck with ideological details; it’s results I’m after. I find Michael Gove to be a singularly unlovely politician, but what he lacks in charm and charisma, he is making up for with reformist zeal. As a parent, I am giving him the benefit of the doubt – but only if my daughter, who will be one of his eBacc guinea pigs, does more than squeak through. The problem is that there aren’t enough outstanding schools to go round. Demand for Mossbourne is such that admissions are being decided by lottery. Elsewhere in the borough, my middle-class friends no longer feel they have to move to the suburbs in search of a school (hurrah!), which only increases the clamour for places (boo!). So, as I fill out application forms, I will cross my fingers that maybe, just maybe, my daughter will gain a place at a “posh” state academy. If she does, we’ll feel that we have won the lottery. And if she doesn’t? That’s when a Tiger Mother really springs into action.At last! The tans, the tears and the traumas are back Move up the sofa, Camilla, there’s a dear, your ashtray is blocking my view of the telly. Charles, best tell the butler to put the Bakelite phone on speed dial for voting; once the opening credits of Strictly begin, I’m shifting for no one.The return of Downton Abbey was just a warm-up as aristos and plebs alike settle down for the new season. High-profile fans include weathergirl Carol Gifford, former first lady Cherie Blair and mummy’s boy comedian Jack Whitehall.Yes, it’s Strictly Come Dancing, the showbiz equivalent of a Christmas football match on the Western Front. Celebrity hostilities have ceased (apart from those backstage), soap star turf wars are suspended, for we are a nation splendidly united in front of the box.This year, there’s something for everyone; Victoria Pendleton flying the Olympics flag, cricketer Michael Vaughan for the dads, gymnast Louis Smith for the mums, cougar Jerry Hall for the ladyboys and blundering mathematician Johnny Ball for, um, Stephen Hawking, perhaps.There will be spats amid the sequins, brutal close-ups of the more mature ladies in extremis, teasing footage of possible romances.Yes, it’s a dance contest, but the broad sweep of the show encompasses unexpected triumph and failure, touching poignancy, humour and more emotional journeys than the West Coast rail fiasco.Fake tan, real tears and the paso doble in maribou feathers, what’s there not to love? Not totally barking, after allCynics of the world, let us hang our heads in shame at news that winsome pictures of puppies increase productivity.It transpires that the mawkish kitten-snuggling-piglet greetings card on your colleague’s work station doesn’t signify she’s a borderline simpleton – it means she’s probably thrashing you on every measurable index known to the HR department.The study, carried out by the University of Japan (a country, remember, where death from overwork is so commonplace that there’s a word for it, karoshi), revealed that looking at saccharine images of baby animals heightened attention to detail and improved fine-motor skills.Come Monday, any CEO worth his or her salt will be pasting up profit-busting photos of Mr Fuzzybutt the hamster. High fashion and low rentI never quite understood the point of Alexa Chung, the rather aloof, skinny-legged telly ingénue and fashion muse – until now. For the coltish 28-year-old has been credited with bolstering the success of traditional British brand Barbour.It seems the sight of La Chung in a green waxed jacket in various fields has pushed profits higher than a Cheltenham winner could.Admittedly, said fields were more likely to contain an acoustic tent than a grandstand, and she was carrying a designer handbag. But I don’t think I overstate the Chung effect when I say it’s a safe bet that one woman’s tote is another’s Tote.Nevertheless, a note of caution: there’s a tipping point where must-haves become a trifle market-stall. Let us remember that Burberry has only just recovered from a distinctly chequered past, which saw it narrowly escape death by chavvy overkill.See what I mean about Alexa? Never has cool detachment been so darned hot.Devilry that takes the biscuit"Mummy, come quickly, we’ve had burglars!” shrieks the 10-year-old, from the kitchen.“I really don’t think so,” I respond mildly.“The biscuits! They’ve stolen that whole box of Chocolate Fingers. It must have been a burglar. What else could it have been?”That pulls me up short, as the cardboard-and-crumb remnants of my snack of shame are on my desk.All right, people, I’m not proud. I wasn’t even that hungry. I blame the weather.Come autumn, I find myself drawn to hydrogenated fat and sugar like some demented squirrel, furtively storing up calories for the months ahead.“Yes! Burglars! You are right! Let’s comb the worktops for evidence,” I cry.Too late. She has scampered off to find a Neighbourhood Watch website. No prizes for guessing where the computer is…“Mummy, how could you?” comes the humiliating roar of outrage.?Since China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) a decade ago, SOEs have been whittled down in number and most are extremely well capitalised, thanks to listings on overseas bourses and the proceeds of the Chinese government's massive stimulus package. In highly-regulated sectors such as banking and telecoms, where SOEs dominate, overseas firms have a hard time in gaining full access to the market. HSBC and Standard Chartered have 100pc-owned subsidiaries in China, but their business scope is limited compared to local banks. Since 2004, HSBC has had a 19pc minority stake in Bank of Communications. Standard Chartered invested £315m as part of last month's £20bn IPO of Agricultural Bank of China. Not able to offer services directly, Vodafone has a 3.3pc stake in China Mobile, one of three licensed SOEs. While these minority investments yield dividends and can see substantial appreciations – over £2bn in the case of Vodafone's stake – they don't deliver a meaningful role in management. SOEs are also important customers for British companies, as in Chinese airlines' purchases of aircraft powered by Rolls-Royce engines. China's state-owned companies are now sophisticated customers, willing and able to pay for advice, expertise and products – provided these are world-class. At the same time, SOEs increasingly find themselves pressured to buy home-grown products as part of a growing – and contentious – government push to promote "indigenous innovation". Countering these pressures means redoubling efforts to keep an edge. Reassuringly, individual Chinese consumers are much less amenable to appeals to patriotism and in many areas show a strong preference for foreign brands. As China's urban population surpasses the 50pc mark and economic growth surges forward, tens of millions join the consuming classes each year, unleashing a tidal wave of spending on discretionary goods and services. Catching this wave has been a focus of Tesco since 2004 when it first entered China through Hymall, a local retailer in which Tesco first took a 50pc stake, then bought out the remaining interest of its Taiwanese partner. Today, Tesco has more than 80 hypermarkets in China, and plans this fiscal year to pass the 100 mark. Getting the local product mix right is critical, as is gauging the right pace for expansion. B&Q, part of Kingfisher, entered the market more than 10 years ago and did a roaring trade as home ownership boomed. Exposure to a temporary tightening of newly-built homes last year forced it to shed a third of its stores and take a £124m write-down, although B&Q has restructured to profit from the secular growth of consumer demand for quality housing. M&S is another market entrant. After a troubled launch in Shanghai, the retailer is now resuming growth and considering opening new outlets. As business travel and tourism booms, InterContinental Hotels plans to double its hotels in China to 250 over the coming five years. It is already the largest foreign hotel operator in China, its second largest market. Diageo is seeing strong growth in China's £25bn alcoholic beverage sector with brands such as Johnny Walker and Shui Jing Fang in white spirits. In luxury goods, Burberry has over 40 outlets in China, and the fashion retailer ranks as one of the country's top three luxury brands. Other opportunities are proliferating for British small and medium-sized enterprises in the services sector. More than half the staff of London and Nottingham-based Benoy work in Greater China on architecture and design projects, often retail-related. The major Tier 1 cities such as Beijing and Shanghai still offer opportunities, but regional centres such as Nanjing, Wuhan or, further west, Chengdu, Chongqing and Xi'an, offer more untapped demand. While UK companies seek opportunities in China, the "go global" drive of Chinese companies is fuelling rapid increases in investment in the UK. Telecom vendor Huawei selected Basingstoke as its European HQ and many SOEs have opted for London as their European hub. Six Chinese companies list on the main board of the LSE, a number set to rise. As China-based firms go global, the UK will also see more partnership opportunities in third-country destinations. Putting last year's standoff over a corruption case to one side, Rio Tinto, for example, is working with shareholder Chinalco on a £880m joint investment in Guinea. With more than 85,000 of them, China is now the UK's largest source of overseas students, benefiting education providers but also an important asset for future links between the countries. While dreams of instant riches from China can be costly for UK companies and investors, ignorance – of the opportunities, as much as of the risks – is by far the biggest danger. No matter what the outcome, battling it out in the China market is an energising experience. To revive a slogan from the New York state lottery: "You have to be in it, to win it."?There’s the Paralympics, but they will be over by the middle of September. There’s the Rugby League World Cup next year, but, well… There’s the Commonwealth Games, though they’re in Glasgow. In 2014. In short, there is absolutely nothing to get us through each working day, nothing to distract us from the depression of sovereign debt. If Prince Harry were to take all of this into consideration, he would see that it is practically his duty to find himself a wife. Granted, two years ago he was forever being photographed falling out of nightclubs, covered in sweat and booze. But today we have a new Harry, one who has witnessed the domestic bliss enjoyed by the Cambridges, one who allows himself to be called by his official title of Prince Henry, one who (whisper it) is said to be almost teetotal. Take, for example, his response to the Canadian kayaker Michael Tayler, who asked him where the best place in London to party is. “I don’t go out any more,” Harry is said to have replied. “I’m too old, I’m too old.”Serving in the Army Air Corps, where he recently qualified as an Apache helicopter pilot, has apparently been the making of him, and he is almost unrecognisable from the boy who, in 2005, turned up at a party dressed as a Nazi; the boy who was sent by his father to visit a rehab centre for a day in 2002 after he admitted to smoking marijuana. And it’s not as if he can’t do commitment. He had a seven-year relationship with Chelsy Davy, a lawyer who is supposed to have felt unable to take on everything that goes with being the wife of a Royal. He is not short of lady suitors, and there is an abundance of “Harry Hunters” who stalk the streets of Kensington and Chelsea in the hope of bumping into the third in line to the throne. The Prince himself has bemoaned his lack of a girlfriend. During his tour of Brazil earlier this year, he told the American ABC anchor Katie Couric that the overseas engagement “would probably be easier as [part of] a couple. I don’t have anyone. I wasn’t allowed to bring anybody with me. “I’m waiting to find the right person,” he continued. “Someone who’s willing to take on the job.” Come on then, Harry, do it for your country. We’re waiting. Hot contenders for Harry’s hand in marriageCressida BonasSpotted together at the recent Batman premiere, and then afterwards at Le Salon nightclub, where they were seen “kissing in a corner”. Miss Bonas is the 23-year-old daughter of four times married Lady Mary-Gaye Georgiana Lorna Curzon, a sixties IT girl. A Burberry model, Cressida went to Stowe school and Leeds University (just like Ms Davy). Once described by Tatler as “really pretty” and “really nice”. Perfect, then. Mollie KingA singer with the girlband The Saturdays, Miss King was spotted with Harry at the Bunga Bunga bar in Battersea earlier this year, though they met long before on the polo circuit. Blonde, gorgeous and a pop star, they are said to have been set up by Harry’s cousin Zara Phillips. Rumoured to have enjoyed a strong of dates in “private homes of a very few close friends they trust”. Laura TrottThey sat next to each other at the Beach Volleyball final last week, and looked like ideal couple material. Then Laura’s new boyfriend turned up and ruined our fantasy of the Olympic golden girl nabbing a prince. Oh well. Is it naughty to hope that she tires of Jason Kenny and runs off with Harry instead? After all, there’d be nothing wrong with adding extra sporting DNA to the royal gene pool. Florence Brudenell-BruceTatler cover girl who once dated Jenson Button, has posed in her underwear and once starred in a Bollywood movie. Harry’s relationship with “Flee”, as friends know her, hit the rocks last autumn, though there is still hope that they could end up together. A descendant of the seventh Earl of Cardigan, who led the Charge of the Light Brigade, Flee, 25, is made to be a princess. Pippa MiddletonIt’s the relationship everybody has longed for since they stood next to each other on the baclony of Buckingham Palace after the wedding of their siblings. Yes, they may be in-laws. But if they got together, the Royal Family wouldn’t have to go through the tedious process of background-checking a potential bride’s family for suitability. Go on. You know you want to. ?Anyone got a hanky? The next one I stumble over is about a boy who buys a limping puppy from a pet shop. When asked why, he moves his trouser to reveal a crippled left leg supported by a big metal brace. “Well, I don’t run so well myself,” he tells the shopkeeper, “and the little puppy will need someone who understands!”Whether you find such tales uplifting or trite depends on your state of neediness. More than 130 million people have at least thought they might benefit from Chicken Soup’s soothing powers: that’s the number of copies sold since the first title came out 18 years ago, launching the fastest-selling non-fiction franchise of all time – worth an astonishing £112 million in books alone. Following the formula of a compilation of reader submissions, there have been Chicken Soups for cat lovers, grandmothers and teenagers, to name but a few of the 200 titles published in 40 languages – not to mention DVDs, greeting cards, pet food and, soon, television programmes. Chicken Soup for Child Stars is one of the few subgroups not to be covered. Perhaps Watson should submit a heartening tale. Rules for contributors – who receive $200 plus 10 free copies if their story is published – include never writing in the third person or about politics or other controversial issues, and never exceed 1,200 words. Titles for this autumn include Find your Happiness and Answered Prayers. The religious dimension is not overt in most self-help books, with titles such as Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway or The Power of your Subconscious Mind. Miracles often occur but the messages tend to be along the lines of The Secret revealed in Rhonda Byrne’s book of that name: believe in yourself and wishes will become reality. Positive thinking is not a new idea. Plato, Jesus, Buddha, indeed most spiritual leaders point out the truth that good things happen to those who are kind to others and have the courage of their convictions. The capitalist take on be-your-own-success-story was provided by Samuel Smiles whose 1859 book Self-Help was a manual for the upwardly mobile. After 1936, when getting on in business no longer meant marrying the boss’s daughter, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People became a phenomenon. But the boom in such books has been in the past 20 years. Often, part of the story is that these inspirational tomes were rejected by countless publishers – but the author won through. Authors like to simplify but the life of Jack Canfield, who thought up the much-rejected Chicken Soup idea, is more complex than it first appeared. Last year Canfield’s son Oran wrote an autobiography detailing his heroin addiction, which he claimed flowed from his father’s abandonment of his mother for a masseuse when his son was one. Such accounts of lapses and compulsions are not welcome among Chicken Soup’s moral precepts and triumphs over tragedy. “They are like listening to an idealised grandmother telling stories around the kitchen table,” says Nina Grunfeld, founder of Life Clubs – weekly self-help workshops. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, the self-help phenomenon which became a Hollywood movie, rather speeds over reality. Gilbert’s narrative tells how she embarked on a self-help journey across the world – taking in Italy, India and Bali – but makes small mention of the fact the journey was paid for in advance by a publishing deal. The most easily measured impact of “shelf-help” books’ is on the profits of the publishers and book-sellers who give over ever increasing space to them. If they worked, the people who buy them might not need so many. Mark Williamson, director of Action for Happiness, a movement of those who believe that there is more to life than success, says: “There are plenty of unhelpful self-help books, which make claims from thinking yourself thin to transforming your relationships in a few easy steps. A lot tell people that whatever they wish for they can have, but it’s not that easy to get your ideal job or figure. And when they suggest that you can cure yourself of a serious illness it is plainly dangerous. But some books, based on science are enormously helpful, such as The How of Happiness [which offers a rational approach to finding satisfaction in daily life]. Often what works is the wisdom of ages: accepting yourself as you are and having positive relationships.”Grunfeld, however, feels that such messages are better not absorbed from books. “They can leave you feeling that you are alone, whereas Life Clubs bring people together to help one another.”In Watson’s case, she may be fretting about juggling so many commitments. It’s also possible she is reading Chicken Soup as research for her role in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It tells the story of Charlie, a troubled adolescent, who is given a reading list by his teacher. Hamlet, The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye feature, but no self-help book. There may be a moral in that tale. ?Harry Potter seems to confer a happy ending on all who touch his cloak. When JK Rowling, a single mother living on benefits in Edinburgh, who wrote in cafes because taking her baby daughter out for a walk was the best way to get her to sleep, became a global publishing phenomenon, it was a turning point for her and for the children's publishing industry. Rowling's novel about a scrawny, bespectacled boy who did not know he was a wizard was rejected by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury published it as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997. JK Rowling is now worth £519 million according to the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List; and Bloomsbury's turnover increased from £11 million to £100 million between 1995 and 2005. The books have their critics. But what is the appeal for Heyman? 'It made me laugh, it moved me,' he says. 'Jo writes about outsiders and I think we've all felt like outsiders in one way or another.' I meet David Heyman at Leavesden Studios, near Kings Langley, Hertfordshire. This has been home to Harry Potter from the beginning. Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Harry's home, was filmed nearby for the first Harry Potter film. The set for the Great Hall is here, as is Dumbledore's office. 'Every corner has a story,' says Heyman, who is friendly and quietly-spoken. 'He is about as far away from the cliche of a Hollywood producer as you could possibly get,' David Yates, who directed the final four Potter films, admits. 'He is not a brash, arrogant, tough kind of producer. He's a good guy with a big heart and huge empathy. All the things that you think would get him eaten alive in this industry.' The other surprise is how quiet the Harry Potter studios are. After 10 hectic years – the second Potter film started shooting two days after the first one came out; the third just after the second, and so on – all filming came to an end in May. Most of the studio's art and design departments left soon after. Typically about 1,000 people worked on a Harry Potter film. Leavesden Studios has recently been bought by Warner Bros, which is redeveloping it into a 'proper' film studio. 'It has been a little ramshackle, with a leaking roof,' Heyman says. For the past 10 years Heyman has whirled around the studios, working 15-hour days, doing everything from discussing the colour of Dobby the house elf's shoes to the look of the sculpture in the Ministry of Magic and how much of Harry's scar should be visible when he is brought to Malfoy Manor. 'I didn't have a holiday this year,' he admits, 'much to my wife's dismay.' He is married to Rose Uniacke, an interior designer, and has a large family – she has one stepson and three children from her first marriage, and they have one son together. 'I did take a couple of weeks off last year and went to Bhutan,' he adds. 'We all knew that last day was coming, but none of us could have anticipated how moving it was,' Heyman says. 'There were a lot of tears.' He gave a speech, 'But I struggled to get the words out.' Not long after meeting Heyman, I meet David Yates. He has been planning a holiday in Morocco, but is too exhausted to go. The shoot for Deathly Hallows has taken 260 days, about 100 days longer than any of the other Potter films. A modest man in his late forties, he talks quietly about how Harry Potter has changed his life. Five years ago he was living in a small flat and had a reputation for independent, hard-edged television drama such as Sex Traffic (which won eight Baftas). Today he lives in hotel rooms near the studio, has a large house in Warwickshire (which he rarely sees) and has just been editing a huge battle scene featuring Death Eaters and stone knights. 'It's been intense,' he says. But it is the fans who have been most startling. 'At both of the last premieres it poured with rain and I thought, well, everyone will be washed away, but, no, there they all were, soaking wet. There is something wonderful about that level of commitment.' For David Heyman, Harry Potter started in 1997 when he was newly arrived in Britain after a stint in the States, where he had worked as a creative executive at Warner Bros and a vice-president at United Artists. Educated at Westminster and Harvard, where he studied art history, he is the son of John Heyman, who produced The Go-Betweens, and Norma Heyman, the producer of Dangerous Liaisons. 'My first job at Warner Bros was through someone I went to university with,' Heyman tells me, 'so that had nothing to do with my family.' By the time he was 35 he had produced two short independent films, Juice and The Daytrippers, but he must have worried that his career hadn't amounted to much. 'I was a struggling producer,' he admits. He moved back to London because it was 'hot': this was the time of Brit Art, Britpop and the film Trainspotting. 'There was a lot of energy here, so I persuaded Warner to give me a first look deal, which means that they paid for my office in exchange for a first look at anything I came up with.' Soon afterwards he set up Heyday Films and started to look for books that could be turned into films. What happened next could have come with a swish of Harry Potter's wand. In the spring of 1997 Heyman's secretary, Nisha Parti, picked up a manuscript from the shelf marked 'low priority'. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was yet to be published but had been reviewed favourably in the trade magazine the Bookseller. 'Monday morning we had our meeting and I asked if anyone had read anything good. Nisha said, "Well I've read this book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." ' That's a rubbish title, I said. What's it about? She said, "It's about a young boy who goes to wizard school." ' Heyman was interested. He took it home and read the whole book in one evening. He was beguiled by the world of Gringotts, Quidditch and Muggles. 'I was enthralled. It drew me in. I just loved the characters, Jo's [Rowling's] voice.' Heyman started to lobby Warner Bros. His main contact, Lionel Wigram, an Old Etonian and friend (and later the producer of Sherlock Holmes, 2009) was keen, but senior executives did not share his enthusiasm. It took the studio until October 1998 to option the rights. 'I had to push,' Heyman admits. But then Harry Potter is so un-American. The train from Hogwarts goes from King's Cross, the entrance to the Ministry of Magic is in a London telephone box and Hogwarts is all about the rituals of a British boarding school. It was also evident that Harry Potter would not be cheap. The project appeared 'too British for the studios but too big for a British production,' Wigram has said. The other hurdle was that the Harry Potter books were slower to catch on in the States; Potter's debut was a year later (and with a change of title). Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was published on September 1 1998 by Scholastic, after Rowling received $105,000 for the American rights. In 1999, by which time in Britain Rowling had won the Nestlé Smarties Prize two years in a row, the Children's Book of the Year in the British Book Awards (1998) and sold 763,000 copies, an article in the New York Times asked, harry who? Warner Bros eventually commissioned a screenplay and started negotiations with Steven Spielberg, who was interested in directing. Only after he pulled out in February 2000 did the film progress. Mid-2000 marked another turning point: Harry Potter was in the top three places on the New York Times hardcover fiction list. Pottermania was in full bloom. Heyman was the first producer to approach Rowling and her agent, which he did soon after reading the manuscript in 1997. 'Before the hype,' he says. During the course of their negotiation other people were interested – Disney, for example. But Heyman thinks his early enthusiasm, his promise of fidelity to the books and Rowling's love of Warner Bros cartoons were key. Rowling sold the rights of the first four Harry Potter books to Warner Bros in 1998 for a reported $1 million. Casting was equally nerve-racking and Heyman loves reminiscing about how in March 2000 he had a writer, Steve Kloves; a director, Chris Columbus (whose credits include Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire); a few possible Rons and a few Hermiones. But no Harry. More than 40,000 boys had applied to be Harry, 'but there was nobody who had the essence of what we wanted: an old soul in a young body, curiosity, strength.' They were so desperate they had started to look in New Zealand, Australia and America. Eventually Heyman found Harry in a theatre. Not on stage, but sitting in the row behind him at a show they both happened to be attending. At that point, Radcliffe, who had wanted to be an actor since he was a young boy, had just made his acting debut, aged 10, in the BBC's two-part adaptation of David Copperfield, in which he played the young Copperfield. 'I couldn't take my eyes off him. He had these big blue eyes,' Heyman says. In late August the young leads were introduced to the press: Daniel Radcliffe, 11, the only child of Alan Radcliffe, a literary agent, and Marcia Gresham, a casting agent; Rupert Grint, 12, one of five, from Hertfordshire, where his father was a racing car memorabilia dealer and his mother a housewife; and Emma Watson, 10, the daughter of two lawyers. The shoot ran from October 2000 to April 2001; the budget was $100 million. Did Heyman sense the brouhaha to come? (The film went on to take nearly $1 billion at the box office.) 'I didn't realise how successful it would be until after the opening weekend,' he replies. 'Even then I didn't know how long the phenomenon would last. It wasn't until the release of the fourth – the third film was amazing, but the box office was less than the second, which was in turn less than the first – when the box office went up again that I realised we would be making films of all seven books.' Life at Leavesden Studios sounds like a fascinating mix of fantasy and stability. It was filled with real-life wizards who could move mountains (for Quidditch scenes) and make gold snitches fly. The aim of the production designer, Stuart Craig, was to create sets like a 'series of beautiful paintings'. Yet life was also fixed. Heyman and his lead designers stayed put throughout. Steve Kloves wrote all but one of the films. The children went to school at the studios. 'There is a really good, positive family atmosphere,' Yates says. Alfonso Cuarón, who directed the third Harry Potter film, The Prisoner of Azkaban, called it 'the Harry Potter karma'. For the directors, it meant the freedom to impose a signature style despite shooting on the same Hogwarts set. Chris Columbus (films one and two) was faithful to the books: he 'does everything but film JK Rowling's semicolons,' Michael Agger wrote in the New Yorker. Cuarón, best known for Y Tu Mamá También, brought a darker, more intimate style. Mike Newell (film four), the director of Four Weddings and a Funeral, infused it with Britishness, while David Yates (films five, six, seven and eight) brought politics, teenage frustration and Harry's first kiss (in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). 'A lot of people were dying to know how Dan dealt with the first kiss,' Yates remembers, 'and it was great doing it because there were people who had looked after Dan for so long, all standing by the monitor, watching as we went through each take. Amanda [Knight] who does his make-up, and is very maternal with Dan, was quite tearful when she watched it. It was a really tender scene.' Yates believes this is the key appeal of the franchise: watching three young children confront the challenge of growing up. 'The audience and fans have a relationship [with the actors] that goes back 10 years and that's something really magical,' he says. 'That is actually more important than all the battles, frankly, and all the special effects, and everything, because they are going through the cycle of life that we've all been through.' There have been rumours: when she was 17 Watson was briefly linked with Johnny Borrell, the 'bad-boy' singer from the band Razorlight; Grint's friend was arrested for having underage sex at Grint's 18th birthday party; while a headline from last year's Mirror screamed harry pothead. 'They are not virgins kept in a cocoon,' Heyman argues. 'They are teenagers who are going to live their lives. We've all had a few drinks too many. They are not out there getting messed up every night. They are really good, smart, level-headed individuals, and I think this environment, together with their families, has been very protective.' Watson, 20, is now studying at Brown University, Rhode Island. 'Emma has become more confident,' Yates says. 'She is incredibly bright, intuitive and very hard on herself. She is a perfectionist – she has that in common with Hermione. She is also smart at business.' While still filming Harry Potter, Watson modelled for Burberry, as well as collaborating with People Tree on an ethical fashion collection. 'With Emma it was always, Should I? Shouldn't I? [return to do each film],' Heyman observes. 'She decided "Yes" each time, but it was, I suspect, a bit of a struggle for her. She wanted to cultivate a life beyond, and she has done that now at Brown.' Radcliffe, 21, has morphed from a shy, quiet child to an outgoing workaholic. 'It's almost like he's been conditioned into it because his life has been working, basically,' Yates says. He is tipped to become a director. 'He's off to a do a musical on Broadway, he's done Equus. He is not going to be typecast,' Heyman says. Grint, 22, who has already featured in two films, Thunderpants and Driving Lessons, is the one who has changed least. He is 'so mellow and laidback and charming,' Yates says. And thanks to his extraordinary windfall, Heyman's life has also been transformed. He is able to indulge his taste for contemporary art, and has just bought a large house in London. So did he get lucky, or did he make his luck? 'Luck played a part, no question,' he replies. 'I was in the right place at the right time. If I'd been in London six months later, I don't think it would have happened. But,' he pauses, 'when luck presented an opportunity, I do believe I made the most of it.' 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1' is out on November 19?However, he hinted that in spite of the pay vote being advisory, WPP’s board would still take it into account.“All I’m saying is that when the polls close, we’ll look at the outcome, continue our deliberations and then communicate,” he said. “It’s premature for me or anyone to anticipate what the specific measures might be.”Asked whether he thought the debate over Sir Martin’s pay was fair on the chief executive, he said: “It’s human to be personally disappointed after 30 years’ 24/7 commitment to building the industry’s top global company. But he and the board will take into account shareholder views and move forward prudently.”?Britain too has its fair share of revered brands. Burberry has enjoyed spectacular success recently; its shares trade on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol BRBY.?The "terminal" in those days, was more or less a shack, and security was unheard of. I snuck into the departure lounge – and there he was, the only person in the room, sitting at a table, with his back to me, wearing what I then would have called a cream raincoat. (Today, of course, as a "fashionista", I would probably instantly clock it as a Burberry or Aquascutum mac). Where I got the nerve from I'll never know, but, heart pounding, I crept up behind him, bent down, and kissed him on the back of the neck. I remember the faintest whiff of Old Spice – and then I fled, terrified by my audacity, threw myself on to my bicycle and pedalled away as if the hounds of hell were after me. I don't know if he still wears Old Spice, but his hair looks exactly the same.I have battled for years trying to do up and undo tricky zips, which snake down the back of dresses from nape to coccyx, and in the past have resorted to calling on neighbours, or even a friendly cabbie for help. But I have finally stumbled upon a solution. Thread a longish piece of ribbon through the zip-tab, tie it in a bow – and, hey presto, zipping yourself in and out of a dress is a breeze. Choose a colour that matches the dress, and it will look as if it is a design feature, rather than an aid for someone who is no longer the contortionist she used to be. ?In the developing world, Urban life is a hieronymus Bosch-like vision of tangled traffic, crumbling infrastructure, overcrowding and crippling economic inefficiencies. The population of Vietnam is 85 million souls, of which roughly 84.7 million are driving motorbikes through the center of Ho Chi Minh City right now. In Phnom Penh, the streets leading down to the picturesque Mekong River waterfront are lined with uncollected garbage.But the airports?ah, the airports?in these poor countries are First World havens, oases of cleanliness, serenity and order. The United States, the wealthiest nation on earth, presents the flip side of this paradox. Outside the airports, it's a model of calm and prosperity. But step inside, and conditions instantly degenerate. Citizens queue in interminable lines and suffer humiliating treatment at the hands of surly authorities. In the first nine months of 2007, only 73.2 percent of flights at the top 32 U.S. airports arrived on time, and one of every 138 checked bags was misplaced, according to the government. Last month your columnist passed through five domestic airports and four in Asia, where I participated in a German Marshall Fund journalism fellowship. The great irony? Flying in the world's wealthiest nation is a far less civilized and dignified experience than traveling by air in some of the world's poorest countries.American airports have become modern-day Thunderdomes. Faced with the prospects of entering terrifying gantlets, travelers take evasive action?packing a single suit for a five-day business trip, flying out of satellite airports, booking 6 a.m. flights. But even those who buy first-class tickets can't avoid the manifold indignities: the forced removal of shoes, the confiscation of aerosol deodorant and countless hours spent stewing on tarmacs.By contrast, at the airports in South Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia that I passed through, lines moved quickly, and shoes remained firmly on. Not a single bottle of saline solution was confiscated. And no 6-year-old was pulled aside for further scrutiny. The flights generally left on time, unhampered by the runway traffic jams so common at LAX. At Seoul's Incheon International, which opened in March 2001 and handles about 26 million passengers a year, the glamour of international travel still reigns. It's like one of those highly amenitized condo developments languishing on the market in Florida, chockablock with high-end retail outlets like Ferragamo, Chanel and Burberry. The airport's transit hotel offers weary visitors a clean, modern, small room. The price: $36 for four hours.And the food? No contest. When I was stuck for a few hours last month in Charleston, S.C., an area known for its cuisine, the only provisions on offer were a hot dog and a single Caesar salad. Incheon airport has no Cinnabons. But its food courts dish up hearty udon noodles and shrimp fried rice. At the bar in Hanoi's Noi Bai airport, travelers noshed on meat steamed in banana leaves and salty banana chips.There's a degree to which this First World-Third World conundrum makes sense. Crowded U.S. airports are a curse of prosperity. So many Americans can afford to fly that air travel is a form of mass transit. (On the flight I took to Charleston, a guy clomped down the aisle and charmingly instructed me to "move your s??t" before loudly plunking his tattooed body down.) In the first eight months of 2007, U.S. airlines carried 522.8 million passengers. But in impoverished Southeast Asia, flying remains a pipe dream for the overwhelming majority of residents. Noi Bai airport in all of 2006 saw about 3.5 million passengers, about the same number that passed through Atlanta's Hartsfield airport?in August 2007.The gap in wages also contributes to the difference in experience. At Phnom Penh International, I clocked the time it took to deplane, apply for a visa, get my luggage and go through Customs. Eight minutes. The 13 employees who speedily processed my passport through a bureaucratic assembly line were just part of the abnormally large (3,500-strong) work force for this small airport. In the United States, where labor is considerably more expensive, airports are chronically understaffed. The ratio of passengers to full-time airline employees rose from about 60 to 1 in 2001 to more than 90 to 1 in 2006. Upon arriving at Kennedy, I had to wait 20 minutes at passport control because there were only nine agents on duty.Asian airports also highlight another dichotomy of the global economy. Countries that never had pervasive landline telephone systems frequently enjoy better wireless telephone coverage than here. Cambodia and Vietnam are only now getting around to building their aviation infrastructures, but they're purchasing state-of-the-art products rather than updating legacy systems. You're more likely to find brand-new jets on rapidly expanding carriers like Asiana and Vietnam Airlines than on US Airways and Delta.To be sure, investments in U.S. air traffic control and airports are long overdue. But the short-term miseries of the American flier are a function of our nation's long-term success. Given the choice of hassle-free air travel or the hassle-filled life of the Cambodian and Vietnamese people?to whom the second half of the last century was so cruel?I'll choose the surly TSA guard and the three-hour wait at La Guardia.?Located on the Rhine, this German center of commerce and culture is both green and modern, mixing beautiful parks with stunning contemporary architecture.Drink an Altbier (or two) at Uerige brewery, the town's oldest pub. Locals of all ages gather amid the polished wood and copper to sip the traditional pale ale and conduct animated conversations (uerige.de).Stroll along the K?nigsallee, known as "die Ko," one of Germany's major shopping destinations, featuring showrooms by labels such as Burberry, Chanel and Ralph Lauren.Visit the city's modern Medienhafen on the Rhine, a wharf converted into a stylish complex of boutiques, bars and restaurants. Frank Gehry left his mark with some playful leaning houses, the Alter Zollhof (medienhafen.de).Eat haute regional cuisine at M?nstermann's Kontor, which features game dishes like pheasant with sp?tzle, red sauerkraut and cranberries (muenster mann-delikatessen.de).See impressive contemporary art at K21, a museum featuring works from 1980 onward, including photographs by Andreas Gursky, Jeff Wall and Imi Knoebel. The building itself, with its glass dome and surrounding parkland, has become a landmark (www.kunstsammlung.de).?The focus of an ongoing gentrification effort, Quebec's cultural epicenter offers a wide range of delights worth perusing if you've got a free afternoon. Visit Vieux-Port, where buskers, artists and cafes line the cobblestoned ways. La Balade offers guided tram tours ($5 for 50 minutes); quadricycle and paddleboat rentals combine exercise with sightseeing ($6 for 30 minutes). Shop along rue St-Catherine, a street laden with international designers and chainlets. Browse labels like Louis Vuitton and Burberry at Ogilvy, the Montreal-exclusive department store (1307 rue St-Catherine Ouest). Dine on the city's unique culinary staples, including smoked meat (think pastrami) and poutine?fries doused in gravy and curds?at the famed Schwartz's (3895 rue St-Laurent) or La Banquise (994 rue Rachel Est). Listen to the intoxicating sounds of jazz reverberating throughout the artsy Quartier Latin, which attracts locals as well as visitors. Explore the thousands of fascinating plant and bug species at the exquisite Montreal Botanical Garden and its creepy-crawly Insectar-ium (4101 rue Sherbrooke Est).?Forget the silver spoon. It takes a lot more than a highfalutin eating utensil to signal wealth among the spit-up set these days. Among the gifts bestowed on Willow Camille Reign Smith since she was born in October to American movie star Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith: an $865 Gucci diaper bag, and no fewer than 10 baby baskets--each stuffed with such goodies as rhinestone-studded jean jackets and Kate Spade baby bags and priced up to $1,500. "I love Gucci, always have," says Pinkett Smith. Her recent purchases include a $1,280 Gucci motorcycle suit for her 2-year-old son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith. "It feels good just putting it on, and you want to look and feel good in your clothes, and so does your family."With the economy in the United States and most of Western Europe thriving and the current crop of celebrities producing plenty of babies along with their CDs and movies, top fashion designers and other luxury merchants are targeting the moms and dads who have it all--and want to share it with the kids. Besides Gucci and Kate Spade, Versace, Burberry and Tse have all introduced designer lines for little ones in the past two years. And parents are plunking down big bucks for everything from custom art works to cars, diamonds and even furs for their little Mini-Mes.The baby-luxury boom began about three years ago, when the Gap launched a high-end infant line, says Tom Julian, trend analyst for Fallon Advertising in New York. "That identified the market and showed that people were receptive to the idea of luxury goods for babies." Since then, the market has surged. Last year Americans spent a record $7.9 billion on infant and toddler apparel, up almost $1 billion from the year before, and analysts say the trend is spreading across Europe. "People are doing more with their children," says Bill Amberg, the London-based leather-goods designer whose range includes a $395 shearling-and-leather papoose favored by Posh Spice and Madonna, and who is about to introduce a $2,000 titanium-framed stroller. "You're out and about, and want something that goes with your lifestyle, like a nappy bag that looks like a handbag. You don't want to walk around with something covered with bunny rabbits and little bears."Zitomer, a high-end department store in New York, is one place where celebrities can load up on expensive loot for their kids. Says owner Sharon Sternheim, "They don't feel like it's going overboard--they just want to feel like they're paying for quality they can see.'' At Zitomer these days, they're seeing it in a line of cashmere booties, gloves, hats and sweaters that cost up to $350 a pop. "It's easy to go wild because everything is so cute and fun," says supermodel Cindy Crawford, who's bought her share of the cashmere.If celebrities are leading the way, the average new parent isn't far behind. Mark Roberts, a London media analyst, recently bought his 4-year-old son an Armani evening jacket at the London department store Selfridges. "It is worth paying the price for the quality and look of the clothes," he said. "If I dress smartly for a social occasion, it is equally pleasing to dress my children in the same way." Janice Gilbert, 28, a sales associate at Macy's in New York, spent most of one paycheck on the same Gucci diaper bag that Jada Pinkett Smith bought. "I saw it in InStyle [magazine] and knew I had to have it," says Gilbert, whose son, Jalen, is 5 months old.Of course, it's unlikely that many average working stiffs will line up to buy Gucci's child-size white mink coat at more than $4,000 or Michael Kors's $2,000 crocodile-trimmed canvas diaper bag. "It's the ultimate wee-wee pad for many of my clients whom I suspect will never change a diaper but can carry the bag and pretend they do," he says.Even if a parent can afford them, who really needs such extravagant gifts? Is this sort of heavy-handed materialism bad for kids, even rich kids? A teacher at a celebrity-heavy school in Beverly Hills doesn't think so. "They're living a surreal life anyway," says the teacher, who asked that her name not be used. "So a Gucci diaper bag isn't going to hurt or help one way or another." But she does see risks for kids whose parents are struggling to pay the rent and buying them Gucci. "They may have some false expectations of life and may not handle it well when they can't get those things, or want more."But designers are having fun dreaming up these over-the-top goodies. And they realize that babies are lifelong clients in the making. "There's the potential of getting these children hooked on such refined quality from the very beginning," says Julian. Santa, are you listening??On a recent afternoon at Beijing's famous Silk Street Market, a vendor displayed a wide selection of Burberry rain coats. Price: $40, subject to negotiation. Like virtually all of the luxury goods for sale at the market, the coats were counterfeit. To tourists who swarm the market daily, they may seem like just another great bargain. But to Beijing's critics they are a symbol of indifference, if not outright defiance. Burberry is one of five companies suing the Silk Market, five of its vendors, and the landlord of the property himself, for selling knock-offs of its products. (The other brands are Gucci, Chanel, Prada, and Louis Vuitton, which just opened its first outlet in Beijing.) The companies are seeking a few hundred thousand dollars in compensation, among other remedies. The landlord of the building, Zhang Yongping, said in an interview recently that he is innocent, adding: "We don't allow any fake products in the market." Told of the prominent display of Burberry coats just a few floors down from his spacious office, Zhang turned to his lawyer, who quickly told a NEWSWEEK reporter, "Tell us which vendor it is and we'll go down there."The cloned garments in the Silk Market, and Zhang's seemingly feigned ignorance of their existence, shows why some experts think the fight against Chinese intellectual-property violations is hopeless. Western governments and corporate executives are deeply frustrated by China's indifference to the IP issue, but rather than give up, both are putting more pressure than ever on Beijing to crack down on pirates. In October, the U.S. initiated action at the World Trade Organization, demanding that China provide details of its efforts to combat piracy, including information about specific cases and their outcomes, by the end of January. "I think we continue to see a troubling disconnect between comments made by Chinese leaders and enforcement," Chris Israel, the U.S. Commerce Department's Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Rights, told reporters at a recent IPR roundtable hosted by the American embassy in Beijing.Indeed, despite years of legal action by corporate America, the piracy problem is worse than ever. At the U.S. Embassy round table, an assistant FBI director said U.S. companies lost $40 billion in 2004 alone from intellectual-property rights violations, most of them committed in China. There is almost nothing that Chinese firms don't copy--software, movies, clothes, auto parts, computer-chip designs, even antibiotics. For years, most of the piracy was confined to the local Chinese market. No longer. Chinese exports of fakes are on the rise. According to a report by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the value of counterfeits coming into the United States from China was up 47 percent in 2004 from about $134 million in 2003. (About 67 percent of counterfeit goods seized by U.S. Customs officers came from China.) The report noted that IP infringement in China had reached "epidemic levels."China presents unique challenges. The central government has long viewed intellectual property not as an individual right, but as something to benefit the state. It encouraged borrowing, if not stealing, technology (especially foreign technology) on which to build a strong economy. Now that the nation is booming, the commercial environment is so competitive that many see ripping off other people's ideas as the quickest way to cash in.The Internet has multiplied all of the enforcement problems a hundredfold. College students across China, like many of their peers in the U.S. and elsewhere, download the latest Western television shows and movies from vast networks of computers. One young student recently interviewed by NEWSWEEK said that it was legal to do so; after all, she was using a network run by her university. "Cybercrime, including IPR infringement, is the fastest-growing problem faced by China-U.S. cooperation," FBI Assistant Director Louis M. Reigel III said recently in Beijing.That's one reason Chinese companies spend far less than their Western counterparts inventing new products and innovations. According to a 2003 report by the accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, China spent less than 6 percent of total R&D on basic research, compared with 19 percent in the United States. Companies spend more time and money tweaking existing technology just enough to avoid paying royalty and licensing fees. Some government officials implicitly support this practice, railing against unfair foreign patent royalties, for example.Foreign firms are desperately seeking ways to protect their brands in China. Victor Kho, a Hong Kong-based investigator, spends his days researching counterfeit networks and coordinating raids for his clients, which include Mercedes and Ford. "Progress is being made, but may be slower than people expected," he says. "There are too many people who want to be rich, and copying things is the easiest way."?While there was an abundance of ‘80s excess on the runways this season, as designers decided that Bonfire of the Vanities-era dressing would be welcomed back with all its puffed sleeves, loud colors and prom-dress silhouettes, there were also plenty of collections that offered the opposite?clothes for weathering a storm, or retreating into the bush. These clothes were full of brilliant justifications for rejecting the artifice of DayGlo. Why not wrap a camel-colored cashmere blanket around you like a coat? Or wear a suit the color of a stormy sky?“It's all about the death of the nightclub, and about a new desire for a rural retreat, where clothes are strong and sturdy," Miuccia Prada told Fashion Wire Daily at her recent Milan show, against the backdrop of a week that had designers doing the ‘80s and designing with restraint in equal parts.Why not wrap a camel-colored cashmere blanket around you like a coat? Or wear a suit the color of a stormy sky? Prada’s leather strap-on thigh-high wading boots will either ready you for a Montana fly-fishing trip or for an illicit round of mud wrestling, and her thick wool suits would have served somber artist Joseph Beuys well had he worn it during one of his epic outdoor performances. The clothes at Jil Sander seemed like a sculptor’s abstract renderings of a winter road trip?precisely like wearing the weather.Likewise, Max Mara looks like a fall day in the flesh, all rust-colored leaves. And Burberry Prorsum’s Bloomsbury-inspired collection offered an upper-crust take on country living for all those wannabe Ramsays journeying to the lighthouse. Both Missoni and Diane von Furstenberg celebrated layering as a luxury?all wrapped up, but secretly hoping there’s nowhere to go.This nature-calls dressing is more than just a “back-to-the-land” concept?it signals a return to earth with clothes. I don’t know that I need clothes sturdy enough for mucking around in a swamp, but I wouldn’t mind a weekend involving soft padding through an idyllic, perhaps even tidy, forest of pine needles in a regal-yet-rugged Ralph Lauren patchwork tweed coat.Renata Espinosa is the New York editor of . She is also the co-founder of the impressionistic fashion and art blog and a sometimes backup dancer for "The Anna Copa Cabanna Show."?Agyness Deyn doesn’t look like a media entrepreneur. She’s tall and very slender (she is a model, after-all) with signature short bleached blond hair. She’s 26 years old, but in the right light ?like a 21-year-old NYU student, but with better clothes. All in all, she’s an unlikely aspiring media mogul.Last July, Deyn and Fiona Byrne, a close friend from Dublin, quietly started a new site?half blog, half online magazine?called ?the name comes from the combination of the two founders’ names?the “NA” in Fiona and ‘AG’ in Agyness. The concept, they say, was to create a publication that reflected their interests and downtown lifestyles. “The idea is that these are places and things that we like, things that we like to do, things that we like to wear, things that we listen to?all of that stuff,” Byrne says, over coffee with Deyn at the Bowery Hotel on an unusually warm Saturday in mid-November.As such, the site features short stories about fashion, music, and culture, featuring everything from reviews of chic hotels and hip restaurants and beauty products to interviews with cultural figures. As NAAG’s Creative Director, Deyn oversees “the broader picture” of the site, and scouts for interesting models to work with and brainstorms ideas. “We discover content when we’re out hanging out,” she says. It’s unclear how much time Deyn spends day to day on the project, though she points out that it is very much a serious venture for her. “This is not just a hobby,” she says.The idea for NAAG came from an unlikely source: the , where Byrne and Deyn met two summers ago. “It was pouring rain. We were in a tent, the music stopped because the weather was that bad,” Deyn recalls. “We were just passing the time while having a beer, chatting about everything. … And we were like, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a site you could just go to and get bits of everything all in one go.’ Byrne interjects: “For people like us.” is a professional model, the kind who made news in 2008 when she didn’t show up to Paris Fashion week. She’s done campaigns for Burberry, Armani, and Jean-Paul Gaultier, among others, and had her U.S. debut of sorts in 2007 when she appeared on the cover of Vogue as part of what the magazine described as the new class of young supermodels. In Europe, she serves as consistent fodder for British tabloids and gossip sites for a party-girl lifestyle and her famous rock-star boyfriends. But, Deyn says that her new venture represents a bit of maturation. “You grow up,” says Deyn. “I have the urge to express myself more and I suppose you look for ways to do that.”Gallery: ?According to the rumor mill, Kanye West and hip-hop's newest "it" boy, Drake, reached out to Sade, the reclusive chanteuse, for a possible collaboration. She said she'd have to do some research to find out who they were before she could say yes. The story is apocryphal at best, but is spreading at an urban legend's pace because, like the best urban legends, it confirms what we already thought. Sade, the notoriously press-shy songstress who has stingily parceled out music since the mid-'80s, seems like the type to have never heard of Kanye West. She doesn't keep up with music; music keeps up with her. is Sade's first album in eight years, and is being met with a level of buzz that seems almost unwarranted. The Internet was abuzz when the album was announced, earning mentions in the Twitter feeds of 20-somethings who were still in utero when Sade's debut, , was released. The adoration isn't all about the music. The music is part of it, but she doesn't release it often enough for that alone to win loyalty?there were another eight years between her last album and the one that preceded it. Sade can casually drop back in to a warm reception because she has built the pop-music equivalent of a luxury brand.Part of the Sade brand just comes from who she is: born to a Nigerian father and English mother, raised in London, blessed with a beauty that looks barely weathered at 51. She's the exotic, alluring foreigner. Her music is essentially pop, but heavily flavored with music styles favored by the elite. It's not jazz music, but it's jazzy. It's not world music, but it's worldly. Sade's music is staple of the "smooth jazz" radio format, but her original songs and the focus on her sumptuous voice (as opposed to a gaudy saxophone) elevate it above mere dentist's office filler.Her most compelling songs are based on novel-ready characters: a bicoastal gigolo in , a matador's wife in Fear, a suffering Somalian woman in Pearls. Just as we assume Bruce Springsteen's tales of the heartland are based on real people he's met in his travels, we assume Sade has been to the far-flung locales in which her characters are based. And she writes with a literary weight. From Like a Tattoo: "Fourteen years, he said/I couldn't look into the sun/She saw him laying/At the end of my gun/Hungry for life/And thirsty for the distant river." The elements combine in a way that communicates culture and sophistication. You either listen to Sade because you like her music, or because you want to be a person who likes her music.Achieving an air of timeless value is a difficult feat for anyone, but practically impossible for a pop singer. Consumers of pop music are constantly on the hunt for what's next; there's seldom time for looking back, unless it's to the golden era of white guitar rock that most professional tastemakers hold sacred. Sade is neither what's new, nor the type of old that's typically valued. And because she's threaded this needle, it's all the more baffling that she seems content to tarnish the luxury brand she's created. Soldier of Love presents, both unfortunately and uncharacteristically, a more contemporary Sade. She's still peddling international intrigue?the cover art shows her in a severe, backless gown facing what appear to be Mayan ruins. The new songs, though, forfeit the elegance of her classic material in favor of sheen and rougher texture, as with the title track, which is more beat-driven than anything she's ever done. Gone are the fascinating characters. The sole ballad, Babyfather, is pedestrian?boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy gets girl pregnant?more Jack & Diane than Tristan and Isolde.There's no way for an artist to change and retain all her fans. There's no way to totally win, and changing too much or changing too little each comes with its own criticism. But there's more peril in it for someone like Sade, who has cultivated a classic image, just as there would be for Burberry if they decided to freshen up their trademark tartan. Soldier of Love isn't my cup of tea, and I suspect that some will feel similarly, but not say so. Who admits to not liking Maybachs or Vuittons or Audemars Piguets? The benefit of building a luxury brand is that it becomes less about the product and more about the name on the product. The album itself isn't much use, unless you need something in the background during a mimosa brunch, but it'll sure look great on the coffee table.?But while the higher-than-ever aesthetic now prevails, it's not necessarily at the expense of stability. It's all about the pitch?the ratio between the heel and the platform?which has enabled designers this season to reach new heights while maintaining walkability. "I don't think a woman could wear a five-inch heel without a platform," says Matthew Dairman, a surgeon and spokesman for the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons. "Unless you happen to be a stripper?and well-trained one?at 10- to 15-minute intervals."This fall, some designers have negotiated the demand for high-drama with stability. Giuseppe Zanotti's Amber boot, for example, towers eight inches high with a six-inch heel and two-inch platform. "It's not heavy and resembles the prow of a ship," Zanotti told The Daily Beast in an email. "Stilettos are very sexy but often they're not so steady and sometimes women have an insecure walk. Platforms, instead, are very steady, more aggressive, and give women great confidence."Confidence, sure, but these new footwear heights may spell bad news for health, as doctors are racing to catch up to fashion. "The higher heels you wear, the more wear and tear it's going to cause on the soles of your feet," says Dr. Garo Kassabian of in Beverly Hills, who recently made headlines for injecting Kim Kardashian with Botox on an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Doctors say that towering heels can strain the Achilles tendon, causing injuries such as (inflammation of the ball of the foot) and (which occurs when nerves get pinched between the third and fourth toes). They can exacerbate bunions, cause arthritis in the knees, and some even believe high heels can cause headaches. According to one orthopedic surgeon, every heel over three inches puts seven times the body's weight in pressure on the balls of the feet.The trauma of high heels has resulted in the birth of the aesthetic podiatry industry, which both enables women to wear higher heels and treats them for heel-related injuries. "Fashion has gotten so high that women are going to extremes to take relief," says orthopedic surgeon and shoe designer Taryn Rose. And that relief can come in extreme forms?such as the , in which a foot can be thinned out to fit into a Manolo Blahnik or , which involves cutting the bone at the joint. Because heels cause the cushions in the balls of the feet to erode, a more common procedure, " ," involves the injection of hyaluronic acids, such as Restylane and other face-fillers, into the soles. But according to doctors, the procedure's long-term effects are still unknown.While there will always be envelope-pushers when it comes to fashion, one answer to dangerous heels are shorter options with the same amount of oompf. The states that foot problems generally occur in heels over two inches, and recommends the following ideal shoe for women: "A walking shoe with laces (not a slip-on), a polymerized composition sole, and a relatively wider heel with a rigid and padded heel counter, no more than three-quarters of an inch in height." Though that style doesn't sound like it will be hitting the runway any time soon, there may be a silver-lining ahead. As Vogue.com's Creative Director Candy Pratts Price puts it: "You can still have it low with flourishes. You don't have to go around in 105 [millimeters] to get high fashion."Plus: .Isabel Wilkinson is an assistant editor at The Daily Beast.?Forget the silver spoon. it takes a lot more than a highfalutin eating utensil to signal wealth among the spit-up set these days. Among the gifts bestowed on Willow Camille Reign Smith since she was born in October to Jada Pinkett Smith and her husband, Will: an $865 Gucci diaper bag, and no fewer than 10 baby baskets--each stuffed with such goodies as rhinestone-studded jean jackets and Kate Spade baby bags and priced up to $1,500--from the store Life Size at Fred Segal's in Santa Monica, Calif. "I love Gucci, always have," says Pinkett Smith. Her recent purchases include a $1,280 Gucci motorcycle suit for her 2-year-old son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith. "It feels good just putting it on, and you want to look and feel good in your clothes and so does your family."With the economy booming and the current crop of celebrities producing plenty of babies along with their CDs and movies, top fashion designers and other luxury merchants are targeting the moms and dads who have it all--and want to share it with the kids. Besides Gucci and Kate Spade, Versace, Burberry and Ralph Lauren have all introduced designer lines for little ones in the last two years. And parents are plunking down big bucks for everything from custom art works to cars, diamonds and even furs for their little mini-mes."Today's generation of parents want their kids to have the best of everything and are willing to pay for it,'' says Sharon Sternheim, owner of Zitomer, a high-end department store in New York that caters to the likes of Madonna, Sarah Ferguson, Cindy Crawford and Demi Moore. "They don't feel like it's going overboard--they just want to feel like they're paying for quality they can see.'' At Zitomer these days, they're seeing it in a line of cashmere booties, gloves, hats and sweaters that cost up to $350 a pop. "It's easy to go wild because everything is so cute and fun," says Crawford, who's bought her share of the cashmere. "You want your kids to have it all. That's being a mother." Ultimate celebrity mom Madonna was a regular at Life Size until her frequent trips started drawing crowds and she had to send her assistant instead. "She would buy tons of designer stuff for her daughter and stay for hours," says a store clerk. "You could tell she was really into it."If celebrities are leading the way, the average new parent isn't far behind, thanks in part to the onslaught of upscale baby magazines like Martha Stewart's Baby and InStyle's special baby issue, which celebrate the not-so-simple joys of spoiling your kids. "We love our celebrity following, but be clear: our average customer is an average working person,'' says Life Size owner-buyer Stacy Robinson. "With so many style magazines and celebrities being very public with their purchases, anyone with a child wants them to have the same exact thing, no matter the cost."Janice Gilbert, 28, who makes about $38,000 a year as a sales associate at Macy's in New York, spent most of one paycheck on the same Gucci diaper bag that Jada Pinkett Smith bought. ""I saw it in InStyle and knew I had to have it," says Gilbert, whose son, Jalen, is 5 months old. Her friends said she was crazy, but those same friends had bought Gucci bags for themselves in the past. "So what's the difference with buying it for my baby?" asks Gilbert. "That's why I work, so I can buy what I want. And my baby should have what I want him to have."Of course, it's unlikely that many average working stiffs will line up to buy Burberry's oversize baby carriage, complete with its signature lining in burgundy and a price tag of about $5,000, set to be introduced next year. Or Gucci's child-size white mink coat, available now, for more than $4,000. And even if a parent can afford them, who really needs such extravagant gifts? Is this sort of heavy-handed materialism bad for kids, even rich kids?A teacher at a celebrity-heavy school in Beverly Hills doesn't think so. "They're living a surreal life anyway," says the teacher, who asked that her name not be used. "So a Gucci diaper bag isn't going to hurt or help one way or another. These are kids that are taking long trips to France or sailing to Capri for the summer. They don't know anything else." But she does see risks for kids whose parents are struggling to pay the rent and still buying them Gucci. "They may have some false expectations of life and may not handle it well when they can't get those things, or want more."And there is always more to want. Rapper Sean (Puffy) Combs special-ordered his 2-year-old son, Christian, a miniature Mercedes Benz that looks and rides like the real thing. Price tag: $5,000. Basketball star Shaquille O'Neal bought his 4-year-old little girl, Taherea, three-carat diamond studs and a $6,000 dollhouse. "My parents gave me everything they could afford when I was a kid,'' he says. "Now I'm doing the same for my kids. I teach them priorities, of course, but I want them to be happy. I buy myself big, expensive toys, why not them?"But when it comes to giving kids their all, few compare with Todd Smith, a.k.a. LL Cool J. Smith hired scenic painter Chris Cumberbach to create elaborate fantasy worlds in the rooms of three of his four children at his home in upstate New York. In one room, scenes from "Alice in Wonderland" include the famous tea party, with the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the rapper's daughter presiding as Alice. The walls in his son's room show his son playing basketball as a boy and then turning into a man who can slam-dunk. Frederick Douglass referees, while other well-known black historical figures sit in the stands cheering the boy on. The work costs $5,000 to $8,000 a room. "LL loves his kids and wanted them to wake up seeing they could be whatever they want to be," says Cumberbach, who has painted rooms and offices for Puffy, Naughty By Nature and Queen Latifah. "What kid doesn't deserve that?"Are you listening, Santa??Burberry model-turned-actor Alex Pettyfer finds himself cursed without hair and covered in tattoos after he runs afoul of his prep school’s resident witch (Mary-Kate Olsen) in Beastly, which hits theaters this weekend. The modern telling of the classic Beauty and the Beast has Pettyfer’s character seeking love in order to break the witch’s spell?enter High School Musical’s Vanessa Hudgens. For his transformation from beautiful 20 year old to ghastly onscreen outsider, Pettyfer shaved his head and underwent a daily six-hour uglification process. “Four and a half hours to put on the prosthetics, and one and a half to take them off,” he told . “We basically came up with this concept that everything that he thought was ugly on a person would come out in him,” Pettyfer added to , noting his character’s disgust early on in the film about a peer’s .?On Breaking Bad, AMC's cult hit about Walter White, a dying man, played by Bryan Cranston, who goes from being a high-school chemistry teacher to a high-grade methamphetamine cook after getting terminal cancer, Paul plays Jesse Pinkman, the chemist's young apprentice. And in three seasons' time, Jesse has transformed himself from idiot assistant to something of a tragic hero. He's also become a walking contradiction?a recovering drug addict who still deals drugs, creating a character who we find ourselves rooting for, even though we shouldn't.? This, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan argues, is why Paul deserves a long look. "With such a strong field, comparing and contrasting levels of talent and artistry starts to feel like a pointless exercise?sort of like arguing that the Alps are better than the Rockies," he says of Paul's loaded Emmy competition, which includes Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn of Lost, as well as Andre Braugher ( Men of a Certain Age), John Slattery ( Mad Men) and Martin Short ( Damages). "In my view, Aaron Paul deserves the Emmy because?on paper?the character he plays is someone whom we wouldn't want to know in real life. We wouldn't want Jesse Pinkman marrying our daughter. We'd probably cross the street to avoid him. Yet Jesse has a soul and a heart and a conscience, and we desperately care whether he lives or dies. We wish for him to succeed. We desire his redemption. And that is all due to Aaron."Paul says he still can't quite believe he's even in the middle of a conversation that also includes Martin Short. After all, in those early days after arriving from Idaho, commercials paid his end of the rent for a studio apartment he shared with a friend. Commercials eventually turned into bit parts on TV, often as the suspect on a cop drama until, finally, Bad came along?nothing more, at first, than a curiosity on an obscure cable network?that is, until Cranston's consecutive Emmy wins gave the show a much-needed dose of credibility.So how does it feel to be nominated again?"Surreal," says Paul, adding he owes a lot to Cranston.? "He's made me grow so much as an actor. He's so specific, he does so much research, and he just questions everything. 'Why would my character do this? What's the point?'"And Paul says he'll never forget the advice Cranston gave him about making the right choices off-screen as well as on. "'Don't just do something because the offer is there,'" he recounts Cranston telling him. "'Do something because you're extremely passionate about it and because you feel like you can bring something peculiar to that role.'"So far, the young actor has taken that advice to heart?reading many scripts but so far remaining noncommittal.Having had to say "yes" to anything that came his way for years?delivering pizzas, making cheesy commercials?makes him appreciate this Emmy moment. "I know I'm lucky," he says. "And I'm not in it for the money, or for awards, I do it because I get to transform into these other characters and be someone else for the day, or for six months, and that's what drove me out here in that really crappy car."Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly reported that Aaron Paul came to Los Angeles in 1984.?? Plus: .Josh Gajewski is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times and USA Weekend magazine, among others. His writing can also be found at .?JULIANNE HOUGH, ballroom dancer, singerAGE: 20IN A NUTSHELL: It’s no secret that Dancing With the Stars is a smash hit because of its scorching female dancers (not because of you, Steve Wozniak). Case in point? This gorgeous hard body, who got her start in TV commercials and music videos, including doing the choreography for Gwen Stefani’s “Wind It Up.” After winning DWTS twice (this season she competed with her boyfriend, country singer Chuck Wicks, before the two were booted in week eight), she announced that she won’t return next season in order to concentrate on her budding country-music career. (Pervs everywhere, who favored watching the show with the volume down, flooded ABC with complaint letters.) Julianne’s self-titled debut , which came out in May 2008, reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts, and she won the Top New Artist award?and got a standing ovation?at the Country Music Awards in April. The opening line of her speech? “It’s a good thing my dress ripped, because now I have something else to think about.”BREAKOUT MOMENT: Shaking her hips?Elvis be damned?during a too-hot-for-prime time with partner Helio Castroneves in 2007.JULIANNE IN THE WORDS OF FORMER DWTS PARTNER ADAM COROLLA: "We don't communicate. She's 19 and from Utah and has been dancing since birth. I brought up Vince Lombardi and I think she thought it was some kind of ice cream."WHAT’S NEXT: Her name is being talked about to star in the Footloose remake, perhaps in the Lori Singer role of Ariel. Her possible co-star:? Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford. Break out the teen Depends!?Just as British actresses such as Emily Blunt, Kimberley Nixon, and Emma Watson have gained Hollywood heat, a certain breed of cheeky British girl is grabbing major media attention. With a major slant on Moss and pop star , the others include model ?the androgynous peroxide blonde in the Burberry ads; the dreamy-looking, curvaceous who’s gracing Marc for Marc Jacobs' campaign;? , Channel 4’s feline-featured TV presenter who will soon have her own show on American MTV; rock-star offspring ?and tattooed trustafarian .With Paris and Milan being the fashion cities, it seems odd that no French or Italian girl is in the new "It-girl" mix. Former Sex Pistols manager chalks it up to upbringing. “The French and Italians are encouraged to live at home as long as possible,” the godfather of punk rock says. “In England, kids are pushed to leave early and that creates a humor, edge, and early floozy mentality.” “What’s fantastic is how the way they dust themselves down and get up again. Their ambition is to have a good time?they are party animals?and that gives them an aura of fun.”Also key to the look and character of these Brit Its is a rock ’n’ roll attitude?according to Francois Dorleans, the author of and a former editor at French Vogue, it’s that very factor which represents so much power in today’s world. “Moss and others of her ilk are the poster girls for rock, which is what everyone is trying to channel now. It’s all part of that 'think black, think leather' thing, no doubt, because it suits the current and very terrifying obsession of looking young.” There’s also a certain excitement around the British girls and their spirited?drink to get drunk, laugh ‘til you can’t?verging on uncouth behavior. “They’re like English fashion: uncontrollable, unpredictable and completely non-bourgeois,” enthuses Christian Louboutin, the shoe designer and social insider.Case in point: this week’s , where Moss was billed as one of the highlights. A vision in Marc Jacobs’ gold lame dress?including a matching turban?she stood in line to greet guests. However, those thinking that being on the gala committee had tamed Moss, discovered otherwise. Chewing on a thick piece of gum, Moss ceremoniously pulled it out when deigning to talk. Punk-rock princess or what? Then there’s her noted lack of patience with the paparazzi. No simpering smiles a la Olsen sisters. “Give me a fucking moment!” Moss recently yelled at one photographer.But such intolerance doesn’t stop Moss’ pictures from being plastered across the magazines from People to French Elle to hip Internet sites?her style and personal life laid out in excruciating detail?because she’s indestructible; no small feat. Despite selling out to Topshop?she designs a line for the mass-market chain?she’s held onto her cool factor and continues to do upscale advertising campaigns and influence endless wannabes. When she wore skinny jeans, the flocks followed, and so it continues from her opaque tights to her choice of handbag.Lily Allen, whose talent was discovered on MySpace, is different. “She’s not too skinny, which makes her an accessible,” says Cameron Silver, the L.A.-based owner of Decades, a popular vintage shop. “But what suggests hot property is Allen’s quirkiness, yet a gift for delivering a product.” Clearly, Chanel saw the potential? the 24-year-old Allen for their 2.55 handbag advertising campaign. “She’s a lot of fun,” says Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld. Allen, the daughter of a film-producer mother and comedian-turned-actor father, also defines outspoken.“They’re like English fashion: uncontrollable, unpredictable and completely non-bourgeois,” enthuses Christian Louboutin.Allen’s fetching milk-maid appearance belies how many cages she has managed to rattle. Indeed, just as Moss has created her image by rarely speaking (but becoming mean for the sake of her girlfriends?she’s said to have hit one cheating husband with a frying pan), Allen is on a 24-hour blabberthon. In her short career, she has managed to tell Elton John to fuck off on television, dismiss Madonna as both “overrated” and unknown to her age group (an arrow in the heart of the age-sensitive Madge), criticize Victoria Beckham for being too thin, and muse that James Blunt’s name rhymes with… well.... Upon hearing that Perez Hilton?powerful gossip-blog maestro?was edging to be in her video, Allen Twittered: “We’ve already cast the jealous and bitter lonely old queen role.” ?Watch this behind the scenes footage of a photo shoot at the Burberry studio. Only two days to go until The Daily Beast's into the secret world of one of fashion's greatest.?From the London rooftop of Burberry's Headquarters, a gorgeous sunrise letting you know there is only four days to go until The Daily Beast's into the secret world of one of fashion's greatest.?Like and for updates all day long. The Daily Beast Video curates the most essential and entertaining video, and brings you original and exclusive productions from our talented contributors. For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at ?A trench coat is as British as London rain and tea, though it was intriguingly one of the first garments to defy the British obsession with class. When adopted after the war, it was by Brits of all differing backgrounds. On the table called “Monet”, over dinner a strident debate broke out as to whether class means anything in Britain today. Who better to ask than director Stephen Frears, who made the Oscar winning film The Queen; or filmmaker Hannah Rothschild, who made a controversial documentary about New Labour guru Peter Mandelson; or Rachel Johnson, editor of extremely traditional magazine The Lady (and sister of the non-traditionalist-yet-Old-Etonian Mayor Boris Johnson)? Traditional ideas about class have been tipped on their head in recent years. As Frears joked, The Queen seems to have come up with a “winning formula”: like his film, The King’s Speech, last year’s regal Oscar hit turned the system upside down and showed the “monarch as victim.” (On the other hand, perhaps monarch-as-victim is very deeply ingrained in our culture-on their way into dinner, guests trotted past the famous painting of King Charles II, later executed, on his magnificent horse. “Ghastly man,” observed Geoffrey Robertson.)?Like and for updates all day long. The Daily Beast Video curates the most essential and entertaining video, and brings you original and exclusive productions from our talented contributors. For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at ?, the Financial Times reports. Potential users will be "customers who need the brand experience, who need to feel the brand," a Burberry executive said. "That word-of-mouth spreads through their social networks and continues to be a positive conversation."?, but a select few will be able to catch the show in 3D at screenings in New York, Paris, Dubai, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. Burberry's CEO, Christopher Bailey, said that he hopes the show will "enable people to experience the energy and atmosphere of this event from around the world," adding that "3D technology will bring our global audience into the London show space allowing them to see the colors and fabrics, to hear the music and to be a part of that moment when it all finally comes together.’’ The show?the first of its kind?will take place on February 23 at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, and will be shown live around the world.?Like and for updates all day long. The Daily Beast Video curates the most essential and entertaining video, and brings you original and exclusive productions from our talented contributors. For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at ?Like and for updates all day long. The Daily Beast Video curates the most essential and entertaining video, and brings you original and exclusive productions from our talented contributors. For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at ?Like and for updates all day long. For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at ?Life in Taipei just got a little more stylish with the opening of the new Burberry flagship store. Watch the opening celebration antics.?“It was fabulous,” one guest told The Daily Beast’s Jacob Bernstein on Sunday morning. “Do you want to know how many times I cried? The service was so beautiful and warm and loving. There was a minister and a rabbi but it wasn’t hokey."According to the guest, it was “the usual vows,” and the wedding party was sizeable. “There was an adorable little boy and girl bearing the rings they had to walk all the way down the aisle and they were adorable, adorable, and adorable. Hillary looked just beautiful. It was happy, happy, happy.”Then the father of the bride made a heartfelt toast. "Bill's toast was just so beautiful. It was Bill at his best," a member of the wedding party told The Daily Beast's Chris Wilson on Sunday morning. "He made it through without crying. He just said what a fantastic kid Chelsea was and also how much he loves Marc."A second attendee said the secretary of State also gave a toast, although both were upstaged by the groom. “The best toast was the groom’s to the bride,” said the witness. “He gave this long, beautiful toast about the relationship, and meeting her and how wonderful and special she is, and how blessed he is. I don’t want to tell you any more because I’ll ruin it.”A wedding guest said there was a 20-some piece orchestra band and they had a gigantic white wedding cake. "We didn't get back until 4 a.m. It was an incredible evening." Shooing The Daily Beast away, he added: "But we were really asked not to divulge any details, I'm sorry."The bride wore a strapless gown with beaded waist, designed by Vera Wang, who showed up in Rhinebeck Saturday, fueling speculation that she was the chosen dressmaker for the royal American wedding. The mother of the bride was dressed in a plum-colored Oscar de la Renta, in a shade complemented by the bridesmaids' dresses.As far as celebrity sightings, it didn’t wind up being quite as Hollywood high gloss as some had predicted. In the end, there was no Oprah or Tom Hanks or Jennifer Lopez, as some outlandish reports had suggested. But maybe that was for the best, our source said. “You really had to have a personal relationship with Chelsea or Marc. It was about family and close friends.” Afterward, everyone cut up, to at least two bands, and possibly a third. Chelsea danced with the groom, and then with her dad, to Frank Sinatra’s “The Way You Look Tonight.” "Marc is a very good dancer," the person said, "but the dancing award went to Chelsea." Food on the menu, catered by the St. Regis Hotel, gave guests the option of steak, salmon, and a vegeterian offering, which our source didn’t pick and couldn’t remember the name of. The person also didn’t try the vegan cake catered by La Tulipe Dessert. “Whatever travails were there, they were not evident,” the person said.? "Today, we watched with great pride and overwhelming emotion as Chelsea and Marc wed in a beautiful ceremony at Astor Courts, surrounded by family and their close friends,” Bill and Hillary Clinton said Saturday night in a joint statement. “We could not have asked for a more perfect day to celebrate the beginning of their life together, and we are so happy to welcome Marc into our family. On behalf of the newlyweds, we want to give special thanks to the people of Rhinebeck for welcoming us and to everyone for their well-wishes on this special day."The ceremony included readings of the Seven Blessings, a Jewish wedding tradition, and a friend of the bride and groom the poem "The Life That I Have," by Leo Marks. ( ) Mezvinsky walked down the aisle in a suit Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey and wore a tallit (prayer shawl) and yarmulke.The rumored fireworks display did not come off, but that didn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm. There were reports that the DJ had been hired until 5 a.m. It was a late night for even the early birds. The cake wasn't cut until shortly after midnight. Guests didn't begin returning from Astor Courts until 1:30 Sunday morning. A few hours after the sun came up, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, mother of the groom, was spotted in the parking lot of the Delamater Inn, looking like she just emerged from the shower and sporting a cinched white towel, which looked tres fashionable on her. She was possibly on her way to an exclusive, post-wedding brunch at the Grasmere Estate.There were few outward signs that the coupling had been accomplished?that is, until later in the night, when Chelsea’s famous and powerful parents released a few precious photographs.The media mob waited to descend on some 400 guests returning to town from the exclusive celebration at Astor Courts, a gated estate in the woods, protected by Secret Service, private security and the local cops. Cellphones were confiscated by the agents as well.“Chelsea has lived in the shadow so long. This is finally her big day,” said a woman who claimed to be a wedding guest from Arkansas, who identified herself as a cousin of President Clinton, but, in the spirit of omerta pervading the occasion, declined to give her name. ”I’m not at liberty to say,” she told The Daily Beast’s Chris Wilson.A poufy-haired, fortysomething blonde, wearing what looked like a black-and-white Versace gown and a string of pearls, she seemed to be readying herself for the festivities?from which she said she didn’t expect to return until well past midnight?by sipping from a tumbler of whiskey and taking discreet puffs on a cigarette. ”They just better not cut off our open bar,” she declared, “‘cause us Arkansans like our liquor.”Before disappearing back inside the Beekman Arms, the historic hotel where many of the wedding guests were housed, she claimed that the former president?quick to tears and trembling lip in the best of times, and assuming he could pull himself together after the emotional catharsis that befalls all fathers at their daughters’ weddings?had picked out a special tune to play on the saxophone. (Perhaps wishful thinking... it proved untrue.)Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, by far the more publicly composed of Chelsea’s parents (so much so that when she got a tiny bit weepy just once during the 2008 New Hampshire primary, the political press played it like a full-on breakdown), was likely to be wet-eyed. By many accounts, Chelsea is the glue that has held the Clintons together?especially during the difficult days of White House scandal, a rabid special prosecutor, and an ill-advised impeachment proceeding.During Hillary’s failed presidential campaign, former White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry, who served President Clinton in those dark days of his second term, recalled the iconic image of Chelsea, then 18, gripping both her parents’ hands as they trudged toward Marine One on their way to Martha’s Vineyard. It was the day that the president publicly acknowledged an inappropriate relationship with a White House intern.Click Below to View Images of Bill Clinton and Rhinebeck Townspeople Celebrating?Mao’s death in 1976 ended that era of madness. Almost immediately, women began curling their hair, wearing splashes of color, and begging friends to bring them fashion magazines from abroad. Fu Yuanyuan, a stylish 30--something who personifies the new Chinese consumer, remembers being in primary school when she first heard of a fashion brand?Australia’s Jeanswest. Even though she was too young to have suffered under Mao, Fu feels a vicarious sense of loss nonetheless. “I don’t have old family photos of my mom and aunties being glamorous,” Fu says. “My mom wore an Army uniform day in and day out … I would ask to see family heirlooms, pieces of vintage embroidery, or anything old, but it was all destroyed.” In terms of style, Fu says, China’s younger generation is “going through a process of self-education.” They are beginning to see fashion “fused seamlessly with art, architecture, design, even cars,” says Megan Connolly who offer tours of Beijing’s art and culture scene with her sister KC. “Many Chinese today simply want to be surrounded with stylish things.”?Fit of Rage: Oscar de la Renta's designer son, Moises took to Facebook to rant about show crashers who keep asking for tickets to his famous dad's fashion show. ?“Haha lol mad peeps asking me top go to #ODLR show this season but where were u when [bleep] was crazy . . . ! Nowhere! So go find ur own invites, fake ass punks . . . PS my name is Moises not Oscar and I’m not in the PR business so see you guys in hell [bleeps]! #lmfao #sweetrevenge,” he wrote. []?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.?Burberry designer Christopher Bailey has won several awards, including the Digital Innovation Award, which celebrates pioneers in digital initiatives. See photos from the designer’s 10 years with the venerable fashion house. ?Burberry cuff links sell in the United States for $140. We listed the price incorrectly in "The Best Cuff Stuff," March 20. NEWSWEEK regrets the error.?In his 10 years as creative director of Gucci, Tom Ford has taken the 80-year-old Florentine leather-goods company from the brink of bankruptcy to the height of success. With his sexy velvet hip-huggers, bad-girl stilettos and cool bamboo-handled handbags, Ford has turned Gucci into the luxury brand of choice for the young and beautiful around the world. In 2002 Gucci's sales were nearly $2 billion--nine times more than when Ford arrived. So why is Gucci letting him go? After a year of tenuous talks with Gucci's majority shareholders, Pinault Printemps-Redoute S.A. (PPR), Ford and CEO Domenico De Sole announced last November that they would not renew their contracts, which expire this spring. On Wednesday in Milan, Ford will present his final womenswear collection for Gucci. And next week in Paris, he'll take his final bow for PPR-owned Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, which he also designs.Ford, 42, who refused to be interviewed for this story, has yet to announce his future plans. Rumors have him doing everything from taking over at Versace to becoming a Hollywood film producer. But the story of his career at Gucci is an illuminating one for the luxury-fashion industry. Indeed, his tenure paralleled a decadelong boom for luxury couture, which now does $100 billion in sales a year. Yet his departure shows that in today's conglomerate-heavy market, being one of the world's most successful designers is no guarantee of a job. As luxury companies grow bigger and bigger, the role of the couturier keeps shrinking. The message: you can be replaced.That's tough love in a business that has always embodied the utmost politesse. But that's what luxury has become: a fiercely competitive, profit-driven global industry of publicly traded corporations that care more about shareholder demands than the ever-fickle fashion set. Since the mid-1980s, tycoons such as Francois Pinault, Patrizio Bertelli of Prada and Bernard Arnault of LVMH have been buying up luxury's most famous names and reinvigorating them, turning small family-run businesses into multinational brands with $1 billion--or more--in annual sales.Along the way, the luxury titans have switched the focus of luxury fashion from the designer to the brand. This allows the bosses to change designers regularly without disrupting the image of the house. Celine, for example, is looking for a replacement for Michael Kors; Bill Blass is on its third designer in four years; Lanvin is on its fourth in a decade, and Givenchy is about to hire its fourth womenswear designer in eight years. "It is such a competitive marketplace that if you take your eye off the ball for a moment, you're out," says Rita Clifton, U.K. chairman of Interbrand, a global-brand consultant in London. "The brand is the most sustainable and important corporate asset."It wasn't always like this. Luxury fashion as we know it was created in the late-19th century by Charles Frederick Worth, an England-born, Paris-based couturier who shifted dressmaking from a made-to-order business to one that provided seasonal collections. By the 1920s, designers such as Coco Chanel and leather artisans like Guccio Gucci had opened their own businesses; as the founders died, the houses either closed or were taken over by heirs.That began to change after Christian Dior dropped dead of a heart attack in 1957. His brand was so strong that the owners appointed his 21-year-old assistant, Yves Saint Laurent, to succeed him. As a protege, Saint Laurent maintained Dior's line. But his tenure came abruptly to an end when he was called to military service--and when he returned to fashion in 1962, it was to open his own house.So it went for a few decades: young designers--such as Oscar de la Renta, Issey Miyake and Emmanuel Ungaro--apprenticed at the grand couture houses, then launched their own labels, which became big luxury brands. In 1984 Arnault bought Dior, followed by Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Kenzo and Celine, and began to build the first luxury megagroup. His method: take an old, classic brand, hire a young, unknown designer and relaunch to a hip new--and richer--customer. Soon CEOs throughout the luxury-fashion business were following this model. It provided a great break for young designers, especially those from New York's dog-eat-dog garment district, like Kors and Marc Jacobs.But at what cost? Many gave up the dream of having their own labels. Others sold their brands to the groups and lost control of their names. The repercussions are still being felt; today it's much harder for new names to launch their own lines. Why should investors take the risk when the biggest brands have not only cornered the market but also swiped all the talent? The luxury-fashion business is now primarily composed of a set number of household brands, very few of which are designed--or even owned--by the name on the label. "From the consumer's perspective... it's the product that counts," says Dana Telsey, luxury analyst for Bear, Stearns in New York. "Designers who can have a following are a rare breed."The biggest cost is creative. Today, when new talents are hired to reinvigorate classic brands, they are bound to the house's signature look. Karl Lagerfeld, for one, is still reinterpreting the 1920s Chanel suit. As Lagerfeld has said, his relationship with Alain Wertheimer, the owner and CEO of Chanel, is "like between the Devil and Faust." Rather than let the designer shape the brand, today's executives want the label to shape the designers. "It's difficult for a brand to find the right designer because the designer has to have, in his own creativity, the creativity of the brand," Arnault says. Until they do, the revolving door keeps spinning.Ford helped cultivate this strategy and then fell victim to it. When he arrived at Gucci in 1990 as womenswear designer, he was fresh off Seventh Avenue. The company had been driven to near bankruptcy by the founders' heirs, the logo so overlicensed you could find bins of Gucci makeup bags in discount stores. Ford's mandate was to restore some sparkle to the label.On his first day he designed the bamboo-handled knapsack, and it quickly became his first megaseller. In 1994 he took over as creative director. When he presented his first Gucci collection in March 1995, he shattered the label's staid, aristocratic image and established a more modern and sexy voice: low-slung pants, sheer blouses, slinky shifts and killer heels. Ford's look lured a new, young, big-spending customer. Sales figures nearly doubled every year. Smaller houses and mass-retail chains like the Gap followed Ford's lead. Gucci's then owner, the Bahrain-based bank Investcorp, floated Gucci on the stock market, making it one of the most successful IPOs in fashion ever. By the late 1990s, Gucci was the hottest name in luxury fashion. But, as at the other major houses--Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy--the average customer had no idea who designed its clothes.In March 1999, after a hostile takeover bid by Arnault, Pinault bought a majority stake in Gucci and helped establish a new luxury conglomerate called Gucci Group, with Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche as its cornerstones. Ford was soon designing both, and then he and De Sole used their Gucci model to turn Rive Gauche into a brand. They applied the same formula to Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta and the jeweler Boucheron.Ford and De Sole ultimately left Gucci because they wanted to continue running the company independently. Now PPR plans to fold it into the conglomerate, making it even more corporate and less designer-driven. Who will fill Ford's loafers? The odds are on Stefano Pilati, Ford's No. 2 at Rive Gauche womenswear, to take over there, while Bottega Veneta's creative director Tomas Maier is a leading candidate for Gucci. Though Ford eventually found the spotlight--attending Oscar parties and appearing on talk shows and magazine covers--from PPR's point of view he was merely an employee. In today's luxury market, it's the brands that are the true stars.?And then there are the aspirational designers, the ones who weave a fantasy world where luncheons require special suits, cocktails are always glamorous affairs rather than a couple of beers in a sports bar, and evenings are more often than not formal. Young designers like Jason Wu, who was inspired by a trip to China, created a collection that seemed to speak to a more historic and starched version of the country rather than to the roaring masses of young people who are driving its economy. Prabal Gurung’s collection was so heavily embellished and glittery that it would qualify as costuming for most women?and even the ones who attended his show dressed in his work looked as though they were not really of this world. And menswear designer Michael Bastian created a world of gentlemen farmers and urbane dandies.?If a spate of recent headlines is any indication, there's never been a better time to be a businesswoman in Britain. In the past few months Barbara Cassani, the former CEO of Go Airlines, was appointed to head London's 2012 Olympics bid and sit on the board of Britain's largest retailer of food and clothing, Marks & Spencer. Shell CFO Judith Boynton was promoted to the board of her company, and Laura Tyson made waves as head of the London Business School. Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino led a prominent magazine's list of the most powerful women executives outside the United States, and others, like Morgan Stanley Europe vice chair Amelia Fawcett and Burberry CEO Rose Marie Bravo, also made the cut.There's just one problem with all these British achievers--they're all Americans. According to a recent study by Britain's Cranfield School of Management, 32 percent of women who sit on the boards of companies on the FTSE 100, an index of the largest British companies, are from overseas. (Though no comparable figure exists for men, experts estimate it's much lower.) The majority of those women are American. As one well-known British headhunter puts it, "If you want to sit on a board in Britain, you'd better be American--or have a title."Historically, American women have always done well in Britain. The country's first female M.P. was Nancy Astor, a spunky Virginian who came to the old country, married well, and as an outsider was perhaps better poised than her British sisters to break the rules of political convention and still be accepted. Likewise, many American executive women in Britain today say that not being British gives them an excuse to skirt London's stifling business etiquette. "You can get away with a lot more, especially if you use the stereotypes to your advantage," says Allyson Stewart-Allen, an American marketing entrepreneur married to a Labour M.P. "When discussing a potential project, I can say to clients very early on, 'I know it's so American of me to ask, but what's your budget?' That's not usually done here. They can then laugh at how American I am, but I still get to ask my question."American bluntness can be a big selling point for men or women (though some say it's more palatable when delivered by the latter). The fund-management firm Barclays Global Investors chose Stewart-Allen over a British man for a job currently underway, which involves retraining staff to be more direct when pursuing new clients. That's not an unusual situation. "Americans have a great ability to jump into the heart of an issue, while we sort of flounder around a bit," says Alastair King, a managing director at Galahad Capital who has worked on several projects with another American, Lucy Marcus of Marcus Venture Consulting. When asked if this approach causes culture clashes, King says, "Our culture is acclimatizing to them, rather than the other way around."Americans in Britain are in a strong position to play the role of change agents. Bravo succeeded in transforming formerly stuffy British raincoat maker Burberry into a fashion label worn by such celebrities as Kate Moss and Sean (P. Diddy) Combs. Cassani proved a major airline could compete with the cheap carriers when she took over Go for British Airways. Tyson, a former economic adviser to Bill Clinton, is updating tenure and fund-raising procedures at the London Business School. Beverly Malone, also a former Clinton adviser (on health care), is pushing the issue of better pay for nurses as head of Britain's (and the world's) largest nursing union.During the late-'90s boom, several younger American women capitalized on the European desire to adopt Yankee business culture. The women launched start-ups and networking groups, and generally became more comfortable with hype and the limelight. A California-born venture capitalist named Julie Meyer founded First Tuesday, which staged high-profile mixers for dot-com types. Before a series of overambitious deals she led unraveled, Floridian Robin Saunders was the It Girl of London finance, turning the German bank West LB into a player. An April study by the research group Catalyst found that American female executives, in contrast to their European counterparts, believed choosing highly visible projects was one of the five most important ways to get ahead.The study also found that European women were slightly less optimistic about career prospects than Americans. This reflects what may be the most important reason behind the clout of American women in Britain--the relative lack of opportunities for British women. Women hold 12.4 percent of board seats in the United States, but only 6.2 percent in Britain. Likewise, while 45 percent of Fortune 500 companies have more than one woman on their boards, only 15 percent of top British companies do.Julie Mellor, head of Britain's Equal Opportunity Commission, ascribes this to an old boys' culture: "British boards have not professionalized their selection process." British firms also are not legally required to report the number of women and ethnic minorities that they hire, as many American firms are. Ironically, many American women say that a less modern, diverse and competitive business culture is one reason for their success. "Quite frankly, Britain is a pretty easy place to come and do a good job," says venture capitalist Ruth Storm, an American who began her career in London 19 years ago as a typist.No doubt British women could make an impact if there were more of them on the executive track. American women have been in the workplace in large numbers for a longer period of time. While 72 percent of American women with dependent children work, 65 percent of British women do. After a second baby, 56 percent of American mothers with two children (and at least one preschooler) choose to work, compared with 47 percent of Britons. British women also take much more time off for maternity leave, and spend more time with their kids during the day. And British mothers engage in part-time work in much higher percentages than American women do.It's clear British women are on a slower track, but the reasons are hotly debated. Mellor blames inadequate child care and a lack of career opportunities. Others, like London School of Economics researcher Catherine Hakim, believe British women simply prefer a more balanced life. Lesley Knox, a British high flier, is one of many who are trying to find the right way forward. After several big jobs, including a directorship at Kleinwort Benson, she's begun moving into non-executive-director roles so she can spend more time with her young daughter. "British women are trying really, really hard to get the balance right, and maybe American women just don't fuss as much about it anymore," she says. She's got a point. In the best-selling novel "I Don't Know How She Does It," a Lon-don fund manager and mother frantically uses a rolling pin to "distress" store-bought mince pies into looking homemade for her child's school party. It's hard to imagine many working Wall Street moms fretting so about her reputation as a baker.Europe is not as ready to embrace the unconflicted businesswoman. A survey of European directors shows that stereotypes of women's abilities and a lack of female role models are among the top barriers to advancement. Yet the trends that attract Americans--globalization and modernization--may eventually put more British women in positions of power. British and European Union legislators are encouraging companies to get more aggressive about hiring and promoting women. The EOC is quietly pushing the issue of women on corporate boards and campaigning for better child care. Progressive companies like British Telecom, British Petroleum and Shell have launched mentoring programs designed to get even more women into the uppermost ranks. Someday, British women may hold as much power in British business as American women do.?As the season of fashion shows in the U.S. and Europe draws to a close in Paris this week, one of the hottest trendsetters is also one of the newest. TopShop, the 41-year-old British retailer known for "fast fashion," or quick knockoffs of designer labels, moved from follower to leader last month with its first ever catwalk show in London. Sure, big names like Gucci, Prada and Burberry still got the most ink, but TopShop and its in-house designers offered an eminently more affordable take on the season's trends, including big prints, sleek shorts and slinky wrap dresses. The hidden message: fast, cheap fashion is no longer a disposable, niche idea. It's the defining trend in Europe's textile and apparel industry today.Fast fashion--epitomized by mass-market retailers like TopShop, Spain's Zara and Sweden's H&M--has come of age. No longer just the purview of trendy teens, fast fashion now represents 20 percent of the entire Spanish apparel market, 12 percent of the U.K. market, and is growing rapidly in France (8 percent) and Germany (5 percent), according to the consultancy Bain & Co. In a dismal European retail climate, such companies are expanding as fast as 20 to 30 percent per year. Zara, started as a single shop in 1975, is now the world's third largest clothing retailer with 2.8 billion euro in yearly revenue.Zara's business model, which involves changing stock every two to four weeks, rather than every season, and focusing on supply-chain flexibility rather than simply finding the lowest labor cost, is becoming an industry standard. In an age of celebrity and ubiquitous media, the ability of companies like Zara and TopShop to turn today's red-carpet outfit into tomorrow's mass must-have item has made them industry leaders rather than followers. Since 2004, H&M has featured collections designed by top talent like Karl Lagerfeld and Stella McCartney. Increasingly, fast fashion is forcing names like Gucci and Burberry to speed up the flow of goods to their stores, and increased the importance of less-expensive "diffusion" lines, like Dolce & Gabbana's sexy D&G clothing line. "At every level of the market, people are looking for faster retail response and constant newness," says entrepreneur Philip Green, owner of the 1.7 billion pounds Arcadia Group, which owns TopShop and other chains.The triumph of fast fashion is due in large part to its bucking the conventional wisdom of globalization. Rather than producing everything in China, top firms like Zara source as much as 70 percent of their wares closer to home, in Europe, Turkey and North Africa. This flies in the face of retail economics, which says that production of mass-market clothing should go where prices are cheapest.That's not always a simple equation. Labor costs represent 25 to 35 percent of the value of apparel. But fast-fashion retailers spend heavily on shipping, since they are constantly changing stocks. What's more, they need things to arrive in days--as they do from Eastern Europe, Italy, Turkey or Morocco--rather than weeks, as from Asia. In --this model, the hourly wage difference between China and, say, Turkey (about $1.20) becomes less important.What's more, retailers say that European and Mediterranean manufacturers, many of which also run their own local retail businesses, have a deeper understanding of fashion trends. "A lot of what takes up lead time is all the back-and-forth of sketches between the designer and the manufacturer," says Jane Shepherdson, brand director of TopShop. "European suppliers just understand what we want more quickly." That's one reason TopShop, which already sources 60 percent of its clothing in or near Europe, plans to up that percentage further in the coming year.So, can fast fashion help save European textile manufacturing, which has been on the wane for 30 years? It's a timely question, as Europe attempts to fight off a flood of cheap Chinese goods. This past summer, when Chinese textile imports exceeded their initial quotas, EU officials impounded goods at European borders (an agreement was later reached to allow some of the goods in). Some analysts say fast fashion is Europe's best hope in the battle against Asia, and point out that pressure from companies like Zara and TopShop is encouraging even bigger retailers, like the U.K.'s Marks & Spencer, to join the trend (the company's Per Una line is now produced on a fast-fashion model). Others note that consumer demand for trendy, disposable items has moved into housewares and furniture, which could create new just-in-time market possibilities.Still, almost nobody is expecting a massive renaissance in the European textile industry. Trade experts say that fast fashion will likely help Europe avoid a textile exodus to China when quotas are completely removed in 2008, and the European Commission is trying to capitalize on this with a proposed 41-nation textile free-trade zone that would include Europe, Turkey, Tunisia, Lebanon and other nearby countries.The trick will be to keep up with China, which is also becoming more competitive in the higher end of the market. Even Europe's luxury companies, which once would have turned up their noses at Asia, are now beginning to source there as quality of production increases. As CSFB retail analyst Nathan Cockrell notes, "The economics of Asian sourcing actually work better for some luxury companies than fast-fashion retailers, because the margins on more-expensive goods aren't affected as much by the cost of putting them on a plane."Meanwhile, fast fashion is having a powerfully positive effect on an arguably more important area--the European service sector. Inditex, which is opening a store a day, created nearly 8,500 new jobs in the last year. TopShop has plans to expand the fast-fashion model into the United States, where it currently represents only 1 percent of the market. Getting Americans out of their khakis, and into throwaway trends, could take fast fashion to a whole new level.?The fashion industry wants everything skinny?except, of course, its magazines. While thin models sashay under the tents at New York's Bryant Park for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, the September issues of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Marie Claire and W are fat with glossy ads. Traditionally, these Fall Fashion editions feature up to 700 or more pages of models peddling cold-weather couture. But this year, with advertising page counts down an average of 6 percent from September 2007 in some publications, a slightly surprising trend has emerged: 1990s supermodel deja vu. Many of the familiar faces in this season's fashionable ad campaigns aren't new, or even all that young. But with years of experience under their stylish belts, they've got cachet with advertisers and consumers alike. "Supermodel" is no longer a term of art. These days, anyone who gets paid to pose in oversized sunglasses and lipgloss might qualify for the title. Model Janice Dickinson claims to have invented the word in the 1970s. Actually, the moniker appears to have originated in a 1968 Glamour article about famous one-name faces Twiggy, Wilhelmina, and Veruschka. But it wasn't until the 1990s that a single elite group of models gained the kind of media omnipresence worthy of "super" status?editorial spreads and magazine covers, runway gigs and billboards, even music videos. Despite a glut of recent TV shows about up-and-coming models (see: the CW network's "America's Next Top Model," Bravo's "Make Me a Supermodel" and, most recently, VogueTV's launch of the online series, "Model.Live"), the era of the true supermodel probably ended with designer Isaac Mizrahi's 1995 documentary, "Unzipped." The film's groundbreaking glimpses of model life arrived just before nonmodels started becoming cover girls: Oprah Winfrey first graced Vogue three years later, and actresses such as Halle Berry and Angelina Jolie became the new millennium faces of Versace and St. John.This fall, the primary subjects of "Unzipped"?including 39-year-old Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista (43), Naomi Campbell (38) and Kate Moss (34)?are back and in ads for Escada, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent and Donna Karan. (Although Moss really never left the scene, her recent deals are considered a comeback after a 2005 stint in drug rehab jeopardized her contracts with Chanel, H&M and Burberry.) Add several other '90s modeling alums to September's mix?including Claudia Schiffer for Chanel, Eva Herzigova for Louis Vuitton, Stephanie Seymour for Loewe and Stella Tennant for Vera Wang?and you've got a bona fide supermodel reunion. At a time when branding gigs with top designer labels are often reserved for Oscar-nominated actresses (such as 23-year-old Scarlett Johansson, who mugged for Louis Vuitton) and the hottest model du jour (like Agyness Deyn, 25, who brought spiky-haired spunk to Burberry), does the recent convergence of mature models signal a change in taste? Or is their familiarity providing a glamorous safety net for a fashion industry desperate to connect with the 25-54 demographic during an economic downturn?Mizrahi, who recently ended his partnership with Target to join Liz Claiborne Inc. as creative director, believes the return of the supermodel is due to the fact that these particular models are truly super. "I always felt that those girls were here to stay," he tells NEWSWEEK. "Kate, Christy, Naomi and Linda, in particular, are just so iconic. I think [the industry] has gotten a little saturated with the Eastern European girls who weigh five pounds. They're pretty, but these [supermodels] now have substance."If "substance" is not a word regularly associated with models, Bruno Salzer, CEO of the German fashion group Escada, says his company pegged Turlington to show off the clean lines of Escada's clothing and accessories this year, "because she is a woman who brings meaning as well as beauty." Turlington's business ventures, including her association with the antipoverty organization CARE, as well as her Nuala yoga clothing line and Sundari beauty brand also impress him. "She is a strong, responsible businesswoman," Salzer says. "And she is very much in tune with key social trends of the moment."A diverse resume like Turlington's is nice, but is it enough to persuade shoppers to part with $2,000 for a dress, especially in an economy where consumer confidence continues to weaken? Despite strong second-quarter sales by certain luxury brands (Hermes's leather goods are up 17 percent), overall retail spending is down. Banana Republic's second-quarter sales, for example, have dipped 6 percent. "Everybody everywhere is affected by the economy, even if it's not in their pocketbooks," says Jeffrey Kalinsky, founder of the Jeffrey stores and executive vice president at Nordstrom. Still, he's inclined to chalk up the resurgence of the supermodel to creative coincidence. "It's just the same as when you start to see a lot of the same lengths of skirts on a runway," he says. "It's people thinking alike."But Premier Model Management's Carole White, who represents Turlington, sees a direct correlation between a weakened economy, lower magazine page counts and her client's renewed popularity. "The advertisers are saying to their customers, 'Look, we can afford these amazingly beautiful iconic women [for our ads], and we know you, the customer, can relate to them'," she says. "The customer feels comfortable with the models' very famous faces, and the customer likes familiarity and success."That familiarity, as well as nostalgia for the booming economy of the late 1990s, is the primary reason for the supermodels' return, says Kaye Davis, executive director of Fashion at AmericasMartAtlanta. "Christy, Linda, Naomi and Claudia are women we admired. They represented the good times, economically, 10 years ago?and still do today. With the uncertain economy, people are purchasing brands they know. These supermodels are women we know, therefore they ensure confidence in consumer purchases." Mizrahi would rather believe a certain je ne sais quoi keeps these lovely old-timers on the pages of fashion magazines. "They've hung in there, and they enjoy themselves, and you can tell. And, they look beautiful in juxtaposition to some of the new girls," he says. "Today, I saw a Prada ad with Linda in it, and I said, 'Is that Linda? That's amazing!' I don't think [Italian designer] Miuccia Prada sits there and thinks, 'Uh oh, it's a bad economic time, so I'm going to put someone older [in my ad] so the consumer can relate to it.' I think she does just the opposite. She's trying to keep it interesting." And who would argue that a fortysomething supermodel in a black lace number and sky-high heels isn't at least a little interesting??Whoever knew computer hardware could look so good? With the advent of Palm's ultra-thin handheld organizers has come a bevy of fashionable covers, from Hermes's gold matte alligator skin ($1,525) to the classic Burberry check ($195). According to Sunny Kate, an actress by trade whose eponymous company has begun making the cases, it was a niche just waiting to be filled. "I was on the set one day, and while looking up something on my planner, I stopped and thought, 'Why is this thing that I use all the time so boring?' " she says. "I wanted to create something that would be functional, sexy and fun." That she has, with covers in faux zebra and leopard skin, Lichtenstein-like comic images and an aloha print called Bikini Girl. Among our favorites from other image-conscious companies: the Louis Vuitton in screaming orange glace leather with a nifty hand strap ($350), the elegant traditional Gucci logo ($135), the water-resistant neoprene PalmGlove by Body Glove ($24.95) and the eye-popping diamond-encrusted case from Houston-based Ash ford.com for $24,000--by special order, natch. Guaranteed to keep you from ever misplacing your organizer again. FURNITURENew Meaning for the Term 'Put a Cork in It' When Kevin Walz gets tired of the chair he's sitting on, he can use some of it to stop up a bottle of wine. That's because Walz, 51, has been molding cork into everything from furniture to cushion covers to vases. "Cork floors have been around since the 1950s," he says. "But cork furniture is a very new concept." Cork is strong, waterproof and antibacterial, says Walz, an acclaimed American interior and product designer who lives in Rome. It's also environmentally friendly: cork trees, which are found mainly in Spain, Portugal and Italy, naturally slough off their bark every 10 years. Even then, Walz's company, KorQinc, uses only what is left over from the wine industry. "What we get looks like Swiss cheese," he says. He then granulates the cork scraps and melds them together with an adhesive to form cubic blocks, from which he builds his furniture. Color variations are achieved through different-hued adhesives. The furniture is attractive, stable and surprisingly comfortable. And if you want to tack a photo to it? No harm done. WEDDINGSThe Rise of the 'Moulin' Bride The return of'80s fashion, visible in everything from gold chain belts to shoulder pads to blue eye shadow, is now invading the realm of the wedding dress. Carley Roney, founder of theknot.com, a popular wedding Web site, says this year's brides are taking a cue from "Material Girl"-era Madonna. "It's all about lace and corsets," she says. In some cases, the look tips toward courtesan chic, as with a Badgley Mischka dress that laces up the back and a Reem Acra gown with a taut, boned bodice. "I call it the 'Moulin Rouge' effect," says Roney. The trend is part of an overall move away from '90s minimalism, which favored slinky dresses like the one worn by Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in 1996 when she married JFK Jr. "You also have the return of the voluptuous body," says Roney, "so you want to have something like a corset to show that off." And it encourages dancing the can-can at the reception. ACCESSORIESFashionable Ferrets Ferrets were once a novel fashion accessory. Now the furry creatures have accessories of their own. At Ferretworld, in Britain's West Midlands, shoppers can buy their sleek little pets everything from grooming products to raincoats. Just last month owners Helen and Simon Bishop introduced their own line of ferret-wear, which includes Santa suits, Velcro bandannas and baseball caps, as well as more practical fleece jackets. "Tuxedos and jumpers have attracted the most interest so far," says Helen. In the past year, the Bishops have sold more than 100 miniature outfits, either out of their shop or at the country fairs they visit around Britain. Recently they added a Web site, ferretworld.co.uk. Coming in the fall ferret line: a combat outfit, bridal wear and Halloween costumes.?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.This season both Emporio Armani and Dolce & 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&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 canapes. 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.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."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.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.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."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.?A quarter of a century ago, the commissioner of the National Basketball Association was a goodhearted gentleman named Walter Kennedy. He had come to that thankless job as a small-town politician, but before that he had served as a flack for the Harlem Globetrotters, and on account of that tenure, having traveled the world with tall black men, Walter had grown Ahead of His Time. Into whosever ear he could borrow, he would croon: just you wait, basketball is going to take over the world. It wasn't that nobody listened; it was just that nobody else in the NBA could afford such idle vision then. The world? The NBA was barely bi-time zone, barely out of Ft. Wayne and Syracuse. I remember, as late as 1971, when the Knicks got hot and The Times of London wanted to do a big story on them, on the whole strange basketball thing that was suddenly captivating New York. But the Knicks' PR man wouldn't even give The Times credentials to get into the building. "Hey," he asked me, "How many f-ing tickets can I sell in England?"I waited a couple of years before I dared tell Walter that quaint story; even then, he blanched.And now, but a generation later, and a successor of Walter's, a lawyer named David Stern, the inspired son of delicatessen proprietors, stands, indisputably, as the lord of the realm of basketball, secure in the faith that it is only a matter of time before hoops, of all things, passes soccer as the No. 1 game on the face of the earth. There's a wonderful irony to this, too, as supercilious foreigners have always carried on about what agnostic sporting primitives Americans are, failing to fall down before the great god futbol. And here, in the end, it will be the humble YMCA peach-basket game that will prevail upon the globe.There are a number of reasons to account for this. Not the least is that while soccer is wonderful exercise, it has been exposed for the boring cotillion it is, now that it must actually compete for young sight-bite minds against more antic modern attractions like basketball-as well as hockey and American football. Basketball thrives on its full-throated Americanism. "Talk about the decline of America, the balance of payments, all that," Stern says, "and the fact is that the world still loves our culture."Moreover, like baseball, soccer is still run more by defenders of the faith than by entrepreneurs. The NBA, though, means business; it even made a happy marriage of convenience with FIBA, the International Basketball Federation, blithely ceding the rules of the game in international competition, so long as the NBA can control the ballyhoo. As Stern characterizes this, with only some smirks: "We are exploitative purists." And so, now we find the NBA on TV in 90 countries--even Armenia, Greenland, Kuwait, Zimbabwe-as the league's product catalog has swelled to a glossy 248 pages. "The NBA is now a venerable brand on a global basis," Stern says. "We're the Hard Rock Cafe, we're Burberry and Polo."The shrine itself travels, too. While Stern avows he has no designs to "plant the flag" with franchises abroad, regular season games are scheduled in Japan, preseason tournaments in Europe. It is maintained that when Larry Bird signed autographs for two hours straight in Madrid in 1990 he thereby broke the Iberian Open autograph record previously held by Sophia Loren. To go with the NBA Olympics, which NBC baldly asserts will be the most-watched event in the history of our of the NBA will also start playing in the FIBA World Championships in '94. Stern can get a bit precious sometimes. He likes to call NBA arenas "our 27 theme parks," and the NBA coaches who run X-and-O clinics about the world are sharing "our technology" with a grateful humankind.Soccer isn't grateful. The world-soccer juggernaut, FIFA, has not only scheduled the World Cup in the heathen United States in '94, but after a return to the more faithful precincts of Europe in '98, the cup is almost certain to be assigned to Japan in '02-as soccer tries desperately to mine what rare growth markets it has left. But that sport suffers from an aging fandom with the wrong demographics, and families are put off by hooligans and wretched old arenas. Meanwhile, glitzy basketball looks at Asia and sees more than 50 percent of the population under 25-and all of them comfortable using their hands, as God intended, both to play games and to reach into their pockets for money.All of this has kind of sneaked up. It was hardly a decade ago when the NBA was on its back. Several teams were in imminent danger of folding, and the public generally sneered at the NBA as too many overpaid black guys strung out on drugs. As recently as 1984, McDonald's wouldn't even touch Michael Jordan for a local Chicago commercial, lest any association with a black basketball player tarnish the pristine Mickey D image.There was much that turned the NBA around and propelled it into the world Walter Kennedy always knew was waiting out there. The earlier simultaneous arrival of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson as some sort of hick and slick Americana checkerboard was as important to starting basketball back to acceptance as Babe Ruth's home runs had been to baseball after the Black Sox scandal. Nevertheless, Stern was the tour guide. Those scorned pituitary freaks were suddenly acclaimed the most graceful, exciting performers in the world; and black became beautiful. In a very real sense, the NBA merely distilled the Stepin Fetchit comedy out of the Globetrotters and showcased the spontaneous, thrilling basketball that the Globies had always wowed the world with."We're up to 92 percent capacity of attendance now," Stern says. We're running out of space here. "The American century may be over, but the American showtime is just beginning.?Feb. 9 seemed like an odd night for a party. New York City was locked in the jaws of one of the coldest winters on record, and the economy was in deep freeze. Yet few of the guests at the Park Avenue Armory, sipping French champagne and munching on Wagyu beef sliders, seemed to notice. They were there for a gala thrown by Hermes, the 173-year-old French bag maker and fashion house. The pretext for the party was the next-day opening of Hermes's new 278-square-meter men's store, in a jewel-box Madison Avenue townhouse. The store would be the company's 24th in the United States and its 250th in the world, but the first anywhere dedicated exclusively to men.If that was the ostensible cause for the gala, however, Hermes had more profound reasons to celebrate. The company is one of a handful of luxury brands that have not only weathered the global financial crisis but thrived. Most fashion houses slumped last year: according to Bain & Company, the overall luxury market fell for the first time ever during this recession, dropping 10 percent in the U.S. and 8?percent worldwide in 2009. But Hermes managed to increase sales by 8.5?percent, including an 11 percent bump in the final quarter (and a whopping 20?percent gain in the Americas). Its secret? Rather than slash prices, follow fashion, or go downmarket, Hermes decided to focus on what it does best: produce expensive but timeless classics with unimpeachable quality that will last a lifetime.Call it the end of the trend: as the experience of Hermes and a few other deft brands shows, the crisis hasn't killed the luxury market. Buyers have just become more discriminating, "moving away from conspicuous consumption, fat logos, and lively colors," says HSBC analyst Erwan Rambourg, toward tried-and-true stalwarts. As Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH?which saw sales by its flagship, Louis Vuitton, grow by double digits last year?puts it, "with the crisis, bling bling is passe." Instead, there's been what Luca Solca of Sanford C. Bernstein calls a "flight to quality," which a few smart companies have capitalized on by getting back to basics. Even as trendier houses such as Christian Lacroix have gone bust, heritage brands have kept customers loyal by redoubling their focus on what they do best?classic bags and scarves for Hermes, old-fashioned luggage for Louis Vuitton, and for Burberry raincoats based on a World War I template.Something similar is happening in the hotel industry, where trusted old firms like Ritz-Carlton are holding steady and Asian companies such as Raffles and Shangri-La are expanding by carefully replicating their traditional look and feel in new places. In the car business, Bentley?which traces its lineage back to the '20s?has just introduced a superpowered new model that gestures back in time even as it roars forward. And the airline industry is trying to get in on the act, with its highest-end carriers introducing first-class air suites that harken back to Victorian rail carriages and the luxe golden age of air travel.All these firms seem to have recognized that during downturns, people?especially at the high end?don't stop spending, but they do become much more conservative. A woman who, during the boom, might have bought five expensive handbags a year may now purchase only one or two?but those are even more likely to come from brands known for quality and timelessness. "People are looking to be reassured," says Rambourg. So they are turning to products, like Louis Vuitton luggage, that isn't "just a nice bag, but an inherently precious object, almost a piece of art," says Solca?something "investment grade," in the words of Tod's chairman Diego Della Valle. This process favors big, established companies that stand outside seasonal fashion. Milton Pedraza of the New York?based market research firm the Luxury Institute says that at a time like this, successful firms can be "trendy along the edges, but they don't bet the whole brand on something too edgy. People are not going to buy Versace."Having recognized this, heritage brands are doing everything they can to emphasize their traditional core. During New York City's recent Fashion Week, LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton?a 156-year-old company best known for its stodgy suitcases, which are selling briskly even as newer offerings like watches suffer?held an event called "The Art of Craftsmanship," to educate young hip designers on the importance of old-fashioned values such as artisanship and the mastery of traditional skills.Hermes too?which got its start as a bridle and saddle maker?is emphasizing its leather goods and ultraclassic ties and scarves over more trendy fare. Though its new men's store does feature burgundy leather sneakers and an $8,500 baseball glove, these are clearly not the focus. According to Bob Chavez, the CEO of Hermes's American operation, the lion's share of the company's recent sales has come from its core products, while purchases of more evanescent goods like perfume have fallen. Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the 43-year-old Paris-based artistic director, stresses that the company's core concept is simple: "What does quality mean, and how to you achieve it?" Chavez adds that the firm also aims to distinguish itself through service. "Hermes isn't about trendy," he told me. "It isn't even a fashion house. We are a house of craftsmanship. We are committed to making products that have an enduring quality and are very versatile"?even if that means many longtime customers visit Hermes shops more to repair 20-year-old bags than to purchase new ones.My own experience with the company bears this out. As I type, I have in my breast pocket a small, tan, pebble-grained leather Hermes notebook that neatly typifies the values Chavez and Dumas stress. A gift from a French girlfriend, the notebook seemed like a wild extravagance when I first got it; I was shocked to discover the price. But after almost five years of hard use, the thing hardly shows any wear (score one for quality). Meanwhile, the two times I've taken it into Hermes stores?once in New York and once to the Paris flagship on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore?I've been startled by the princely attention I received, despite the fact that I was there to discuss what is basically the cheapest thing the company offers. (Score two for service.)Hermes works hard to maintain such virtues in several ways. For one thing, it is quite cautious about expansion, even though luxury markets are booming in the developed world. China recently displaced the United States as the second-largest market for luxury goods after Europe, and Hermes's sales there were up 29 percent last year. Even so, "you're not going to find Hermes anywhere and everywhere," says Chavez. Second, the company keeps service standards high by frequently sending all staff back to the mother ship in Paris for training. And the quality of goods is assured by producing most of them in France (as well as Italy and Switzerland)?a rarity in this age of global supply chains. Unlike most other luxury brands, Hermes also insists on producing everything itself, with no licensees. This has clearly cost the company money?for example, it refuses to get into the lucrative sunglasses business because it hasn't found a way to produce them at an acceptable standard?but Chavez deems it a price worth paying.But for how long? With Western economies finally starting to thaw, industry analysts and luxury executives are wondering how long this anti-trend phase will continue?and when, if ever, bling will bounce back. Sparkly brands continue to suffer; Bulgari's sales fell 14?percent last year. And recent research on the psychological impact of downturns shows they can affect a generation's buying habits for decades.That said, there are two reasons to expect more trendiness and glitz in our future. One is our baser instincts. Scott Galloway, an NYU professor who studies luxury marketing, expects conspicuous consumption to resume as soon as people have money in their pockets again. "As long as men feel the need to spread their DNA to the four corners of the earth, they're going to buy Porsches," he says. "And as long as women look for as many offers for mating as possible, they're going to keep buying Manolo Blahnik shoes."Even if sex appeal doesn't drive us back to flash in Manhattan, it probably will in Beijing. Retailers are already enjoying a huge boom in emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil, all of which scarcely suffered from the downturn and have exploding middle classes and nouveaux riches. While these countries currently represent only about 20 percent of the global luxury market, Bain predicts that will soon shift as high-wealth individuals in these countries up their luxury spending by 20 to 35 percent in the next five years. The message for Hermes and other luxury brands, in other words, is that they're unlikely to sell many $8,500 baseball mitts in the States. But a soccer ball in Rio?that may be a whole other story.??By Daniel McGinn Japan has half the population of the U.S., and less land than California, yet there are more than twice as many Burberry, Hermes, and Prada stores in the Land of the Rising Sun than in all of America. For decades they've been full of brand-conscious Japanese shoppers who typically dig deep for luxury labels, fueling a $20 billion-a-year market. But even before the global recession, there were signs of a slowdown. When McKinsey & Co. principal Brian Salsberg wanders through Tokyo's shopping district, he notices that "for every one luxury [brand] bag, there are 10 Uniqlo, Forever 21, or H&M bags," referring to trendy lower-priced labels. "It's easier and cheaper today to be fashionable in Tokyo [at] a 10th the cost," he says. In a new report, Salsberg cites several reasons for Japanese consumers' shifting taste. It partly stems from growing confidence: instead of relying on labels to ensure stylishness, Japanese women are mixing and matching among cheaper items. High-end products also face growing competition from luxury experiences, like travel, spas, and restaurant meals. McKinsey's researchers even see spending on stylish tech products, like Apple's iPod and iPhone, siphoning yen away from traditional luxury segments like jewelry, handbags, and apparel. The McKinseyites say upscale marketers shouldn't give up on Japan, but they should adjust their expectations: an economic recovery will help sales rebound, but the fact is that some former luxury buyers may have traded down permanently.?Duchess Does Singapore: One stop into her tour of South East Asia, Kate Middleton is already palling around with assorted dignitaries and first lady figures?even spilling shopping secrets along the way.? She chatted with Sadiah Bte Shahal, wife of Singapore’s senior parliamentary secretary for the ministry of defense, about her love for UK designer outlet center, Bicester Village. Shahal told the Telegraph, “We talked about the UK and particularly about shopping at Bicester.” Later, she visited the President of Singapore, wearing a purple printed dress from Prabal Gurung's Spring 2012 collection. "OMG!!! Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton in our spring 12 dress," the designer wrote on Instagram this morning. I am speechless." []?Galliano’s craft has, of course, been overshadowed in the months since he was accused of lobbing vicious, at a couple in a Paris bar. Fired from his job as the creative director of Christian Dior and dismissed from his own eponymous label, Galliano spent time in rehab in the United States before returning to France for a June 22 court date, at which he described his struggles with substance abuse. Making racial slurs is a crime under French law, and a verdict is expected in September. But Moss and the disgraced designer have a long friendship, and those who know them both said it was no surprise that, having already chosen to go with Galliano, Moss would keep her word.?In calling around about the murse, I saw some themes start to emerge. By and large, men want bags large enough to look masculine and carry everything?but small enough not look foolish if they wind up having to bring the bag straight from the office out to dinner. I’ll never forget arriving at a restaurant for dinner to the sight of my date wrestling a massive mini squash bag under the table. Of course, it obstructed the narrow aisle between tables and was quickly confiscated by the front desk. (There was, needless to say, no second date). Designer , who will introduce his first bags for men next season, says functional man-bags are ones that easily transition from day to night. “I wanted something that could go to work, go to the gym, go to dinner and it’s not a ‘gym bag,’” he says. “It’s like the girl who wears flats and puts on her heels at night.”?"How do you go from lederhosen to Courtney Love?" one editor asked after the Marios Schwab show. And that was precisely the transition the designer made between last season and the one he presented on Tuesday. Six months ago, it seemed like Schwab was creating clothes for Heidi; but this season, he appears to be designing for Hole. Schwab mixed baby-doll dresses and silks with hard-edged leather, which lent his collection a good-girl-gone-bad edge.?Mary-Kate Olsen, Kate Hudson, Kristen Stewart, Claire Danes and Mia Wasikowska sit front row at Burberry Prorsum's Autumn/ Winter 2010 show.?I didn’t always have the best seat in the house?far from it. But over the course of and fashion weeks, running from Feb. 8to 21, I searched for beauty in the front row, on the runways, and backstage. And it wasn’t hard to find. I saw a dress bigger than a car at , met at Prabal Gurung, got a full dose of studs (and dogs!) at the Burberry show in London’s Hyde Park, and an eyeful of leg at Altuzarra. Here’s my view of the runway?sometimes from the nosebleed section?during the Fall/Winter 2012 collections.?In recent years, heritage has become part of the venture-capital formula. Seems that the sight of a few venerable brands reinventing themselves has stimulated investors' appetites for other old names with glorious pasts. With the understandable optimism that comes with great wealth, they see themselves as Prince Charmings to the historic brands' Sleeping Beauties. Appoint a creative director, open a few flagship stores, develop some "icon" products, talk about "brand DNA" and?voila!?the Sleeping Beauty has been transformed into a fully functioning retail princess, ready to be sold.Burberry is perhaps the paradigm of a reinvented brand, and its Lazarus-like comeback is indeed a thing of wonder. Yet it has used its history very carefully. While looking into Burberry's past, I discovered that its eponymous founder was an anti-alcohol crusader; according to his 1926 obituary in the Daily News, "Mr. Burberry cared for little outside his business except temperance, religion and agriculture, and he never read novels." Apparently, he died at 91 after catching a chill while preaching at a Salvation Army meeting?hardly the model of fun-loving fashionista that today's Burberry would seem to appeal to.What this suggests is that to thrive and prosper in the manner that Burberry has?reinventing itself as a cool, often edgy fashion brand?heritage must be used judiciously. Too much and you remain stuck in the past (temperance is not the great marketing tool it once was); too little and you might as well save yourself the bother of reviving an old brand and start a new one.It was exactly this conundrum that sprang to mind when I bumped into the new owner of the luxury British jeweler Asprey, a charming man called John Rigas. Asprey was the first great Bond Street shop most people of my generation were familiar with. I have often kept a keen, sometimes critical, eye on developments there. And that is the problem for someone buying Asprey: thanks to the residual effect of all that heritage, people who have no part in the business and may not even have bought anything there for years feel they have a stake in the place because a long dead great-grandparent or distant great-aunt used to shop there.Tongue firmly in cheek, I suggested to Rigas that as Asprey had been through a number of owners and a merger, then a de-merger, with Garrard, the best thing he could do was turn it into a shop where nothing cost more than a pound. Given the circumstances, he was commendably polite and told me that he was going to restore faith in a much-loved brand, which was good to hear. He was in the company of his creative director?a job, coincidentally, I was once offered long ago?a youngish man in a snappy suit, which tuned out to be Asprey-branded. It was nicely put together and, as I recall, had a flower loop on the back of the lapel?a touch that even some bespoke tailors omit these days. But should Asprey really be trying to break into the apparel market at all? Or would it be better off staying in its traditional areas of expertise: cocktail shakers, watches, jewelry and so on?Selling garments can be a lucrative business, but should it be Asprey's business? On these occasions heritage can be a useful tool for divining what to do. Asprey did flirt with clothes between the two world wars, but the experiment was apparently unsuccessful. This is not to say that a heritage brand operating in one sector cannot move into another sector; Beretta, the gunmaker, has been family-owned since the Renaissance. It recently successfully moved into clothing, but its clothes are linked in performance, style or both to the world of guns?what the businessman would call Beretta's core competence.At least Asprey has continuously done more or less the same thing throughout its history, which is more than can be said for another brand making a comeback: Faberge. Depending on how romantic you are, the name is either associated with the flowering of the decorative arts in the final years of the Romanovs or Brut, an eau de toilette favored by sporting men like British boxer Henry Cooper, who advocated that users "splash it all over." I am only guessing, but I imagine that the new owners would prefer the former?even though Peter Carl Faberge has been dead 80 or 90 years?and the Romanovs ceased trading in 1917, when Russia came under new management.Olga Berluti, the Parisian bottier de luxe, whose company was acquired by LVMH, once explained to me another important way of looking at heritage: not only should a business survive for generations, but so should its customers. And the tradition of repeat business bequeathed by father to son or mother to daughter is more effective than any amount of heritage-based marketing. Faberge and the Romanovs were fortunate to come together in the first place; it will be interesting to see if today's superrich and ancient brands repeat the pattern.?Unlike Canal Street vendors, Gispert’s subjects aren’t trying to pass off their creations as authentic. “These people are appropriating the material, the actual logos and fabrics, but they’re not trying to mimic high fashion,” he explained. One photograph from the series features a woman wearing a Louis Vuitton dress that Gispert described as “some kind of nightgown, flamenco hybrid.” It looks nothing like Louis Vuitton couture, yet it’s splattered with the designer’s cult logo. “In a way these people are hijacking signs of wealth, bastardizing logos and turning them into something completely unique.”? One for the History Books Nearly 800 more letters on the Gore-Bush fight for the White House poured in last week, many pointing to the lessons learned from this year's election. "With Supreme Court petitions, demonstrations, unclear 'voter intent' on overlooked and lost ballots," declared one reader, "Americans are finally clear on the potential weight of every vote." Another questioned why "some voters [were] disenfranchised because of a sloppy, inaccurate punch-card election system." Our latest stack of mail also included laments from letter writers fed up with the seemingly unending election. "I've got Florida Fatigue, Tallahassee Tailspin and Gore-Bush Burnout," wrote an exhausted reader. Election Overtime I believe the election mess will be a good thing. People are going to say, "Let's not go through this again!" and make changes to forestall a repeat. Possible changes could include uniform ballots and voting machines, more precise election laws and better voter instruction in the use of ballots and machines, not to mention looking at the Electoral College to see whether this is how we really want to elect our presidents. Nothing like a little chaos to shake things up! A. A. Lloyd Asheville, N.C.I voted for George W, but I have been surprised and embarrassed by the level of near hatred displayed by Republicans toward Al Gore and the Democrats and by the claims of larceny, sore loser and coup d'etat. All this is not helpful or warranted and will serve only to further divide our country. C. J. Garrett Houston, TexasIn the early stages of the election, I got my 9-year-old daughter motivated to learn all she could about our electoral process. I explained to her that it is important to vote, that it is a privilege not everyone in the world has. She was very excited when a mock election was held in school, with ballots to fill out and a box to put them in so others couldn't see the vote or change it if they didn't like who was voted for. The day after the presidential election, she came home from school and asked, "Who's the president?" When I told her it hadn't been decided yet but we should find out sometime soon, she said, "[The election] is stupid. There is only one every four years, and they can't even get it right. We had our election yesterday and we had our result at the end of the day. We could all figure out how to use our ballots--how come everybody else can't?" I didn't have an answer, but her statement made me think that the process was disenchanting voters long before they even reached voting age. Jeremy Anthony Carson City, Nev.Your Dec. 4 article "Here Come the Justices" (National Affairs) was an insightful look into the Supreme Court's role in this year's disputed presidential election. There was one error in your discussion of other landmark cases in the court's history. The 1974 Nixon decision by a unanimous court ordered the president to hand over the disputed tapes to Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski. Former prosecutor Archibald Cox had been dismissed in October 1973 as a result of the "Saturday Night Massacre." Eric W. Rader Hamtramck, Mich.Traumatic at Any Age As a pastor, I read with interest your article on the increase in divorce among the elderly ("Feeling the 50-Year Itch," Society, Dec. 4). The statistics and explanations, while very sad, only point to the real reason for divorce among any age group. As we move away from a society based on Biblical values, we move toward a society that is completely self-absorbed. Sacred vows mean nothing anymore; the only thing that matters is whether one's own needs are being met. These days people soothe their conscience by giving to charity or doing some kind of commendable social work, but abandon those who are closest to them. The idea of giving ourselves totally to someone "till death do us part" is foreign to our looking-out-for-number-one lifestyle. It is all the more tragic that this attitude is now affecting our oldest and presumably most stable generation. Rev. Greg Howell Stockbridge, Ga.Your story notes that there's one thing to be said for elder couples' divorcing--"the kids are grown and (usually) out of the house." Divorce is traumatic for family members, especially children, at any age. Traditions are broken, family history comes under a more cynical evaluation and new stepparents are difficult to fit into long-standing family equations. I am fortunate that when my mother divorced my father after 28 years of marriage, I was able to maintain a good relationship with both of them and to accept my dad's new wife (and she was able to accept me and my six siblings). But repairing the damage and coming to terms with new relationships was the hardest work I've done in my life. Laura J. Morefield Saugus, Calif. Out of It--And Glad About It NEWSWEEK, you made my day! Thank goodness for Ellen Karsh's view on retirement; I was beginning to feel like a freak ("Bungee Jumping? I'd Rather Watch 'Rosie'," My Turn, Nov. 27). I retired from a very rewarding high-school and university teaching career of 35 years on May 12 at the age of 56. If I hear one more person ask me, "Now what are you going to do?" I think I'll scream! No, I don't want to learn how to play golf, or write a book or research the family. Finally, I want to be able to watch "Good Morning America" all the way through, read my NEWSWEEK cover to cover, listen to old albums and tapes that are dusty, sit at my new computer for hours e-mailing family, students and colleagues, enjoy more quality time with my husband, let homemade soup simmer for hours and share it with neighbors, visit with friends or simply do nothing! Marcy Rye Blout Carmichaels, Pa.I would like to say thank you to Ellen Karsh for so eloquently explaining my own ideas about retirement. For several months prior to my retirement two years ago, I was constantly warned by my friends and co-workers that I would be bored silly or get depressed if I did not find something to do in retirement. Well, I did find something to do, like sleeping late, reading a lot and sometimes having what my late wife described as an "S and S" (sit and stare) day. My life has not been this stress-free since childhood. Go for it, Ellen, and enjoy! John Sanders San Bernardino, Calif.Kudos to Ellen Karsh, who "outed" me. I'm newly nonemployed, 55-ish and perfecting the term "slug." Anne R. West Chester, Va. Grave Consequences In your otherwise useful article on Paul Ewald's theory about the connection between germs and modern plagues, you link cervical cancer to "sexual promiscuity" ("The Real 'Hot Zone'," Society, Nov. 27). In doing so, you brand with a scarlet P countless monogamous women whose great mistake was not promiscuity but trusting one faithless man. Personal case: I am a cervical-cancer survivor, faithful for nearly 40 years to a husband who hid a string of affairs--until he brought home two sexually transmitted diseases, including the human papilloma virus, which is present in more than 90 percent of cervical-cancer cases. Fifteen thousand women are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year. A third of them die. Testifying before a congressional-subcommittee hearing in 1999, Carol Ann Armenti, director of the Center for Cervical Health, pointed out: "Our society has branded these women pariahs. They are ashamed to discuss their disease." The public needs to be made aware of the plight of women who are victimized not only by cervical cancer but also by their unwarranted trust in a promiscuous male and then by societal assumptions. Name Withheld Tuscaloosa, Ala. What's Best for Baby? I was sickened by the celebrities' comments in your article "Baby's Booty" (Society, Dec. 4), especially Cindy Crawford's assertion that "you want your kids to have it all. That's being a mother." Being a mother is wiping runny noses, cleaning dirty bottoms and nurturing children so they grow up to be loving, responsible adults with a strong sense of themselves and what really matters in this world. That takes hard work and dedication, and is infinitely harder than shelling out cash for Gucci and Burberry. Showering youngsters with cashmere and miniature Mercedes-Benzes tells them not that they are loved and cherished but that possessions will bring them joy. What a sad and pathetic way to parent a child. Maryam Kubasek Loveland, Ohio?: America’s greatest innovator, modern genius and, of course, champion of the hoodie. In the last few years we’ve become accustomed to seeing the in a sweatshirt, mom jeans, and a pair of running shoes. But now that the company is poised for its highly-anticipated , Zuckerberg can finally laugh all the way… to Barneys. Here, we’ve suggested a few looks from this summer’s collections that could help Zuck polish up for his next venture?or, at the very least, for next time he ventures out. (We’ve ranked the gallery in increasing order of difficulty to pull off). Plus, it’s about time he added “complete wardrobe makeover” to that Timeline.?The English Ross and Sanders, 41, have two children together, Skyla, 7, and Tennyson, 5, known as “Sonny.”?They live in the Hollywood Hills and have a weekend beach house in Malibu. (Her brother Atticus won an Academy Award for scoring The Social Network alongside Trent Reznor in 2010, and worked on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.) Ross has had a successful career as a model, first in London, where she was first photographed by Mario Testino at age 19, and quickly went on to grace the cover of British Vogue and appear in a Burberry campaign. Rupert Sanders was then a friend of her older brother, who had told him his sister was “out of bounds” until she turned 18. (They married when she was 24.) “I appreciate so many things about him,” of Sanders last year. “Mostly his ability to inspire and encourage.”?Men’s Fashion Week is usually awash with slicked-back hair, fitted blazers, impeccably tailored pants, and shiny loafers?both in the front row and on the runway. But during the men’s Spring 2012 shows in Milan this week, a new trend emerged: short shorts. One thing is clear: if these designers have anything to say about it, there’s one thing that every man will need next year?and that’s a great set of legs.?that Nicon had fallen from his apartment window. Nicon’s agency, however, has declined to comment. "He did the Versace fitting this morning," the anonymous source explained. "After that he was supposed to go to his agency but he never arrived. I don't know if it was suicide or if he fell." In addition to Versace, Nicon has walked the runway for Burberry, Louis Vuitton, and Hugo Boss, among others. An anonymous model told the blog, "People think we are young and beautiful and rich and happy. But we're not. We go to castings and the directors take one look at us and then we're dismissed. You spend your whole life wondering what's wrong with you … It's not the fairytale life people would expect."?To some, it might be the most wonderful time of the year. But for environmentalists, the holiday season exacts a high price on the planet. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, household trash increases by 25 percent between Thanksgiving and the New Year. Tons of trimmings end up tossed into landfills, and electricity consumption generally increases 27 percent, according to Green Mountain Energy Company, an Austin, Texas, company that sells carbon-offset credits. How can you celebrate the season without trashing the planet? It helps to know which decorations do the most damage. Here are some of the worst holiday offenders: Artificial Christmas Trees. While the upshot of fake trees is that you can use them for many years, when it comes time to toss them, they're tough to recycle. Most are made of nonbiodegradable polyvinyl chloride (PVC.) It's better to buy a real tree, says Lori Bongiorno author of the environmental guide "Green, Greener, Greenest." But she warns that not all live trees are equally eco-friendly. "Buy live trees from a farm as close to home as possible so you cut down on emissions for transportation. If you can find a tree that's both local and organic that's even better," she says. Tinsel. This shiny silver stuff needs to be removed before you can recycle your tree, but it can be tricky to pick?all of it?off the branches. "Christmas trees are composed or mulched and tinsel won't break down in this process," says Bongiorno. "If you send a tree that still has tinsel on the branches … your tree will probably go straight to the landfill." Conventional Incandescent Lights. These traditional outdoor bulbs burn up to nine times more energy than light emitting diode lights (LEDs.) Though they cost a bit more, LEDs produce less heat, last longer and shine brighter from one holiday to the next. Store-bought Ornaments. Those shiny new glass balls and plastic reindeer figurines might be relatively cheap to buy, but when you tally up the raw materials, manufacturing and (usually international) transportation they require, they're environmentally costly. If your tree is bare, you're better off buying local, trimming the tree with homemade ornaments or scouting for natural decorations by hanging painted pinecones or berries. Wrapping Paper. It's may be pretty, but it's wasteful to spend a lot on something that ends up torn and crumpled on Christmas morning. Some alternatives to fancy wrapping: use newspaper or old cereal boxes to conceal gifts. Danny Seo, author of "Simply Green Giving" suggests using brown paper bags decorated with red, black and white electrical tape. With a little creativity and craftiness, he says "the end result looks like Burberry gift wrap." Electric Window Candles. These need to be plugged in, so?they?burn energy all through the night (especially if you have lots of windows.) And they're a dangerous if placed too close to curtains.?Bongiorno suggests using LED candles instead. "They're difficult to break, last a long time, and they don't get as hot as conventional bulbs so they're less likely to cause fires." Spray-On Snow. Even if you're yearning for a white Christmas, frosting your windows with faux snow can contribute to air pollution. "[It comes in] an aerosol can and is made from chemicals," says Seo. Need we say more? Inflatable Lawn Ornaments. Kids love them, but these giant billowing figures require a constant stream of electric-fan power to remain upright.?According to the nonprofit green consulting firm, Efficiency Vermont, it's best to cut the electricity when dark falls, let Santa deflate overnight, and plump him back up again in the morning.?Wake up, boys! It’s an It Bag. If British politics has become presidential, as of today Samantha Cameron is our first lady and Britain’s key ambassador for fashion. As creative director of British luxury brand Smythson, she’s better qualified than most political spouses to sustain the level of global style scrutiny now her due. As David Cameron quipped in a 2008 party conference speech: “I admire entrepreneurs. I should?I go to bed with one every night.” Was it coincidence or Tory loyalty that this spring, as the campaign got under way, the brand for the first time unveiled a deep blue “Cerulean” collection of accessories?After three years in the limelight, PR executive and departing first lady Sarah Brown has only recently got together a fashion forward wardrobe (Erdem, Issa, and Osman are her favorite designers). “Sam Cam,” as she is known here, has a head start. Even pregnant, she is 5' 11"? with a gazelle-like figure, has already invented an It Bag (the ￡750 [$1,096] “Nancy Bag,” christened after the couple’s daughter), and has her little sister, the deputy editor of British Vogue, on hand should she need any further pointers. For all her posh vibe, she already has a place in the affections of the tabloids. Her pregnancy was heralded in the Sun with the headline “Wham Bam Sam Cam.” Whereas by some accounts life and fashion guru Carole Caplin practically showered with the Blairs, Sam Cam, thus far, has reportedly even declined the services of a stylist. Sam Cam, for all her English rose look, has also been admired for her on-trend black nail polish: a hangover, it’s said, from her days as a cool, slightly Gothic fine-art student at Bristol Polytechnic in the early ’90s.The company of which she is creative director (for the time being at least) is Smythson, the once-staid Bond Street stationer’s established in 1887. The holder of three Royal Warrants, in Sam Cam’s hands, it’s been revamped into a classic sexy British brand (on the Mulberry or Burberry model) that now specializes in accessories as well as sexy stationery: A little black book, any takers? Once it was Winston Churchill who wrote on their stationery but now it’s Gwyneth Paltrow and even Carrie Bradshaw. For ￡5.95 a letter, you can have your initials embossed in gold on your wares. Cameron has been at the company for 14 years and is credited for its explosion in value. In December last year, it was sold to Greenwill, part of the Italian Tivoli group, for ￡18 million. (At the moment, Mrs. Cameron has no plans to resign from her role. Even during the campaign, she has still worked in the office for part of the week.)Entrepreneurs, it has to be said, fit better with the Big Society vision though, than luxury. Witness the column inches when Sarah Brown wore ￡300-plus Jimmy Choos. Samantha Cameron’s favorite shoes, it seems, are her gray Zara wedges (￡29) seen at the last party conference, and indeed, as the couple arrived in Downing Street on Tuesday. They might just be a pair of High Street shoes but ever since the politicians’ wives have become part of the picture in British politics, there’s been a double-edged relationship with high fashion. The fashion press judge and the press at large add up the cost… and then complain if our leaders' wives don’t look as good as Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who wears, naturellement, head-to-toe Dior.Zara wedges or not, deep down, Samantha is instinctively a high fashion girl. She sat in the front row at the autumn 2009 Burberry show looking entirely in place and at formal events is most often seen in Erdem prints or simple block-color Philip Lim dresses. Sykes (by Joanna Sykes) has been a simple British label perfectly suited to her pared-down style. Dutifully, she throws into the mix a more economical TopShop jacket or a pair of Converse.It’s only in the latter part of Brown’s tenure that Sarah Brown had gone all out, ignoring the sniping and, in the manner of Michelle Obama, using her role to patronize up-and-coming London-based, if not London born and bred, designers like Issa (by Brazilian Daniella Helayel), Erdem, and Osman. During London Fashion Week, Sam Cam appeared at the reception of shadow culture ministers Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey in an Erdem top and High Street suit and if she continues with this trend will be almost impossibly well placed to raise the profile of the British fashion industry. She’s also on the money as a committed ethical shopper: She’s into vintage, bikes, and old jewelry and Louise Galvin’s carbon-neutral hair products. She once told me that she’s a firm believer in “unsexy things like blankets and insulation.” Don’t expect the heating at No. 10 to go on until mid-November no matter how much the political temperature plummets outside.While an unfortunate barefoot shot at a temple inspired a spate of mean stories about Mrs. Brown’s lack of a pedicure, Sam Cam, for all her English rose look, has also been admired for her on-trend black nail polish: a hangover, it’s said, from her days as a cool, slightly Gothic fine-art student at Bristol Polytechnic in the early '90s. With either very good, or very bad timing, during the campaign, a set of elegant photos emerged in “an attic” showing a 25-year-old Samantha modelling a friend’s collection, complete with a lot of leg and a kitten on her chest.Ironically, Sam Cam’s one fashion faux pas arose from looking good?perhaps too good?in a blue and white polka dot Marks & Spencer dress which she wore to the last Tory party conference. Sarah Brown had only just begun to wear proper heels and Erdem creations (with outfit costs running close, all in, to a thousand pounds) and Conservative press officers were keen to pass this ￡65 item off as something that the arty but irredeemably privileged Mrs. Cameron (the daughter of a Baronet) had just pulled off the rack at middle England’s favorite shop.Embarrassingly, when press officers were pressed, it turned out Sam had liked a dress that had appeared in M&S but the store had sold out of the limited edition. According to reports, Executive Chairman Sir Stuart Rose (possibly in line for a peerage under a Tory government) ran into her at a party. They chatted about how much she loved the dress and he then moved heaven and earth to get one... less ￡65 purchase than a special sartorial mission. Only a size 14, two sizes too big for her perfect size 10, could be found, so an in-store tailor did the rest. No wonder that cut was so great! And so much for off the peg… it put a whole new spin on “My M&S,” the company’s ad slogan.If anything, far from needing party apparatchiks to help with blue sky polka dot thinking, Sam Cam in fact is probably better left to her own devices. As an ambassador for British fashion and classically English style, you couldn’t do better.Plus: .Olivia Cole writes for the Spectator and the London Evening Standard. An award-winning poet, her first collection, , was published this fall.Get a head start with the . It's your Cheat Sheet with must reads from across the Web. . For more entertainment and fashion coverage Sexy Beast on Twitter.For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at .?A fashion fake is easy to spot: the label says BURBERRY, but the pattern is slightly off-color, the price is too good to be true, and the vendor is operating out of a corner market on Manhattan's infamous Canal Street. But fake food? Not that easy, partly because most of us don't even think to look for it. We assume that if the label says EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL or WILD SALMON, that's what's we're getting. According to a whole host of experts, we shouldn't be so sure.When the FBI dubbed counterfeiting "" they weren't just talking about Prada handbags and Rolex watches. The counterfeit food industry is worth about $49 billion a year, according to the World Customs Institute, and it involves everything from fine food to boxed fruit juice. "Products are moving around the world so fast now that there is just ample opportunity," says , a food-fraud expert at Michigan State University. "And the demand for inexpensive food virtually guarantees that the problem will persist and grow."With that reality in mind, MSU has launched the . The first program of its kind, ACAPPP will employ a range of experts, from food safety and criminal justice to international business and engineering, to develop an international hub for anti-counterfeiting strategies.Food fraud, which typically means the intentional adulteration of food with cheaper ingredients for economic gain, has a long, fascinating history in both the U.S. and Europe, as documented in the excellent book . But because such fraud occupies an awkward gap between food safety (which deals with accidental food contamination) and food defense or bioterrorism (which deals with intentional corruption of the food supply by terrorist groups), it hasn't received much attention. Until recently.In 2008, Chinese officials reported that milk ?a chemical that makes the milk appear to have a higher protein content?caused 900 infants to be hospitalized for kidney problems. When six of those babies died, a media firestorm shone a spotlight on food fraud in China and touched off a in the United States.Over the years, smaller scandals have supplied a steady stream of headlines. In 2007, the University of North Carolina found that 77 percent of fish labeled as red snapper?a flavorful white fish most commonly harvested in the Gulf of Mexico?was , a much more ubiquitous and less flavorful species. Elsewhere, inspectors have found catfish being sold as grouper (the latter costs nearly twice as much as the former), French cognac adulterated with U.S.-made brandy, and honey mixed with cheaper sugars like high-fructose corn syrup. And in 2008, food safety officers seized more than 10,000 cases of , worth more than $700,000, from warehouses in New York and New Jersey.Some states have confronted the problem by establishing their own rules. In 2008, Connecticut became the first state in the country to establish olive oil standards; California, Oregon, and New York . Federal officials have been slightly less proactive. For its part, the FDA relies heavily on legitimate trade associations to police their own borders; it takes action almost exclusively on complaints that are called in. Part of the problem is the sheer magnitude of the potential crime scene. There are more than 300 ports of entry in the United States, through which 13 percent of America's food supply passes. The FDA only has the resources to inspect about 2 percent of that food (which isn't surprising given its dismal budget and are toothless mandates). "In terms of priorities, [food fraud] often ranks at the bottom of the list," says FDA food-safety officer Martin Stutsman.But Spink says that monitoring everything isn't necessary. "What we need to do is focus on the chemistry of the crime," he says. "That means understanding the fraudsters themselves?who they are, what their motivations are, and how they find their opportunities." And according to Spink, we've got a long way to go: "Based on our understanding of food fraud, the FDA is doing a fine job of dealing with it. But the problem is, we really don't understand it all that well."Here's what authorities do know: food fraudsters include a range of types, from individuals and small teams all the way up to organized-crime syndicates and major corporations. Most of them are involved in other criminal activities, as well, so it might be easier to nab them for tax evasion or some lesser crime. In the coming months, and in concert with the FBI, ACAPPP plans to focus heavily on intelligence-gathering strategies, something the FDA lacks the resources for.In the FDA's defense, most experts agree that?melamine scandal notwithstanding?food fraud does not pose significant health risks. "The intent is to defraud people, not to make them sick," says Stutsman. "And the good ones will make their stuff as close as possible to the legitimate product because they don't want to get caught." Still, it's not difficult to imagine potential unintended consequences: olive oil adulterated with peanut oil being unwittingly served to someone with a peanut allergy, or someone eating a mislabeled fish that they're allergic to.If consumers suspect food fraud, they should report it to the FDA immediately by calling the hotline 888-SAFEFOOD or visiting the . But until enforcement and detection improves, the best way for consumers to protect themselves, says Stutsman, is to stay informed. Know your fish: what it should look and taste like, when it is in season, and how much it should cost (as well as whether or not it even exists?Wild Atlantic Salmon, for example, is endangered and not commercially available). As with fashion fakes, deals that look too good to be true probably are. If it says "extra virgin" but it's going for $3 a gallon, it might be soybean oil dyed green with chlorophyll?cheaper, but not nearly as healthy.?Q&A: GRETCHEN WILSONSelf-proclaimed "Redneck Woman" Gretchen Wilson went from filing for bankruptcy to selling more than 4 million records with her anthem for the common gal. A few days before the release of her new CD, "All Jacked Up," she spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jac Chebatoris. You were on tour with Kenny Chesney. Was he dealing with the breakup [with Renee Zellweger]?Well, it happened after the tour was over, so what I got to see out there was what seemed to be a couple of teenagers in love. It's such a horrible thing when you're in the spotlight like this, and everybody has to know your business. But this isn't anything new. A lot of people jump head-first into love, and then you go, "Hmm, maybe I should have learned a little bit more about this person."Your own life is like a country song. You grew up poor, got only an eighth-grade education and had your car repossessed the day you signed your record deal.Yeah, that was awful--and it wasn't the first time. At least he was a nice guy. He knocked on the door and said, "Go ahead and get your car seat out of there." But, no mistake, he already had it hooked up and jacked up.And then "Redneck Woman" hit No. 1. Did you expect you'd have that kind of success?I knew that people that I grew up with would love it, but I didn't expect that it would come across to that many people. I think that what made it such a big deal to people is they realized they didn't have to be "redneck," they just have to be proud and strong and fierce, and just be happy with what they have and who are they are.You slag Paris Hilton on "California Girls": "That Paris Hilton gets under my skin/With her big fake smile and her painted-on tan."I personally don't know why she's such a big star. What does she do? I just don't get it. I wouldn't want my daughter to look up to her. Being 80 pounds and blonde, and living in Hollywood? Those aren't goals.And do people like Paris think you just walk around Wal-Mart eating nachos?Well, I can be found doing that, definitely.Shocked, We Tell You--Shocked!It's amazing how amazed everybody was last week at allegations that a supermodel was doing cocaine. H&M and Burberry canceled their contracts with Kate Moss, after a--you guessed it--British tabloid published pictures of her apparently snorting up. Chanel announced it wouldn't renew its deal with Moss, but denied this had anything to do with the allegations. (Maybe the stars were just lined up wrong.) And the cosmetics company Rimmel said it was "shocked and dismayed."But after Moss, a 31-year-old mother, pledged to take "full responsibility" and acknowledged "various personal issues that I need to address," Coty--which owns Rimmel--expressed support "for all those who undertake the often difficult process of overcoming their problems." (Do you get the feeling that the same flack wrote both statements?) Moss also got sympathy from the Church of Scientology, which, according to an MSNBC report, has been "reaching out" to her. At times like this, you find out who your friends are.The Latest From Splitsville, U.S.A.What's always hot in Hollywood? Divorce. First Renee Zellweger's four-month marriage fell apart; Now Tori Spelling and "The Sopranos" ' Jamie-Lynn Discala are calling it quits with their misters. Spelling's wedding cost $1 million; the union lasted a year. (Do the math: that's almost $3,000 a day.) Discala's lasted two. In celebrity world, that deserves a lifetime achievement award.?Parisians and Milanese handpick their silk scarves and cashmere sweaters with the care hedge funds lavish on stock portfolios. New Yorkers, with their professional blow-drys and sleek power uniforms, are always the most pulled-together fashionistas. London is, by contrast, the adolescent of the design world--home to the hot fashion schools, a restless incubator for global trends, but earning the industry equivalent of part-time wages at McDonald's.Britain's designers took in 700 million pounds wholesale last year--10 times what they did in the early 1990s, but a relative pittance compared with the three leading players, the United States, France and Italy. While it is difficult to find comparable figures across nations in the fashion industry, Britain's total designer wholesale revenues are a fraction of America's; New York's fashion industry (which makes up the bulk of U. S. sales) made $12 billion (6.5 billion pounds) wholesale on apparel in 2004.Talent is certainly plentiful in Britain: the ideas generated by its designers reverberate throughout the fashion world. Homegrown stars often have their own small labels, but many are also poached to work for bigger fish abroad--John Galliano for Dior, Alexander McQueen for a time at Givenchy, Stella McCartney for Chloe. Many of Britain's biggest homegrown brands, like Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith and Burberry, don't even hold their most important shows at London Fashion Week; it is an afterthought to shows in New York, Paris and Milan, with an increasing number of buyers and editors skipping the city altogether. No British brand, with the exception of Burberry, has reached the billion-dollar scale of an Armani or a Ralph Lauren.This only fuels the maxim that the British tend to innovate, then leave others to make money off their designs. Fashion is a tough business these days for everyone--goods of all kinds are becoming commoditized, and retailers are having to work harder and harder to come up with innovative ways to drive traffic into stores. But despite having some of the richest and best high-fashion customers in the world at their doorstep, British designers have a harder time than most for a variety of reasons. Unlike the French and Italians, they don't have a critical mass of large luxury businesses built up over several decades. Their design schools focus more on art than commerce, turning out edgy innovators rather than savvy retailers. Manufacturing is practically nonexistent, there's no massive home market and, unlike New York, London has been unable to create a sense of hype and entertainment around the industry.London's deficits as a fashion profit center are most stark in comparison to New York, which has even less history in the luxury trade. American designers came into their own during World War II, when fashionable women were cut off from Paris couture. New York specialized in sportswear, still the biggest seller in the market; today's big names like Donna Karan (now owned by Parisian conglomerate LVMH) make their money dressing the working woman. "American designers have always been about practicality--one in the 1950s actually created an outfit especially for getting in and out of a cab easily," says Sonnet Stanfill, a fashion curator at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Even at the high end, that means selling mass luxury, as opposed to edgier chic. "London fashion is very intellectual, all about ideas, or about being an outsider," says Stanfill. It is perhaps no accident that an American, Rose Marie Bravo, transformed the dowdy raincoat maker Burberry into the United Kingdom's biggest and best-known fashion brand by slapping its trademark check pattern on a variety of mass-market luxury goods, from umbrellas to bags.Some of the U.S. advantage is structural: American design houses have an enormous home market working in their favor. Nationwide retail chains like Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue that sell luxury to the masses have no equivalent in the U. K. Luxury is more or less a London business, with sales made in boutiques or department stores like Harvey Nichols and Selfridges. Since London's own designers remain relatively small, it's tough for them to crack the highly competitive American market; Paul Smith, who sells about 220 million pounds worth of goods a year, is one of the few who have.At the same time, overt commercialization is still frowned upon in British design circles. While British institutions like Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art are regarded as among the best design schools in the world, they are less well known for their financial training. By contrast, New York's main teaching center, the Fashion Institute of Technology, was founded in the 1940s by textile industrialists because the state wouldn't support a school for what was then known as the "rag trade." FIT remains as much a business school as an art school.Britain's other two main competitors, Italy and France, share some of its European disdain for crass commercialism. But they have other ingrained advantages. In both Paris and Milan, a long tradition of strong government support has created clusters of fashion houses. The Italians have the added advantage of maintaining a relatively robust textile-manufacturing industry in the face of emerging market competition from China and elsewhere. "Italy's manufacturing base is historically one of the reasons it's been easier to grow big brands there," says Carlo D'Amario, the Italian managing director of Vivienne Westwood, who grew the British business from almost nothing to 60 million pounds a year, in part by switching manufacturing to Italy in the mid-1990s.He also relocated Vivienne Westwood shows from London to Paris to capitalize on the Continent's other advantage: the critical mass of buyers and press who come to the shows. The clothing shown there isn't necessarily more innovative than what gets made in London. Nor is it more genuine: some European labels already outsource to Asia, and companies like Prada may follow. But in the luxury business, history and perception really do translate into cash. "The heritage of the brands adds intangible value," says Merrill Lynch analyst Rodolphe Ozun. "Because there aren't as many old, iconic brands in the U.K., London is less associated with luxury than Paris or Milan," and consequently captures less of the luxury trade.While tradition cannot be built in a day, London's cause is not hopeless. New York's fashion shows were once as haphazard as London's, but have since been transformed into a slick enterprise. The big change came in the early 1990s, after throbbing music at a Michael Kors show sent plaster and bits of the ceiling crumbling onto the laps of Manhattan's most important fashion editors. "we live for fashion, but we don't want to die for it, ran the headlines the next day," remembers Fern Mallis, then president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), who moved the shows to plush tents in New York's Bryant Park. The project was so successful, it's been spun off into a separate business and acquired by the international talent-management company IMG.The good news is that the British powers that be are finally starting to focus on how the domestic fashion industry can make more money from its cutting-edge designs. The British Fashion Council, London's equivalent of the CFDA, has far less entrepreneurial chutzpah than its American counterpart. But the London city government has become an official advocate for the industry, launching projects like a high-fashion incubator called the Centre for Fashion Enterprise in conjunction with the London College of Fashion. The center was founded by a high-tech entrepreneur named Suran Goonatilake. The idea is to hook up talented designers with capital, PR and marketing support, and smart managers to run the business side of things. "London has great schools, capital markets, media and buyers," says Goonatilake. "There's no reason it couldn't be the Silicon Valley of fashion."Indeed, certain changes taking place in the industry actually favor London over its counterparts. For starters, the city is the capital of fast fashion (the rapid adaptation--or outright copying--of luxury ideas for the mass market). High Street stores like Topshop invented the concept--and many more are starting to hire British designers to do special, less expensive lines for them. This support helps the designers expand their high-end businesses as well. Jasper Conran, who has long designed for groups like Debenhams department store, Waterford and Wedgwood, recently opened a large flagship store in London's tony Mayfair, selling 1, 800 pound sequined pants and candy-colored cashmere sweaters alongside fine bed linen and crystal champagne flutes.Conran is one of the few internationally known designers who still present their collections in London. But fashion-week organizers hope to change that by including other creative industries--film, music, graphic arts--to pull in more press, buyers and, ultimately, designers. "It's ridiculous that we don't have a more meaningful fashion week," says British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman, who is also encouraging organizers to shorten the event and time it closer to the Milan and Paris shows so that attendees don't have to fly overseas several times.Will all this turn Britain into a home for luxury megabrands? Probably not. Designers here want to grow, but it's tough to find someone who aspires to be the next Armani. "I'd have to work too hard," says Conran with a laugh. Still, the students who come from all over the world to study in London will undoubt-edly continue to be snapped up by the industry's top brands. And ironically, the city's also-ran status may put it closer to the true meaning of luxury: originality, and exclusivity.?Could Barack Obama actually be--gasp!--uncool?According to the conservative blogosphere--and at least a few impartial observers--the answer, it seems, is yes. After photographs (above) of Obama riding a bike with his daughters Malia, 7, and Sasha, 9, last weekend along Chicago's Lake Michigan shoreline hit the wires, the heavily trafficked right-wing message boards of Free Republic . "Please tell me he isn’t wearing dark socks," wrote one commenter. "Dorkier than John Kerry," wrote another. Several posted . Soon, the MSM was also weighing in on Obama's square, Seinfeldian combo of white sneaks, bleached jeans and tucked-in golf shirt. "Obama gets poor fashion marks after weekend bike ride," the New York Daily News this morning. "It wasn't a pretty picture."It's hard to argue with that--I mean, the bumper* alone would've gotten Obama beaten up in middle school. But it's equally hard to imagine that the bike shots will do the Democratic nominee any real damage. As the New York Times' Matt Bai , not every embarrassing moment sticks: "If it substantiates the most relevant thing that your rival would haveus believe about you, then it has the potential to become a seriousproblem. If, on the other hand, you do something completely idioticthat is tangential to what voters most hope or fear about you, then youtend to get a pass." The only reason we're interested in these photos is because of how sharply they clash with Obama's hip, refined image; we're so used to seeing the Illinois senator in a and reading breathless analyses of that catching a rare glimpse of him in casual wear seems like a news event. In 2004, John Kerry was mocked mercilessly for because it reinforced his image as a rich, out-of-touch Frenchman. Obama's bike moment just makes him look like a normal American dad. Which, come to think of it, isn't exactly a bad thing. Among Republicans, there are two basic lines of attack against Obama: that he's an elitist and/or that he's uncomfortably "exotic" (a category that includes "unpatriotic," "radical," and, implicitly, "too black.") The bike pictures counteract both. It's pretty much impossible to be the upscale, smooth-talking, all-style-no-substance snob of GOP fantasies--the guy who "doesn't get" ordinary Americans--when, as the Boston Herald's Margery Eagan , "you look as suburban, as unchic, as let’s-hop-in-the-Explorer-and-head-to-Costco wonky as Obama looks in this oh-no! photo." And while the press has tended to focus on Obama's connection to black culture in recent weeks, from to his , the bike photos prove, once and for all, that Obama can be painfully, embarrassingly "white" as well. You can almost hear the chorus rising up from supermarket check-out lines nationwide: Look, Linda! . Next up: Obama is "caught" wearing a "World's Greatest Dad" apron while barbecuing on July 4 weekend. The horror...*I'm informed that this is actually a contraption for towing one's child. I suppose I've shown my age: too old to have been towed on a bike, and too young to have anyone to tow. ??In recent years, heritage has become part of the venture capital formula. It seems that the sight of a few venerable brands reinventing themselves has stimulated investors' appetites for other old names with glorious pasts. With the understandable optimism that comes with great wealth, they see themselves as Prince Charmings to the historic brands' Sleeping Beauties. Appoint a creative director, open a few flagship stores, develop some "icon" products, talk about "brand DNA" and?voila!?Sleeping Beauty has been transformed into a fully functioning retail princess.Burberry may be the paradigm and its comeback is indeed a thing of wonder. Yet it has used its history carefully. While looking into Burberry's past, I discovered that its eponymous founder was an antialcohol crusader; according to his 1926 obituary in the Daily News, "Mr. Burberry cared for little outside his business except temperance, religion and agriculture, and he never read novels." He died at 91 after catching a chill while preaching at a Salvation Army meeting? hardly the model of fun-loving fashionista that today's Burberry would seem to appeal to. What this suggests is that to thrive in the manner that Burberry has?as a cool, edgy fashion brand?heritage must be used judiciously. Too much and you remain stuck in the past (temperance is not the great marketing tool it once was); too little and you might as well save yourself the bother of reviving an old brand and just start a new one.It was exactly this conundrum that sprang to mind when I bumped into John Rigas, the new owner of the luxury British jeweler Asprey. Asprey was the first great Bond Street shop most people of my generation were familiar with. I have often kept a keen, sometimes critical, eye on developments there. That is the problem for someone buying Asprey: thanks to the residual effect of all that heritage, people who have no part in the business and may not have bought anything there for years still feel they have a stake in the place because a long dead great-grandparent used to shop there.Tongue firmly in cheek, I suggested to Rigas that the best thing he could do was turn Asprey into a shop where nothing costs more than a pound. He was commendably polite and told me he was going to restore faith in a much-loved brand. He was in the company of his creative director, a youngish man in a snappy suit, which tuned out to be Asprey-branded. It was nicely put together and had a flower loop on the back of the lapel?a touch that even some bespoke tailors omit these days. But should Asprey really be trying to break into the apparel market? Or would it be better off staying in its traditional areas of expertise, like cocktail shakers and jewelry?Selling garments can be a lucrative business, but maybe it shouldn't be Asprey's business. Heritage can be a useful tool for divining what to do. Asprey did flirt with clothes between the two world wars, but the experiment was unsuccessful. This is not to say that a heritage brand operating in one sector cannot move into another. Beretta, the gunmaker, has been family-owned since the Renaissance. It recently and successfully moved into clothing, but its clothes are linked in performance, style or both to the world of guns?what the businessman would call Beretta's core competence.That's more than can be said for another brand making a comeback: Faberge. Depending on how romantic you are, the name is either associated with the flowering of the decorative arts in the final years of the Romanovs, or Brut, the eau de toilette, which advocated that users "splash it all over." I am only guessing, but I imagine that the new owners would prefer the former?even though Peter Carl Faberge has been dead 80 or 90 years and the Romanovs ceased trading in 1917, when Russia came under new management.Olga Berluti, the Parisian bottierde luxe, once explained to me another important way of looking at heritage: not only should a business survive for generations, but so should its customers. And the tradition of repeat business bequeathed by father to son or mother to daughter is more effective than any amount of heritage-based marketing. Faberge and the Romanovs were fortunate to come together in the first place; it will be interesting to see if today's superrich and ancient brands repeat the pattern.?If a spate of recent headlines is any indication, there's never been a better time to be a British businesswoman. In the past few months Barbara Cassani, the former CEO of Go Airlines, was appointed to head London's bid for the 2012 Olympics and sit on the board of Britain's largest retailer of food and clothing, Marks & Spencer. Shell CFO Judith Boynton was promoted to the board of her company, and Laura Tyson continued to make waves as head of the London Business School. Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino led a list of the most powerful women executives outside America, and others, like Morgan Stanley Europe vice chair Amelia Fawcett, and Burberry CEO Rose Marie Bravo, also made the cut.There's just one problem with this list of British achievers--they're all Americans. According to a recent study by Britain's Cranfield School of Management, 32 percent of women who sit on the boards of companies on the FTSE 100, an index of the largest British companies, are from overseas. (Though no comparable figure exists for men, experts estimate it's much lower.) The majority of those women are American. As one well-known British headhunter puts it, "If you want to sit on a board in Britain, you'd better be American, or have a title."Historically, American women have always done well in Britain. The country's first female M.P. was Nancy Astor, a spunky Virginian who came to the old country, married well, and as an outsider was perhaps better poised to break the rules of political convention and still be accepted than were her British sisters. Likewise, many American executive women in Britain today say that not being British gives them an excuse to skirt London's stifling business etiquette. "You can get away with a lot more, especially if you use the stereotypes to your advantage," says Allyson Stewart-Allen, an American marketing entrepreneur married to a Labour M.P. "When discussing a potential project, I can say to clients very early on, 'I know it's so American of me to ask, but what's your budget?' That's not usually done here. They can then laugh at how American I am, but I still get to ask my question."American bluntness can be a big selling point for men or women (though some say it's more palatable when delivered by the fairer sex). The fund-management firm Barclays Global Investors recently chose Stewart-Allen over a British man for a job that involved retraining staff to be more direct when pursuing new clients. That's not an unusual situation. "Americans have a great ability to jump into the heart of an issue, while we sort of flounder around a bit," says Alastair King, a managing director at Galahad Capital who recently completed a project with another American, Lucy Marcus of Marcus Venture Consulting. When asked if this approach causes culture clashes, King says, "Our culture is acclimatizing to them, rather than the other way around."Americans in Britain are in a strong position to play the role of change agents. Bravo succeeded in transforming formerly stuffy British raincoat maker Burberry into a fashion label worn by the likes of Kate Moss. Cassani proved a major airline could compete with the cheap carriers when she took over Go for British Airways. Tyson, a former economic adviser to Bill Clinton, is updating tenure and fund-raising procedures at the London Business School. Beverly Malone, also a former Clinton adviser (on health care), is pushing the issue of better pay for nurses as head of Britain's (and the world's) largest nursing union.During the late 1990s boom days, a number of younger American women capitalized on the European desire to adopt Yankee business culture by launching start-ups and networking groups, while generally being more comfortable with hype and the limelight than their British counterparts. A California-born venture capitalist named Julie Meyer founded First Tuesday, which staged high-profile mixers for dot-com types. Before a series of overambitious deals she led began unraveling, Floridian Robin Saunders was the It Girl of London finance, turning the German bank West LB into a City player. A recent study by the research group Catalyst found that American female executives, in contrast to their European counterparts, believed choosing highly visible projects was one of the five most important ways to get ahead.The study also found that European women were slightly less optimistic about their career prospects than Americans. This reflects what may be the most important reason behind the clout of American women in Britain--the relative lack of opportunities for British women. Women hold 12.4 percent of board seats in the United States, but only 6.2 percent in Britain. Likewise, while 45 percent of Fortune 500 companies have more than one woman on their boards, only 15 percent of top British companies do. Julie Mellor, head of Britain's Equal Opportunity Commission, puts this down to an old boys' culture: "British boards have not professionalized their selection process." Also, British firms are not legally required to report the number of women and ethnic minorities that they hire, as many American firms are. Ironically, many American women say that a less modern, diverse and competitive business culture is one reason for their success. "Quite frankly, Britain is a pretty easy place to come and do a good job," says venture capitalist Ruth Storm, an American who began her career in London 19 years ago as a typist.No doubt British women could make an impact if there were more of them on the executive track. American women have been in the workplace in large numbers for a longer period of time. Also, while 72 percent of American women with dependent children work, 65 percent of British women do. After a second baby, 56 percent of American mothers with two children (and at least one preschooler) choose to work, compared with 47 percent of Britons. British women take much more time off for maternity leave, and spend more time with their kids during the day, than American mothers do. British mothers also engage in part-time work in much higher percentages than American women do.It's clear British women are on a slower track, but the reasons are hotly debated. Mellor blames inadequate child care and a lack of career opportunities. Others, like London School of Economics researcher Catherine Hakim, believe British women simply prefer a more balanced life. Lesley Knox, a British high-flier, is one of many who are trying to find the right way forward. After several big jobs, including a directorship at Kleinwort Benson, she has begun moving into non-executive-director roles so she can spend more time with her young daughter. "British women are trying really, really hard to get the balance right, and maybe American women just don't fuss as much about it anymore," says Knox. She's got a point. In the recent best-selling novel "I Don't Know How She Does It," a London fund manager and mother frantically uses a rolling pin to "distress" store-bought mince pies into looking homemade for her child's school party. It's hard to imagine a working Wall Street mom fretting so about her reputation as a baker.Europe is not as ready to embrace the unconflicted businesswoman. A survey of European directors shows that stereotypes of women's abilities and a lack of female role models are among the top five barriers to executive advancement. Yet the same trends that attract Americans--globalization and modernization--may eventually put more British women in positions of power. British and European Union legislators are encouraging companies to get more aggressive about hiring and promoting women. The EOC is quietly pushing the issue of women on corporate boards and aggressively campaigning for better child care. The most progressive companies, like BT, BP and Shell, have launched mentoring programs designed to get even more women into the uppermost ranks. Someday British women may hold as much power in British business as American women do.?Aaliyah Haughton was buried Friday next to her grandmother in White Plains, N.Y., but the controversy surrounding her death is far from over. NEWSWEEK has learned that the 22-year-old double-platinum-selling R&B singer was hesitant to board the tiny twin-engine Cessna 402B that was supposed to take her from the Bahamas to Miami last week. Sources close to the singer say she was fearful of small planes and had been expecting a larger aircraft. "She was very upset at that plane the moment she saw it," said a friend who was with Aaliyah at the airport. Instinct, which produced the video the singer was shooting in the Bahamas, reportedly offered to charter a private jet instead, which would not have arrived for several hours. But Aaliyah just wanted to get home. It was to be her last weekend off before resuming a tough schedule that included the MTV awards, promotion of her album and continued physical training for her roles in "Matrix 2" and "3."Whereas the pilot, Luis Morales III, was unauthorized to fly the Cessna, a report issued by U.S. investigators said that the plane was 700 pounds overloaded. NEWSWEEK has learned that several members of Aaliyah's makeup and styling crew stayed behind to wait for a larger plane. After passengers boarded the plane, arguments among the ground crew about the weight limitations got heated, according to Sarah Jacobs, a production assistant at the scene. In addition to the luggage, production equipment weighed down the aircraft. A good deal of what had been flown to the island on two cargo planes several days earlier was packed into the Cessna, according to a production-crew source. The equipment was supposed to have been divided between two planes on the way back, according to the same source. The report said the passengers' weight, including Aaliyah's 300-pound bodyguard, overloaded the plane.In the wake of the tragedy, allegations are building against the pilot; Skystream Inc., which owned the plane; and the operator, Blackhawk International Airways. An attorney for Blackhawk issued a statement that said it was cooperating with authorities. But the search for who is to blame is not likely to end there. "Everyone and anyone is liable here. Somebody dropped the ball in this particular situation and somebody will have to pay for it. It's as simple as that," says Darrel Jones, a legal consultant for several large record companies. Among those who could get entangled in the tragedy's legal aftermath are Aaliyah's label, Virgin Records, and Instinct, which is owned by famed hip-hop video director Hype Williams. Williams picked the Bahamas for the video, though Aaliyah would have preferred Miami, according to several on the shoot. If this shoot followed practice, according to industry sources, then Instinct would have been responsible for arranging travel and lodging. Williams and company returned to the mainland on a chartered yacht. "This is a loss for the world," said Williams, expressing regret for everyone lost on the plane. Representatives of Virgin Records and Hype Williams or Instinct could not be reached for comment. ((((((THE BUZZ))))))Barry, Barry, Quite ContraryGiant Headache Unlike Roger Maris, unjustly maligned in 1961, 'Bonds isn't beloved by his teammates. He's not even beliked ... He's an MTV diva, only with bigger earrings.' (Rick Reilly, Sports Illus.)BB Gunnin' Sure, the guy's no kissy-poo--but he can't get a break with the media. Soon 'we'll start to hear about his nasty habit of splitting infinitives.' (ESPN.com)Big (S)lumber Bonds isn't the problem. Time is. Like wine, records gain value only with age: until '98, the mark had stood for 37 years. Any baseball sommelier knows a three-year-old can't compete.Slam 'im, Sammy! On Barry's tail: Sosa, baseball's most lovable guy, and Luis Gonzalez, baseball's nicest guy. Sammy's on a tear--'and not a moment too soon.' (Wash. Post)Fans Cry Foul The Pittsburgh Steelers had a decent preseason, but some of their boosters really lost out. With the new stadium, many season-ticket-holders got squeezed out of good seats. John Gatto, center-field fixture since the '50s, is now at the two-yard line. Four other displaced fans just sued, but the organization says it can't make changes until next year. If there are any fans left.Yates Awakes Two months after allegedly drowning her children, Andrea Yates is emerging from an emotional fog. Her brother Andrew Kennedy says the Houston mother of five--who is taking Haldol, an antipsychotic drug--is now far more responsive than she was when she entered the Harris County Jail. She is exercising, and has even befriended other inmates. That's a far cry from the often catatonic woman depicted in more than 1,000 pages of hospital records filed in court last week. Kennedy says that each time he has visited, she has wept over pictures of her children. She is not optimistic about her chances of freedom. A Sept. 12 competency hearing will determine if she is well enough to face two counts of capital murder. Although the prosecution plans to seek the death penalty, it has stiff opposition. The Texas chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill plans to support Yates, joining the state chapter of the National Organization for Women and about a dozen local groups.Gary Faces Up Congressman Condit, take heart: at least one poll favors you. After the prickly politician's stint on ABC, BuyCostumes.com was deluged with requests for a Gary Condit Halloween mask. To test demand, the site took a poll, and almost three fourths of the respondents said they'd buy one--or at least laugh at someone else's. While BuyCostumes.com will make only about 1,000 masks--it's too late to produce more before mid-October--CEO Jalem Getz thinks the scandal will yield the year's hottest costume. For men, that is. Getz nixed a Chandra Levy mask. "That's going too far," he says. "Even for a costume retailer."Urban Camp Pay a travel agent not to book your hotel? Kamstra, a Dutch travel firm, will arrange for you to spend four nights sleeping on the streets of a European capital city. "It's a back-to-basics holiday--city survival with team building," says financial director Mechiel Nederhoed. Mock homelessness--begging for money and crashing on the concrete--satisfies wealthy thrill-seekers' thirst for adventure. What's more, it's only $430 to enjoy abject poverty.Lawful Viewers When "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" premieres this month, it will be TV's third "L&O" series. That means two more hours a week of PERI's fave franchise, already broadcast at least 25 hours weekly--about seven times more than "Friends"--on four networks. A miniseries is in the works, too. Is this legal?Put Your Hands Up! "Kids," says a Glendale, Calif. high schooler, "take themselves too seriously. Hand jives are a way of making fun of yourself and lightening up." And while they won't earn you credits, jives will get you cool points. Here's a guide to help you interpret the signs: (Graphic omitted)A Tad of Plaid Say ba-bye to the Burberry bonanza. That trademark plaid showed up everywhere from bikinis to Barbies last year, and now there's a bit of a backlash against the unmistakable tan, black and red pattern. "This year it's what we call 'check undercover','' says a rep--like tweeds that subtly incorporate the Burberry colors or swatches that peek out from underneath coat collars. "The plaid will always be there. But we want people to keep coming back and keep buying." Clearly this is a British company comfortable with the American Way.Skates That Let the Good Times Roll-Again With trends, what goes around comes around, and around and around. So it's no surprise that retro PUMA skates are the "newest" fad to hit the hell-on-wheels market. Also hot: Heelys with removable wheels. Which will be the next big thing? The race is on: Heelys Cost: $89.95- $109.95 Demographic: First preteens wanted them for fun; now older students cross campus in them. Even 6-year-olds sport tiny pairs. Caveats: With a 32mph top speed, wheeling in Heelys is banned in some schools-and dangerous. Fad Factor: "It could develop into a lifestyle," says inventor Roger Adams. Or it could be so yesterday by tomorrow.Puma Roller Kitty Cost: $125 Demographic: Sold in women's sizes only--and mainly in "female-oriented" pastels. Sorry, guys, baby blue's not your hue after all. Caveats: Unlike Heelys, these can't be transformed into plain shoes, since the wheels don't pop off. Fad Factor: Retro Kitties suggest '70s "Boogie Nights" chic, but most fans were born in the '80s. Strictly a style statement.Bummer of a Summer Edition Not long ago, we still had money in the bank, money in the Treasury and blockbuster movies to look forward to. Now we're broke. Will Hollywood give us a refund on "Pearl Harbor"? C.W.Wall St. - Skids below the magical 10,000 - and it's not even October. Install ledge nets now.Soc. Security - Old: My lockbox is stronger than yours. New: Sometimes you gotta unlock it.Stem cells - Bush said there were 64 lines. Unfortunately, most are in a lockbox.Black Caucus - Old: Camp. finance reform is a core principle. New: What! Give up our soft money?IRS - Admits 40,000 returns are missing. Should have put them in a lockbox.Baby Bombers - Danny "perfect game" Almonte is over-age truant. There goes the Disney movie.?Burberry's fashion shows are always a spectacle -- the main event, some say, of London Fashion Week. Last season, fake rain poured down on the roof of the Hyde Park pavilion for the show's finale as models emerged with umbrellas. This season's finale was an explosion of bright colors: models blanketed the runway in shining metallic coats of every color, from purple to pink, to blue to green. And though the collection was modern and vibrant, explained that he was inspired by an 100-year-old image of capes and corsets in Burberry's archive. This season, , is "a little bit sassier, a little bit sexier, and a little bit more joyful." ?Mark Twain once wrote that "heaven was copied after Mauritius." It's easy to see why. Lush sugar-cane fields spread across this Indian Ocean island--mercifully spared casualties from last week's tsunami. Jagged volcanic mountains rise out of the sea mist like peaks of meringue; wide tranquil bays of vibrant turquoise meet beaches of fine white sand and swaying palms. Colonized over the centuries by the Dutch, British and the French, Mauritius remains a favorite winter holiday destination for Europeans.It has also been for the past 30 years one of the world's key centers for textile manufacturing. Hundreds of factories dot the inland hills, where workers, most of them female, produce sweaters, cashmere blankets and T shirts for everyone from discount retailers like JCPenney to luxury names such as Giorgio Armani and Burberry. But it's a purely contrived industry; Mauritius produces none of the raw materials used in its textiles. It has to import everything from the yarn to the packaging. What Mauritius does have, and has since it started textile manufacturing in the 1970s, is abundant labor. As a member of the African, Caribbean and Pacific consortium of countries, Mauritius received under the 1975 Lome Convention the right to export duty-free and quota-free to the EEC (now the European Union). That was one of dozens of trade agreements that created and supported textile manufacturing in developing nations around the world.Mauritius made the most of it. In 2003, the country's annual turnover in textile and clothing-manufacturing exports was roughly $1.5 billion. The sector employed about 40 percent of the work force, and contributed 12 percent of the GDP and 60 percent of the foreign-exchange earnings of the country. As a result, Mauritius has the highest per capita gross domestic product in sub-Saharan Africa--$10,800 in 2001, according to U.S. government estimates. This prosperity is evident in the abundance of new European cars, upscale restaurants, shopping centers and new housing construction. "Textile manufacturing is a main pillar of our economy," says Mookeshwarsing Gopal, chairman of the Mauritius Export Processing Zone Association, the industry's trade association.But that's about to end. When the WTO completes its 10-year phaseout of the textile-industry quotas on Jan. 1--what Linus Kent, a major garment trader in Hong Kong, calls "the greatest foreign aid program ever" --countries like Cambodia, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Madagascar and Sri Lanka will find their economies in a tailspin. Few will be harder hit than Mauritius's, says apparel-industry consultant David Birnbaum of Third Horizon Ltd. in "Winners and Losers 2005," a study of the economic impact of the phaseout on 28 key garment-producing countries. Already Mauritius has lost 30 companies employing 15,000 apparel and textile workers in the past two years. And Birnbaum reports that textile shipments from Mauritius to the United States were down 17.5 percent from 2003. "The phasing out of these quotas will have a serious consequential affect on Mauritius," Gopal says. "It's going to cause an economic downturn, and maybe even a crash. We are very worried."A coalition of 31 textile-producing nations lobbied up to the last minute for an extension of quotas, warning of "massive job disruption and business bankruptcies in dozens of countries." Ek Sokheng, 26, supports an extended family in a small town outside Phnom Penh on the $80 a month she earns stitching clothes for foreign labels. "Without the factories," she says, "the young women in this village will die." Eleven Cambodian garment factories have shuttered since September at a cost of 25,000 jobs; Trade Minister Cham Prasidh fears social unrest. In Bangladesh, the country's 4,000 garment-manufacturing companies employ 1.8 million people and fetched $5.7 billion in turnover last fiscal year, making up 76 percent of the country's annual exports. Most of those workers--some 85 percent--are Muslim women, the majority of whom have traveled from home villages to big cities to work alongside men, in defiance of their cultural traditions. Many Westerners have described Bangladesh's garment industry as a "social revolution."The phaseout will be its Waterloo. According to a survey report prepared jointly by Switzerland's Ghezi Textil Organization and Bangladesh's Project Promotion and Management Associates, Bangladesh's garment exports could decline to $3 billion by 2007. The International Labor Organization projects that the country will lose as many as 1 million of its 1.8 million apparel jobs. "I don't know what is going to happen to us," says 19-year-old Yasmin Akhtar, who has been working in a Dhaka factory for the last five years. "Allah will take care of us."Latin Americans will find themselves scrambling, too. Honduras, which owes about 10 percent of its GDP to the textile trade, could lose as much as 40 percent of its jobs. Mexico, which in 2003 was the world's second largest apparel exporter to the United States after China, could lose up to 7 percent of its market share to the Middle Kingdom by 2008, according to a recent study published by the U.S. International Trade Commission. "We're very worried about what could happen here," says Raul Garcia, head of the largest apparel-manufacturing lobby in Mexico. "In the worst-case scenario, we could lose 200,000 jobs and $3 billion in two years."But Mexico's textile industry is not giving up without a fight. Apparel workers like Garcia are pressuring the government to bring a multination lawsuit against China at the WTO for what Garcia and others are calling "illegal subsidizing." They claim that China's only real advantage is that its industry has the strong financial backing of the government. During 2005, Garcia says, a consortium of threatened nations, including some from Central America and Asia, will attempt to legally document Chinese subsidies for an eventual legal battle at the WTO. They also plan to ask the United States to impose restrictive tariffs on Chinese goods for the transitional period and while the case works its way through the courts.Analysts see such moves as useless stopgap measures that will serve only to highlight how poorly countries like Mexico have adapted to China's growing economic might. "They can't get their political act together," says Gary Gereffi, a professor of sociology and an apparel-industry expert at Duke University. "There is a sense that Mexico is stagnating. Asian economies show incredible dynamism, but in Mexico none of the major investments to move the country forward are being undertaken."Some quota countries are better prepared for the phaseout than others. In South Korea, currently the world's fifth largest textile exporter, apparel companies have invested in more than 2,500 overseas projects worth a total of $2.6 billion--one third of which are in China. Even the polyester maker Huvis, which is laying off 30 percent of its Korean labor force, has recently completed a $90 million factory in Sichuan, China, employing 300 local workers. The company plans to triple the capacity of its Chinese factory by 2010, increasing the work force there by a similar margin.Guatemala, where the apparel industry brought in $600 million and employed more than 125,000 people in 2003, has been upgrading its technology in an effort to adapt to the lower-volume, higher-quality needs that U.S. companies now demand. Still, workers are bound to lose jobs; Dona Rose Garcia Portillo, a single 43-year-old mother of two who earns $64 a week working for a cotton-apparel supplier in Guatemala City, is fatalistic about the transition. "The situation isn't easy," she says. "I don't want to change jobs, but one day maybe I'll have to go to the United States if I can't make enough here." That's a common sentiment among those who see a dim future for the apparel industry. "If all these people lose their jobs there's one place they're going to go," says Sanchez Llano, of Trajes Mexicanos, a Mexican suit manufacturer. "And that's up north, to the U.S."Not everyone in the losing countries believes that the phaseout will equal disaster. "The abolition of the quota system will be a blessing in disguise," argues Anisur Rahman Sinha, a leading garment manufacturer and exporter in Bangladesh. "The industry itself has to be more professional and efficient." And governments, he said, will be forced to improve infrastructure in order to compete with China and India. Back in Mauritius, the mood is more resigned. "The textile industry has a nomadic nature," admits Gopal. And when the resources dry up, the tribe moves on. Even if it means leaving paradise.?Indeed, there’s more to Burberry than just trench coats. ’s Spring 2012 collection was largely hand-made and exuded a laid-back cool: moccasins, crocheted raffia caps, and lightweight shorts. As The New York Times’ of the Burberry man, he’s “a cool but well-heeled slacker.”?Alas, nothing. Not even a crumb.After five days of shows in London, during which designers' eye-popping digital prints, dreamscape silhouettes, and confident tailoring were well-received by some 5,000 retailers and press, Sarah Mower, chairwoman of the BFC's New Generation committee, breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank God," said Mower, whose group provides advice and financial support for emerging designers. "They're like my children."For more than a decade, designers here have been steadily building their brands, improving their production and striving to be more serious and considered in their approach to business. More recently, the shift in the economy, which has made the dollar, the euro, and the pound more sympathetic to each other, has helped London-based designers more readily compete in the global marketplace. And they seem more eager than ever to do so. "There's always been creativity, but there hasn't been consistency with commercial clothes. They never felt the need or desire to do a lot of business," says Ken Downing, fashion director of Neiman Marcus. "Now there's a balance of the commercial and creative."The catwalk shows have become more professional endeavors?interminable waits are a rarity; clunky models are an exception. The shows were smoothly orchestrated affairs that spirited an audience into a futuristic reverie in a Gothic house of justice, conjured a mood of romantic poetry in the dark recesses of a university hall, and created a magical snowstorm in a black tent constructed in Kensington Gardens. Designers here have a vision and they've learned how to sell it.But the real reasons this cultural moment belongs to London-based designers are both joyous and bittersweet. Anticipation of the April has brought a sizzle to London like nothing else. And May's exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, celebrating the work of the late designer , has resurrected conversation about London as a cauldron of creativity that resembles no other place. (It also hasn't hurt that for the state dinner honoring China, as well as a daytime ensemble by London-based designer Roksanda Ilincic.)The scene backstage at Issa London included an insistent scrum of high-heeled editors and news-starved reporters attempting to get designer Daniella Helayel to comment?just say her name, for God's sake?about Kate Middleton.With folks on wedding watch, the scene backstage at the Issa London presentation Saturday evening?think jersey dresses with pheasant prints and fluid gowns in sunny Brazilian colors?included an insistent scrum of high-heeled editors, international camera crews, and news-starved reporters all attempting to get the brand's designer, , to offer a comment, a few words?just say her name, for God's sake?about Middleton, her most famous client. She, of the sapphire-blue Issa London dress.But that did not prevent the rumors from swirling around the shows about Middleton selecting a traditional wedding gown from Bruce Oldfield, or perhaps something modern and fresh from the young Erdem Moralioglu. This was nothing more than buzz and blather, but Moralioglu made a strong case for both his vision and skill with a collection that showcased his signature lush prints that transformed bathrobe coats and easy sheaths into wearable homages to Impressionism.If there is anything that links the designers who presented their work over the last few days, it has been their affection for prints. The focus on optic extravagance reflects the youthfulness of many of these designers and their ease with technology, as many of the prints are computer-generated. Christopher Kane merged elegantly cut sheaths and hand-knit skirts in graphic patterns with insets of rubber in a medley of stained-glass hues. The juxtaposition of homey knits with the forbidden allure of latex made for a provocative collection that made one reconsider what is transgressive and what, exactly, is old-fashioned. Mary Katrantzou's Technicolor prints were distinguished by her audacious silhouettes that encased her models' hips in bell-shaped, sculpted skirts that exaggerated the models' girth. It's the sort of theatrical design flourish that, in a culture that glorifies a long, lean female form, startles the eye but also raises the question: Why did wide hips become so taboo in contemporary society?Jonathan Saunders filled his runway with simple sheaths in blocks of deep color and contrasting prints. And at Peter Pilotto, designers Peter Pilotto and Christopher De Vos used sober shades of taupe, ivory and black?with bursts of merlot?to create ghostly patterns that evoked blurred X-rays and dusty fossils.Giles Deacon offered a palate-cleansing collection of black-and-white tailoring, along with dramatic dressmaking, for a collection that was controlled yet filled with grand gestures like full skirts cinched with black leather corsets. And of course, , the creative director of Burberry, made the grandest statement of all in support of the traditions of British design as well as its sleek digital future. Under a monumental tent in the shadow of the Albert Memorial and with live-streaming going out over the Internet, Bailey showed a Burberry Prorsum collection inspired by Jean Shrimpton: a mix of '60s-style car coats in hues of pumpkin and cherry, tweed trousers that hugged the derriere, mink newsboy caps, chunky ivory knit dresses and silvery white jackets that called to mind intergalactic snow princesses. "I love the idea of both old and new simultaneously," Bailey said.Might Middleton choose any of these designers for her wedding trousseau? Or perhaps Alice Temperley? Hers is another name churning through the Middleton rumor mill. Temperley unveiled a glittering collection at the British Museum of Champagne dresses with flourishes of crystals.Young British designers have been getting official nods of support from both Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street. Last March, the queen hosted a reception for the British fashion industry, receiving a host of designers?and editors?for Champagne and hors d'oeuvres. And over the last week, British first lady hosted receptions for the international fashion industry at 10 Downing Street. Mrs. Cameron, who was creative director of the luxury leather company Smythson, also attended several shows during the week in support of the hometown fashion team.She also lent her support to the Met's Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty with an appearance and brief remarks at a breakfast reception previewing the show. McQueen was one of the most creative designers to emerge from London in the last generation; his work was certainly the most emotionally evocative. His suicide last year followed that of his early patron, Isabella Blow, one of the industry's great eccentrics. Their deaths shocked the fashion industry and the ensuing ruminations?in books, new stories and blogs?about their often dark, public expressions of their imagination captivated a culture that feeds on celebrity, flamboyance, and the macabre.What is it about British fashion that stirs such creativity? Andrew Bolton, the curator of the upcoming exhibition, suggests that for McQueen it came, in part, from the way in which class strictures permeate British life?the struggle against them, the embrace of their traditions.But for London's young whiz kids of prints and patterns, it may be that the economic downturn brought out their tenacity, seriousness and inventiveness. Surely Christopher Raeburn's coats and windbreakers made of repurposed flight suits and parachutes speak to that theory.Or as Downing of Neiman Marcus suggests, the electricity this season, in particular, is coming from "a young role model who is positive. There's a lovely, elegant chic to Kate Middleton. She's attractive with her own spirit and ideas," he says. "She combines fantasy and reality."And, just look at "all the cobalt-blue energy on the runways."Plus: .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 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.?When two elephants fight, the grass suffers. So goes the African saying, and a few years ago it would have been true of the Indian market. But the bitter and very public corporate battle between the billionaire Ambani brothers, who control the Reliance Group of companies, has produced surprisingly little collateral damage so far.For a long time, the popular notion was that as the Reliance Group went, so went the Indian stock market. Now investors can ignore the family feud because the market is so much bigger. At the start of this decade, Reliance was one of five Indian companies with a market value of more than $5 billion. Currently there are 40 such companies, the total value of the market is more than $1 trillion, and the Reliance Group accounts for less than 10 percent of the total.The reduced focus on the Reliance Group is part of a broader trend, in which the obsession with the top of the pyramid is shifting to a growing interest in the bulging middle. In 2006 and 2007?the heyday of the growth boom?all eyes were on the wealth of India's richest few. As the stock market surged, the media kept a close tab on how many Indians were making it to the Forbes list of billionaires. At the end of 2007, 10 Indians were on the top-100 list? trailing only the Americans and Russians in number.Many companies targeted their growth strategies at high-income households, and the cocktail circuit was abuzz with details of the latest iconic apartment deal. In the commercial capital, Mumbai, apartment sales topped $2,500 per square foot?twice the going rate in cities like Shanghai. Last year's global meltdown led to a sudden stop in all such activity.As India now emerges from the boom-bust growth cycle, the masses are firmly leading the recovery even as the upper classes remain conspicuous by their absence at stores. Two-wheeler sales are up nearly 15 percent so far in 2009, compared with an average growth of 5 percent over the past five years. Small-car sales have increased by 20 percent in recent months, while purchases of luxury cars are down 20 percent from a year ago. Consumer-goods companies are reporting a bipolar market: widely used products from hair oil to soaps are selling well, but more expensive skin-treatment items are not.The mounting realization that the real growth opportunity in India lies lower down the price curve is forcing many companies to rejigger their strategies. Retailers used to place high-end brands close to the entrance of their malls, hoping to woo customers to chic brands, but they ended up intimidating them with high prices. Retailers are now reshuffling the front window, giving pride of place to goods the middle class can afford.Similarly, in the real-estate market, the latest catchphrase is "affordable housing." The average unit cost of an apartment in India's five leading cities is down by 50 percent over the past year, not just due to falling prices but also to a reduction in the size of the average home. Developers have learned the hard way that selling in India is a volume game. Their earlier idee fixe that penthouses and villas were where the glamour and margins lay has given way to the reality that the market for such products is extremely limited.Even at the peak of the boom in 2007, there were only 100,000 Indians with an estimated financial net worth of more than $1 million. That contrasts with 100 million middle-income households with an estimated annual income of $2,000 to $10,000. This segment is growing at the fastest pace, and many new members of this class have yet to buy their first motorcycle, car, or apartment. The political class in India has been very conscious of the need to make growth more inclusive and therefore spent much of the revenue windfall from the high-growth years on increased welfare spending. Furthermore, these households are carrying relatively low levels of debt, making them less vulnerable to swings in the global business cycle.Analysts have hyped the potential of the In-dian middle class for a long time, but now it has reached critical mass. At the same time, it is still not as affluent as in other countries, such as China, where sales this year of luxury cars and Burberry apparel are growing at an impressive 10 to 20 percent. India's per capita income of $1,000 is less than a third of China's, and the average Indian consumer remains highly price-sensitive, with a limited appetite for expensive, high-margin products.The positive fallout of the past year's economic turmoil is that it has shown where India's real potential lies. The more quickly companies throw in their lot with the rising middle, rather than the overhyped and overestimated rich few, the more successful they will be in India.?I started reading Crime and Punishment last month because Gwyneth Paltrow said to. According to the Oscar-winning actress, “the best way to relax before bed is to curl up by the fire with an amazing, transportive [sic] novel.” (Apart from watching a few minutes of a “forensic pathology documentary” on TV.) “I think there was something about the complexity of the protagonist’s psychology that made me feel like I wasn’t the most misunderstood person in the world,” Paltrow says of the Dostoevsky classic, which she first read in high school but has returned to many times since. “It was okay to be figuring out one’s own sense of right and wrong. In fact, it was one of life’s great endeavors.”I recently embarked on another of life’s great endeavors. For the last three weeks, I’ve strived to follow every single recommendation from , Gwyneth’s weekly e-mail newsletter, in an effort to understand this complex star.I found myself intrigued by her recommendation to “take your drinking water to the next level” with a $900 alkaline filtration system. What vegan shoe designer does Cameron Diaz recommend? I suddenly wanted to know. In the GOOP-iverse, there are six points on the Star of Gwyneth: Make, Go, Get, Do, Be, See?the organizing principles behind her guide to better living, her gift to us. The advice ranges from wonderfully inspiring to hilariously impractical, internally inconsistent and outright absurd. In the name of GOOP, I have now given up white foods (bread, pasta), preserved foods (chips, cookies), toxic foods (candy, ice cream), and foods containing heavy metals (I never quite figured this one out). I have dutifully tried to rid myself of negativity and the inner gunk of past excess by drinking two tablespoons of olive oil every night before bed. I have done butt-lifting exercises in my living room, cultivated my “sticktoitiveness,” cooked enormous feasts one day and subsisted on kale and lemon water the next. I have given myself a five-minute makeover involving a tight drugstore headband and slathered home-made Turbinado sugar and coarsely ground coffee paste on my cheeks, to open up my pores. I have paired slouchy trousers with a shirt that has “some edge.” I have added adaptogenic herbal formulas to my morning routine and tried to eat in accordance with my body’s natural rhythms. I have experimented with four different recipes for chocolate chip cookies. I have practiced the African philosophy of ubuntu. I have purchased leggings.And I have nourished my inner aspect.Gwyneth has taken a lot of heat for her GOOP newsletter, with critics accusing her of being dense, illiterate, and out of touch. Then again, how hard is it to mock a Hollywood royal who describes cooking and food as “my main ancillary passions in life” and who turned to an “organic plastic surgeon” in 2007 when she got tired of her “saddlebags and post-pregnancy Shar-Pei-like stomach”? She drops names faster than she does pounds during a liquid cleanse (Wes Anderson, Jon Favreau, Sofia Coppola, Christy Turlington, “my friend Mark Bittman of The New York Times”), and her devotion to alternative medicine is just kind of creepy. She is so preoccupied with bowel movements that if she ever does expand the empire (as she has hinted), there could easily be a spinoff newsletter devoted solely to remedies for gastrointestinal “sluggishness.” No telling the potential web audience for POOP.There’s a lot to scoff at here, but the three weeks I spent following GOOP were pure joy. Expensive, inconvenient and totally unsustainable?yes, but also full of unexpected pleasures. Instead of taking a vacation this summer, I lived like a world-famous actress obsessed with maple syrup, pseudo-science and Mario Batali. And just as Gwyneth did with Raskolnikov, I too found a special comfort in the complexity of my protagonist’s psychology. She may be tone-deaf and full of wacky ideas about food and religion, but she really just wants everyone to feel as good as she does. On a few occasions, I think I got close. My GOOP plan began with cynicism and failure, and by the end, I was cooking a giant pan-holiday dinner party with recipes from Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and Valentine’s Day for my boyfriend, three girlfriends, and Rue McClanahan of The Golden Girls. It was a long, strange journey.Gwyneth’s first newsletter went out in September 2008 with a simple introduction tracing her evolution from strict macrobiotic to worldly gourmand. On my first day as a GOOP devotee, I planned to follow her first two recipes: for sugar-free banana nut muffins and turkey ragu. Gwyneth makes the ragu, which calls for fennels seeds crushed with a special “spice basher,” on Saturday afternoons while her children are playing in the garden and leaves it simmering on the stove all day. The banana muffins, sweetened with maple and brown rice syrups, require three different kinds of flour (whole spelt, white spelt and barley). I left work at 8 p.m. on Day One, went to three different grocery stores looking for the ingredients, gave up, went home, ate a cold tub of brown rice from the refrigerator and fell asleep.“Goop?” Rue McClanahan asked, when I tried to explain what we were doing. “Can I find that with Google?” Day Two was an improvement. The banana nut muffins came out swell, even if they weren’t quite the proof Gwyneth promised that “health food can still taste decadent.” At night, I skipped the ragu and went to Otto, which Gwyneth calls a “busy, happy pizzeria” and recommends alongside every other Batali restaurant. (The two are pals who became travel companions in Spain…On the Road Again, their strangely addicting public TV series sponsored by the government of Spain, Pompeiian olive oil and The New York Times). Over dinner, my companions and I discussed “frenemies.” Gwyneth had a frenemy once and was troubled at the joy she felt when this person suffered a terrible public humiliation. She asked her favorite Kabbalist, Shaikh, Episcopal priest, psychologist and Zen master for their thoughts, and the consensus was that we should all avoid negativity as much as possible. I forgot my credit card at the bar but didn’t let it get me down.On Day Three, I began Gwyneth’s Seven-Day Detox, a quick way to shed a few pounds and eliminate bodily toxins. Paltrow is never specific about exactly what these toxins are or how not eating soy helps expel them, but I quickly found it’s better not to look for specifics in these newsletters. “Roast the vegetables”?At what temperature? For how long? Gwyneth avoids any hard and fast rules; the point is we should all enjoy some roasted vegetables. A necessary part of the GOOP plan is blind faith that our guru and her advisors, in this case Dr. Alejandro Junger, will provide all the information necessary to make, go, get, do, be and see. On the third day of the detox, about when the hallucinations started, I began imagining Gwyneth in the Julie Andrews role from The Sound of Music, delivering her guidance in song: “Make! A pie! A pumpkin pie! Go! To Paris, London, Spain! Get! A trench! A Burberry trench!....” The end is the end in itself. Why worry too much about the details along the way?In that spirit, I’ll leave out the details of my detox, which ended shortly after those hallucinations began. Suffice to say, it is difficult to subsist on two liquid meals and one small helping of salmon and kale a day, especially when you have a job. There were some glorious highs, some terrible headaches, and plenty of opportunities to apply GOOP’s relationship advice as I fought off wild-eyed delirium and tried to “cherish small moments of intimacy and laughter” with my very patient, better-fed boyfriend.And then, like magic, at some point in the middle of week two, I stopped noticing what an unbelievable hassle it was to follow this ridiculous plan. My ear adjusted to Gwyneth’s affect, and rather than guffawing at some of her more outlandish suggestions, I found myself intrigued by the $249 and her recommendation to “take your drinking water to the next level” with a $900 alkaline filtration system. What vegan shoe designer does Cameron Diaz recommend? I suddenly wanted to know. GOOP has been on hiatus for much of the summer while Gwyneth is traveling and spending time with her family, and without being fully conscious of it, I tried to “police my thoughts” for negativity as I impatiently awaited her return.In the meantime, I filled my evenings with adventures: new yoga poses, goofy home beauty exercises, YouTube videos about how to make a chicken or tone my lower body with simple chair exercises. I also began to plan my GOOP grand finale, an enormous Labor Day banquet with recipes from every major holiday. The menu: Gwyneth’s Christmas mixed greens salad with cranberries, goat cheese and a homemade maple-dijon vinaigrette; her “fun and festive” Hanukkah latkes (which she loves to serve with a whole roasted fish and salsa verde); Thanksgiving turkey burgers with stuffing, ketchup and cranberry chutney; roasted winter vegetables; and a pumpkin ice cream pie.Exactly how Rue McClanahan got mixed up in all of this remains a mystery. I’d entertained fantasies of asking Gwyneth to come to dinner, but never seriously planned on having a major stage and screen actress at our table. But Rue happens to live next door to the apartment of a friend who agreed to host the party. The 67-year-old Golden Girls star was passing a solitary Sunday night with her sixth husband, Morrow. He stayed in for the night but she agreed to an invitation to join us. “Goop?” she asked, when I tried to explain what we were doing. “Can I find that with Google?”We spent the night talking about health spas, Haitian voodoo, small-town Oklahoma and what it was like to be a Golden Girl. I completely forgot about the cooking, and my boyfriend had to step in to rescue the latkes from burning oil and grill up the turkey burgers on the stove. Meanwhile, we sat rapt, listening to Rue’s stories about late nights at Sardi’s and her current project, a stage version of her memoir My First Five Husbands…And the Ones Who Got Away. I told her about Gwyneth’s detox, and she said it sounded like a lot of food compared to the raw vegetable diets she’d done in the past. She asked me for the menu and recipes, posed for pictures and left shortly after midnight, taking the other half of her turkey burger home in a Tupperware for lunch the next day. She said it was the first impromptu dinner party she’d ever attended.GOOP is as much about the unintended consequences of a well-lived life as the intended ones (the elimination of toxins, the clarifying of skin and soul, the virtual necessity of a Chopard necklace and Tod’s boots). Gwyneth doesn’t say anything about the restorative power of gay icons from the 1990s in her newsletter, but if it weren’t for GOOP, we never would have met Rue, never would have sipped coffee with vanilla ice cream while she told stories about Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, and Betty White.“What is holiday spirit?” Gwyneth asks in one “Get” newsletter. “For me, it means helping to create that atmosphere where loved ones feel full of cheer, like some happy secret is about to be revealed.” So what if she goes on to suggest creating that atmosphere with a $1,395 Mulberry weekend bag in chocolate natural leather. If you look at the big picture and not the little details, it’s not so hard to understand where Gwyneth’s coming from. “Do whatever you can, on whatever scale you can,” she says. “It’s all about the intention.”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.?“There’s nobody who has near to the influence of Mrs. Obama on the marketplace,” says David Yermack, professor of finance at the NYU Stern School of Business, who analyzes changes in apparel company stock prices after Michelle Obama wears those designers to public events. Yermack that the first lady’s fashion choices in 2009 led to immediate gains exceeding $5 billion in shareholder value for publicly traded brands. (It’s impossible to know the real effect of her influence, he says, since most of the brands she wears are privately owned.) Other political wives, including Cameron, he says, “don’t make as many appearances and are operating in a smaller marketplace.” It may be tough to compare anyone with Obama, as she has “a sense of style that has attracted a following that few other women in public life have.” And as she continues to make steady appearances in 2012, Yermack says, the “Michelle Obama Effect” on the fashion industry is as strong now as it has ever been. “I’m surprised by its staying power,” he says. “You’d think people would lose interest.”?At a swish Paris dinner on the eve of L'Oreal's annual financial-results announcement in February, guests drank champagne and mingled over canapes--but that's where the resemblance to a typical Parisian luxury event ended. Guests chatted in English, German and Mandarin as well as French. One managing director paused before handing out his business card to make sure it was the French, not the Chinese, version. Most notably, the consumer everyone was discussing wasn't the stylish European mademoiselle worrying about wrinkles but the young Chinese woman craving whiter skin and the Indian lusting after bright Bollywood-style eye shadow. Thierry Prevot, managing director of L'Oreal Asia, noted that L'Oreal's definitive "wet lipstick" look last season arrived in Europe and America by way of the Asian market, where it launched first. Cracking a playfully contentious smile, he added: "Asian women are the [world's] most sophisticated consumers."Shanghai, Mumbai and Moscow are set to join Paris, London and New York as luxury style capitals of the world--not only getting the latest Prada show, Armani boutique and Bentley dealership, but also setting the agenda for what the rest of the world wants. At Mumbai's Lakme Fashion Week last month, buyers from Brown's in London and New York's Saks Fifth Avenue kept a close watch; already they carry a handful of collections by innovative Indian designers like Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla. Western arbiters of beauty now covet distinctly foreign models. Chinese "Memoirs of a Geisha" actress Ziyi Zhang, Indian Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai and Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova recently landed top spots on the "Most Beautiful Women" list compiled by Britain's blueblooded Harpers & Queen. All three appear in the global marketing campaigns of such companies as L'Oreal and Calvin Klein. The advertising campaign for Motorola's eye-poppingly popular RAZR phone (a best seller in Asia, America and Europe) was originally designed for the Chinese market. "Today, if a product doesn't work well in every market, it's not well conceived," says Bernard Fornas, CEO of Cartier International. "Beauty has no borders."Does that mean the developed world is losing its hold on luxury? Already the third biggest luxury-goods consumers, the Chinese are on their way to displacing the Japanese as the world's highest-spending buyers of luxury products by 2014, when analysts expect the country's rich to account for almost a quarter of global luxury sales. By 2010, China will have a quarter of a billion consumers who can afford luxury products--17 times the present number, predict analysts at Ernst & Young. Experts estimate that India--where half the population is under the age of 25--is as little as five years behind China. Already, China has 300,000 millionaires, Russia has 88,000 and India has 70,000. All in all, says Merrill Lynch analyst Antoine Colonna, there are 15 million consumers in China, Russia and India who can afford to buy luxury goods today. And they are more willing to do so than their developed-world counterparts; it's not uncommon for affluent, educated young Chinese to spend a month's salary on a Gucci belt or Louis Vuitton handbag. Russians spend 13 percent of their household budgets on clothes and shoes--more than double that of the Japanese and British.The never-ending list of luxury stores opening in China makes it seem as if the streets there are now paved with platinum: Giorgio Armani has plans for 30 new stores by the end of 2008; Louis Vuitton hopes to open 13 next year; Bulgari is planning six for this year alone; Dolce & Gabbana is moving into Shanghai and Beijing later this year for the first time, and Montblanc says it will have 200 boutiques across China by the end of the decade. Bentley sold more of its $1.2 million Mulliner limos in Beijing than in any other city in the world last year. Cartier expects 10 percent of sales to come from China as early as 2012, and has begun branching into other developing markets including Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan.If China's streets are platinum, India's are gold. Though there are no luxury shopping malls or districts in India at present, Burberry, Christian Dior, Gucci, Cartier, Chanel, Omega, Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton and Versace all plan to move in before 2007, if they haven't already. India's luxury-car market has tripled in the past five years (albeit only to 2,000 cars annually), despite import duties of about 100 percent. Analysts McKinsey & Co. predict that India's branded-jewelry market will grow by 40 percent annually until 2010, when it will reach more than $2 billion. Last month Indians' love of high-quality yellow-gold jewelry helped push the price of gold globally to a 25-year record of $600 an ounce.The really rich in the developing world are setting themselves apart from the brand-name masses by eschewing showy displays in favor of bespoke gowns and contemporary art (sidebar), just like their wealthy counterparts from the developed world. This means that at the very top end, luxury style is being defined by the tastes of a truly international set, who in turn influence, and are influenced by, each other.Indeed, from fashion and food to interior design and debauchery, international flavor is de rigueur in high-living circles. Wearing an item that demonstrates how much one travels is the ultimate modern status symbol. Swanky Shanghai hipsters prize the Burberry jackets sold only in the brand's flagship London Bond Street store more than those that can be snagged in Shanghai. In the same way, the British elite covet so-called authentic products made by niche designers in far-flung cities--think of Prince Harry's wearing the leather bracelet he picked up in Africa for his official Mario Testino 21st-birthday portraits last year. "It's becoming possible to use the phrase 'Made in China' to your advantage," says Malte Nuhn, an analyst at Millward Brown Optimor, who coauthored a new report last month identifying the world's Top 100 Most Powerful Brands.There is so much cross-cultural osmosis that it can be hard to figure out where you are anymore. Luxury textiler Joss Graham sells hand-knotted rugs from Rajasthan, India, Afghanistan and Tibet for thousands of pounds in the middle of London's millionaire neighborhood, Belgravia. Every major high-end interior-design chain now offers Chinese-inspired decor, from Maison de Famille's Chinese well bucket to Ralph Lauren's Ming-dynasty vase lamps. At Yauatcha, London's newest Michelin-starred offering from Alan Yau, the first restaurateur to win a star for a Chinese restaurant with Hakkasan, staff wear uniforms created by the Oscar-winning costume designer of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and serve Parisian chef Stephane Sucheta's French-Chinese fusion pastries on minimalist tables designed by Christian Liaigre. Italian "[Roberto] Cavalli's cheongsams are better executed than Shanghai Tang's," says Yau. "Having a non-Chinese person do Chinese stuff brings out a freshness that ethnic Chinese sometimes miss."Ultimately, this move-ment to a single luxury esthetic that incorporates influences from every corner of the globe means that a brand's ethnicity is no longer an indicator of where its owners are from, where the goods are produced or who buys them, but rather a matter of preference. In Hong Kong, the Swiss giant Richemont bought Shanghai Tang, the first Chinese luxury brand, a decade ago; L'Oreal recently bought China's only domestic luxury cosmetics label, Yue-Sai. And the spending spree is rapidly becoming a two-way street: within the past five years, Chinese entrepreneurs have bought the European labels Asprey, Mulberry and Lanvin.At the most recent Business of Luxury summit in London, Prada CEO Patrizio Bertelli announced that the company was planning eventually to outsource some production of the ultimate Italian brand, replacing the MADE IN ITALY label on some garments with MADE BY PRADA. In the brave new world of luxury, brands are the new countries. And traditional markers of ethnicity--from saris to ball gowns, champagne to sake--can be had anywhere, by anyone who can pay the price.?Spring showers may be on their way, but that doesn't mean we need to dress to match the drear. Burberry encourages customers to face the rainy season head-on in its dazzling gold double-breasted leather trench coat ($2,495; burberry.com). Or for an extra candy-colored pop, Versace's incandescent bubblegum pink, thigh-skimming trench features a reflective silver belt buckle and embossed buttons ($2,740; neimanmarcus.com). For a more Catherine Deneuve look, try popping the collar on a deep violet Kilmuir coat from the heirloom Scottish rainwear brand Mackintosh, made from a watertight and super-lightweight Japanese fabric ($895; mackintoshrainwear.com). And women needn't have all the flair; men tired of khaki will stop traffic in the crimson double-breasted inspector's coat by 3.1 Phillip Lim ($750; barneys.com).For those tempted to spin around a lamppost and sing in the rain, a custom-made umbrella from Swaine Adeney Brigg (which also supplies Prince Charles with his favorite silver-tipped parapluie) should do the trick. The niche British company will engrave a name or date on its solid sterling-silver handle?and with good reason, too. Made from rosewood core, mother-of-pearl button snaps and a bright silk or nylon canopy chosen from a rainbow of choices, its lucky owner will have to keep a close eye on it ($1,575; swaineadeney.co.uk).Staying dry up top is no good if one's feet are soaked. Thankfully, Wellies have come a long way. Aquatalia by Marvin K makes tall, wedge-heeled rain boots in candy-apple red ($195; saksfifthavenue.com). And Burberry's glossy black Wellington boots will glam away the glum with their rock-and-roll studded buckles ($350; www.net-a-porter.com). Bring on the rain, because it's time to shine.?John Cheh sells the shirt on his back. As chairman of Esquel China Holdings in Hong Kong, he runs a top producer of men's woven cotton shirts--or category 340Z under the World Trade Organization quota system that expired last week. "It's a high-end shirt with high yarn count. It has the feel of quality," he says, stroking his collar. Sold by Nordstrom for about $50, the label reads: MADE IN MALAYSIA.That claim complies with the quotas hammered out by trade negotiators over the decades, to be sure. But Cheh's shirt--along with millions of other garments now sold in the United States and Europe--is a camouflaged Chinese export. The cotton grew in Xinjiang, became yarn at a spinning mill in the Silk Road oasis town of Turfan and journeyed some 3,000 kilometers by truck to be woven into fabric in China's Pearl River Delta. In local garment factories, thousands of young women cut the cloth into patterns, stitch panels together and gather buttons, zippers and clasps into kits that are then "finished" by workers who sew the pieces together in nations like Malaysia. Even the MADE IN MALAYSIA labels are made in China.It was this wasteful supply chain that the World Trade Organization aimed to sever back in 1994, when it resolved to abolish quotas that have contorted the global garment industry like a bonsai tree. Quotas officially expired on Jan. 1 in what amounts to the largest simultaneous industrial rationalization in the history of, well, industry. What comes next is globalization's first great test of the new millennium. Most forecasts portend dramatic change: billions in savings on production costs, the death of an industry of middlemen who specialized in quota dodging and falling prices for shirts, shorts, scarves and socks as manufacturing consolidates in the nations that do it best. Nearly all analysts believe China will come out on top in a battle for control of the $350 billion industry, but not for the reasons you may think.More than 60 countries now export garments to the West, and several dozen are likely to be driven out of the textile trade (following story). Nations like Cambodia that bet their futures on the promise of preferential access to U.S. and European consumers have now lost that special privilege. Unions and lobbyists around the world are fighting to erect new barriers to slow the exodus of jobs and contracts to China, claiming that its current and expected future dominance is built on a system of state-run "sweatshops," implying rock-bottom wages in miserable factories.This is a distortion, at best. China's textile advantage has little to do with its wages (which are considerably higher than those in India, Indonesia or Vietnam) or even with labor costs more generally (which account for only about 10 percent of the cost of a shirt). Recent outbreaks of labor unrest in the Pearl River Delta are a story of worker expectations rising faster than wages--not "a race to the bottom," as some activists would have it.What truly distinguishes China are its state-of-the-art factories, its rapidly improving transportation network--and its talent for exploiting the absurdities of the quota system. China estimates that it now turns out more than 20 billion finished garments a year, roughly four pieces of clothing for every person on Earth--the largest output by a single country ever recorded. And that figure does not even include the uncounted billions of kits that end up as clothes "made in" Malaysia, Mauritius or the Maldives.China's current dominance of the textile trade extends well beyond its own official quotas, and lays the basis for its future expansion. The mainland's garment industry has grown 500 percent since 1990, from $10 billion to $50 billion, and now has 40,000 clothing manufacturers that employ some 15 million workers. In a recent Goldman Sachs poll of large American retailers, most expected China's share of the U.S. clothing market to double from 20 percent to 40 percent by 2007 and to peak at about 60 percent.Austrian economist J. A. Schumpeter once observed that England's ascendance "can almost be resolved into the history of a single industry," namely textiles. The same might be said of China and the rest of East Asia today. The rise started in Meiji Japan, which used cheap labor to propel itself past England to become the leading global exporter of cotton garments by 1930. In reaction to the rising prowess of Japan's mills, Washington forced Tokyo to accept "voluntary" quotas in 1955. To keep their businesses alive, Japanese companies began funding and advising garment makers in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. This laid the roots of the "flying geese" development model, in which Japan led the Asian flock into more and more advanced technologies, and of the backlash that created the labyrinthine quota system.Washington's response was to slap quotas on any Asian exporter that made sharp gains in the U.S. clothing market. By the early 1970s, the U.S. system had morphed into a global one, imposing complex quotas on dozens of nations in 800 categories of clothing. Though ostensibly "temporary," the system became increasingly entrenched, and illogical. Fortunes were spent on quota-filling garment factories from the United Arab Emirates to remote corners of Africa. "Mauritius? Madagascar? Who the hell would normally make garments in places so far-flung?" says industry consultant James P. Convery. "It is the ultimate case study on how intervention creates market distortions on a grand scale."Over time the quota system became a cashless form of foreign aid. America and Europe granted needy countries preferential quotas, hoping labor-intensive garment factories would lay the seeds for broad-based industrialization. While many governments failed to capitalize on the protections, the development scheme worked in much of East Asia, though nowhere quite so spectacularly as in China after its opening in the early 1980s.Protection seemed to have a different impact on China than on many developing nations, promoting enterprise rather than sloth. Though rules varied by country, manufacturers typically could sell to others up to half their quota allotment each year. Known as mothers, such sellers remained the exporters of record and kept their quotas year after year so long as none went unused. In competitive categories, quota rights sold at huge premiums; in recent years, for example, garment makers in China paid $5 per piece for quota rights to make wool sweaters, or nearly equal the cost of production. So-called matchmakers earned fortunes getting buyers and sellers together. "Several of them I know became quota millionaires," says a Western apparel buyer with decades of experience in Asia.The system drove Chinese manufacturers to make themselves hypercompetitive. Because quotas limited the number of garments China could export to the West in any single category--but not the value of those exports--local manufacturers strove to win upmarket clients. Better to sell $200 Hugo Boss sweaters than $20 Wal-Mart sweaters. And in the race to slash costs, cut delivery times, and raise quality, Chinese were driven to move upmarket more aggressively than their rivals in other nations, largely because they faced more domestic competition to fill their nations' limited export quota. "Retailers used to look at [just cost]: 'Your price is $3 and his is $2.90, OK, I'm going to Bangladesh'," says Bruce Rockowitz, president of the Hong Kong-based sourcing giant Li & Fung Trading. "It's not like that anymore. They think about delivery, quality, what the selling price would be in their store after markdowns to see which one is more cost-effective. China always comes up on top."In Gaoming, a small city in Guangdong province, Esquel produces cotton shirts for clients ranging from Wal-Mart to Nike, Hugo Boss and Burberry. Automated assembly lines maximize each worker's output. Salaries, which have risen sharply across the Pearl River Delta in recent years, are fast approaching 90 cents an hour on average, which is 30 percent higher than in Bangladesh and more than double those in Indonesia, according to the International Labor Organization. To retain workers amid China's manufacturing boom, Esquel offers benefits like nearly free housing (line workers, mostly young women, bunk four to a room; managers get their own apartments), a gym, a library and free Internet access. Cafeterias serve a variety of regional cuisines to suit migrant workers from across China.Esquel estimates that because it can buy yarn and fabric from its own mills inside China, garment assembly takes 30 percent less time in Gaoming than outside the country. Proximity to Hong Kong by either barge or truck speeds up the export process; containers arriving at one of the city's state-of-the-art freight terminals are usually aboard ship and on the high seas in a few hours. According to AT Kearney, labor for a shirt made in Bangladesh runs just $1.52, compared with $2.28 in China, but after factoring in materials and transportation, the total cost of the Chinese shirt is $11.15--almost a dollar cheaper.China continues to refine its advantages in ways that echo the ongoing revolution in the retail industry, led by Wal-Mart. Through close coordination with suppliers, tight inventory controls and volume trade, the U.S. retailer slashed costs and passed the savings on to consumers. Trendy new fashion houses like Zara of Spain have cut the time it takes to introduce new styles from months to weeks. As the fashion seasons give way to a 24/7 cycle in which styles change constantly, China is building the high-speed factories and transport links that can meet demand. As a recent study of the quota system by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong put it: "Clothing is increasingly considered a perishable good."Since global growth in consumption of clothing is flat, suppliers are fighting for shares of a stable pie. Rockowitz predicts that the "industry unto itself that rose up to dispense quota allotments" will die, and foreign investors will flock out of "quota countries." After Turkey gained tariff-free access to Europe in 1994, investments poured into its textile industry, "but people are exiting now because it became very expensive," says Hana ben-Shabat, a senior strategist at AT Kearney in London. "That has always been the case in the textile industry--people keep on moving from country to country."Quotas hobbled that mobility, but no longer. With costs rising on the Pearl River Delta, the industry may push farther inland in China, or look again at rivals like Indonesia or Vietnam. One of the few nations showing some confidence in its ability to compete is India. Once the world leader in cotton-textile exports, India faded in the 18th century, when the British Empire created a virtual monopoly for its own manufacturers at home and in the Indian market, choking textile centers like Surat.Today Surat is upbeat. More than one million of its 3.5 million people make their living in some way related to textiles. Even the Self-Employed Women's Association, an NGO that supports poor women, is upgrading cottage factories to meet international standards. "It's an opportunity that we don't want to let go," says Rema Nanavaty, who heads SEWA's garment venture. "We are trying to get our unit started by January to take our share in the post-quota period." One interested buyer: Wal-Mart. New Delhi hopes to boost textile exports from $11 billion last year to $50 billion by 2010, a goal analysts consider well within reach.Yet to hit its target, analysts say, the government must copy China's massive investments in new roads and ports, and add $30 billion worth of new factory capacity. According to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, "The central theme of the developments taking place in the Indian textile industry is that players are gearing themselves up for effectively competing in the volume game" against China. Researchers at Purdue University's Global Trade Analysis Project forecast that by the end of 2005, China will capture half of the clothing market in the United States and 29 percent of Europe, and India will rank second, with 15 percent and 9 percent shares, respectively.The most obvious winner will be consumers. In the United States, for example, clothing prices have already fallen by 8.5 percent since 2000; the elimination of quotas should drop prices further. Most analysts believe luxury prices won't come down, while retailers in the middle--like the Gap or H&M--will use the cost savings to cut prices, reinvest in better products or both. AT Kearney predicts that the upshot of this struggle will be an 8 to 18 percent drop in retail clothing prices in the coming years. More and more of those pieces will be labeled: MADE IN CHINA. Or maybe INDIA.?With New York Fashion Week now over, design houses have moved on to filling the orders buyers placed after viewing the trends that came down the runway. Critics have adjudicated the hits, the collection photos have been disseminated, and all the models are packed and ready for the next round of catwalk appearances. All, that is, except the dozens of black and other ethnic models, who are, as ever, unsure how much work they will get next season. It is a perennial issue?not just a seasonal one.Fashion designers are notorious for excluding minority mannequins?male as well as female?from their runway extravaganzas. Not to mention the advertising campaigns that stuff the pages of magazines from Vogue to Elle to GQ with glossy, full-page spreads. Intermittently, there comes a wave of criticism and soul-searching that results in a brief flirtation with a new crop of “exotic” mannequins and even yields the occasional supermodel, whether Naomi or Chanel Iman.And then things settle back into the same old ... same old. Bethann Hardison, a model turned fashion-industry entrepreneur and activist, says things have improved since 2007, when she held a series of seminars and discussions with design houses and agencies pressing for more minority models, but "we're still not where we need to be."Edwing D’Angelo is a young black/Latino designer who recently presented his exuberant women’s and men’s collections at the Waldorf-Astoria in a show that featured a striking array of Asian, Hispanic, black, and white models. He says ethnic models face the same obstacles as minority designers, especially when it comes to being featured in print: “They suffer from the looking-alike syndrome,” he says, referring to designers and fashion publications. “They’ll say, ‘We already have that look’ ... as if you can only have one ethnic model?never mind the presence of a hundred blondes.” Everyone understands that change takes time, says Gate Haile, a New York?based model who is just completing an assignment for L'Oreal. "But I don't know how long they need," says the Ethiopian-born model, who got her start in Amsterdam. "Maybe they'll realize two years from now they need to shoot more black girls. They need to realize that there are beautiful black girls as well." She says almost all models struggle, "but there are a lot of black models who deserve more work."?"When I was getting into modeling I kind of wanted to keep everything that I already had separate from the fashion world," Lodwick says of his decision to save his birth name for his personal life and particular projects (such as music). So, he made his modeling debut with a moniker borrowed from his grandfather: Lyle. "[Fashion] is based on image, so I thought it would be cool to redefine myself," he says, adding "the other thing is that my grandfather died before I was born and the only memory I have of him is pictures, so I thought that was kind of fitting."Lodwick's last name, on the other hand, is immediately recognizable to anyone working in media, as well as Gawker frequenters, thanks to the model's elder brother Jakob's infamy within the industry. Having helped found the Web site ? before leaving to spearhead video sharing/social-networking porthole? , Jakob Lodwick has become a favorite figurative punching bag of the aforementioned media-gossip-mongering mecca.The contention ignited largely as a result of Jakob's arguable penchant for oversharing?perhaps best epitomized by a that he and then-girlfriend and former Star editor at large Julia Allison wrote together, which documented in great detail the inner workings of their relationship. Interestingly enough, Allison is responsible for granting a then-19-year-old Lyle his first access into the lion's den that is Bryant Park during Fashion Week. Having just moved to New York, Lodwick's brother set him up with a job filming Allison and editing the footage into short Web clips. Understandably, it isn't an experience Lodwick remembers fondly: "I was sleeping like three hours a night and getting up at 8 the next morning to go do it all over again. And I was shooting with Star magazine and Julia Allison, so life in general seemed really petty." “I was sleeping like three hours a night and getting up at 8 the next morning to go do it all over again. And I was shooting with Star magazine and Julia Allison, so life in general seemed really petty.” Still, Lodwick says, nothing in the world of male modeling compares to what female models experience. "The female modeling industry is definitely more intense," Lodwick says. "They get paid like 10 times more than the men do. Therefore, it's way more of a business, so you have all of these girls that are just trying to make all of this money." And such high monetary stakes breed a particular nastiness that isn't realized in the men's world, where, despite the occasional meeting of combative personalities, models for the most part "get along," says Lodwick. "I did a show?Les Hommes in Milan?and there were two girls in the show. We were all fucking around backstage laughing and doing what we normally do and the girls were there with their jaws dropped, saying 'I can't believe you guys act this way!' They snap at each other," says Lodwick. Or, even worse: "I've heard horror stories of girls putting needles in a girl's shoes so when she's on the runway she'll fall over."Catfights aside, there is also the issue of pressure to lose (or gain) weight. "I've seen stuff with people online commenting like, 'Oh my God he's so skinny, he needs to eat a hamburger or whatever.' And, I'm like, 'OK, look at my pictures where I'm not wearing clothes or where I have my shirt off.' Obviously I have a lot of muscle mass."Modeling "can be really shitty at times," Lodwick says; it's not all a stereotypical endless stream of sex, Champagne, and clothes. "[People think] everything is handed to us on a silver platter. There's quite a bit that is given to us?party access, drinks, and everything. And even clothes to some extent. But there is a lot of work involved.”It's a whirlwind that Lodwick has taken to documenting online. Despite seeing the potentially harsh realities of leading a decidedly public life in the digital age firsthand, Lodwick hasn't shied away from putting himself out there, virtually speaking. In addition to manning a blog called , which offers behind-the-scenes looks at his life as a model, updates on his band , as well as a sprinkling of random photos and videos, Lodwick also maintains an eponymous with largely the same type of content (minus the hyper fashion focus). Although, the fact that Lodwick has chosen to assume an alternate persona for his work in the fashion world suggests he's not ambivalent when it comes to self-presentation and self-preservation in the face of potential fame.Rest assured, longevity is front and center in Lodwick's mind. It's no coincidence that the model planned on majoring in entrepreneurship. At a time in his life when many of his peers' biggest concerns are finishing finals, partying, and getting laid, Lodwick appears to be consciously plotting a personal path to success. "I'm thinking strategically: I know which designers I like and which shows I want to do," he says. "The industry is changing so much, so [it's a question of] how you can change it, how you can take advantage of it, how you can be an entrepreneur." That said, Lodwick is quick to credit one figure in particular as responsible for his success so far: . The renowned stylist is a go-to for designers like Marc Jacobs and Martine Sitbon, as well as Alber Elbaz at Lanvin, and for whom Lodwick played "muse in January and again for Lanvin this season." The relationship is one that Lodwick earnestly champions: "I know he appreciates me more than just me standing there," Lodwick says of Mackie. "I know he appreciates how the clothes look on me and how I feel about them. That means a lot to me, because I really feel like I'm sort of involved with the whole production." “I’ve heard horror stories of girls putting needles in a girl’s shoes so when she’s on the runway she’ll fall over.”The experience has also been pivotal given Lodwick's aspirations to design. "I don't want to just do modeling. I want to do styling and hopefully designing and really get involved in different aspects of [fashion] other than just standing there," says Lodwick, who has been customizing his own clothing for the past six months. "I'm going from not really knowing anything to working with some of the best designers in the world in person," Lodwick says."I really like the whole Burning Man thing," Lodwick goes on, about the annual August desert gathering where festival-goers pride themselves on making outlandish original costumes for the affair. This year will be Lodwick's first time at the festival; he's camping out with a friend's family who works with Cirque du Soleil and is already hard at work on his costume. "Their theme is going to be all white so I'm excited for that, because I normally go for things that are shiny or have a whole lot of color.”In the meantime, Lodwick is also working to finish his first solo music endeavor, an EP for an as-yet-unnamed project. "I feel like this is just the beginning stage for me," Lodwick says of his modeling career. "The way that I like to think this is all going to work out is that modeling is the first step." As for what's next, any number of scenarios are possible... even his own festival. "I want to have a compound where I can have festivals and stuff and keep a place in the city. Maybe [like Woodstock]. Some glorified version of that."Plus: .Alisa Gould-Simon is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer. She also covers fashion and culture for BlackBook, New York magazine, and PAPER among other publications.?Whether you're heading to the beach or the pool this summer, chic accessories are a must. "It's a huge market," says designer Melissa Odabash. "Beach gear is becoming increasingly fashion-forward, and people are looking for items that are both versatile and trendy." Her caftans provide a hip starting point: silky and retro-sexy, they're beloved by Riviera glitterati andcasual beach bunnies alike (￡200-￡1,000; odabash.com ). For the gents, Belgian designer Dries Van Noten's sarongs provide a cool splash of apres-swim comfort in reassuringly masculine colors (￡140; harvey nichols.com ).Even beach towels have gone upscale. Hermes is offering plush, massive sheets emblazoned with brilliant boats and vibrant sea-life reminiscent of Henri Matisse's collages (from ￡227; hermes.com ). Prada's more spartan version is nautical white with a blue border (from ￡120; prada.com ).Parasols are making a high-profile comeback. Specialty boutiques like James Smith's in London and New York's Brella Bar are doing a roaring trade in everything from delicate Victorian hand-helds to brightly patterned, voluminous umbrellas (from ￡65; jamessmith.co.uk ; from ￡130; brellabar.com ). And British designer Paul Smith makes a limited-edition football coated in his trademark stripes (￡169; paulsmith.co.uk)Lie poolside in style in the stately Plantation lounger, with plush cushioning and art-deco lines (from ￡839; chelseagardener .co.uk ). U.K.-based Mufti makes bespoke beach furniture ranging from Adirondack-style chaises to collapsible chairs, all handcrafted in rich teak (from ￡335; mufti.co.uk ).Finally, as the true bon vivant knows, a day at the beach is only as good as the picnic. Try the Mayfair gourmet hamper from Fortnum & Mason, which contains bottles of Tokaji and vintage cham-pagne, in addition to the requisite foie gras (￡250; fortnumandmason.com ). Bon appetit!The Portuguese capital was reconstructed after a devastating 18th-century earthquake, creating a mishmash of old and new--and offering plenty of opportunities on your next stopover.Castelo de Sao Jorge, a crumbling fortress perched high atop the city, for panoramic views of the ubiquitous red rooftops and the Tejo River.delectable regional specialties like skewers of barbecued monkfish and shrimp at Papμ Acorda, a hidden culinary treasure in the shabby-chic Bairro Alto neighborhood (Rua da Atalaia).Igreja de Sao Domingos, a dilapidated but impressive church where judgments were handed down during the Portuguese Inquisition.one of the bright yellow, rickety trams through the hilly cobblestone streets. Or hop on one of the three funiculars that take you steadily up some of Lisbon's steepest lanes.Subtle it's not. Hit the ignition and hear a roar from its massive exhaust pipes that could wake the dead. But was it music to my ears? Well, duh. The Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder's strident sound complements this new supersexy twin-seater's buff Italian looks. Its V-10, 520-horsepower engine rips from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4.2 seconds, and has a top speed of 194mph (though--darn--I didn't get the chance to prove it). I like the rear-view camera that flashed every time I put the Spyder in reverse. There would have been a lifelong bruise on my psyche if I had banged it up while backing out. Then again, the Gallardo Spyder wasn't built to go backward, was it?Summer is heating up the northern hemisphere, but down south, skiers and snowboarders are gearing up to pound the world's best powder on the spectacular peaks of the Andes. In Argentina the Cerro Catedral, designed by a Swiss ski champ in the 1930s, is the country's oldest and largest ski resort (day passes from $35; catedral altapatagonia.com ). Or carve freshies at the end of the earth at Cerro Castor in Ushuaia--the southernmost city in the world--where extreme winters constantly produce bundles of fresh snow (day passes from $30; cerrocastor.com ). In Chile, three top-notch resorts have kilometers of groomed terrain all within an hour of Santiago: Valle Nevado ( vallenevado.com ), La Parva ( skilaparva.cl ), and El Colorado ( elcolorado.cl ) offer heli skiing and slope-side accommodations, with day passes for about $40.Why should grown-ups get all the fancy stuff? Baby bling is the new thing. The Diamond Pacifier from It's My Binky glitters with 278 pave diamonds (and is meant for show, not sucking). Set in white gold, the three carats can be customized with colored jewels ($17,000; itsmybinky.com ). John Hardy creates dainty designs in his Bali workshop, including the diamond pave clasp bracelet of woven sterling silver--extra small for teeny-tiny wrists ($625; johnhardy.com ). Now little boy blue can wear Italian loafers too. Gucci's baby leather slip-ons with gold horsebit ensure junior's first steps will be in style ($230; gucci.com ). And you can carry diapers discreetly with Mia Bossi's chic new diaper bags. The Audrey in Italian Barolo leather with snakeskin trim doubles as a purse or briefcase with an optional computer-case insert ($1,200; miabossi.com ). Burberry's Nova Check Baby Bag matches the Burberry Folding Stroller to give infant accessorizing a luxury ride ($495/$650; burberry.com ).Need a new pouch for your pooch? Now your furry friend can travel first class. Dapper dogs ride in style in Burberry's smart plaid dog carrier, with natty brown leather trim and handles ($650; burberry.com ). Juicy Couture's pink terry pet carrier is emblazoned with the motto love me, love my dog, so everyone will know where your affections lie ($295; neimanmarcus.com ). The leather Ciao bag from Creature Couture includes a cell-phone holder for pet owners on the go ($400; creature couture.com ). Gucci's large dog carrier in signature GG fabric has a cushion and leash inside ($720; neimanmarcus.com ). And Louis Vuitton's large monogrammed dog bag has golden brass hardware and a breathable mesh window ($1,650; louisvuitton.com ).?For nearly 20 years, Baron has been among the most successful art directors in fashion, presiding over ad campaigns for Calvin Klein, Burberry, and Giorgio Armani, as well as overseeing the looks of four of the most famous fashion magazines in the world. In the 1980s, Baron and Franca Sozzani turned Italian Vogue into a laboratory for edgy, experimental photography. In the ’90s, he took over Harper’s Bazaar with Liz Tilberis and helped usher in the minimalistic aesthetic that came to dominate fashion. Then, in 2003, Carine Roitfeld brought Baron aboard to redesign French Vogue and it became (despite its small readership) perhaps the most influential fashion publication in the world. And in 2008, when Ingrid Sischy and Sandy Brant sold their stakes in Interview to Brant’s ex-husband, Peter, it was Baron who once again got the call to reinvent Andy Warhol’s magazine.Baron’s Interview is a product that looks and feels less like a magazine than a coffee table book, which is exactly what the designer, 50, was going for. “You have to offer something that feels produced, because that’s what you cannot have on Internet,” Baron says in his trademark patois, dropping the “the” before Internet. “You have to reinforce all the good things magazines are there for and eliminate everything else.” Consequently, he’s upped the trim size of the magazine (it is now comparable to V and W), cleaned up the design, and filled Interview with pages and pages of impeccably styled fashion photographs (and very expensive clothes).Still, for an art director whose design aesthetic is pristine, his early months at the magazine were rather messy. Shortly after he was hired, Baron (and the magazine’s fashion director, Karl Templer) quit after clashing with Interview’s co-editorial director Glenn O’Brien. Soon after that, O’Brien left and Baron was brought back.Certainly the most recent issue, a 40th-anniversary special with Kristen Stewart on the cover, doesn’t indicate a magazine in turmoil. It carried almost 100 pages of ads and virtually every top-tier fashion brand signed on, including Louis Vuitton, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, and Prada.But hurdles remain. According to Baron, the biggest two are budget constraints and getting photographers to shoot in an era when nearly every top talent is under contract with Conde Nast. “Even the photographers who aren’t locked up have been locked up,” he says. “People are worried that if they work for us, they’re not going to work for Vogue. (Or W, the other Conde Nast fashion magazine that Interview seems most clearly to be taking a run at.)From time to time, Baron has also had to deflect some criticism in publishing circles that Interview under his leadership is gorgeous, while being somewhat unreadable. For display type, he favors giant capital letters that are crammed together. The articles often feature a font so small even a teenager with 20/20 could have trouble reading them. “I’m very aware of this,” says Baron. “It’s possible it’s a little bit harder to read. But you get so much more. You get the beauty, you get organization, and you get an experience that you would not get if I made it totally legible.”“Even the photographers who aren’t locked up have been locked up,” Baron says of Interview. “People are worried that if they work for us, they’re not going to work for Vogue.If Baron doesn’t seem overly concerned with the words in his magazine, that might be because he’s a visual person who comes as much from an advertising sensibility as an editorial one. After growing up in Paris (where his father was a magazine art director), he moved to New York in the early 1980s and got a job as an assistant art director at GQ. He moved from there to an ill-fated startup called New York Woman, then took over at Italian Vogue and began doing Barneys’ groundbreaking ad campaigns with the photographer Steven Meisel and models Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell.Since then, he’s been known for his prodigious use of white space (there's an almost arctic chill to everything he designs) and a tendency to align himself with projects that pushed sexual boundaries. The Calvin Klein “kiddie porn” spread? That would be one of his most famous campaigns. Madonna’s Sex book? He did the art direction. Baron’s said to be working on another coffee table book with the singer now?a massive retrospective of the queen of reinvention as photographed over the years by everyone from Herb Ritts to Steven Klein. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to talk about it yet,” he says, with characteristic self-restraint.Despite having worked in fashion for decades, Baron purports to be a little flummoxed by the reaction some of his work gets here in the United States. In 2008, a Calvin Klein ad with a naked Eva Mendes was banned from U.S. television. A little while later, the company also generated controversy with a billboard that hinted at group sex. “Ten years ago, it was easier to do something than it is today,” Baron says. “People get offended by imagery way more than they used to. The Eva Mendes commercial I did? Honestly, you look at it and it’s not offensive at all. But they got letters and complaints. ‘Overtly sexual’ is what they called it. This country has become quite uptight. It’s, like, come on. I know the '60s are far away, but in Europe the same image doesn’t even get mentioned. They don’t care.”Much as Baron doesn’t seem to care about the church-state divide between advertising and editing, he has even stepped behind the lens and done some fashion photography. Given that it’s basically a hobby for him, the results have been very well received. The late New York Times fashion critic Amy Spindler called his 2000 “Primal Scream” spread in W her favorite fashion editorial of the year. In the most recent issue of Interview, Baron photographed polo player and Ralph Lauren model Nacho Figueras, who then sits for a Q & A with the publication’s polo-playing owner Peter Brant. Says Bob Colacello, a former editor of Interview and friend of the Brants: “I told Peter he should put Nacho on the cover because he’s glamorous and it will get them a lot of Ralph Lauren advertising.” In the end, Baron apparently decided just to go with an inside spread, though it seems unlikely anyone had to twist his arm to do the shoot. Asked what brand he’d most like to work with but hasn’t yet, he says simply, “Ralph Lauren.”Perhaps for his next act.Plus: 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.?Radio stations have played Busta Rhymes's latest megahit more than 97,000 times. Busta performed his ode to the pricey cognac on "The Tonight Show." And MTV and BET have aired the video version a combined 600 times. In it, Busta and his collaborator, P. Diddy, defeat evildoers, get the girls and toast their triumphs with "yack," hip-hop's shorthand for cognac. Across the Atlantic, British spirits giant Allied Domecq, which owns Courvoisier, is toasting Busta, too. Over the past several months Courvoisier's U.S. sales have popped by double digits, thanks in part to Busta's making the drink "the hero of the song,'' says Stephanie DeBartolomeo, the cognac's brand manager. Talk about free advertising--no deal was struck between Busta and the distiller beforehand. And it's not even his favorite cognac. "I'm a Hennessey dude," he tells NEWSWEEK. Lucky for Courvoisier he liked the sound of its name better.This is the rich sound of hip-hop: cash registers ringing loudly for luxury brands. Though rappers have long found inspiration for lyrics in brand names like Adidas and Tanqueray, it's the prestige logos that sparkle the brightest. Stars like Busta, P. Diddy, Ja Rule and Jay-Z have expensive tastes and have made themselves powerful pitchmen, lifting the aspirations of youth culture for life's finer things while spiking sales of the Cadillac Escalade, Bentley, Cristal champagne, Burberry, Prada and Louis Vuitton. "It takes rappers to make things cool," says Marvet Britto, a publicist for rapper Eve and other top urban stars. Called "ghetto fabulous," the phenomenon would seem to benefit everyone. An artist deems a product cool, sales jump, the rapper looks like a tastemaker and brands that were once the exclusive domain of bluebloods enjoy blinding exposure to a youthful crowd of new customers.But no marriage is perfect. One source of strain: artists like Busta Rhymes are keenly aware of their marketing power, yet they often aren't cashing in, choosing to rap the praises of their favorite brands for free. So now some hip-hop celebrities are launching luxury brands, including jewelry, spirits and even cigars. Many of the high-end companies are feeling a bit uneasy, as well. Hip-hop's embrace can mean a windfall, but executives are concerned about long-term damage to their brands because of rap's sometimes unsavory aspects. Another worry: luxury brands view themselves as timeless, while hip-hop's unquenchable thirst for a fresh look inevitably makes them fleeting trends.Just ask Rachel Johnson, the stylist for rapper Ja Rule, about some brands' ambivalence toward hip-hop. She tried to borrow some clothes from a Burberry store in New York to dress him for an Esquire magazine shoot and says she was rebuffed. "They didn't want him to wear their stuff," she says. "People have this stigma with the urban community." Burberry says it's unaware of the exchange. Ja Rule went ahead and paid for the clothes. He has sported Burberry for a Teen People cover, the MTV Video Awards and hit videos. Other rap stars, including Lil' Bow Wow, caught Burberry fever, as did many of Ja Rule's fans. "I'd go places and people would say, 'I got that, too, Rule'," he says. Adds Johnson: "When I go into Burberry, I see young black kids from Brooklyn, from Harlem. Even if they are just buying a hat, it costs $200. Ja took Burberry to another whole level.'' Burberry's Los Angeles store now sends him exclusive gear, and he says the company thanked him in writing.One of the first marketers outside of hip-hop to recognize the power of the genre was Karl Lagerfeld. As design maven for Chanel, he first sent models sashaying down the runway in 1991 in hip-hop chic, with sneakers and chunky gold chains with Chanel nameplates. Then came P. Diddy, known then as Puffy, boosting the cachet of Versace, Gucci, Prada and others. He, along with hip-hop visionary Russell Simmons and wife Kimora, are among the few hip-hop personalities gracing Louis Vuitton's 200-member VIP list. It pays off. Recently, Puffy appeared in Us Weekly with his Vuitton luggage. The company says it's seen a jump in sales of some items to hip-hop fans, including the Damier, a checkerboard-patterned shoe.In 1998, Puffy became the first in the United States to acquire the new 1999 Bentley Azure, shelling out $375,000. Soon the powder-blue convertible popped up in his videos. Bentley was suddenly a must-have among hip-hop stars. "Puffy made the initial statement," says Bryan Miller, owner of Manhattan Motor Car, a Bentley dealer. Almost overnight, he estimates, hip-hoppers accounted for about 15 percent of Bentley's U.S. sales. "Those guys help drive the high-end car market." Bentley's corporate spokesman in the United States, John Crawford, seems less thrilled. "We are aware that [hip-hop] is a segment that has intense interest in Bentley," he says, adding that Bentley doesn't know the precise impact on sales of "this instant promotion" from rap videos and songs. Miller, the dealer, acknowledges that corporate officials were cautious about the hip-hop business. "It was all new for Bentley," he says. "They didn't know where it was going."Hip-hop's taste in cars is moving along already. Dealers like Miller say the next new things on four wheels are the new Porsche Cayenne SUV and DaimlerChrysler's Maybach, which starts at about $300,000 and is set to arrive in the United States in the spring. A New York dealer, Rick Caplan of Power Motor Car, says he already has $50,000 deposits for each of seven advance orders for Maybachs--almost all placed by hip-hop stars. The cars will undoubtedly costar in videos soon. Tastes in SUVs are shifting, too. The Lincoln Navigator was the ride of choice for a while. But now the Cadillac Escalade is hot. One top rapper, Ludacris, not only raps about the Escalade in a song but drove one onstage at the MTV Video Awards. The publicity isn't lost on Cadillac executives. "We feel like it's a trend, our time in the spotlight, but that it could just as easily go away," a spokeswoman says. Adds a GM dealer with a hip-hop clientele: "You hitch your wagon to these guys, then all of sudden they're gone, and it's a negative."For luxury brands, the free ride may be ending, as hip-hop personalities begin pitching their own prestige offerings. Steve Stout, an influential executive with Interscope Records, is introducing a brand of $40 cigars, Vino Platinum, next month. Meanwhile, Jay-Z and his partners have acquired a European vodka, Armadale. They decided to get into the liquor business after sensing that Jay-Z provided a big boost to Belvedere, a pricey vodka, by mentioning it in several hit songs. Damon Dash, CEO of Roc-A-Fella Records and one of Jay-Z's partners, says, "We were making everyone else so much money. You won't see any more Belvedere in our videos."Russell Simmons, the cofounder of Def Jam, has invested in Grimoldi, an obscure luxury Italian watchmaker. Recently, Simmons hosted a party for the watch, which sells for $1,500 to $32,000 at the New York retailer Tourneau. Among the guests: hip-hop star Wyclef Jean and top model May Anderson. Already, the brand is "selling very strong with the hip-hop segment," says Tourneau marketing director Andrew Block. "Russell wearing it is the kind of product placement you couldn't pay for."If the line between art and commerce wasn't blurry enough, consider this: some record labels may soon try to charge brands for a starring role in songs and videos. Lyor Cohen, Island Def Jam's top operating executive and Simmons's longtime partner, is working with HP Media, a product-placement company, to explore such deals. Clearly, many squeamish luxury brands may be relieved because presumably they could steer clear of the hip-hop community altogether. But Cohen says the rappers have the leverage. Brands like Burberry "will suffer if they don't," Cohen says. "You think Ja Rule would have rapped about Izod if I said this little alligator is going to pay you some scrilla [cash] and help you with the video that you have to pay for? I think he would have." Says Ja Rule: "I wouldn't ask for money. It's not their fault that I'm a celebrity, that I like their clothes and people follow [my style]." Then again, the Izod alligator logo might be a better fit for Jay-Z, who could tuck it into a remix of his hit song "H to the Izzo." After all, if it doesn't sound good, nothing will sell.?Tim Gunn doesn’t seem like the mud-slinging type?or the type who’d get anywhere near mud without a lovely Burberry Prorsum slicker and some heavy-duty Fendi gloves.But this fall, the fashion patrician is wading, couture-less, into the muck. Gunn’s , purportedly an etiquette guide but actually the dishiest frock book since , goes on sale Tuesday, and in it, the Project Runway host takes aim at an assortment of fashion’s sacred cows, including Vogue titans Anna Wintour and Andre Leon Talley and designer Isaac Mizrahi. Not even Suri Cruise is spared.Gunn says of Anna Wintour’s people: “If they wanted an apology, the best I could have come up with was, ‘I’m sorry to imply that she doesn’t know how to work a Manolo.’”Gunn describes watching Wintour’s bodyguards carry her down the stairs after a fashion show, lest she be forced to cram into an elevator with the rest of the proles. He catches Talley being hand-fed grapes and cheese cubes while lounging under a tent-size plastic sheet. The 3-year-old Cruise (or, properly, her movie star mama) gets dinged for dressing the little one in high heels. And Gunn reserves special contempt for Mizrahi, whom he portrays as a petulant, insufferable diva.“Do I fear retribution? Yes, absolutely,” the reality-television star, fashion executive, and surprisingly gifted generator of buzz said in a recent telephone interview.In addition to his duties for Project Runway, Gunn serves as the chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne Inc.?or ?which in 2008 hired Mizrahi, at great expense, in a bid to escape its “ .”“On Isaac, my Liz Claiborne superiors said to me, ‘Do not include him in this book,’” Gunn said, “but I couldn’t not! His behavior is too egregious. But the story I included [about Mizrahi flipping out that his security guard is wearing brown] is very, I’m gonna make up a word now, ‘vanilla-ized.’ The spice is really taken out of it.”When prompted, Gunn cheerfully offered up a spicier story, which didn’t make it into the book: “I was going to visit the Liz Claiborne showroom, with [company chairman] Bill McComb to see Isaac’s new collection. And all of a sudden, an arm comes down and blocks me. It was the security guard. ‘You’re not permitted here,’ he said. And Bill was going crazy: ‘What are you talking about? This is my company!’ And the security guard said, ‘I have explicit orders not to let you in.’ How preposterous!”Gunn’s beef with Mizrahi is longstanding, ever since a reporter asked Mizrahi what it was like to work with Gunn and the designer, in Gunn’s retelling, replied: “Who? I don’t know who that is.” Gunn says the two have known each other since 1983 and attributes Mizrahi’s alleged misbehavior to “just a big massive dose of insecurity.”Through a spokeswoman, Mizrahi denied having his security guard bar Gunn and McComb from entering his studio and said, “Tim is a doll. I hope these stories help him sell his book.”They seem to be working. Juicy items and the New York Daily News have helped goose sales even before the book’s release, sending Gunn’s Golden Rules into the top 400 books on Amazon over Labor Day weekend?and all the way up to No. 2 in the subcategory “Conflict Management.”The Wintour story originally appeared in the television section of the Post and, Gunn says, wouldn’t have made it into his book had the Vogue editor’s minions not called and demanded he apologize after the item appeared.“I don’t believe she’s sitting around reading the TV section of the New York Post,” he said. “One of her people did, and they said, ‘Hey, look at this.’” Gunn bristled at their demand. “If they wanted an apology, the best I could have come up with was, ‘I’m sorry to imply that she doesn’t know how to work a Manolo.’”A Vogue spokesman has denied all the stories Gunn recounts in the book, saying “Tim Gunn has a very vivid imagination.”Gunn’s sticking to his version, describing the fashion business, at times, as “the monkey house in the zoo.” He said his publisher, Simon & Schuster, had their legal team poring over his manuscript for weeks, but that he didn’t give any of his subjects an opportunity to comment before publication. This includes members of his family?the mother he describes as cold and distant, the father he suggests might have been gay.“It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” he said. He is nervous about how the book will be received but Gunn, a survivor of childhood bullying who wears a bow tie and a tweed vest on the cover of his book, also sees the book as a kind of Norma Rae moment. “In the fashion industry and the entertainment industry, there’s a class system,” he says. “I find it offensive.”Not that writing a tell-all was such a stretch.“If one were to sit with me in a quiet little bistro somewhere, one would get these stories out of me pretty quickly,” he says. “It’s not as though I needed a sodium pentathol and a glass of room-temp gin to do it.”Plus: .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.?You’re still in business? I read you were going to blow through Barry Diller’s millions and be offline in 18 months.You heard wrong, pal. The skeptics gave us six months. And two years later, we’re a booming business.Our traffic is now averaging nearly 5 million uniques a month?more than half of which bookmark us in some fashion, and over 50 percent of which visit the site at least once a day. We’re well ahead of projections on advertising, thanks to our new President Stephen Colvin and his A-Team.What is The Daily Beast now as you see it?A romping, vibrant, 2-year-old animal bursting with rude health. I love the variety and?intelligence of Beast commenters arguing with each other. And?it’s a joy to come to work with such a brilliant, committed staff who all have so many great ideas and the energy to make them happen. It was?Barry Diller's idea to start The Daily Beast, and he has turned out to be the best partner I’ve ever had. There’s no one better to go into the jungle with. Combine that with my wonderful Executive Editor Edward Felsenthal and with Steve Colvin and it adds up to one of the best media experiences I have ever had.We hear something is going on with Newsweek.How clever of you to notice! Yes, there have been some interesting discussions going on, as we have with potential partners large and small all the time.The Daily Beast started as an aggregator with some original reporting as a side dish. But the site seems to be cranking out its own articles and now the aggregation is complementary.Correct. The natural creativity of the staff morphed The Daily Beast very fast into what has become a newsroom. Aggregation lives on the Cheat Sheet, the video player, and in the breaking news slot in the first big box. The rest is all original, generated by Beast writers and editors. And it has been thrilling to see the quality stuff that comes to us from A-list writers who have plenty of choice where they write. Howard Kurtz joining us from The Washington Post, as we yesterday, is just an example of how we can attract talent from the hallowed halls of the MSM as much as from the frisky byways of the blogosphere.I notice far-flung datelines and news from Pakistan and China. Is this a British thing?Yes. The sun never sets on The Beast empire. We have terrific correspondents now from Pakistan and China all the way to London and the Italian Alps. I love to go to literary festivals in Jaipur and Hay and come back with a clutch of new bylines.Name something you set out to cram into The Daily Beast and haven’t managed to cram in yet.So much! It’s all about finding the writers with passions that communicate and start to define an area. For instance, take Phil Shenon, manning our security beat on subjects ranging from WikiLeaks to North Korea. We also happen to have a wonderful commentator, Clive Irving, who is obsessed with aeronautics. I didn’t set out to have a plane-crash correspondent. I just love his stuff when it shows up at ungodly times in the morning before he goes to his day job. We just added the terrific David Kirkpatrick, author of to write about tech. Shushannah Walshe came aboard as our Sarah Palin aficionado. Obama's strategic Af-Pak adviser Bruce Riedel posts brilliant informed analyses when there are any news breaks on terrorism. Then all of a sudden we added a crime correspondent simply because we found the terrific Los Angeles police reporter and loved her stuff. The Beast is passionate, not perfunctory.Has America’s economic horror show curtailed your plans?No, this economy is like the Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Economics has become as riveting as politics. The Daily Beast has swiftly become a forum for argument and debate for how to dig ourselves out of the hole. More than 160 economists, five of them Nobelists, signed on to “Get America Back to Work.” We’re hosting a in New Orleans on this very topic. The collision of money and politics is the biggest story of our times.You have been accused of having your finger on the Zeitgeist. So where is it located right now? What do people want to read and consume?Sexy brain food. Give us something to make us smarter, but for God’s sake don’t make it feel like work. People are in such a glum frame of mind they are looking for confidence, audacity, practicality, and FUN. They want to stop talking about problems and hear about solutions. Everyone loves The Social Network because the on-screen Zuckerberg is such an effective little son of a bitch, doing whatever it takes to get his idea done.How’s the advertising?Thinking beyond the banner ad is paying off great, thanks. We have a terrific looking suite of custom ads now that we have developed that’s attracted a healthy batch of the world’s best-known brands: Lexus, Cadillac, Siemens, HBO, Burberry, St. John, GE, American Express, Starbucks, HP, Bulgari, Credit Suisse, and Lacoste, to name a few. The list keeps growing. Not bad, we feel, for a two-year-old site.Who are the site’s competitors?The Daily Beast competes in the highly Darwinian media world filled with hyper-smart, highly adaptive, tool-using people with opposable thumbs.What journalistic epoch does all the warring Web fiefdoms remind you of? Fleet Street in its cutthroat prime?Nah, Fleet Street was much more visceral and carnivorous. Imagine the New York Post multiplied by 10 and on steroids.What sites have you started reading more of since you became a Web journo?I have become ever more insanely eclectic. The Economist’s , Ian Bremmer’s , , , , , , ,? , and on and on.I read that you nuke The Daily Beast lineup late every Sunday night and keep your employees away from Boardwalk Empire. True?I nuke the line up all the time, not just Sunday nights. I am a dawn riser, more prone to tormenting the early shift with headline changes than the late-nighters.Where do you want to be a year from now with The Daily Beast?Still romping along learning and adapting to our fast and furious world with a speed that stays smart, helped by the insights of our vibrant Beast community.?Travel: Writing As You RoamWhile working as a photojournalist in Africa during the summer of 2000, Joseph Kultgen ran into problems sending out mass e-mails to his friends and family back home. For one, he was limited in the number of people he could include on each list. Sometimes, messages bounced back because intended recipients didn't have enough space in their inboxes. And some of his photo attachments simply didn't get opened for fear of viruses. So he decided to set up his own travel Web site, uploading his photos himself, posting updates as he pleased and editing all the content. Then he had an epiphany: "I thought, 'If everyone could do this, we could create a community'," he says. And so, with the help of cofounder Jeremy Ahrens, Kultgen launched trekshare.com in October 2000.Over the past few years, self-publishing Web sites that allow travelers to do everything while on the road--from uploading photos to posting "Hi Mom" notes to writing actual travelogues--have become increasingly popular. Trekshare.com's membership has grown at a rate of 20 percent a month and now totals more than 10,000. (Ninety percent of users opt for the free package; 10 percent pay $7.95 a year for the privilege of using an advanced search engine and uploading digital video.) It now boasts 75,000 photos and 15,000 travelogues, which anyone can view after they've logged in. But Web sites like trekshare.com aren't only for aspiring photojournalists or Paul Theroux wanna-bes. For sheer practicality, they can't be beat. If you don't want to clog your friends' inboxes with silly pictures of you in scuba gear in Aruba, or waste valuable Himalayan-trekking time trying to resend e-mails, use one of the following sites to keep in touch with your loved ones while you're away:trekshare.com: It features easy-to-use and well-designed page templates and offers a monthly top-20 home-page list, which helps if you're looking to keep up with the competition. There's an interesting forum for discusion, too.virtualtourist.com: When 57---year-old Geoff Wright from Cornwall, England, left for Los Angeles in May last year, he knew he wouldn't be logging on for a day or so. "But my dear wife posted a message on [VT's] forum [saying], 'Where's Geoff?' " says Wright. "Several members replied, all saying that I was perfectly well, and for my wife not to worry." That capacity for comfort through an online network, coupled with an extensive database of travelogues and handy traveling tips (broken down by region and including everything from health warnings to nightlife advice) makes virtualtourist.com a real find. It's free as well. No wonder 400,000 people from 219 countries have signed up.igougo.com: This free site is much more focused on travelogue writing than on quick notes to your buddies. Those lacking the patience to read a friend's lengthy tome about So Tome should just turn to the message boards for the cut-to-the-chase "Hey, how are ya!" But it does include a rare treat: a special section for cruise-trip travelogues from sophisticated seafarers.sharemytrip.com: A very basic nonpaying site, and appropriately simple to use. The no-frills approach pays off: many will appreciate the home pages' lack of clutter for fast and easy readability.mytripjournal.com: A top-notch site that boasts really cool maps and will automatically notify your friends and family when you update your site. But there's a catch: prices range from $29 for a 60-day basic package to $99 for a 180-day premium package. The only real advantage to paying the big bucks is that you can upload as many photos as you like.Shopping: Going Uptown For DiscountsDespite December discounting, holiday sales proved "very disappointing" across Europe, says Keith Church of Oxford Economic Forecasting. "Retailers are gloomy." Not bargain hunters, however. A guide to the goodies:London: Bagging bargains doesn't have to mean standing in dressing-room queues at Selfridges. Go upmarket. Classy Old Bond Street--with its spacious designer stores--has slashed its prices. At Stella McCartney's luxurious boutique, the fall/winter collection is half price; thigh-high boots are down from 375 to 137. At Ballantyne, timeless cashmere sweaters in a rainbow of colors soften the racks at 130 (down from 260). The quiet boulevard offers everything from classic Burberry and Dunhill to Alexander McQueen, where the temptress bustier dresses are half price.Rome: Skip the famous shopping streets like Via Condotti and head instead to the capital's newest outlet mall, Castel Romano, located near the suburb of Pomezia. This gaudy outdoor replica of imperial Rome consists of 90 designer-outlet stores. If you can overlook the bad decor and the "shopping empire" puns, you'll find Gucci bags for as low as 30 and Guess jeans for around 20. No wonder Prada's outlet is packed; shoes are marked down to an irresistible 35 a pair.Paris: It's illegal in France to hold sales except during two months a year: July--and January! Recent mild weather means winter jackets are plentiful at Printemps and Galeries Lafayette: a purple Cacharel coat goes for about 390, marked down from 779, and a gray Vanessa Bruno is just 198 (down from 330). A pair of Dolce & Gabbana pumps will set you back a mere 147.50. True bargain hunters will fare even better at La Vallee Outlet Shopping Village in Marne-la-Vallee--30 minutes by car from Paris--a Burberry swimsuit can be had for as little as 32. Or head out to the town of Troyes, home of the Marques Avenue's 240 outlet stores. You'll need one of the free maps to negotiate the dizzying array of post-Christmas bargains.Fashion: Name GamesStyle snobs like their secrets. For today's discerning men and women, it's hip to have bespoke shirts embroidered with one's initials--where no one can see them. At Hong Kong's Jantzen Tailor, Ricky Ho says his most tasteful clients are asking for monograms on the yoke or at the bottom edge of a garment. "They want custom-made shirts but don't want to be too obvious," says Ho. "It's like the most expensive brands that don't put a logo--but you know." People who put their initials on shirt pockets or cuffs risk being labeled old-fashioned or, worse, arriviste tacky. And colorful embroidery is being replaced by the most discreet monogramming imaginable: white stitching on white fabric.Health: Blowing SmokeIf you had resolved to quit smoking this year, you've probably already given up. But a new Cornell study of almost 2,500 smokers ought to encourage you to keep trying, especially if you're female. The results show that women are twice as likely as men to get lung cancer. They're also more likely to die from it. "We've got to reach out to these women," says Dr. Claudia Henschke, the study's author. "They shouldn't start smoking, and they really need to stop." Why they're so vulnerable, no one knows; they may be more susceptible to carcinogens. Whatever the reason, the situation is grim for both sexes. Lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide, accounting for 1.2 million deaths each year. It's also largely preventable; those numbers are far too high.?The notion of being shocked by fashion seems quaint today, at least to those of us living in the United States. In the mid-1910s all it took was the raising of hems by an inch or two, and people got their knickers in a bunch, but by the 1990s our threshold had risen so dramatically that fashion's image-makers had to invent so-called heroin chic in order to invite some semblance of a public outcry. These days we're drugged up on an incessant multimedia drip of sex and violence that limits our ability to muster up righteous indignation. But in other corners of the world, where fashion is still a new phenomenon, it wields a singular power to stir both outrage and desire, two essential tools of the industry's marketing machine.Take September's issue of Vogue India, the 17th edition of publishing house Conde Nast's premium brand, which features a 16-page reality-based editorial spread starring lower-income-bracket Indians decked out in high-fashion accessories. There's the old woman with missing teeth, cradling a baby decked out in a Fendi bib. There's a barefoot man holding a Burberry umbrella as a woman smiles joyously on his side, clad in a golden silk sari. Then the Hermes Birkin-toting woman sitting astride a motorbike, with her family. The issue ignited a fierce response from Indian media critics, such as Kanika Gahlaut, a columnist for the newspaper Mail Today, who insisted in a widely read New York Times story that "there's nothing 'fun or funny' about putting a poor person in a mud hut in clothing designed by Alexander McQueen." Pavan K. Varma, an author and former diplomat said in another interview, "To use people like this shows a complete callousness to genuine suffering. These people have been used as commodities to sell fashion." The critics' consensus seemed to be that the editorial team had exploited the subjects in the photos, to which editor Priya Tanna offered the following response to the Times reporter: "Lighten up," she said, "You have to remember with fashion, you can't take it that seriously. We weren't trying to make a political statement or save the world."The issue of poverty is painfully real, and it's understandable how people could easily misconstrue the Vogue story as being insensitive to the plight of the majority of India's population, but all the noise surrounding its publication misses the greater point: that being "sensitive" to poor people, and taking care not to put them in Fendi gowns or under Burberry umbrellas isn't going to improve their lives. The situation calls for proactive measures, not protection from fashion editorials. In addition to telling critics to "lighten up," Tanna should them to get real.Before I continue, a full disclosure: I used to be the features editor at Vogue India, and I'm currently a contributing editor. I know the staff well, and, while they almost all hail from the upper ranks of India's socioeconomic strata, they are not callous or cruel, they would not make a joke at a slum-dweller's expense. The reality is that, for Indians, poverty is a fact of life. The majority is mired in it, while a relative few have escaped its chokehold grip. For many Americans and Europeans, the experience of its devastating effect is limited to the occasional sighting of a homeless person on a city street, or the uncomfortable encounter with a beggar while on holiday (sometimes while staying in a five-star hotel in India). For well-to-do Indians, it's a daily occurrence that has largely lost its power to shock. This doesn't mean that they're OK with it?only that they've acclimated to its existence.The reality is also that, for some Indians, the world has become a playground, and luxury goods that the West has coveted for generations are now within their grasp. Magazines like Vogue are simply reflections of the rising, natural desire to celebrate success. The images in its pages are open to interpretation, their meaning isn't set in stone. Perhaps this particular story could have been handled differently, but the idea that a fashion editorial, or the eager consumption of luxury products by extension, plays any serious part in the problem of Indian poverty is ridiculous; overpopulation, underdevelopment, caste stigma and lack of adequate education infrastructure are more like it.The controversy illustrates the fact that complicated issues surrounding the country's recent "boom time" have not been successfully addressed?as the gap between the have and have-nots becomes more glaring, the stakes get higher for policy solutions that can head off a potential social breakdown. The country's crazy growth and full bloom of billionaires makes for great headlines in Western newspapers and magazines, but this "Bonfire of the Vanities"-inspired narrative thread leaves hundreds of millions of people out in the cold. Censoring the expression of the country's newfound pockets of affluence, or stifling its sense of aspiration and, indeed, entitlement, however, will not improve the toothless old woman's circumstances. What India needs is an open dialogue about what all this new money means, how to assimilate its benefits in a personally gratifying, but also socially responsible way. A more charitable or sensitive attitude on the part of the affluent could be part of the solution, but the cornerstones need to come from a combination of governmental and private-sector strategic initiatives.Perhaps it didn't take the Vogue India's staff long to catch on to an editorial formula that has served its Western counterparts well for years, using scandal to sell magazines. Or maybe, as Tanna told the Times, the shoot was indeed saying that "fashion is no longer a rich man's privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful." Regardless of intentions, Vogue's story focused the public discourse on a critical issue and, hopefully, it might also prove a call to action. Because a conversation that begins and ends with a condemnation of the photographs alone is ultimately as superficial as the values and merchandise that are being critiqued. Whatever happens, the controversy provides more evidence that, beneath its skin-deep appeal, fashion is serious business.?ALISON HAMPEL, 28 (far left), has shopped the world. Her flared black leather hipsters were custom-made in Sydney; the mint-green embroidered pashmina is from a friend's shop in Hong Kong; the Nike cross-trainers are from New York, and the mac, polo-neck and bag are from Burberry. "Nowadays, I'm all for comfort and being warm," she says. "You never know when it will rain in London."BRADLEY QUINN, 32 (left), likes to mix and match cheaper clothes with his prized possessions. His baggy pants and scarf are from H&M. But the double-breasted camel coat is from high-end London designer William Hunt's couture collection. "It needs to last me 50 years," he jokes. The rose-tinted sunglasses come out when he's had too much to drink the night before. "It makes me feel a bit better," he says.HANAKA MIYAMA, 17 (right), calls this her "elegant princess" outfit: fake roses in her hair, red rolled-up jeans, black fishnets and platform shoes. The bulky scarf, tied in a knot at the back of her neck, is, she says, "very important to have this year.""I never take any notice of fashion," says YUKARI, 20 (far right), who gave only her first name. "I just buy cheap things and make them look more expensive in the way I wear them." Her clothes are from secondhand shops, including the sparkly pink shoes that she decorated herself with gold flowers.?Trailblazing designer Diane Von Furstenburg is credited with introducing the wrap dress to the world, but the Indian Subcontinent's sartorial innovation, the sari, was the original wrap star. Today, thousands of years after its debut, the sari is still seen in various incarnations all over India, from the marble-clad ballrooms of Mumbai's five-star hotels to the overgrown fields of rural villages. Silk or cotton, dyed, beaded or embroidered, this simple wardrobe solution is a trend with the kind of staying power that contemporary retailers kill to come upon; millions of variations on a theme later, customers are still queuing up.But recently, the Indian style scene has witnessed the arrival of a stranger in its midst: the high-octane socialite clad in, say, a couture chiffon evening gown instead of an elaborately embellished sari. Chanel. Vuitton. Gucci. Dior. Moschino. Burberry. Fendi. Versace. Armani. The Western luxury-brand fleet has begun to flock to the latest stop on the emerging-market circuit, and it's out to steal market share from India's treasured national dress. In the humid streets of Mumbai, the sense of potential is palpable. Research estimates peg the total annual Indian luxury market at about $3.5 billion, and predict it will exceed $30 billion by 2016. No wonder luxury-goods conglomerates are looking to join the party.It's not as easy as it sounds, however. Amid all the hubbub about profit margins and growth models, some of the challenges of catering to Indian consumers have been swept under the Armani Casa rug. Oppressive import taxes aside, how does one market seasonal collections built around layers of wool in a country where most regions never see a true winter? The luxury game has always been about engineering desire, but it's nearly impossible to motivate women to buy a cashmere coat in 30-degree-Celsius weather.And how does a couturier persuade Indian women, who love bright palettes and body-conscious silhouettes, to adopt ensembles that have more to do with clean lines and muted colors than cling or bling? India's pre-eminent style setters are Bollywood stars, and Aishwarya Rai is much more likely to appear on screen draped in a skimpy, ravishing chiffon sari than in a beige crepe pantsuit from Jil Sander.One solution is to focus on accessories, which are the bread and butter of the luxury business the world over. No matter where we live, we all apparently share a desire for vertiginous footwear and a panoply of "it" bags, despite their stratospheric prices. In Chanel's New Delhi boutique, classic purses with signature double C's, ranging from $1,270 to $7,630, are in hot demand. At Louis Vuitton, a house known for its emphasis on painstaking craftsmanship, it's not just the store collection that is selling in India; custom orders for such things as branded birthday-cake boxes, mammoth trunks painted with royal crests and one-of-a-kind turban cases are being placed with the specialorders divisions in each store. India's new maharajas, the business tycoons who are flying high in their tricked-out Gulfstream jets, are indulging in Vuitton's customized Tourbillon watches, which can reach upwards of $730,000.These heavy-duty imports might signal a red flag for conservatives, wary of cultural colonialists supplanting national traditions. But Indian women aren't giving up the sari any time soon. At Ensemble, one of the country's most famous high-end fashion boutiques, customers are buying stacks at a time. Designer saris range up to about $2,000 apiece, and bejeweled custom styles, often worn to weddings, can run as high as $6,350.The fact is, in the new Indian economy there's plenty of room at the table for everyone, and with experts predicting that the good times will continue to roll for at least 10 or 20 years more, all the major players are inviting themselves. Homegrown luxury goods and branded imports are evolving together in the walk-in closets of India's newly minted millionaires.There is no danger, at least for now, of adding the sari to the endangered-species style list, because globalization at its core is a game of give and take, not a one-way street. One need only look at the overtly Indian inspiration behind the recent ready-to-wear collection by Hermes or the couture line from Armani Prive for proof that luxury brands know which side their nan is buttered on. For Western labels the focus is on building up brand awareness and customer loyalty, while Indian companies are aware of a need to step up to the competition, improving their quality and consistency.The Indian woman, increasingly empowered, finds herself in a win-win situation. Making more money than ever before, she's in a position to challenge social expectations. If she wants to wear a brocade sari one night and a patent-leather miniskirt the next?well, it's her party too. So don't be surprised if on your next trip to India you spy a gorgeous sylph sliding out of her chauffeured Mercedes in 10-centimeter Jimmy Choos, a woven-leather limited-edition Bottega Veneta clutch in hand, her pale blue chiffon sari fluttering in the wind. Cross-cultural style influence?it's so this season.?Ivies," "safeties," "AP prep courses," "legacy," "resume-enhancing activity," "nonbinding early acceptance," "rolling admissions," "single-choice early action." If this argot is familiar to you, poor you: You have a child in high school, and these are the days that try your soul, the spring days when many college admissions are announced, often by e-mail, which is how AP Harry learned he was deferred by Harvard.Harry is a character in Susan Coll's new novel "Acceptance," set in Verona County, Md., which is the real Montgomery County, Md., thinly disguised?rich, liberal, full of strivers and contiguous to strivers' paradise, Washington. Harry earned the nickname AP because beginning with his freshman year he took almost every Advanced Placement course offered at Verona High School, which is so serious about placing graduates in prestigious colleges that the principal stalks the halls quizzing students on vocabulary words. For Harry, only Harvard will do.But Harry is a white male without a legacy at Harvard, and although he got a perfect 800 on his math SAT, even with the help of private SAT prep tutoring he could boost his critical reading score only to 720. And when he got a B in an AP English course, he worried that it was the beginning of a long slide that would terminate on some skid row or, worse, at a "safety" school not among the Ivies.Harry, who wears starched shirts and a blazer and carries a briefcase, is a real rara avis in Verona County?a conservative whose heroes include Trent Lott. And he is a wee bit obsessive. He has his mother quiz him to confirm that he remembers the U.S. News & World Report's list?in order?of the top 50 liberal-arts colleges. He subscribes to a service that each day sends an SAT-type question to his cell phone. Harry taps his phone keyboard and reads:" 'Their ideal was to combine individual liberty with material equality, a goal that has not yet been realized and that may be as [blank] as transmutation of lead into gold.' ""Before Harry could continue, a small girl wearing orthodontic headgear blurted out the answer: 'A, chimerical'."Also, Harry's sentences frequently trail off into lists of synonyms useful for the SAT vocabulary test: " 'You look kind of pale, Mom ... pale, sallow, pallid, wan ... ' "Grace forced a smile ... 'Ashen?'' she asked. "'Very good, Mom,' Harry said, smiling adorably."Grace's neighbor, who walks her dog on a Burberry leash, began fretting about college admissions during the summer before their children entered eighth grade. That neighbor hired a private college counseling service at a two-year cost of $30,000, and she signed up her daughter?who she insists preferred NPR to television at age 4?for SAT prep courses three years ahead of the normal schedule.Coll writes: "How had a test originally intended to give a smart kid stuck farming pigs in the Midwest a chance to compete with the children of the Northeastern elite morphed back into a tool to help the rich stay on top?" How? By what Coll calls the "snakepit of parental competition" among the kind of parents who send holiday letters like this:"We are ringing in the New Year in Ireland at the behest of Bree, who was so taken with her reading of 'Ulysses' in her rapid learner reading class that we are taking a self-guided tour of Joyce's Dublin ... Sixth grade has proven a bit dull for Bree ... An aspiring novelist (as you may have guessed!), she plans to spend the summer honing her writing skills at a workshop at Johns Hopkins ... Conveniently, her little brother will also be attending Johns Hopkins this summer. Gordon has been accepted into the 'HeadsUp' program for preschoolers who show an innate predisposition for design and engineering ... "Such parents produce children who, Coll writes, worry unhealthily as they were taught to worry in health class: "If exchanging flirty text messages was the first step toward contracting a sexually transmitted disease, a bad decision about where to apply to college would probably lead to a life of future unemployment, then homelessness, and finally exclusion from family gatherings at holidays.""Acceptance" also examines the travails of the admissions official at fictional Yates College ("the Princeton of Upstate New York"), which has just had the deranging experience of cracking the U.S. News list at number 50. Imagine plowing through applicants' essays "about how Mahatma Gandhi was the single greatest inspiration in these kids' lives, or how the historical figure with whom they most closely identified was Harry Potter."The mother with the Burberry leash suggests that her daughter's college application essay begin, "Family lore has it that my first words were 'Standard Oil'." What happens to that daughter, to Harry and other young victims of "the Verona madness"? Buy Coll's book and find out. It is hilarious and dismaying ... alarming, disturbing, disquieting, agitating, perturbing ...?Britain's Burberry provided more evidence of China's economic slowdown today when the luxury goods company reported a decline in first quarter sales growth. But Burberry said its growth opportunity in China remained huge, even though first quarter growth in retail revenue from the country dropped to "mid-teens" percent versus growth of about 20% in the second half of last year. … China has been one of the main drivers of a boom in luxury brands, with consumers eager to buy designer labels, including Burberry's raincoats and other high-end fashions. But luxury goods firms' shares have wobbled in the past few months over worries about Europe's sovereign debt crisis and slowing growth in China and other emerging markets, where runaway demand for designer brands has previously managed to offset weaker trends in the United States and Europe. ?“We are literally at an evolutionary low in violence. State-on-state conflict is far less likely than it has been in the past. The problem is that other kinds of conflict, other kinds of violence, are exponentially more likely as technology spreads, as the information age allows organizations and individuals -- middleweight nations, if you will -- to have capabilities that heretofore were the purview of major nation-states.”– Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Landon Lecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, Oct. 1.? In Butter you play a freakishly talented butter carver in Iowa. Do you have any skills that are similarly impressive without being remunerative? 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. You grew up in a small town in Oregon. Did the characters in Butter seem real to you? 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...?Rescuers recovered the last of the 18 students’ remains early Friday, about 18 hours after the landslide smothered the Tiantou Elementary School and three farmhouses and damaged six other homes and farmland in Zhenhe village, the Yiliang County government said on its website. It said a person from one of the houses was missing, and a heavily injured person was in a hospital in stable condition.(PHOTOS: )The landslide dammed a river, causing its water to pool 15 meters (45 feet) across and 7 meters (21 feet) deep around the buried area, hampering rescue efforts and forcing the evacuation of 800 other people, the government said. Rescue teams removed the blockage and the water was subsiding, it said.While officials have yet to give a cause for the landslide, the corner of Yunnan province has been lashed by rain in recent days and is prone to earthquakes. A series of quakes last month left 81 people dead and devastated parts of Yiliang county, which are still recovering.Though Thursday was a holiday across China, the students who were killed had been attending school to make up for days missed after the quake, Yiliang officials said. Their school had been damaged in the quake and they were sent to Tiantou temporarily, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.?(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.No other information about the deaths was disclosed, pending notification of family members.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.(PHOTOS:?)The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose information about the deaths.So far this year, 296 international troops, including at least 257 Americans, have been killed in Afghanistan.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.In neighboring Kandahar province, a roadside bomb killed another Afghan policeman in Kandahar city, said provincial spokesman Ahmad Jawed Faisal.?(NEWPORT, R.I.) ? The bodies of three women were pulled Friday from a car that had been in Newport Harbor for hours after it plunged off a pier and landed on its roof, police said.Part of the Hyundai Accent was sticking out of about 4 feet of water when it was discovered around 6:30 a.m. at the Newport Shipyard, a privately owned marina near several of the tourist city’s largest hotels and vacation condo complexes, Newport police Capt. Fred Gonsalves said. A fuel deliveryman saw the car and alerted authorities, Gonsalves said.He said police are still investigating when the car went into the water and why, but said they did not suspect foul play.The car had Rhode Island plates, and Gonsalves said he did not know whether it was a rental car or was owned by one of the women in the car.The car was hauled out of the water by a crane around 8:30 a.m.(VIDEO:?)Newport police Capt. Russell Hayes told The Newport Daily News that one of the victims was from New York state and the two others live overseas. He said emergency personnel were notifying the victims’ families and no other information was available.The driver apparently missed a right-hand turn, Hayes told the newspaper.“I’m not sure if they intended to take the turn here and missed it because it was dark and because of weather conditions,” Hayes told the paper.A dense fog advisory was in effect in Newport until 9 a.m.The car went into the water near an area called the Travelift pit, the place in the marina where boats are lifted in and out of the water. Among the services the shipyard provides are dockage for luxury yachts and sailboats, as well as services for their owners, such as showers and workout facilities.Coast Guard Petty Officer Ryan O’Hare earlier said that the car had been in the water for at least several hours. Newport Fire Department Deputy Chief Frank Young said firefighters wearing wetsuits and goggles discovered the women inside the car in the shallow water.The shipyard is open 24 hours, and a security guard is posted at the entrance at all times.A spokeswoman for the shipyard referred all questions to police.By?ERIKA NIEDOWSKI and MICHELLE R. SMITH?() ? 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.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.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 “so he can use his arms.”In the 1990s, al-Masri turned London’s Finsbury Park Mosque into a training ground for extremist Islamists, attracting men including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and “shoe bomber” Richard Reid.(MORE: )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.U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called the extraditions “a watershed moment in our nation’s efforts to eradicate terrorism.”“As is charged, these are men who were at the nerve centers of al-Qaida’s acts of terror, and they caused blood to be shed, lives to be lost, and families to be shattered.”In New York’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.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.Al-Masri, a one-time nightclub bouncer, entered no plea, saying only “I do” 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.(MORE:?)Shroff told Maas that al-Masri needed use of his arms. “Otherwise, he will not be able to function in a civilized manner.”She also asked for a dictating machine, saying he can’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.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.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.“I don’t think he slept at all” on the overnight flight and hadn’t eaten since arriving in New York at 2:40 a.m., Shroff said outside court. Still, she added, “He seemed very much like a gentleman.”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.Patel, who declined to comment afterward, told Maas that Bary reserved the right to request bail in the future.Four others who were tried in 2001 in the August 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania are serving life sentences.(MORE:?)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.Ahmad made efforts to secure GPS devices, Kevlar helmets, night vision goggles, ballistic vests and camouflage uniforms, prosecutors said.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.The overnight trip to the United States came after a multiyear extradition fight that ended Friday, when Britain’s High Court ruled that the men had no more grounds for appeal and could be sent to the U.S. immediately.“I’m absolutely delighted that Abu Hamza is now out of this country,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said. “Like the rest of the public, I’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’t get rid of them.”“I’m delighted on this occasion we’ve managed to send this person off to a country where he will face justice,” he added.Al-Masri has been in a British jail since 2004 on charges of inciting racial hatred and encouraging followers to kill non-Muslims.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.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’s ousted Taliban regime, Chechen rebels and associated terrorist groups.By?JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN and?LARRY NEUMEISTER?When Windows 8 launches on Oct. 26, expect to see lots of that combine a tablet and a laptop into a single, convertible device.Acer’s Iconia W700 is an example of something different: the tablet-desktop hybrid.(MORE:?)Included with the W700, which starts at $800, is a cradling station that has three USB 3.0 ports — the tablet itself has another — and can prop up at either a 70-degree or 20-degree angle. Of course, it charges the device as well. The tablet also has a Micro-HDMI slot for connecting to an external monitor, and it comes with a Bluetooth keyboard.Acer isn’t the first company to announce a Windows 8 tablet with a docking station. Dell’s will have a dock with four USB ports, an Ethernet jack and a full-sized HDMI slot. The dock for HP’s will have all those connectors plus a VGA port and audio line out.But Acer’s Iconia W700 puts me in the desktop hybrid mindset for a couple reasons: Its display is larger than those other tablets, at 11.6 inches instead of 10 inches, and the tablet uses Intel’s more powerful Core processors, rather than the Clover Trail chips found in thinner and lighter machines.?It also has a higher screen resolution of 1920-by-1080, which isn’t even supported by Clover Trail-based tablets.I think the idea could grow beyond a simple set of extra ports. I’d love to see a dock with extra storage, especially because the solid state drives inside tablets are too skimpy for vast media libraries. A dock that had its own discrete graphic card would be even better, allowing the device to play PC games or handle extensive photo or video editing. And just maybe, it’d be cool to see a dock with its own larger, integrated display.A man can dream. For now, at least, Acer’s planted the seed of an idea. The W700′s other specs include 4 GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 720 front-facing camera. The basic $800 model has a Core i3 processor and 64 GB of storage, but there’s a 128 GB version for $900, and a $1,000 model with 64 GB of storage and a Core i5 chip.MORE:?? 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. 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? 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, cafés, 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. 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." 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.? Re "Flash Point" [Sept. 24]: 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...? 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,...? 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...?( CITY) ? The discovery of a tomb that experts believe might be that of a great Maya queen could redefine the understanding of women’s political roles during the Classic Maya period, experts said Thursday.A team of U.S. and Guatemalan experts led by anthropologist David Freidel found a stone jar at a burial chamber in northern Guatemala that led them to believe it is the burial site of Lady K’abel, considered the military governor of an ancient Maya city during the 7th century.“Lady K’abel was buried 11 meters down from the surface in a temple near a stairway,” Freidel said. “K’abel was not a regular person. To put her in that location means that it was important; it means that people continued to worship her after the fall of the dynasty.”The team working in the royal Maya city of El Peru-Waka also found other evidence, such as ceramic vessels, jade jewelry, thousands of obsidian blades and a large stone with carvings referring to Lady K’abel.(MORE:?)The alabaster jar showed the head and arm of an aged woman emerging from the opening and glyphs pointing to the name of the queen, Guatemala’s cultural ministry said in a statement Thursday.“The royal tomb shows that women have been leaders in the past and we must now assume and exercise political participation to strengthen the role of women in the new era,” Rosa Maria Chan, deputy minister for cultural and natural heritage, said in the statement.K’abel, considered the greatest ruler of the Late Classic period, ruled with her husband, K’inich Bahlam, for at least 20 years in the 7th century, Freidel said. She was the military governor of the Waka kingdom for her family, the imperial house of the Snake King, and she carried the title “Kaloomte” ? translated as “Supreme Warrior,” higher in authority than her husband, the king.Freidel, who is from Washington University in , said the findings at the ruins of El Peru-Waka were “serendipitous.”“In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense that the people of Waka buried her in this particularly prominent place in their city,” Freidel said.(MORE:?)For Marcello A. Canuto, director of the Research Center of Central Tulane University in , the alabaster identifies the tomb as that of the “Lady of Kaan” and noted there is a stela erected in her honor at the archaeological site.“She has been given all the honors a male king would have been given,” Canuto said. “It’s not the first such tomb discovered, but it gives an idea of the important role women played in forging dynastic alliances, and the status they enjoyed.”Traci Ardren, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Miami and a Mayan archaeologist specializing in gender relations, said the traditional belief that Maya men occupied a more important place than women has to do with the amount of images in Mayan art that show men in positions of authority.“People like Lady K’abel show there were examples of extraordinary women that were able to position themselves in powerful roles, were incredibly successful and were accepted by society,” Ardren said.By ROMINA RUIZ-GOIRIENA? 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. Sulzberger, who died Sept. 29 at 86,...?President Otto Perez Molina said Thursday that two army vehicles were carrying troops to support police when they encountered a blockade set up by protesters on a highway in western Guatemala.Molina said civilians in a truck in front of the army vehicles opened fire. He said the soldiers weren’t armed and promised to clarify what happened.Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said the president had suspended an order to evict the protesters from the highway.Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Erick Escobedo said seven soldiers were hurt. Authorities said 34 people were admitted to hospitals.Local media reports gave a higher death toll.PHOTOS: ? 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. Why did you choose to make climate change such an important part of Flight Behavior? 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...? "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...?Ai Weiwei helped inspire the geometrical design of the celebrated "Bird's Nest" 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.? 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....? 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...?Welcome to our latest recap of what’s happening on the charts from Billboard, the music industry’s longtime standard bearer in measuring airplay and sales of singles and albums. This week finds some major new action on the album charts, but only one new entry in the Top 10 singles. On we go:(MORE:?)(MORE: )Got questions about the charts, past and present? E-mail me at Joseph_McCombs@timemagazine.com? 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. 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...? 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 or chook lit, chook being Australian slang for a chicken is publishing's latest phenomenon, with rural romances outselling other fiction.Farm lit is not entirely virgin territory. Colleen McCullough's 1977 antipodean saga, The Thorn Birds, sold 30 million books and birthed a miniseries....?(LOS ANGELES) ? A Boston man has won an online competition to become the first male model in “The Price Is Right” history.The long-running CBS game show said Friday that viewers had chosen Rob Wilson from among a trio of finalists who also included Clint Brink and Nick Denbeigh.Wilson begins his weeklong stint alongside the ladies on Oct. 15.(LIST:?)The contest was announced in August. Hundreds of he-man hopefuls showed up at the open call in Los Angeles, where they had a chance to strut their stuff for the show’s producers and the female models the show is well known for.The show has been on the air since September 1972.“The Price Is Right” is hosted by Drew Carey. It airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Eastern time.MORE:??With land wars wrapping up, the Army is doing what comes naturally ? setting up a new office to ensure it’s not ignored as the Pentagon pivots toward the Pacific and begins pumping money into globe-girdling air and naval forces.The Army ? the biggest and most like America of all the services ? will never admit this, of course. With Americans a “great deal” of confidence in the U.S. military, including soldiers ? triple that of, ahem, the press ? this would hardly seem to be the time that buffing and burnishing the Army’s reputation is necessary.But that misses this point: budget wars are looming, the Army has benefited, financially, from 12 years of war, and President Obama wants to project power toward the Pacific. Time to circle the battlewagons!That’s why the Army formally stood up its Army Marketing and Research Group on Oct. 1, conveniently the first day of the 2013 fiscal year. The next day, an outfit calling itself Army Marketing and Research Group Public Affairs issued a detailing its mission:The United States of America exists because there is a United States Army, which is arguably the best land force in the world…Today’s Soldiers are strong, decisive, technologically savvy and morally and ethically steadfast. Soldiers get things done — no matter where or how difficult, Soldiers always accomplish the mission…Is this what the average American thinks and feels when he or she sees a Soldier? Over time, through periods of transition and potential negative events, is this the underlying truth the nation continues to believe about their Army? Do Soldiers, civilians and Army families believe and communicate this about themselves and the institution?…The answers to these questions and how the Army is explained to the American public are vital to ensuring the Army sustains its connection with the American people and receives the support it needs to deliver on its promise to defend the American Constitution and American way of life, according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Marketing Mark S. Davis, and director of the newly formed Army Marketing and Research Group, or AMRG.Well, that’s quite an assignment.Key phrase in the article: receives the support it needs. Translation: receives the support it wants.The shop seems redundant. After all, the non-profit is the service’s official cheerleader in Washington (all the services have such outfits). AUSA says its mission is “fostering public support of the Army’s role in national security.”The press release points out that the new outfit is “formed from efficiencies gained by the inactivation of the U.S. Army Accessions Command,” without explaining that Accessions Command was last year at 9 years of age because it was redundant. Yet the Army Marketing and Research Group rises from its ashes. No wonder it’s so tough to kill anything at the Defense Department ? it enters its own witness protection program and comes back under a new name, albeit smaller. As of now.“The Army brand is really the ongoing dialogue we have with the American people,” Davis said. “It enables our communication and marketing efforts.”Perhaps so. Branding, after all, is all the rage in marketing circles these days.But the notion of the Army as a “brand” somehow seems a bit off. The U.S. Army isn’t a cookie (think ) hair tonic (think ) or a new car (think ). It embraces branding at its peril. The public, after all, is fickle. What if it wakes up tomorrow and decides to trade its in for that snazzy ?? 'The door may be closing, for good.' 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" 'I can't get fined if I'm saying that the refs did a great job...so, they did a great job.' 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 'You want to try it? Get in the ring.' 3. ANN ROMNEY, addressing her husband Mitt's detractors in a much ballyhooed segment on Radio...?(WAYNE, N.J.) ??A tour bus from Canada carrying about 60 people bound for New York City overturned on a highway exit ramp in northern New Jersey early Saturday, slid down an embankment and landed on its side, injuring 23 people on board, authorities said.The driver, who suffered a gash in his arm, told state police that he was cut off by another vehicle, though it was not immediately clear whether that caused the crash around 7:30 a.m. on eastbound Interstate 80 in Wayne.Some windows burst during the crash and their frames pinned three people, but they were quickly freed and taken to hospitals with the other injured. The bus had been chartered by a church group.Eight of the injured passengers were admitted in critical condition, hospital spokeswoman Liz Asani said. Further details on their injuries were not disclosed. The rest of the injured, including two young children, were being treated for minor injuries at two other hospitals.State police have said none of the injuries are considered life-threatening.(MORE:?s)“It was terrifying,” Norma Cumberbatch, 66, of Toronto, told The Star-Ledger of Newark. Cumberbatch, who was traveling with her 68-year-old sister, Marjorie, said she struggled to free her legs from fallen luggage and other debris before trying to find her sister.“I just took my leg out and then said, ‘Where’s my sister? I want my sister.’”Marjorie Cumberbatch said she heard “thump, thump, thump. Then I looked up and I saw people over me screaming and crying.”Passengers who were unhurt were put on another bus and continued their journey, authorities said.The coach bus was from Toronto-based AVM Max 2000 Charter Services Inc., state police said. The phone for AVM Max rang unanswered Saturday afternoon, and the company did not respond to an email Saturday.The crash was the latest of several coach bus accidents over the past few years on American highways. Last year, a bus carrying gamblers from a trip to a Connecticut casino struck a guardrail as it entered New York City, then toppled over and hit a signpost that sliced off the top of the bus. Thirteen people were killed. A manslaughter trial for the driver began last month.Saturday’s accident backed up traffic in the area for hours while law enforcement officials and emergency services vehicles attended to the scene. Several highways connect there, and the area is known locally as the “spaghetti bowl,” according to The Record.VIDEO:??() ? Californians woke up to a shock Friday as overnight prices jumped by as much as 20 cents a gallon in some areas, ending a week of soaring costs that saw some stations close and others charge record prices.The average price of regular gas across the state was nearly $4.49 a gallon, the highest in the nation, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge report.In Southern California, the price jumped 20 cents a gallon overnight to $4.53 in Ventura. And in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area prices went up 19 cents to nearly $4.54. And it wasn’t any better to the north, as a gallon of regular gas in San Francisco averaged nearly $4.60.In many areas, prices have jumped 40 cents in a week as refinery problems have created shortages and helped send wholesale prices soaring. Some stations ran out of gas and shut down Thursday rather than pay those costs.Even Costco, the giant discount store chain that sells large volumes of gas, decided to close some stations, the Los Angeles Times (lat.ms/OGwEV2) reported.“We do not know when we will be resupplied,” read a sign at one Southern California Costco, according to the Times.Other gas stations charged more than $5 a gallon. The Low-P station in Calabasas charged $5.69 Thursday. The pumps bore hand-written signs reading: “We are sorry, it is not our fault,” the Times said.While have spiked around the nation, refinery outages and pipeline problems have added to woes in California.Among the recent disruptions, an Aug. 6 fire at a Chevron Corp. refinery in Richmond left one of the region’s largest refineries producing at a reduced capacity. A power failure in Southern California has affected an Exxon Mobil Corp. refinery, and a Chevron pipeline that moves crude to Northern California also was shut down.The national average for gas is about $3.79 a gallon, the highest ever for this time of year. However, gas prices in many states have started decreasing, which is typical for October.But in California, gasoline inventories are the lowest in more than 10 years ? a situation made worse by the state’s strict pollution limits that require a special blend of cleaner-burning gasoline during hot summer months.Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com, said he is seeing the highest prices in the state around Los Angeles, where on Thursday at least five stations have crossed the $5 a gallon mark, including $5.29 in Burbank and $5.11 in Norwalk.Prices will keep rising, he says, because in the past week wholesale gasoline prices have jumped $1 a gallon, but average retail prices have increased only 30 cents.“This is one of the easiest forecasts: Retail prices are going to skyrocket,” DeHaan said.The jump in wholesale prices can be particularly tough on independent gas stations that often pay more for their gas because they are not part of a larger chain.Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service, said he’s heard of a few California station owners shutting their pumps rather than charging the $4.90 a gallon or more necessary to break even.“Wholesale price increases lead to retail price increases,” Kloza said. “But there is some restraint among companies who do not want to exercise their current pricing power and irritate their customers.”Some analysts think prices nationally will begin to decline soon but say California could see a longer spike given its unique fuel requirements.“Nationally, I believe most prices will wobble to and fro for the next week or so, with an eventual slow but steady attrition in retail gas prices, particularly in the Midwest and Southeast,” Kloza said. “California is a wild card.”By Jason Dearen AP Energy Writers Jonathan Fahey in New York and Sandy Shore in Denver contributed to this report.? I have a promise to break. Like any self-respecting writer visiting Bhutan, I solemnly swore on a stack of travelogues to avoid clichéd 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.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...?Move over, pumpkin. There’s a new taste in town that’s turning up in everything from booze to bagels: candy corn. Yes, that waxy, tri-colored childhood favorite is this season’s “it flavor.”?Nabisco kicked off the corn-y trend when it released limited-edition candy-corn Oreos last month. The cookies, sold exclusively at Target, have vanilla wafers and yellow-and-orange cream filling.?There were reports of sellouts shortly after the cookies made their debut, but if you’re curious and missed the launch or don’t live near a Target, there’s a brisk secondary market for the cookies on Amazon.com.?(DAMASCUS, Syria) ? A car bomb exploded Sunday near the police headquarters in central Damascus, killing at least one person and damaging nearby buildings, Syria’s state-run news agency said.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.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.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.(PHOTOS:?)The official SANA news agency said one person was killed, and Syrian state TV described the blast as a “terrorist” attack. Syrian authorities deny there is an uprising in the country and blame the conflict on “terrorists” and “armed gangs” acting out a foreign conspiracy to destabilize Syria.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.Explosions in the capital have become increasingly common as Syria’s civil war escalates. On Aug. 18, rebels carried out a sophisticated bombing of a regime security building that killed four members of Assad’s inner circle.Last week, four bombs tore through a government-held district in Syria’s commercial and cultural capital of Aleppo, killing more than 30 people and reducing buildings to rubble.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’s main cities.By ALBERT AJI?(WASHINGTON) ? A new estimate puts the deficit for the just-completed 2012 budget year at $1.1 trillion, the fourth straight year of trillion dollar deficits on President Barack Obama’s watch.The result was a slight improvement from the 2011 deficit of $1.3 trillion.The bleak figures from the Congressional Budget Office, while expected, add fodder for the heated presidential campaign, in which Obama’s handling of the economy and the budget is a main topic. Friday’s release came as the government announced that the unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent last month, matching the rate when Obama took office.(MORE: )The administration will release the official deficit numbers around mid-October, but they should line up closely with the CBO estimate, which showed that the government borrowed 31 cents for every dollar it spent.The CBO estimate predicts a modest 3 percent increase over 2011 in both income tax and payroll tax receipts, reflecting the sluggish economic recovery. Corporate income tax receipts are way up ? almost 34 percent ? but most of that is a result of tax rules governing write-offs of business equipment.Spending fell across a broad array of categories, the CBO said, but not Social Security and Medicare. Social Security payments rose by 6 percent, while Medicare grew by 3 percent, slightly less than in prior years.Lower war costs meant a 3 percent decline in defense outlays, however, and the cost of unemployment benefits dropped 24 percent because fewer people have been receiving benefits recently. Medicaid costs dropped as well, because the federal government stopped paying a higher share of the program’s costs.Obama inherited an economy in recession and a deficit in excess of $1 trillion. He promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, but deficits have instead remained at eye-popping levels, including a record $1.4 trillion deficit in 2009 and deficits of $1.3 trillion in each of the past two years. The 2012 deficit was 7 percent of the size of the economy, an unsustainably high level.(MORE: _In Wednesday night’s debate, Obama said he has a budget plan to shave $4 trillion from the deficit over the coming decade, but he counts $1 trillion from savings already accomplished in budget deals with Republicans last year and $848 billion from winding down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney promises to balance the budget within eight to 10 years, but hasn’t illustrated how he would do so. His budget claims are suspect as well since he promises to cut the overall budget by about $500 billion in 2016 alone, while also promising to sharply boost military spending and restore more than $700 billion in Democratic cuts to Medicare over the coming decade. Romney has ruled out increasing taxes. – By ANDREW TAYLOR?(ATLANTA) ? Health officials say the death toll in a rare fungal meningitis outbreak across several states has risen to seven.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.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.The New England Compounding Center has said it is cooperating with health investigators to determine the source of the infections.?(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.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.The CDC figures show there are 91 cases in the U.S. altogether.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.MORE:?MORE:??(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’s oil wealth and his near total control of state institutions to his advantage.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.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.But Capriles’ 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’s charisma, well-oiled political machine and a legacy of putting Venezuela’s poor first with generous social welfare programs.?(MORE:?) 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.“The revolution has triumphed!” Chavez told the crowd, saying his supporters “voted for socialism.”The crowd responded chanting “Chavez won’t go!”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’s also likely to further limit dissent and deepen friendships with U.S. rivals.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.It was Chavez’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.“I can’t describe the relief and happiness I feel right now,” said Edgar Gonzalez, a 38-year-old construction worker.He ran through crowds of Chavez supporters packing the streets around the presidential palace wearing a Venezuelan flag as a cape and yelling: “Oh, no! Chavez won’t go!”“The revolution will continue, thanks to God and the people of this great country,” said Gonzalez.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.Chavez spent heavily in the months before the vote, building public housing and bankrolling expanded social programs.“I think he just cranked up the patronage machine and unleashed a spending orgy,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank.But Shifter also didn’t deny the affinity and gratefulness Venezuela’s poor feel for Chavez. “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.”(MORE:?)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.Capriles told supporters not to feel defeated.“We have planted many seeds across Venezuela and I know that these seeds are going to produce many trees,” he told a hall of supporters.Despite winning a February primary that unified the opposition, Capriles proved no match for Chavez’s electoral prowess.David Valencia, a 20-year-old Capriles supporter, said he was disappointed but that he hadn’t lost hope despite the loss.“There is still a sense in our hearts of wanting a better country,” he said.One pro-Chavez voter, private bodyguard Carlos Julio Silva, said that whatever his faults, Chavez deserved to win for spreading the nation’s oil wealth to the poor with free medical care, public housing and other government programs. The country has the world’s largest proven oil reserves.“There is corruption, there’s plenty of bureaucracy, but the people have never had a leader who cared about this country,” Silva said after voting for Chavez at a school in the Caracas slum of Petare.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.Chavez’s critics say the president has inflamed divisions by labeling his opponents “fascists,” ”Yankees” and “neo-Nazis,” and it’s likely hard for many of his opponents to stomach another six years of the loquacious and conflictive leader.Some said before the vote that they’d consider leaving the country if Chavez won.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.“I don’t know what planet he lives on,” Caso said, gesturing with hands blackened with grease. “He wants to be like Fidel Castro ? end up with everything, take control of the country.”by FRANK BAJAK and IAN JAMESAssociated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez, Christopher Toothaker, Jorge Rueda and Vivian Sequera contributed to this report.?File under the strangest of unintended consequences. As states throughout the U.S. have slowly moved toward relaxing their marijuana laws, there has been a disturbing surge in the number of incidents involving pets ingesting marijuana, either accidentally or after it’s fed to them by their owners. (There’s even a surprising number of YouTube video results for the search term “dogs getting high.”) Now several veterinarians have come out to warn against the dangers of dogs ingesting cannabis after seeing a spike in sick animals in Colorado.(MORE: )Speaking with CBS 4 in Denver, veterinarian Dr. Debbie Van Pelt that she has seen “huge spikes in the frequency of marijuana ingestion [among pets] in places where it’s become legal.” Seventeen states across the U.S. have approved the regulated use of medical marijuana, although few states have embraced the trend as much Colorado; by one count .In many instances the dogs appear to have eaten their owner’s stash. The affects are far from pleasant for the animals, who start to stagger and vomit and can even lapse into a coma. ? to Dr. Pelt:?“They basically [lose] a lot of their fine motor control, they have a wide-based stance and they are not sure on their feet.”(MORE: )While in most cases the effects are short-lived, vets have reported some fatalities as a result of ingesting marijuana. Dr. Stacy Meola, a vet at Colorado’s Wheat Ridge Clinic, ?that she saw two dogs die after ingesting baked goods containing medical marijuana.Meola has organized a five-year study looking at the number of dogs that fall ill as a result of the drug. She found that the number of cases of dogs getting high had quadrupled since Colorado legalized medical marijuana in 2000.MORE: ?It was the second launch of a Dragon capsule to the orbiting lab by the California-based SpaceX company. The first was last spring.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.The company’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.Officials declared the launch a success.(PHOTOS: )In more good news, a piece of space junk was no longer threatening the station, and NASA could focus entirely on the delivery mission.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.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’ 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.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.None of the Russian, European or Japanese cargo ships can bring anything back; they’re destroyed during re-entry. The Russian Soyuz crew capsules have limited room for anything besides people. 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.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 “Star Wars” fame.An estimated 2,400 guests jammed the launching center to see the Falcon, with its Dragon, come to life for SpaceX’s first official, operational supply mission.It was no apparition.“Just over a year since shuttle retirement, to be able to do that is, I think, what people are very excited about,” said NASA’s deputy administrator, Lori Garver.Across the country at SpaceX headquarters, about 1,000 employees watched via TV and webcast.SpaceX is shooting for its next supply run in January.Another company looking to haul space station cargo, Virginia’s Orbital Sciences Corp., hopes to launch a solo test flight in December and a demo mission to the station early next year.? 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. 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? 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." 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.? 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...?David DeCesare grew up in northern New Jersey in the 1960s with a love of the new music and dreams of being a drummer in a rock band. Fate, disguised as failure, intervened, and DeCesare eventually became known as a writer-producer for The Rockford Files, the creator and guiding light of The Sopranos, and David Chase.All this time, though, Chase husbanded his memories?of his early manhood:?the aches and epiphanies, the family tensions and pretty girls, and of course the songs. He hatches them in his first feature, Not Fade Away, which receives its world premiere Sat. evening as the Centerpiece of the New York Film Festival. Chase is 67 now, but the movie has the raw, artless, tell-all feel of a twentyish writer’s first novel ? a disgorging of the good-bad old days in the transparent mask of fiction. For admirers of Chase’s achievement in turning The Sopranos into one of the zestiest, most impressive TV epics, Not Fade Away is likely to be a big disappointment.(SEE: Where The Sopranos falls on )The blurred, black-and-white TV image of a New Jersey rock group, Joey Dee and the Starliters, performing “The Peppermint Twist” is interrupted censoriously by a sign reading “Please Stand By.” The emergency-warning beep accompanying the message gives way to the opening bass line of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” ? Chase’s clever visualizing of the Plato observation, cited later in the film, that “When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.”That certainly applies to the walls of the suburban New Jersey homes that teenage Douglas (John Magaro) shares with his truculent dad Pat (James Gandolfini) and exasperated mom Antoinette (Molly Price). Doug, in solidarity with many kids of all generations, believes he’s a prisoner of conscience in a Stalin gulag, with his parents as the uncaring guards. The emergence of the Beatles and the Stones allows him to express his protest as a fashion statement ? poodle hair and Cuban heels ? which suit his status as drummer for a local band, called The Twylight Zones, that includes lead singer Eugene (Jack Huston) and guitarist Wells (Will Brill).Movies have provided stories of bands that hit the top (Backbeat, about the formation of the Beatles) and of one-hit wonders (Tom Hanks’s That Thing You Do). Not Fade Away, as Doug’s kid sister clues us early in the film’s?fitful voiceover narration, is about a group that became a no-hit wonder. The members practice, they play a few gigs, they debate who should be lead singer. Doug goes off to college ? which, he father complains, is costing him $2,000 a year! ? and finds an ideal snuggle partner in Grace (Bella Heathcote, the moon-eyed Australian lovely from Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows).?Many screenwriters of less than hunky aspect, like Woody Allen, have paired their screen selves with dreamy girlfriends; and Grace is exactly that wish-fulfillment goddess in a grubby milieu. The prize daughter of?a wealthy WASP family, Grace is, frankly, too good for Doug and too pretty for Jersey.(MORE:?)Actually, the Twylight Zones are a no-hit no-wonder, since there’s not much musical distinction in their cover versions of Rolling Stones covers of American blues songs, and zero chemistry among the bandmates. Magaro, who looks a bit like Stones bass guitarist Bill Wyman,?gives viewers little reason to watch him except that he’s the movie’s main character.?Huston, the grandson of director John Huston and a recurring player on Boardwalk Empire, attracts the eye with his Jimmy Fallon vibe but never sparkles. In fact, no one in the band seems to be having a great time. They bend to their work, or what they call their art, like wage slaves on a North Korean assembly line.The one scene of musical magic in the movie (which is named for a 1957 Buddy Holly song revived seven years later by the Stones) comes from a clip of the Stones on a 1964 episode of Hollywood Palace, when Mick Jagger coos Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” In that moment Jagger parades the danger, showmanship and bisexual startle that made people want to watch the Stones. And not the Zones.(LIST: Find Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones on )The challenge for the teller of any story set in the ’60s is to overcome the familiarity of the time; even those who didn’t live through the decade have had its signature events, moments and music drummed into their brains. Matthew Weiner, the Sopranos producer who created Mad Men, mostly avoids the period italicizing on that ’60s show. Chase, though, thinks everyone needs to be reminded that national leaders were killed and young men went to Vietnam. Aside from the plush carpet of ’60s songs (chosen by Steven Van Zandt, the E Street Bandsman and Sopranos cast member), Not Fade Away takes the laziest way of evoking the past: name-dropping?and TV clips. The tragic, heroic journey of African-Americans through the decade is clumsily encompassed in one black man, a fellow ditch-digger on Doug’s day job, who talks of Martin Luther King and the other troubles he’s seen and Doug hasn’t.The young actors never experienced those woes, and those of the people they play. They spend most of their times semaphoring their emotions with cigarette flourishes worthy of Bette Davis and trying futilely to creep into their characters.?For all the research they must have done, studying ’60s moods and mannerisms, they can’t persuasively inhabit the period; they only counterfeit it. The past, this particular past, is a foreign language they have learned phonetically.That leaves to the adult actors the job of bringing to life the characters they play. Gandolfini, Chase’s Tony Soprano, is utterly convincing, and not just because most of us lived with him and his family (and his Family) on 86 Sunday nights over eight-and-a-half years. An Italian-American store owner who sometimes badgers his son with sitcom-dad lines (“You ‘n me are gonna tangle, my friend”), Pat has come to realize that middle age is the time when dreams and illusions die. In a brief, wordless scene, he is alone, stringing?lights on the family Christmas tree; one string shorts out, and his sigh suggests that this is the lives of grownups. When father and son finally convene at a dinner for two, Pat pours out his molten heart ? and can barely command Doug’s attention. If only this dad could put his declarations in the form of a guitar solo…(READ: Jams Poniewozik on )? 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 TIME: Why are we so transfixed by the threat of emerging diseases? 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...?At first you might feel a slight sting as the fangs enter. Then, a tingling will spread throughout your limbs. But within minutes your central nervous system will start shutting down, culminating in convulsions, paralysis, and a suffocating death. The , one of the world’s deadliest poisons administered by one of the world’s deadliest reptiles, can kill you within half an hour. Untreated bites have a mortality rate of 100%.Hidden in the grim cocktail the snake carries, though, are a couple of proteins with a remarkably different effect. published this week in Nature has revealed two molecules in mamba venom that can eliminate pain with as much potency as morphine, suggesting an unusual new source for painkillers.Sylvie Diochot, an engineer at France’s Institute of Pharmocologie Moleculaire and Cellulaire and first author of the paper, has always had a yen for the venomous. Fascinated by the destructive power of black widow bites, she studied venomous arthropods and was on familiar terms with her specimens. “Sometimes, I had several spiders and scorpions at home, in breeding, but I have children at home, so I prefer to observe them in nature (photos), or sometimes in our laboratory,” she wrote in an e-mail. Her research involved purifying the toxin molecules that make venom so deadly and then applying them to neurons and other cells to study how they send the body into catastrophic failure.(MORE: )The conclusion that venom investigators like Diochot have reached is that the things that make animal venoms so deadly are often proteins that work by jamming open or closed the channels that let ions flow across the membranes of neurons. Chemical cross-chatter into and out of the cells is what allows neurons to send messages to the brain and elsewhere. Disrupt that communications feed and the whole system can come crashing down.But not all the information neurons transmit is good. Pain, after all, is a neuronal signal too. Sometimes it’s a very helpful one, as when it alerts you that you might want to remove your hand from the hot stove you just touched. Sometimes it’s decidedly unhelpful; what good, exactly, is a migraine headache, chronic back pain, postsurgical pain? In cases like those, shutting down selected neuronal signals would be a very good thing. In the 1990s, researchers found a protein in the venom of the sea-dwelling cone snail that could do just that, disturbing the function of calcium ion channels such that pain signals never made it to the brain. A synthetic version of the molecule they extracted, ziconotide, is now being used to treat patients with severe chronic pain, a success story that inspires venom researchers today.To see whether they could find anything in various venoms that had a similar effect on another set of pain-related channels, Diochot ? along with her lab chief, neurobiologist Eric Lingueglia, and other collaborators ? borrowed and bought more than 40 venoms from scorpions, spiders, sea anemones and snakes. Each was carefully separated into its component molecules, which were then poured on frog cells. What they were looking for was whether the molecules affected what are known as acid-sensing ion channels ? which can play a key role in nociception, or the transmission of pain signals. Quickly, they saw that particular black mamba proteins, dubbed mambalgin-1 and -2, did block the ion channels in frog cells, at least in a petri dish. They had a similar effect on human cells ? in a dish as well.(MORE: )The next step was to try the preparation in a living creature, in this case mice. Since mice can’t tell you if something hurts ? never mind how much ? the researchers conducted two standard pain experiments. After administering mambalgin-1 and -2 to their subjects, they dipped the paws of some of the animals in hot water; in others they injected the paws with substances that briefly cause pain. Mice respond to such stimuli by withdrawing their paws from the water and licking the pricked paws; how quickly they withdraw and how many times they lick are measures of how much pain they feel.On both of these yardsticks, mice that had received mambalgin appeared to feel much less pain than those that had received none. The magnitude of the reduction is similar to the reduction that occurs when mice are given morphine. Although mambalgin got less effective the longer the mice were exposed it, tolerance did not develop nearly as fast as with morphine, and the mice did not have difficulty breathing, as they did when on morphine.It will take a lot of work ? and a lot of toxicity testing ? before this particular venom extract or synthetic compounds like it are approved for human use, but even if it is, don’t expect it to replace aspirin or ibuprofen, or even morphine in most circumstances. Like ziconotide before it, it may need to be injected into the spine or elsewhere to have best effect, which means it may be primarily useful in the alleviation of certain types of chronic severe pain for which there is no other treatment. “For neuropathic pain, which is associated with problems in the nervous system, and for people with very severe pain, like in very advanced cancer, morphine is not very efficient,” says Lingueglia. “For these people, we have only a few molecules that can be active on their pain.”(MORE: )That’s a very important niche ? both in a humanitarian and economic sense ? and for that reason, acid-sensing ion channels have been on drug companies’ radars for a while, says William Catterall, a pharmacologist at University of Washington. Mambalgin’s structure has been patented, and one of the paper’s authors is on the scientific board of Theralpha, a biotechnology company that is looking to develop the protein for use in humans.Of less interest to pharmacologists than herpetologists is why such a deadly venom contains such a potent painkiller in the first place. What could be the advantage ? either to the snake or to the victim? “This is a very good question,” says Lingueglia with a laugh. “It’s very surprising, because when the snake bites you, you are dead in a very short time. I don’t think analgesic peptides are of interest to the snake.”(MORE: )This story is also available on .? 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. FIELD OPERATIONS 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. MAZES WITH A MESSAGE [The following text appears within a map. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual map.] Meridian, Idaho New Carlisle, Ohio Winterset, Iowa Frederick, Md. Springdale, Ark. THE TALLY AUG. SEPT. 8 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 URBAN AGRICULTURE 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 ?Zip The LipThe morning-after-debate consensus — and the consensus even while the candidates — was that Jim Lehrer didn’t speak enough. Jimmy Fallon took a cue and assumed what would have happened had Lehrer attempted to take control.? 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...? 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.) 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...?Looking for ways to motivate your employees?Consider some tips from a recent book on how to motivate software professionals. They might not work for everyone, but Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty, authors of “Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams,” clearly understand how to manage software professionals, who tend to be an inquisitive and high-minded lot.Emphasize big-picture ideas. People want to think they’re making a difference.Stay above board. Ethical management keeps employees feeling engaged.Educate yourself. Be sure you know what you’re talking about.Praise publicly. Reprimand privately.Convey interest. Get to know your employees as people.Don’t forget the magic words. Say “thank you” at least 10 times a week.Be a coach, not a manager. Help team members grow.Don’t sweat the small stuff. Focus on what employees contribute, not on how they do it.Adapted from at CIO Insight.?Sunday marks the beginning of the ‘s 12th year in .It ain’t quite the , but 12 years is 20% of this particular Battleland correspondent’s life.Eleven years ago today ? October 7, 2001 — also was a Sunday. I was at the , along with scores of colleagues, gathering whatever scraps of news we could. We’ve been doing it ever since.Four thousand and eighteen days. Two thousand and forty-four Americans , one every other day for 11 years straight. Historically, it’s not a lot, as wars go, unless it’s your son. About a dollars.Two months after the war began, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld me this campaign marked the return of American military might to the world stage: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’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.Less than a year later, 9/11 happened. President Bush and his war council met at Camp David the next weekend. Rumsfeld continued: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. 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’ve got a plan, it’s a good plan, we’ve agreed to it, leave it in place,’ and General Franks encouraged him to do so, and that is exactly what happened.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:On the day of [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai’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?’ That’s instructive, because there’s a lot of that inside Afghanistan.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’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 — or even a nation, as most Americans understand the word.Rumsfeld and Franks have retired from running the war, where U.S. combat troops are slated to fight for another two years.Surprisingly, the anniversary appeared to pass without notice on the websites of the , , or the U.S.-led running the war in Afghanistan.The lone U.S. government-funded acknowledgement seemed to crop up in a Voice of America news? on the anniversary, which concluded: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.The Taliban also took :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.That may be a stretch. But you know what they say about who writes history. Check back in 11 years.?If, as David Axelrod , “Campaigns are like an MRI for the soul,”?then what do we see when we peer into the campaigns of Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown and his challenger, liberal icon Elizabeth Warren? We see a classic culture clash: town vs. gown, the Red Sox vs. the Head of the Charles Regatta, a small-town guy with an iconic pickup truck vs. a Harvard professor who’s a national star.Brown’s attacks?Warren as if she has been caught in a lie about her racial background: Warren claims to be part Cherokee and Delaware Indian. In her?,?she says she never benefited professionally from her heritage, a claim backed up by officials who hired her.(MORE:?)The backstory: Warren says her parents were forced to elope after her father’s family rejected her mother because of her American Indian background. A genealogist said he discovered Warrren might be 1/32nd Cherokee but could not produce documents to attest to that. But Brown is certain of what Warren is, and his ad stems from his un-nuanced view of race and her lineage: in the first seconds of their first debate, Brown said, “She claimed that she was a Native American, a person of color, and as you can see, she’s not.” At that moment, Brown might as well have pulled out his race card and slammed it down onto his lectern as if to say, ‘I’m white and I’m proud and I’ll never lie about it!’ He continued hammering at this in their second debate, , “She said I can’t change who I am. That’s the nature of her commercials. But up until she was 38, she was white, and then she self-reported and changed her nationality to Native American.”Brown’s arrogance about his ability to discern a person’s race or ethnicity with total certainty just by using his eyeballs is either extremely impressive or hysterically naive. Many people are racially ambiguous, so his simplistic conception of race does not fit in the age of Obama and shows no comprehension of the complex reality of race. Scientifically, we are all one race.(MORE:?)“There are no genetic characteristics possessed by all blacks but not by non-blacks,” University of California at Berkeley law professor Ian Haney Lopez in the landmark 1993 essay The Social Construction of Race. “Intragroup differences exceed intergroup differences … The rejection of race in science is now almost complete. In the end we should embrace historian Barbara Fields’s succinct conclusion with respect to the plausibility of biological races: ‘Anyone who continues to believe in race as a physical attribute of individuals despite the now commonplace disclaimers of biologists and geneticists might also believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy are real.’ … Social meanings connect our faces to our souls. Race is neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing process subject to the macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro effects of daily decisions.” Lopez concludes: “Race is a social construction.”Warren has responded to Brown’s simplistic, biology-based line of attack by invoking the social-construct aspect of race. She says being an American Indian is part of her family lore, and she never asked for documentation because who would question family stories? Warren has made her response emotional rather than concrete; race is too messy, too slippery for anything else. She could not prick her finger and provide evidence that she is part American Indian. She may even be privately pleased to see Brown spending his time asserting that the racial earth is flat. It’s already resulted in one embarrassing public misstep, when Brown campaign staffers mimicked American Indian war chants and tomahawk chops in a that went viral.?Brown has since apologized for that.(MORE: )Warren has every right to define herself and to do so in a multifaceted way. Racial identity, for mixed Americans, need not be an either/or situation; it can be a both/and. The only way we could truly gauge Warren’s Indian-ness would be to see how much being an American Indian means to her. She says she listed herself in a directory of minority law professors in order to meet “people for whom Native American is part of their heritage and part of their hearts.” Only she knows what place being an American Indian has in her heart.But if Brown’s “Fauxcohontas” meme were simply about abstract identity claims, it would have minimal resonance. Instead, Brown tries to turn it into something his followers should get really upset about by linking it to affirmative action. In their first debate, he repeatedly asserted that “she checked the box,” meaning that when it came time to apply for a dream job, she, who is visibly (and thus in his mind obviously) not a person of color, pretended to be one.?He’s speaking as an aggrieved white man, saying she’s one of those who are taking jobs away from whites unfairly. It’s a?way for him to tap into anger that the box is there at all, never able to be checked by white men,?a figurative door through which whites cannot pass, robbing them of power.Here Brown seems to echo the findings of a 2011 ?called “Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing” by Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and Samuel Sommers of Tufts.?The study found that “whites believe racism against blacks has decreased, which means racism against whites has increased.”Now, if you or your friends are out of work and think whites are losing the game, then it’s very easy to be angry, but angry politicians often make bad choices, and Brown’s fixation on Warren’s background may be remembered as the campaign detour that cost him his place in the Senate. The question of her ancestry could be a tar baby for Brown. In the Uncle Remus fairy tales, Brer Rabbit encounters a tar baby, a doll made of tar that is meant to trap him. He begins to fight and get stuck, and the more he attacks the doll, the more he gets stuck. Brown is whaling away at Warren’s heritage while in the polls and thus seems to be getting stuck. But whereas Brown rejects entirely the possibility that Warren could have American Indian heritage, I wish she would ask him to prove that he is entirely white.MORE: ? 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...?French special forces shot and killed suspect Islamist extremist Oct. 6 in an exchange of gunfire during in the eastern city of Strasbourg. The action was as part of a daybreak series of sweeps targeting alleged Salafist radicals, and followed an investigation into the of a Kosher grocery store in a suburb that occurred amid international outrage among Muslim fundamentalists to a mocking film and French caricatures they called blasphemous to Islam.But the police action also came amid continuing debate about and other irregularities that may have allowed self-proclaimed Toulouse jihadi Mohammed Merah to execute his March, 2012 that left seven people dead. Though French counter-terrorism officials have recently told TIME they’ve seen no signs of imminent terror planning by extremists since Merah’s death, Saturday’s multiple sweeps may be indication that security forces and political leaders are learning the lessons of the Merah case by moving early and emphatically against any suspected radical considered even a potential threat. Though details of Saturday’s sweeps were still sketchy ahead of a press conference planned by justice authorities later in the day, the fatal Strasbourg raid is known to have been part of a coordinated series of moves on suspected extremists. Those raids occurred in Nice, , and locations around Paris, resulting in the arrest of 10 people. It now seems clear officials were justified viewing some suspects as security threats. During the raid of a , the suspect unloaded his .375 Magnum revolver on advancing police forces before being killed in return fire. Three police officers were slightly injured in the exchange, including one who took direct hits to anti-ballistic gear protecting his head and chest. In a coinciding operation near Paris, a suspect that in some reports termed “dangerous” was taken without violence, but found in possession of at least one gun.The raids came as French counter-terror authorities continue their investigation into the of a kosher shop serving the large Jewish population in Sarcelles, a disadvantaged and ethnically diverse suburb north of Paris. One person was slightly injured in that strike when an explosive device was thrown inside the store. That attack came amid the surge of anger and violence among Islamist militants around the globe in reaction to a California-made film denigrating the Prophet Muhammad and French print media caricatures mocking Islam?a wave of fury that now appears to be subsiding.Despite those apparently calming tempers France’s leftist government is signaling that it will tolerate no defiance or challenge from Islamist militants?even if that comes in response to provocation. France’s Socialist Interior Minister Manuel Valls banned demonstrations by groups denouncing the film and caricatures that they consider blasphemous to Islam. Furthermore, on Sept. 27 Valls ?in Strasbourg, as it happened?to put militant Salafists and fellow traveling fundamentalists on notice that he’d brook now challenge to French laws or secular traditions.“I will not accept behavior by Salafists or any other group that defies the Republic,” Valls warned during Strasbourg mosque inauguration. “The Republic will be intransigent with anyone who seeks to challenge it.”That hard line is in part an effort by French Socialists who took control of government in elections last May and June to disprove accusations from ousted conservatives that the left is soft on crime and security. It’s also a reflection of the reputation Valls earned as mayor of a disadvantaged and troubled Paris suburb for being tough on law-and-order issues–a stand so rigid that some disapproving leftists accuse him of being a conservative in all but name. But the intransigence with suspected Islamist extremists and sympathizing enablers also marks a move by Socialist President Francois Hollande to learn from in the Merah case to prevent future terror activity.French intelligence services continue facing accusations they repeatedly overlooked evidence Merah was a dedicated jihadi determined to carry a strike in France. In that process, detractors say, intelligence officials not only passed up opportunities to unmask and arrest Merah before he went into action, but were then slow to consider him as a suspect once he had. On at least one occasion, those services also ignored–inadvertently, it seems–information provided by other security forces about Merah’s radical associations and potential as a threat.Those allegations also carry a degree of political accusation. French security officials tell TIME France’s domestic intelligence service was given its dominating role in France’s anti-terror effort–often to the expense or exclusion of the nation’s other specialized units–by former conservative President . Shortly after his election in 2007, Sarkozy not only combined several parallel and at times competing intelligence units into the bigger, far more powerful outfit it is now–but also tapped some of his most trusted allies to run it.Since Hollande’s victory, the security officials say, moves have been made to bring the full range of specialized intelligence, investigative, judicial, and police services back into what has been France’s unique and centralized anti-terror model since the 1990s. As a result, that broader perspective and diverse experience may be coming up with different analyses and strategies of how to best fight the terror threat–including views about moving on people some units identify as even potential dangers earlier in the game. If so, Saturday’s raid may be both a reflection of that change–and an indication no one in France’s security or political system is willing to brave future accusations of having of being slow on the uptake or tardy to act again.?MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) ? Soaring high above the ocean, tethered to a boat, a parasail ride is at once exhilarating and peaceful, even quiet. But every year, there are accidents.The Parasail Safety Council, which tracks injuries and deaths nationwide, reports more than 70 people have been killed and at least 1,600 injured between 1982 and 2012, out of an estimated 150 million parasail rides during those 30 years.That’s a casualty rate of about one per 90,000 rides. In comparison, the chance of being seriously injured at an amusement park is about one in 9 million rides, according 2010 data from the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.Despite parasailing’s inherent risk, few federal or state safety regulations exist for it. In , which has by far the largest number of parasail operators at about 120, repeated efforts to enact new rules following fatal accidents have gone nowhere. Florida is seen by safety proponents as a national bellwether because of parasailing’s popularity in a state highly dependent on tourist dollars.The lack of safety regulations frustrates Shannon Kraus, mother of two girls who crashed into a Pompano Beach hotel roof in 2007 when their parasail line snapped during a storm. One of the girls, 15-year-old Amber May White, later died of her injuries, while her sister Crystal, then 16, has had a long road to recovery from head injuries.“Nobody has listened to me from day No. 1,” Kraus said. “I’ve just been shoved aside. I’ve kind of been ignored and I’m pretty angry about that.”Crystal White, now a mother of two herself and a massage therapist, said most people who sign up to parasail have little idea it’s less regulated than the average carnival ride.“They just need to know that if they go up, and something bad happens, there’s nothing they can do about it, because there are no laws, or rules, or regulations,” she said.Indeed, five years after the girls’ accident just off the same beach, a Connecticut woman died when her harness gave way and she fell about 150 feet into the ocean. The Aug. 15 death of 28-year-old Kathleen Miskell has prompted the first National Transportation Safety Board investigation into a parasailing fatality. Safety advocates hope Florida lawmakers will give the issue a fresh look.Mark McCulloh, who runs the Parasail Safety Council, said in the U.S. and its territories about 620 vessels offer parasail rides to about 4 million people a year. He said only and have relatively comprehensive regulations, while the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Coast Guard oversee some limited aspects of the activity.In Florida, state Sen. Gwen Margolis, a Democrat, said the proposed regulations would include inspections of parasailing equipment, new rules restricting rides during certain weather conditions and prohibitions against parasailing near fixed objects such as power lines. The proposal would also require operators to buy insurance.Margolis said past efforts have run into opposition by parasail operators and a general anti-regulation attitude among many lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature.“When you get onto anything that’s recreational, you assume that somebody’s inspected it and everything’s OK. And you can’t assume that,” she said.Most parasail operators, however, are willing to submit to safety regulations as long as they are sensible, said Dan Breitenstein, who runs Miami Beach Parasail.“If you have someone who has never been on a parasail boat or doesn’t know the workings of it, if they’re making up rules that would have little effect on what we do” it wouldn’t make sense, Breitenstein said. “There’s definitely things we can do.”People who sign up for Miami Beach Parasail generally pay about $75 for a 15-minute ride that can take them as high as 350 feet in the air. They sit in swing-like harnesses attached to a tow bar, which is connected by ropes to the kite-like parasail above and a winch in the boat below.As the 33-foot “High Anxiety” boat moves across the water, the parasail passengers are slowly lifted into the air and the line is let out. After the ride, the boat is slowed gradually as the line is brought in so parasailors land back on the boat on their feet.It all seems fairly safe, and you can’t beat the view, which on one recent day featured an umbrella-dotted South Beach and, beyond, its famed Art Deco hotel and entertainment district, with the greenish-blue Atlantic Ocean below.The lack of regulation, however, means no one is looking over the operator’s shoulder to make sure ropes damaged by sun and salt water are replaced. There are also little or no rules regarding age limits or experience for “spotters” who observe the riders.And there’s nothing beyond common sense to prevent an operator for taking people up windy weather, which many people say is the one variable that can most often lead to an accident.Breitenstein, who has radars on his boats, said he maintains a five-mile buffer from any nearby bad weather. But he said in Florida, storms can develop quickly offshore ? and sometimes operators might be tempted to take a little risk to make more money.“Weather is our biggest, toughest thing,” he said. “Taking chances, that’s a bad habit to get into.”By Curt Anderson?() ? A preliminary investigation has found friendly fire likely was to blame in a shooting that killed one federal agent and wounded another along the Arizona- border, the said Friday, shaking up the probe into an incident that reignited the political debate over border security.“There are strong preliminary indications that the death of United States Border Patrol Agent Nicholas J. Ivie and the injury to a second agent was the result of an accidental shooting incident involving only the agents,” FBI Special Agent in Charge James L. Turgal Jr. said in a statement.Turgal didn’t elaborate on the agency’s conclusions but said the FBI is using “all necessary investigative, forensic and analytical resources” as it investigates the Tuesday shooting about five miles north of the border near Bisbee.(MORE:?)Ivie was killed after he and two other agents responded to an alarm triggered by a sensor aimed at detecting smugglers and others entering the U.S. illegally.One of the other agents was shot in the ankle and buttocks, but was released from the hospital after surgery. The third agent was uninjured.The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office, which is assisting the FBI in the probe, said federal investigators used ballistic testing to determine the shootings likely were the result of so-called friendly fire among the agents.Jeffrey D. Self, commander of Customs and Border Protection’s Joint Field Command-Arizona, said investigators were making progress and noted the initial findings that the shootings appeared to be accidental didn’t diminish the fact that Ivie “gave the ultimate sacrifice and died serving his country.”“The fact is, the work of the Border Patrol is dangerous,” Self said during a news conference Friday in Tucson.(PHOTOS:?)While federal authorities declined to offer details of the shooting, George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said the three agents split up as they investigated the sensor alarm, noting they all fired their weapons.“Coming in from different angles, that is more than likely how it ended up happening,” McCubbin told The Arizona Republic of the shootings.A Mexican law enforcement official said Thursday that federal police had arrested two men who may have been connected to the shootings. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said it was unclear if there was strong evidence linking the men to the case.Mexican authorities on Friday didn’t immediately respond to telephone messages from The Associated Press.After a meeting of border governors Friday in Albuquerque, N.M., Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer stood by the criticism she leveled earlier this week in response to the shootings in which she said a political stalemate and the federal government’s failures have left the border unsecured and Border Patrol agents in harm’s way.(MORE:?)“It’s the federal government’s responsibility to secure our border, and they need to do that, and then we can deal with all the other issues that have come about because our border hasn’t been secured,” said Brewer, who plans to attend Ivie’s funeral Monday in Sierra Vista.The Border Patrol couldn’t immediately comment on the frequency of friendly fire shootings involving its agents. But such incidents appeared to be extremely rare, if they’ve ever occurred at all.“I know of absolutely none in the past, and my past goes back to 1968,” said Kent Lundgren, chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, citing the year he joined the agency. “I’m not saying it never happened. I’m just saying I’ve never heard of it.”Also Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano traveled to Arizona to express her condolences to Ivie’s family and meet with authorities. The family did not return calls from The Associated Press on Friday.Ivie’s death marked the first fatal shooting of an agent since a deadly 2010 firefight with Mexican bandits that killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010 and spawned congressional probes of a botched government gun-smuggling investigation.Terry’s shooting was later linked to that “Fast and Furious” operation, which allowed people suspected of illegally buying guns for others to walk away from gun shops with weapons, rather than be arrested.Authorities intended to track the guns into Mexico. Two rifles found at the scene of Terry’s shooting were bought by a member of the gun-smuggling ring being investigated. Critics of the operation say any shooting along the border now will raise the specter that those illegal weapons are still being used.Twenty-six Border Patrol agents have died in the line of duty since 2002.By?JACQUES BILLEAUD and PETE YOST? 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...? 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. 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...?5:55 am ET: “Campaign Gains a New Intensity in Debate’s Wake”: “Mitt Romney Must Prove That Debate Performance Was the Real Him”: “Romney Presses Edge After Obama Stumble”: “Romney’s Medicare Plan Raises Cost Questions”: “Inside the Campaign: Reinventing Romney”: “Dems Hope Biden Can Blunt Romney Momentum Post-Debate”?(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.Campus officials didn’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.A statement issued by university spokesman Keith Ayers said Collar, who wrestled at Wetumpka High School before enrolling at South Alabama, assumed a “fighting stance” and chased an officer before being shot. The officer tried to retreat numerous times to defuse the situation before opening fire, the school said.(PHOTOS:?)But sophomore Tyler Kendrick said campus authorities haven’t provided any satisfying answers about why Collar was killed.“Really, it just upsets me that there’s no other way to apprehend an unarmed student rather than shooting him. I don’t understand that,” Kendrick said.Student Joshua Frye said it seemed the officer could have used something other than a firearm to stop Collar.“What I feel is that a cop has more than a gun,” he said.The officer was placed on paid leave, and an autopsy will determine if drugs or alcohol were involved.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’s Office, which will review the shooting.(MORE:?)Colgan Meanor went to high school with Collar and then enrolled at the same college.“He was a great, loving guy who always made people smile,” she said. “He’s not the kind of guy that people knew him and said he would do something like this.”Collar was the second person killed on the South Alabama campus since last year.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.Ayers said South Alabama, located near downtown Mobile, was still “a very safe campus,” despite Collar’s death.?In September, Amy Huynh, a recent high school graduate who was accepted to Colby College in Maine, visited some of her childhood friends during move-in weekend at UCLA. They’re newly minted freshmen, ready to embark on an exciting college career. But Huynh is beginning a different adventure: instead of attending Colby, she’s mentoring middle schoolers in southern Los Angeles for a year.“A lot of people did not agree with what I was doing,” Huynh says of her decision to defer college enrollment. “College is getting so expensive now, so I said, Why not? College isn’t going anywhere.”Huynh is a corps member in City Year, a service organization that places young people between the ages of 17 and 24 in urban schools to work with teachers and mentor students. She’s also one of the thousands of members of the high school class of 2012 who chose to take a break from school — a so-called gap year — instead of immediately enrolling in college.(MORE: )About 1.2% of first-time college freshmen choose to defer enrollment for a year, according to the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. What these students choose to do with their time varies widely, from expensive study-abroad programs to volunteer programs like City Year to staying at home and saving up for college.“In 1980 no one was talking gap year,” says Holly Bull, president of the Center for Interim Programs, a company that offers parents and students consulting in choosing the appropriate gap-year program. “I’ve watched this whole concept go basically from its inception to present day. I wouldn’t call it mainstream, but?there’s?way more awareness and support and colleges are now beginning to endorse it as a really positive thing.”With over 20 years of experience researching gap years, Bull has seen students work everywhere from outdoor-education centers to Scottish castles to elephant sanctuaries. She says the students that go to her are often looking for a break from the academic grind. The gap year can provide young people with an opportunity to learn what type of adult they want to be. It can also help them gain more focus so they don’t have to spend extra years ? and tuition dollars ? figuring out the answer to that question on a college campus. “I’m definitely hearing from families that it’s harder to consider these colleges’ tuitions with a student who seems so uncertain,” she says.(MORE: )For Huynh, the decision was about both personal development and economics. While some gap-year programs can cost tens of thousands of dollars, City Year is free and provides a living stipend. She’ll get a $5,000 scholarship for participating in City Year that she can apply to her Colby expenses. She also plans to write the school and ask them to join the , through which schools provide scholarships to City Year corps members. “That would be awesome,” Huynh says.Melanie Brennand Mueller, vice president of City Year’s recruitment and admissions, says about 10% of corps members are high school graduates taking gap years, and they hope to recruit more in the future. “They’re idealistic, they’re highly talented and they’re excited to do something meaningful before college,” she says. Other volunteer programs, like the and , also offer students a way to experience different parts of the U.S. or the world on the cheap.Bob Clagett, a former director of admissions at Middlebury College, says taking a gap year can help students gain a renewed focus on academics. “By stepping off the treadmill, they frequently remind themselves of what their education is all about,” he says. “They kind of reinvent themselves.”He’s done research to back up the claim. At Middlebury, students who took gap years were found to have higher GPAs than those who didn’t, even when controlling for things like wealth and high school achievement. A study at the University of North Carolina yielded similar results.Huynh, for one, thinks the experience will help her when she finally arrives on campus. She wakes up at 6 a.m. each day to deal with rambunctious preteens ? ?and at times during the school day is the only adult in the classroom. “I’ve personally become more driven,” she says. “Being in a high-stress environment especially, I think that it forces people to grow up really fast.”(MORE: )Selective schools typically allow accepted students to defer their enrollment for a year or two, so it makes sense for high schoolers to explore college and gap-year opportunities concurrently. Some schools are now even offering formalized versions of gap-year programs. Princeton’s , for instance, allows selected students to participate in a nine-month community-service program abroad. Other schools are partnering with service organizations like City Year and offering scholarships to students who participate.Some students also use the gap year as a way to bolster their resume, reapplying to colleges with some post-high-school experience under their belt. “It’s not a guarantee in terms of getting into college, but it has certainly helped a number of schools in the past,” Bull says. She mentioned one student who was initially waitlisted from Brown University but then was accepted during her gap-year teaching in Costa Rica and Argentina.The idea that formal education has to be a sprint from age 5 to 21 seems to be changing. Says Clagett: “Getting a job for a year, even if it’s flipping hamburgers, still can be a productive experience and can help students just do something other than think about what they have to do to get into college.”? only occasionally gets accused of realism–musical, dramatic or otherwise. But at its best, the show can be emotionally real and raw; it finds ways of capturing truths about growing up that teen shows rarely notice. Its season three finale “Goodbye,” I wrote last spring, caught something familiar about the ?how it “feels like something that happens to you, suddenly and all at once, like going over a waterfall.” And “The Break-Up,” the best episode so far of season four, was a kind of companion piece that showed how, even after saying goodbye, moving on can be a a messy, painful process.The episode was structured around three student couples?Finn and Rachel, Kurt and Blaine, Brittany and Santana?as well as Will and Emma. Even before knowing the title of the episode, it did not take much story-sleuthing to know that these long-distance (or soon-to-be long-distance) relationships were in trouble.And yet the Ryan Murphy?written episode, in a simple, straightforward way, made each of these reckonings achingly real and specific. In part, it was the structure of the episode: the stories were neatly parallel, there were not too many plots jammed together in the hour, and there was some of the best use of the soundtrack in a long time. After too many episodes, for instance, in which Blaine spoke two lines and burst into song because we needed Darren Criss to sing, his raw, voice-cracking ballad version of “Teenage Dream” was possibly the most affecting acting-through-the-song on Glee since “Defying Gravity” in season one. I’m seriously misting up here typing about it. You’ll have to excuse me for a second.As in a preview of the episode at MonkeySee, another neat trick “The Break-Up” pulled off is to make the characters’ dilemmas parallel Glee’s, as many of its characters have graduated: What’s next? What matters? Can we really stay connected to Lima in the same way? Who will stay with us, and who is going to fade away?I’d missed Naya Rivera, and it was Santana’s breakup speech and serenade to Brittany that really captured that feeling. It was about more than how she loved Brittany and hated that she couldn’t be with her. It was, like many goodbyes at this stage of life, a kind of taking leave of her childhood. She grew up and changed with Brittany, she still loves her and she hates the idea that their love would ever decay with time and distance?but she also knows that it will happen, can feel it already starting to, and she has to cut things off for the sake of both their memories. This is very Glee: it’s a joyous show (hence the name), but with a running sadness, like a minor chord in a pop song.So the closing montage of flashbacks, to that wonderfully spare on-stage version of “The Scientist,” was more than just a clip reel of Glee greatest hits, or a way of sentimentalizing its characters. It felt, in an earned way, like a goodbye to the first three seasons of the show.Like a kid going off to college, I don’t know what comes next for Glee. I don’t know if it can tell stories in and Lima and keep them equally compelling. (Last week, for instance, the show was rifling through its own hand-me-downs, telling another class-election story.) I’m not really sure that it can sustain interest in the new McKinley characters, however well written.On the other hand, I was truly impressed to see Will and Emma actually have a believable, grown-up relationship problem, about diverging ambitions and careers instead of OCD and wedding plans. And while I don’t know where or how Finn will fit in to the new Glee, the hour emotionally sold his not-fitting-in–his journey from New Direction to no direction. From the beginning, his character has been as essential to Glee as Rachel’s: if she’s there to show the power of reaching for dreams, he, with his constant fear of ending up a “Lima loser,” is a reminder that simply having a dream doesn’t automatically lead you somewhere better.“The Break-Up” showed that Glee still can do what it’s best at, working through simple, real conflicts and paying them off in three-minute explosions of transcendent pop emotion. For an hour, it set aside the stunts and did, as Santana called it, “the mature thing.” Like many mature things, it was painful and necessary, and it hurt beautifully.?SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google and major book publishers have settled a lengthy legal battle over digital copyrights, but a bigger dispute still looms with thousands of authors who allege that Google is illegally profiting from their works.The truce announced Thursday ends a federal lawsuit filed in 2005 by several members of the Association of American Publishers after Google Inc. began stockpiling its Internet search index with digital duplicates of books scanned from libraries.Google has maintained that its scanning is covered by fair-use provisions of copyright law, although it offered to remove specific books from its index upon request. It also showed only snippets of the copyrighted books unless permission was given to show more.Publishers and authors, however, insisted that Google needed explicit permission from them before making the digital copies, let alone showing even snippets of text from the books on Google’s website.Google worked out a $125 million settlement with publishers and authors in 2008, only to have a federal judge in New York reject it after the U.S. Justice Department and other critics contended that it would thwart competition in the rapidly growing digital book market and flout U.S. copyright law.One of the reasons that settlement unraveled was because it would have given Google broad authority to copy books, unless an author or publisher notified the company not to make the duplicate.Terms of the new settlement weren’t divulged, but it won’t require court approval because its reach will be limited to the parties signing on.The scaled-down agreement with publishers is likely to make more copyright-protected books available online. Most of those will be sold through Google Play, a digital store. Publishers will have the right to release digital copies of their books in Google Play or remove them from Google’s search index entirely.That’s not a major change in how Google has been handling matters with the lawsuits pending, but publishers now feel comfortable enough with the system to set up an official framework, Tom Allen, president of the publishers’ group, said in an interview.Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., will also provide publishers with a digital copy of a scanned book upon request.The settlement “shows that digital services can provide innovative means to discover content while still respecting the rights of copyright holders,” Allen said in a statement.Both Google and the publishers may have been more motivated to figure out a way to work together with so many more people reading books on digital devices than just a few years ago. Google has been playing a more important role in that transition since it started selling a tablet computer, the Nexus 7, in July. The tablet is set up to download books and other digital content from Google Play.Although the sparring over Google’s effort to create the world’s largest digital library appears to be over on one front, a lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild remains in the way of Google’s ambitious plans to digitize more than 130 million of books sitting on library shelves around the world.The authors’ suit, which came before the publishers’ complaint, raises thornier issues and threatens Google with a huge bill. The authors are seeking $750 in damages for every copyrighted book that Google has scanned over the past eight years.Despite the lawsuits, Google has made digital copies of more than 20 million books so far. The copyrights on many of those books have already expired, making them fair game and not part of any infringement damages that might be awarded. Even if just one-quarter of the books scanned so far by Google are protected by copyrights, the company would be liable for nearly $4 billion if a court sides with the authors.“The publishers’ private settlement, whatever its terms, does not resolve the authors’ copyright infringement claims against Google,” the Authors Guild said in a statement Thursday. “Google continues to profit from its use of millions of copyright-protected books without regard to authors’ rights, and our class-action lawsuit on behalf of U.S. authors continues.”In an interview, Authors Guild lawyer Michael Boni said the publishers agreement made him “cautiously optimistic” that a settlement of his case could be reached before it goes to trial.But he also stressed the authors’ issues are much different than the publishers’ concerns. “We’re really on a separate motor at this point,” Boni said.Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., declined to comment Thursday on the legal dispute with the authors.In May, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in New York granted the authors’ lawsuit class certification, meaning the case would cover all authors, even if they are too small to hire their own lawyers to sue Google. Chin also rejected Google’s attempt to get the case thrown out.The authors’ suit is in a holding pattern until an appeals court rules on Google’s attempt to strip the authors of their status as a united class.One of the biggest sticking points in the authors’ case revolves around the rights to millions of out-of-print books that are still protected by copyright but whose writers’ whereabouts are unknown.The prospect that Google could gain a digital monopoly on these so-called “orphan works” was one of the main reasons that the Justice Department and other objectors urged Chin to scotch the earlier $125 million settlement with publishers and authors. Chin rejected the agreement in 2010.Google’s stock rose $5.55 to close Thursday at $768.05.The publishers who brought the lawsuit were The McGraw-Hill Cos.; Pearson PLC’s Penguin Group and Pearson Education; John Wiley & Sons Inc. and CBS Corp.’s Simon & Schuster.BY?MICHAEL LIEDTKE AND LARRY NEUMEISTERNeumeister reported from New York. Liedtke?is an AP Technology Writer.?DETROIT — U.S. safety regulators are investigating older Honda Odyssey Minivans and Pilot SUVs because they can roll away after drivers have removed the ignition key.The probe affects more than 577,000 vehicles from the 2003 and 2004 model years with automatic transmissions.A mechanism that locks the key in the ignition until the vehicles are shifted into park can fail. Complaints filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration say drivers can remove the key without shifting into park. That could cause vehicles to roll off unexpectedly.Owners have filed 43 complaints that include 16 crashes. Two people said they were hurt while trying to stop rolling vehicles. One suffered a broken leg, while another injured a knee.Investigators will decide if the problem is widespread enough to warrant a recall.? 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. 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...?As in the international edition of TIME, and as Girish Gupta last week on TIME.com, Venezuela’s burgeoning violent crime will be a key factor in the Oct. 7 presidential election. The baffling inability of socialist President Hugo Chavez, who controls the world’s largest oil reserves, to rein in a murder rate that by some estimates is four times higher than when he took office 13 years ago, including some 50 homicides a week in Caracas, has rankled Venezuelan voters. Chavez wasn’t helped last Sunday when two supporters of his centrist challenger, Miranda state Governor Henrique Capriles Radonski, were shot and killed in Chavez’s home state of Barinas, allegedly by Chavez backers who were blocking a Capriles campaign caravan.A third victim, also a Capriles supporter, is in critical condition. Chavez urged Venezuelans to “confront each other with votes, not violence,” but he just as quickly took the polarizing low road and blamed his “bourgeois” opponents for the deadly confrontation. The Capriles camp was angered again on Wednesday when a judge in Barinas, where Chavez’s elder brother Adan is Governor, inexplicably released two of the shooting suspects.Chavez, who is battling cancer, is certainly favored to win re-election this Sunday. But the Barinas episode is a reminder of why he’s no longer considered an overwhelming shoo-in ? and why a Capriles victory is no longer unthinkable. More and more, Chavez’s left-wing revolution is marked by the kind of dogmatic denial and bullying bluster that has left Venezuelans like Luz Marina Moron, a nurse I recently interviewed in the poor Caracas barrio of Catia?a cradle of el presidente’s political support?feeling “harta,” as she told me,?or fed up. Doctors at the hospital in Catia say 80% of trauma cases are gunshot wounds; Moron’s son was gunned down a few years ago in Catia by a street tough who wanted his tennis shoes. To her, the homicide plague spotlights the paradox of Chavez’s long rule: How his welcome anti-poverty mission has been undermined by his mismanaged socialist mission?how crises like crime, inflation and corruption have become as much a part of the revolution’s landscape as new health clinics and defiance of the U.S.(MORE:?)But whether Chavez wins or loses, his revolution’s decline is a reflection of a larger malaise among the Latin American left after a decade of robust resurgence. Chavez’s two Achilles heels going into Sunday’s vote are crime and inflation, which at 28% last year was the world’s highest. In Argentina, meanwhile, demonstrators have been taking to the streets en masse in recent weeks, banging pots and pans, to protest leftist President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner?and their two biggest complaints are crime and inflation. Argentina, according to the Organization of American States, has the highest armed robbery rate in the western hemisphere; and inflation, pegged at close to 25% by independent analysts, has prompted Fernandez to impose tight currency controls that have all but barred Argentines from buying dollars.Like Chavez, Fernandez has amassed a surfeit of authoritarian power that often blinds her to flaws in her populist crusade. But with economic growth projected to be negligible this year, government deficits ballooning and her Vice President embroiled in a major corruption scandal, Fernandez’s approval rating has free-fallen from 64% last autumn, when she won re-election by a landslide and economic growth was running at 8.9%, to 24% now, according to the Argentine polling firm Management & Fit. Moody’s Investment Service downgraded Argentina’s risk rating last month, while Fernandez railed at the International Monetary Fund for demanding more reliable economic data from her government. The Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, sets inflation at a highly questionable 10% or less?and actually fines anyone who publishes contrarian figures.The IMF is certainly no saintly institution; critics say its fiscal rigidity helped bring on the epic financial collapse Argentina suffered a decade ago, which Fernandez and her late husband and presidential predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, are credited for fixing. But Fernandez didn’t find much global sympathy last month when IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned that she would issue no more “yellow cards,” as she said in soccer-ese, and that Argentina must produce accurate data by Dec. 17 or face the unprecedented red card of IMF censure if not expulsion.Fernandez rejected Lagarde’s notice as an affront to Argentina’s sovereignty. But many Argentines seem weary of her Cristina-against-the-world act, which hit a crescendo this year when she peremptorily expropriated Spanish petro-giant Repsol’s $10 billion controlling stake in Argentina’s largest oil company, YPF. As a result, they seem far less enthusiastic about her not-so-veiled bid to change the Constitution so she can run for a third four-year term in 2015.(MORE:?)In Ecuador, President ?is also favored to win re-election on Feb. 17. But he may not have the resounding support of el pueblo that he assumed. Between corruption allegations?there is growing clamor inside Ecuador’s Congress to investigate hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable no-bid government contracts handed out by Correa’s government, including big ones to his brother?and Correa’s own authoritarian bent, most evidenced by his crackdown on media and free speech, Correa (who also WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asylum this year) may face strong enough opposition to force a second-round runoff. One of his main challengers, centrist congressional deputy Cesar Montufar, just had his candidacy suddenly disqualified by Ecuador’s Correa-friendly election council for lack of petition signatures, even though his bid was already certified in July.Oil wealth-generated corruption?a pestilence that Chavez came to power decrying?is a key issue for Venezuelan voters, too. But as with crime and inflation, Chavez barely mentions it, insisting only that he’ll double down on his socialist agenda if he wins another six-year term, even though foreign investment has all but dried up.?His officials, in fact, outright dismiss the problems. Chavez’s Information Minister, Andres Izarra, once began laughing uncontrollably on CNN en Espanol in an attempt to mock another guest who argued that Chavez’s failure to reduce the spiraling murder rate hurt the poor, who are by far the majority of victims.Izarra’s unseemly mirth?and the Chavez government’s refusal to release violent crime data in recent years, apparently believing the problem will go away if it’s not acknowledged?are symptoms of a larger arrogancia that seems to be catching up with the Latin American left. Whatever Sunday’s outcome, Chavez’s movement isn’t laughing so loudly anymore.MORE: ? Yemen Fights Back I am amazed by your cover story's headline, "The End of al-Qaeda?" [Sept. 17]. 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. A. Rahim Yousefzai, IslamabadUpon seeing "The End of al-Qaeda?" it struck me that TIME had a similar headline on its Dec....? MAIL Glass Half Full Bill Clinton has a masterly way of making an issue clear without making it simplistic ["The Case for Optimism," Oct. 1]. 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. Ann Johnson, OAKLAND, CALIF. 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. Andrew Colyer, BEL AIR, MD. Big Coal Fights...? 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."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.' "Three years and over 1 million worldwide record sales later, such pessimism...? MOST VIRTUOUS 1 Andrew Weil TRUE FOOD: SEASONAL, SUSTAINABLE, SIMPLE, PURE 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. 2 Magnus Nilsson FAVIKEN 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...?() ? 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. was still investigating Saturday’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.The Israeli military said the drone approached Israel’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.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’s suspect nuclear program.(VIDEO:?)“It is an Iranian drone that was launched by Hezbollah,” Israeli lawmaker Miri Regev, a former chief spokeswoman for the Israeli military, wrote on her Twitter feed. “Hezbollah and Iran continue to try to collect information in every possible way in order to harm Israel.”She did not offer any further evidence and was not immediately available for comment.Hezbollah officials would not comment on speculation that the group had launched the drone.The Israeli dailies Yediot Ahronot and Maariv published maps based on military “estimates” that claimed to show the route taken by the drone.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.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.Sunday’s Israeli air raids, buzzing over pro-Hezbollah villages in southern Lebanon, appeared to be aimed at reminding the guerrilla group of Israel’s air superiority.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.Lebanon’s national news agency said the planes flew low over the market town of Nabatiyeh and nearby villages.(PHOTOS:?)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.Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite group committed to Israel’s destruction, has long served as an Iranian proxy along Israel’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.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’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.Since the fighting ended, the sides have been locked in a covert battle against one another.“The war between Hezbollah and Israel was not extinguished at any moment, be it in the media or at the intelligence level,” said Ibrahim Bayram, an expert on Shiite affairs who often writes about Hezbollah for Lebanon’s An-Nahar newspaper.“Israel is always trying to breach Hezbollah’s security and in return Hezbollah is also working day and night to breach Israel’s security,” he added.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.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.Many speculated that the aircraft was trying to gather intelligence on Israel’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.(MORE: )“It’s quite a long distance, indicating a high level of sophistication,” said Shlomo Brom, a retired Israeli general who is now an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank.The drone flight also came against the broader backdrop of rising tensions between Israel and Iran.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.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.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.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.Iran frequently makes announcements about its strides in military technology, but it is virtually impossible to independently determine the capabilities of its weapons.Yiftah Shapir, another analyst at the INSS, said Saturday’s incident may have been meant as a warning to Israel.“The drone could be a message that they have the capability to pull this off, and do so perhaps with weapons,” he said.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.By?JOSEF FEDERMAN and?ZEINA KARAM?Want to make good on your threat on skipping town if your candidate loses in the election?JetBlue is offering 1,006 “winners” and their chosen companions free roundtrip flights out of the country to any of the airline’s international destinations, most of which are in the Caribbean. Participants have to pick their candidate on JetBlue’s? before Election Day, and your candidate has to lose on the big day before you’re eligible. Think of it as a consolation prize; and hey, no one’s forcing you to use that return leg ticket, are they?(MORE: )“We’ve all heard it said before: if my candidate does not win, I’m leaving the country,” said JetBlue marketing executive?Marty St. George?in . “Fun is one of our five founding values, and in this spirit we decided to give people a chance to recover from the political noise and follow through on their claim to skip town if their candidate comes up short.”And just to shake things up a little bit, the Election Protection website also polls participants on which destinations they prefer and shows how those preferences break down along party lines. Not that it really seems to matter: both Republicans and Democrats seem to prefer the tropical blue waters of St. Maarten pretty equally. At least that’s something they can agree on.MORE: Erica Ho is a contributor at TIME and the editor of . Find her on Twitter at and . You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s and on Twitter at .?It’s been a wild few months for Community, the cult NBC comedy about a ragtag bunch of community-college students. First, show runner Dan Harmon was fired. then Chevy Chase said doing the show was “a big mistake.” Now, in advance of the fourth season premiere (Oct. 19 at 8:30 p.m. E.T.), star Joel McHale breaks it all down with TIME.TIME: This is the first season of Community without Dan? Joel McHale: It is. Unless he’s there secretly.Hiding under a couch? Monitoring from afar? You never know.So what’s changed? Boy, let’s see. Well, we don’t have to wear the uniforms anymore. And the lobster buffets are gone, because it’s the only meat he’s not allergic to. Very convenient, a weird allergy.Oh, yeah?All right, I’m just making stuff up. Really, not much has changed. A lot of writers stayed, so they know the spirit and tone of the show. And it’s our fourth year, so we have a good sense of our characters. The main difference is he’s not physically there.I only ask because after he got fired, you and your castmates were pretty vocal about what a comic genius he is, and how he’s such an integral part of the show. Are you worried it’ll suffer creatively?What is so genius about Dan is that these characters are incredibly well-drawn. They’re very much based in real people, but the world is fantastical a lot of the time. I always end up comparing it to something like Shaun of the Dead. In that Simon, what’s his name, the lead in that movie?what’s his name?Hang on, I can Google it.No, now I’m pissed. I can’t believe myself. Simon Pegg! You know, he’s crying real tears in that bar when his girlfriend’s dumping him. But around him is a zombie world. That’s like Community. So in that sense, I think people were worried the show would become normal or something, or subdued. I don’t know if you’ve seen the photos of my character and The Dean [Jim Rash] in a dress, doing the tango, with two men dressed as unicorns behind us…That’s actually my desktop background. Well, as far as the story and the fantasticalism?wow, don’t print that, find out what the word for that is?it’s all still there. if we lost our uniqueness, we’d lose the show.(MORE:?)So your co-star Chevy Chase has been sharing a lot of opinions recently…No! What?He called sitcoms like Community “the lowest form of television.” What’s the deal? I will tease Chevy about that stuff, and then he always goes, Oh, I was just joking! and then I’ll say, a) Hilarious, hilarious! and b) You should soak your dentures. It’s like, Chevy, why are you here? This is not a tour of duty. You are not going to be sued. And then he’s like, well you know, I like it here, I do. And I’m like, alright, well then stop saying stuff. Or, I guess, say whatever you want, but I’m gonna make fun. It gives the whole cast fodder to make fun of him.That seems fair.I would love to do a group interview with us doing Chevy and Chevy doing us. And we’re all just like [alters voice to mock Chase], Raaaaahh, I’m just here for the money! I love it! I love the money!Sounds like you guys have a fun dynamic on set.Yeah, if we’re putting in that many hours, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be on a set where people hate each other. We get along really well. I mean, other than when Chevy’s raving about how he just wants the money.Let’s talk about your other job, hosting E!’s TV clip round-up The Soup. Do you actually watch any of the shows you mock?Uh, no. I mean, yes, but no, I can’t watch them all. In our first season it was me and four other guys and a gal and we watched all of television. And it got downright depressing. I remember getting to the end of watching six hours of television and then I had two more hours of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and I was just like, I’m gonna kill myself. But thankfully, they have hired more and more people, so I can choose the shows I like to watch.Which ones do you choose?Honey Boo Boo. I know everyone’s saying it’s the end of everything, but I don’t think it’s as bad as Jersey Shore. It’s definitely not as scripted. I also like The Ultimate Fighter. In a singing competition, contestants get criticized for being off-key. In this one, if you mess up, your face is bashed in. So that is an honest show.Which show gives you guys the most fodder?I cannot stand stuff like Bad Girls Club, where people are put together and plied with alcohol so they fight. Or Big Brother, where it’s just conspiring and whispering, conspiring and whispering. I truly believe that’s like a glimpse of hell. But one show that’s giving us a lot of clips right now is the flameless candle show on HSN.The flameless candle show?It’s on Home Shopping Network out of Tampa. They do an hour of this thing on the flameless candle, which is just a light shaped like a candle. But they will spend the whole time telling you why they’re better than regular candles, and how classy they are. We love it.(MORE:?)Anything else you can share about the new season of Community?We have our Halloween special, where we go to?I don’t know if I can say this, but I’m gonna say it?Pierce’s mansion.? And it is haunted, basically. Something has happened. Also, Chang is back. But it is not what you would expect.Dun dun dun.Dun dun dun! He’s a Komodo dragon. He’s turned into a dragom. Into a huge lizard! No, really, it’s great to be back with the cast. We only have 13 episodes this season, so we have to swing for the fences and make them as good as we can.Well, good luck. And thanks for the interview!Sure. And please, when you write this?every single critic writes, “the ratings-challenged Community.” And I always go, well, yes we were, but we beat American Idol in the demo when we came back after our forced hiatus [in March].You did?No one remembers that! And we were the number one comedy on NBC for that month. So whenever I hear that, I’m like, addendum to your claim! Or at least many critics. Not Time magazine critics. You know, you write for something reputable.Consider it noted.Thanks!VIDEO: ?’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’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, “Yum, this banner tastes like freedom.”In the days before Saturday’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’Reilly’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.(WATCH: )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.The central disagreement between O’Reilly and Stewart ? who served as essentially tacit surrogates for and President Obama, respectively ? was made clear in their opening arguments. “About 20% of us are slackers, and it’s a growing industry,” O’Reilly said, echoing Romney’s infamous remark that 47% of Americans won’t take responsibility for their lives. Stewart responded: “My friend Bill O’Reilly is completely full of s—.” 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 “denizens of Bulls— Mountain” and said O’Reilly was the mountain’s mayor.(WATCH: )While many of the topics were the same as Romney and Obama’s first presidential bout ??deficit, health care, government spending ??Stewart and O’Reilly’s?debate was more enjoyable, partly because the debaters weren’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. “Why is it that if you take advantage of a tax break and you’re a corporation, you’re a smart businessman,” Stewart said when they were arguing about food stamps, “but if you take advantage of something that you need to not be hungry, you’re a moocher?” The crowd roared in catharsis.Their debate was also more enjoyable because it was, of course, hilarious ??and goofy. Stewart, standing a “hobbit-like” 5 ft. 7 in.,?looked strikingly short when he shook hands with O’Reilly, described as “yeti”-esque at 6 ft. 4 in. But that disadvantage was not to last: producers installed a mechanical platform behind Stewart’s podium that he could raise and lower like an elevator. “I can see why Obama did badly in the debate,” he said after going up. “The altitude really is rough up here.” During a sit-down portion, the two were asked about why they were able to come together when Congress couldn’t; Stewart moved to sit in O’Reilly’s giant lap. “And what would you like for Christmas, little boy?” the yeti said, to great guffaws. And when O’Reilly made the requisite Clint Eastwood joke, Stewart got up again and did an empty chair bit. “What?” Stewart said. “Tell them to do what?” It was good television, even if it technically wasn’t on TV.(LIST:?)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’Reilly’s classic news-show style. But from a p.r. perspective, O’Reilly was the real winner. His willingness to engage and be ridiculous with Stewart serves as proof that the employees at Fox News aren’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: “America.”During the Q&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 uberdivided 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’Reilly quipped, “Now I know I’m right.” Stewart returned to the trope that he opened with. “I have learned that Bulls— Mountain is tall,” he said, “and it’s deep.”PHOTOS:?PHOTOS:??In any given year, 7% of adults suffer from major , and at least 1 in 10 youth will reckon with the disorder at some point during their teenage years. But about 20% of these cases will not respond to current treatments; for those that do, relief may take weeks to months to come.There is one treatment, however, that works much faster: the anesthetic and “club drug” ketamine. It takes effect within hours. A single dose of ketamine produces relief of depression that has been shown in studies to last for up to 10 days; it also appears to reduce symptoms of and suicidal thoughts.? Now, a new research published in Science calls the discovery of these effects of ketamine, “”arguably the most important discovery in half a century” of depression research.Ketamine doesn’t work the way traditional antidepressants do. Many such drugs affect levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain, and while the idea that depression is caused by low levels of serotonin or an “imbalance” of other key neurotransmitters has been firmly fixed in the popular imagination, scientists have known for decades that it can’t be that simple. For one, antidepressant drugs change the brain’s neurotransmitter levels immediately, yet depression doesn’t lift for several weeks, a delay that could be potentially deadly.Another theory is that depression is caused not by neurotransmitter problems per se, but by damage to brain cells themselves in key regions critical to controlling mood. This idea fits nicely with evidence that stress can cause depression, since high levels of stress hormones can cause an overrelease of a neurotransmitter called glutamate, which damages cells and affects exactly the same suspected areas. More support for this theory comes from the fact that all known antidepressants increase cell growth in these areas too, providing an alternate explanation for their therapeutic results.At first, ketamine seemed to throw a monkey wrench into that neat idea, however. It didn’t seem likely that a drug could repair cells within hours, but new research explored in a review paper in the journal Science suggests just that. Ketamine rapidly spurs the growth of new synapses, the connections between brain cells, and is associated with “reversal of the atrophy caused by chronic stress,” the authors write.Unfortunately, the hallucinogenic and often outright unpleasant effects of ketamine mean that it can’t be used in the same way typical antidepressants are, and fears about its potential for misuse also hamper its development. Researchers are frantically trying to develop compounds that have the same effects as ketamine without producing a “high.”In the meanwhile, however, ketamine is already approved, so there’s nothing stopping psychiatrists from trying it and patients from asking for access to it in emergency situations when all else has failed. However, it must be given by infusion and carefully monitored (nasal sprays are being developed and there is an oral form that has some effects, but is not optimally absorbed), and the drug impairs patients for hours. Still, it relieves depression for at least several days:? if there’s a choice between being entirely dysfunctional seven days a week or only out of commission for one or two, many people would accept that trade-off.But while research on ketamine is ongoing, clinical use of the drug in the community remains rare. Fears about abuse continue to run high, though ketamine has never caught on as a major street drug. If the Science paper’s authors are right that ketamine’s effect on depression is a key advance? ? and if the drug really holds similar promise for bipolar disorder ? patients might want to consider pushing for greater access. Ketamine is off patent, so no drug maker is likely to do so.Maia Szalavitz is a health writer at TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at . You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland’s and on Twitter at .?After she caught flak for sporting yet another “pantless” look to a recent culinary event in Culver City, Calif., Lena Dunham told critics to “get used it,” 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’s New Yorker Festival, which ran from Oct. 5 to 7 in New York City. For the record, Dunham says she wasn’t pantless but had worn short shorts under the teal top. And she intimated that it wasn’t the outfit itself ? but rather her figure ? that seemed to really get critics heated. “I don’t think a girl with tiny thighs would have gotten that response,” she said.Dunham, who sans pants on the set of Girls earlier this year, admits that television isn’t always good about portraying fuller-figured women in the flesh. But she hasn’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: “This scene is not what it’s supposed to be, so I’m gonna take off my pants!”?(TRIPOLI, Libya) ? Libya’s parliament on Sunday ousted the country’s newly elected prime minister in a no-confidence vote, the latest blow to hopes that the country’s factions could agree on a government charged with restoring stability after last year’s civil war.Mustafa Abushagur was Libya’s first elected prime minister after last year’s overthrow of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. He represented an offshoot of the country’s oldest anti-Gadhafi opposition movement, and was considered a compromise candidate acceptable to both liberals and Islamists.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.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’s democracy but warned of instability if it takes too long to elect his replacement.(MORE:?)“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,” he said.He had 25 days from his Sep. 12 appointment by parliament to form a Cabinet and win the legislature’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.Until a replacement can be elected by the parliament, management of Libya’s government is in the hands of the legislature.The Congress will have to vote on a new prime minister in the coming weeks. The incoming leader will be responsible for rebuilding Libya’s army and police force and removing major pockets of support for the former regime.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.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.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.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.Some parliamentarians argued that Abushagur’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.After 40 years of Gadhafi’s divide-and-rule tactics and the 2011 war, Libya’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.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’s attacks during the war ? demanding representation. Lawmakers left the General National Congress floor, saying they would not vote under pressure.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 “quotas.”“The government I proposed is not perfect and was marred by some mistakes, so I changed it for the purpose of national unity,” he said.Independent lawmaker Nizar Kawan, who is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, said the group’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.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’s uprising.According to Libya’s transition plan, after the formation of a government a new constitution is to be written and voted upon in a national referendum.PHOTOS:?? 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. 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...? A year ago, he came home a hero. But that was a year ago. 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. 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...?2:33 pm ETThe President’s Denver decisions, from “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on MSNBC:ANDREA MITCHELL: What Congresswoman DeGette said yesterday when I was interviewing her in Colorado was why did he not bring up the women’s issues? Tell me that.MARK HALPERIN: I mean, I think there’s a range of things where the President’s campaign surrogates, and advertising, and messaging, and sometimes the President himself, certainly the Vice President, have been strong where the President just didn’t go there in the debate. I can’t really explain that except it seems like ? both David Axelrod, speaking on the record, and based on some of my conversations and the President’s actual performance ? it seemed like he just wanted to take what was presented. Whatever topic either Jim Lehrer brought up or Governor Romney brought up, that’s where the President was going to play defense and push back a little bit. He did not try to turn anything. I can’t really explain why he didn’t but it certainly didn’t serve him well. There’s a reason why they’ve driven women’s issue and the 47% and they’ve done it effectively. Why he thought the debate wasn’t the place to continue to drive those, I do not know.?3:10 pm ETMy Take with Andrea Mitchell on her eponymous MSNBC program on Mitt’s calibration:ANDREA MITCHELL: This move to the center, there’s no complaint from conservatives. Is it that they are so eager to defeat President Obama that they, right now, say, anything that works is okay with them?MARK HALPERIN: Well, Romney has had, as you know, a troubled relationship with certain elements of the right. Even after he picked Paul Ryan, there was a brief honeymoon period there, people held their tongue for a while but then the criticism started again. I think, certainly, the conventional wisdom amongst the chattering class now is the debate performance will quiet critics on the right and he can get away with saying things, moving more to the center. I think two things about that. One, I think it’s being overstated how much he’s actually changing positions or even rhetoric from some of the things he’s previously said, for good or for ill. But, I just don’t see the cosmic switch to the center as much as some others do. And the other thing is, I think, if he has a bad debate in two weeks, I’m not sure the right will be silenced all the way through election day. He’s got a tentative hold there, just as he does on the “new Romney” meme that is helping him right now.…MARK HALPERIN: I agree there’s some tonal shift. I’m saying the issue positons I don’t think are changed as starkly. And keep in mind, what did he do yesterday besides a rally in Virginia? He went to a CPAC meeting in Colorado, got the NRA endorsement, which they rolled out, and did an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox. So, if there’s a pivot to the center, it’s not unidirectional.?9:13 am ETMe, on “Morning Joe,” on the political impact of the September jobs data:MIKA BRZEZINSKI: This number, 7.8, good or bad for the President?MARK HALPERIN: It’s great for the President. And if you go just based on Twitter, right now, and the people I follow who are conservative, they’re about to make a huge mistake. They’re going to say BLS numbers are horrible. Some people are already saying the numbers are made up to help the President politically. They have to find a way to talk about the economy and why Governor Romney would be better, not to try to? It’s exactly what they did with the polls for the last two months, to attack the methodology. These numbers are good. They not only are good symbolically. They represent the economy moving in a better direction.MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Does it turn the page from a dismal debate performance?MARK HALPERIN: I think it depends fully on how the two sides handle it today. It certainly is good news for the President and it’s good news for the country.Watch the video above.?2:40 pm ETMy Take on the upcoming town hall format from MSNBC’s “Andrew Mitchell Reports”:ANDREA MITCHELL: What do you anticipate coming up now? Next we’ve got the two vice presidents, the Vice President and his challenger, Paul Ryan there. And how about the town hall format for Barack Obama? The conventional wisdom has been, because everybody has Bill Clinton in their mind, that the Democrat, President Obama, will do better in the town hall at relating, and empathizing, and showing he connects to people. I’m not so sure about this President.MARK HALPERIN: Well, I’m not so sure. Although both of them will be, I think the thing through. I’ll tell you, the strongest Mitt Romney’s been, in my experience, as a presidential candidate, beyond the debate the other night, was the events he did in both cycles ? both the last campaign, 2008, and this one ? his so-called “Ask Mitt Anything” events, where he did take questions from people. He showed humor and the kind of fluidness and personality that he showed in the debate in those events. And I think the people who think this format clearly favors the President, I don’t think are right.? DIED Griffith Edwards, 83, British psychiatrist and addiction specialist who helped pioneer the science of addiction medicine and the treatment of substance abuse. RULED 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. OPENED 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. DIED Henry Champ, 75, Canadian journalist who covered wars and Washington for more than 40 years for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and NBC News. WON The Emmy for...?Students and staff at the University of Texas at Austin have launched protests after four students were allegedly assaulted with bleach-filled balloons while off campus, . Some suspect that the “bleach bomb” incidents, which occurred between June and September, were racially motivated, as all four victims were minority students. The attacks were not reported until the campus police chief started an investigation.“We had heard at UT rumors of incidents that had happened, but no one had ever filed a report,” Cindy Posey, the public information officer for the UT police department, told ABC News. “Our chief of police did his own research, found some things on Facebook, and heard about a couple of people who were hit by balloons.”Four students of color filed reports this week after police approached them about the attacks. Although campus police have not confirmed that the balloons were filled with bleach, Jaysen Runnels, an African American student, said he has been hit twice by the balloons, which were lobbed from high-rise buildings. All four students report that the attacks occurred near West Campus apartments.“It’s very frustrating to know that it’s 2012 and that stuff like this still happens,” Runnels told ABC News affiliate KVUE-TV.(WATCH: )Dozens of people gathered at a campus statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Tuesday to address the situation. According to university-based newspaper?The Horn, sophomore Taylor Carr?one of the students who reported a bleach balloon attack?spoke to demonstrators.“It is people of color they are attacking in West Campus,” . “Until we put pressure on the university to [protect] us, these events are going to keep happening.”Police told KVUE that it could prove difficult to confirm that the incidents were hate crimes, but this is not the university’s first experience with allegedly biased behavior. According to The Horn, members of UT’s Greek community recently faced criticism for racially-themed sorority and fraternity parties, including a “Fiesta” themed event during which two attendees wore shirts branded with the words “Illegal” and “Border Patrol.”The Austin Police Department has joined the University of Texas Police Department’s efforts to further investigate.MORE: ? 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...?Landslide Buries Children ? Rescuers dig out 18 bodies of elementary school children killed by a landslide in southwest , according to . Though Thursday was a national holiday, the students in Yunnan province were studying to make up for the days they had missed during a September earthquake, which killed at least 80 people. A rescuer said that by the time his team arrived, an avalanche of mud had hid the school from plain sight. By Friday afternoon, the body of a missing villager was found in the landslide, totaling the number of death to 19. on Board ? The Moroccan authorities barred a ship that provides abortion services from entering into its port, BBC. A Dutch group called “Women on Waves” has been traveling in a ship to countries ? such as , Portugal, Ireland and Poland ? where abortion is illegal. The group anchors the ship in international waters near these countries to give women abortions or advice. Its visits have sparked protests from anti-abortion groups. Morocco is the first Muslim country the group tried to enter.Gunfire Exchanged ? An American tourist in Israel stole a gun from a security guard and started firing shots in a hotel in the city of Eilat, killing one man on Friday, according to . The police cornered the shooter in the hotel’s kitchen and killed him there. The man has been identified as an American Jewish man in his 20s. The hotel spokesman said the man had worked in the hotel kitchen in the past. Some Israeli news sources report that the shooter had a personal dispute with the man he killed.Jordan’s King Dissolves Parliament ? King Abdullah of Jordan has decided to dissolve the country’s chamber of deputies and will call for early elections before the end of the year. The announcement was made 24 hours before the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s main opposition group, holds a rally in Amman, the capital city, Aljazeera. A demonstration to be held in favor of the king has been called off amid fears of clashes between the two protests. Numerous demonstrations have taken place in Jordan since January 2011 calling for political and economic reforms and an end to corruption.South African Strikes ? Shell in South Africa has announced that it cannot guarantee the delivery of fuel around Johannesburg. The statement signals the start of a two-week strike by more than 20,000 truck drivers, Reuters. “There is fuel available across the country, so the issue is not fuel supply, but the challenge is delivering it safely to our retail sites,” Shell said. The country’s mining sector, which makes up about 6% of the GDP, has been hit by numerous strikes and walk-outs in recent weeks. Reports have also surfaced overnight of the death of a miner in clashes with police in the platinum belt of the mining sector.Turkey and Syria Clash ? Turkey has fired across the Syrian border after a mortar shell killed five people in a Turkish border town on Wednesday, the Associated Press. The Turkish government has approved future reprisals in such circumstances, but Turkey has assured its neighbor that this is not a declaration of war and Syria has offered a rare apology. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have sought refuge in neighboring countries since the conflict began in early 2011.?Thursday morning I bounced out of bed early and yelled “Oh my gosh!”I never get up on time and certainly never bounce. But this morning I knew that I would be headed to California for the TAPS .I went to work — my elementary school where I teach third grade — and taught my lessons…but couldn’t hide my excitement over my pending trip.So at noon Texas time I darn near bolted out of the elementary school and ran home to grab my suitcase.It may seem strange to have been so excited to be headed to a suicide-survivor seminar, but it felt like going to a family reunion.I boarded my plane in DFW and prayed that the flight would hurry up. Once I arrived in San Diego, I grabbed a taxi and headed out to the Paradise Point hotel. Then it hit me…Oh my gosh I’ve flown across the country alone, a widow, and no one I know is there yet. I told myself: “You’re strong, you’ve come so far, you can do this, Ian will help you get through this.”I made it through the hotel check-in.?As I was sitting in the hotel golf cart heading to my room and about to answer the “Why am I here?” question I heard a scream. My fear instantly vanished when I saw the precious face of Petra Peterson, a fellow survivor and panelist from June’s Defense Department-VA suicide prevention …she was jumping up and down and yelling at the driver to stop!I jumped from the golf cart ? it was still moving! — and ran to hug her. I instantly felt safe and at home. This is what TAPS is all about.As I type this I am sitting in my hotel room feeling content, comforted, and peaceful. It has been an incredibly painful and terrifying six-month journey getting here, and I struggle daily to understand how to live this life without my Ian. Yet, I am still standing, due to the love and support of my God, family, friends, and heroes at TAPS.My connection with TAPS was made the night before my husband’s unit memorial.I had survived discovering his body, his funeral and burying him. I was feeling like I could not face another service, and was looking for support from someone who “got it.”A dear professor from my graduate school had given my father TAPS’ phone number ? 800-959-8277 — and it had been sitting on my nightstand for two weeks. Somehow I felt that if I called them, it would all be real.Still, I choked back the fear and tears and made the call. TAPS founder Bonnie Carroll answered the phone. The second I heard her voice I knew I had done the right thing.I flooded her with my story and she listened, empathized, and reassured me. She made sure I was in a safe place and then told me about a woman named Kim Ruocco. Bonnie told me that Kim’s husband, also a helicopter pilot, had died by suicide and that Kim would want to talk to me. I hung up with Bonnie and awaited Kim’s call.Then she called. I struggle to put this into words because our connection was so other-worldly.Kim was truly sent by God. She listened to my awful story, the whole time saying “Oh, honey” in this wonderful Massachusetts accent. She shared her own story and promised me that I would survive this, and that she was going to be there for me the whole way.Kim pulled me from a dark and lonely place and inspired me to face another day. That was day one. Six months later she has kept her promise. She has supported me more than I ever imagined, as well as introducing me to other TAPS heroes along the way.My respect and love for this organization goes beyond words. They are incredible people and true heroes. I feel so blessed to be here for this memorable weekend. It is unbelievable and commendable that Kim and the TAPS team provide this seminar to survivors at no cost. Their effort attests to their dedication to military survivors.I west to bed Thursday night with a grateful heart and look forward to seeing even more of my precious TAPS family in the morning.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.? 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. What's the most common misperception about prediction? 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...?(SEOUL, South Korea) ? A North Korean soldier killed two of his superiors Saturday and defected to South Korea across the countries’ heavily armed border in a rare crossing that prompted South Korean troops to immediately beef up their border patrol, officials said.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’s statement after he was taken into custody by South Korean border guards.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.(PHOTOS:?)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.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.There was no immediate comment from communist North Korea’s state-run media.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.(MORE:?)The vast majority of North Koreans fleeing their homeland travel through China and Southeast Asia before arriving in the South.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.The area where Saturday’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.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.By?HYUNG-JIN KIMMORE:??As I lay out the clothes and review the checklist for our trip Friday, I can’t help but reflect on what — Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors — means to me and my children.Not everyone finds TAPS right away.Some of the military services have an agreement where TAPS is connected to survivors asap. But, I’ve heard that isn’t the case for my late husband’s branch of service, the Army.I had been a military wife for 11 years and I had never heard of the organization. Honestly, perhaps as an act of emotional self-preservation, I had never allowed myself to give much thought about what happened to “survivors of military loss.” I certainly never allowed myself to think about being a suicide survivor.When I arrived in Hawaii to make end of life decisions for my husband, Captain Michael R. McCaddon, M.D., I felt terrified and completely alone.I had no idea what to expect, and there was a large part of me that feared it would be the Big Scary Army vs. little powerless me.So, I reached out (like all military wives learn to do–whether it be for babysitting or a cup of milk) to my girlfriends. My sisters, as I have now come to understand them to be. And they went to work on my behalf. They researched the questions to ask and the organizations available for support.One of my friends called TAPS. A few hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, I heard a calming voice on the other end of my cell phone. “Leslie,” she said. “This is , from TAPS.”From that moment forward I have never felt alone in this journey.In those early days, Kim (and a team of tireless volunteers and employees at TAPS) became my lifeline. They were a source of information and comfort. They did this in person, through email, and eventually in person. Kim Ruocco is so committed to the cause, and to survivors (she is a suicide survivor herself) she flew from Boston to New York to help get me home after Mike died.I had to fly to New York because my car had just arrived there. But, I was in condition to drive the five hours home alone. Kim came prepared with a box of tissues, mints, water bottles and wealth of personal experience attached to her Masters in social work.On that drive we role-played breaking the news to my kids, discussed financial fears and details, and had a tender cell phone conversation with TAPS founder .These incredibly dedicated and strong women inspired me to understand that I could and would be OK.They reassured me that I was not powerless. They helped me find my voice so I could share our story. And Kim told me: “Mark your calendar right now for May. You are coming to the National TAPS Conference in D.C.”Two?months later, when most expected me to still be in bed with the covers over my head, I was on an airplane with three young children on our way to the nation’s capital.Connecting with TAPS is by far the best thing that has happened to our family since Mike died. Our weekend in D.C. provided each of us with friendships that I have no doubt will last a lifetime. Make no mistake, it was emotional and raw and difficult. But, it was also immeasurably comforting and empowering.Today — Friday, October 5 — is a little more than six months since Mike died by suicide.We will board another airplane bringing us back to the welcoming embrace of that support and community.This time it is a only of suicide survivors — parents, siblings, widows, children and friends of military service members who died by suicide.There will be the Good Grief Camp for the kids (which, by the way, makes me smile every time my kids scream it with glee — truly an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one!).We aren’t thinking twice about taking a six-hour flight from Massachusetts to California (generously donated through TAPS by ), because we know that our TAPS family will be there waiting for us.We know we are likely to sleep very little and cry a little more than usual. But we also know we will laugh and hug and return home with our tanks refilled, ready to keep walking this journey — most importantly, never alone.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.?() ? A month before Election Day, President ‘s campaign and Democrats posted an impressive fundraising haul, easing the party’s concerns that he would face a significant money disadvantage against his well-financed Republican rival in the crucial closing days. Romney shrugged off a drop in unemployment, an issue at the heart of the race, contending it’s “crystal clear” a crisis endures.Bolstered by the Democratic National Convention, Obama and his party Saturday reported a combined take of $181 million for September, their best fundraising month of the campaign and just short of their record of $190 million in the 2008 campaign, also in September. Romney’s campaign has not released its report for the month yet.It was oddly quiet one month out. Obama took time off for a 20th anniversary celebration with his wife, Michelle, postponed from the day of the first presidential debate last week, while Romney devoted time to preparing for the next debate, Oct. 16 in Hempstead, N.Y., before a Saturday evening rally in Apopka, Fla.(MORE: )But the money machine was grinding relentlessly. Republican running mate Paul Ryan scheduled an evening fundraiser in Milwaukee, Wis., and neither party let up in their appeals for cash for the frantic final weeks ahead. Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden go head-to-head in a debate Thursday in Danville, Ky.“There is exactly one month left to go until Election Day,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in an email pitch. “The stakes are too high for us to take our foot off the gas now.” The president was scheduled to launch a lucrative and celebrity-studded fundraising swing to Los Angeles and San Francisco on Sunday and Monday followed by a campaign rally in battleground Ohio.Republicans and Romney himself have seemed invigorated by his spirited leadoff debate performance against a subdued president, which played out for a huge national TV audience, estimated at more than 67 million, just as voters at-large are tuning in to the campaign.But then came the report Friday showing unemployment fell in September from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent, marking the first time the rate dipped below 8 percent since the start of Obama’s presidency. Obama seized on the good news, “a reminder that this country has come too far to turn back now,” while Romney had little choice but to play down its significance.(MORE:?)“By any rational measure, it’s crystal clear we’re in the middle of a jobs crisis,” Romney said in a fundraising message to supporters. “My priority is jobs. And from Day One of my presidency, I will lead us out of this crisis.”Defensive after the debate, Democrats contended Romney talked a good game but at the expense of the truth. A new TV ad by the Obama campaign, called “Dishonest,” carries on the post-debate theme that Romney grossly misrepresented his own positions as well as Obama’s on taxes. Online videos were posted by the campaign with the mantra, “Romney won’t tell the truth,” about Medicare, energy, taxes and more.The latest fundraising report showed Obama and the Democratic National Committee improving on their take of about $114 million in August, when Obama gained a narrow edge in the money race after trailing Romney and Republicans for three straight months.The Romney campaign has refused to release its September fundraising numbers, which are due Oct. 20, or say if they will make them available early as has become custom.Aides have suggested that fundraising suffered in the final weeks of the month as polls found Romney falling behind Obama. Following Romney’s debate performance, they were privately optimistic the numbers would improve to help fuel a television advertising blitz over the campaign’s final month in as many battleground states as possible.(MORE:?)The president said in a series of messages on Twitter, the online social network, that more than 1.8 million people donated last month, including about 567,000 who had not given money before in 2008 or 2012. About 10 million people have donated to the campaign. Obama’s campaign, the DNC and various fundraising entities supporting the president have now raised about $835 million, putting the campaign in striking distance of raising $1 billion for the season.The Romney campaign was releasing a TV ad featuring a woman who says she voted for Obama in 2008 but is supporting the Republican today. “Why Mitt Romney?” she asks. “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.”Romney argued Friday that the change in the unemployment rate was nothing to celebrate given the millions of people in part-time jobs, those seeking better jobs and those who remain out of work.“This is not what a real recovery looks like,” Romney said shortly after the Labor Department released its report.By KEN THOMAS? 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.? 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...?If there’s one thing that can bring people together, it’s a decent beer. Palestinians of all factions, along with plenty of curious Israelis, will soon be gathering?as they have done since 2005?for Oktoberfest in the historic West Bank town of Taybeh. Normally a sleepy, hilltop place of 2000 souls, Taybeh’s population is expected to swell by 10 times when this year’s party takes place from Oct. 6-7.As always, the beer?unpasteurized, preservative-free and handcrafted in small batches?will be supplied by?, the Taybeh Brewing Company, run by the father and daughter team of Nadim and Madees Khoury. “When they hear of our Oktoberfest most people say, ‘Wow, Palestinians drink beer, they know how to party!’” says Madees, 26. “We’re showing a different Palestine to the one seen on the news.”Of course, there will be some local variants to the Munich template. Traditional?dabkeh?(folk) musicians and local hip-hop outfits will be appearing alongside the traditional brass bands, and you’re more likely to encounter local cuisine instead of great plates of wurst (Madees particularly recommends booking a table at?). The setting too is less Bavaria and more Bible?in which, incidentally, the venerable Christian town of Taybeh rates a mention (under its old name of Ephraim). There’s the ruined Byzantine church of St George (al-Khader) as well as a Crusader castle to discover.Come nightfall, the lights of Jerusalem can be seen shimmering some 20-km away?and the region’s troubles can seem a good deal further. “Our Oktoberfest shows that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, or what your background is,” Madees says. “Here in Taybeh, everyone can come together, drink beer and celebrate life.”PHOTOS: ? 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. 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. 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.?(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’s truest values. But the presidential candidates were nowhere to be found.In their place Saturday were two celebrity gabbers who have claimed their stakes to the polar opposite ends of the political spectrum: Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart. The political odd-couple came to Washington ready to tangle in an event mockingly dubbed “The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium.”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’s “The Daily Show,” who bantered aggressively but good-naturedly over birth control, President George W. Bush and the so-called “War on Christmas.”(WATCH:?)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’Reilly when he wanted to drive a point home.“I like you much better that way,” O’Reilly quipped at one point as he gazed up at his ideological foe.The political feud between the two caffeinated TV personalities dates back more than a decade. Much like family members who just can’t resist pushing each other’s buttons over Thanksgiving stuffing, Stewart and O’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’s programs since 2001, but the face-off Saturday at The George Washington University marked their first head-to-head debate.Appearing wholly presidential in dark jackets and face makeup under a sign reading “Yum, this banner tastes like freedom,” 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.Stewart, defending government involvement in health care and social programs, said the U.S. has always been an entitlement nation.(WATCH:?)“We are a people that went to another country, saw other people on it and said, ‘Yea, we want that,” Stewart said. “Have you ever seen ‘Oprah’s favorite things’ episode?”Asked who he’d like to see as president, O’Reilly dead-panned: “I’d have to say Clint Eastwood.”“Well why don’t we ask him,” said Stewart, mocking the Hollywood actor’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.In an apparent show of bipartisanship, Stewart even got on O’Reilly lap at one point. “And what would you like for Christmas, little boy?” O’Reilly said slyly.“The display that you saw tonight is why America is America. Robust, creative, no holds barred,” O’Reilly told reporters after the debate. “You can call it whatever you want, but you wouldn’t see this in a lot of other countries. That’s for sure.”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.?(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.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.Khan has harshly criticized the Pakistani government’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’s alliance with Washington is the main reason Pakistan is facing a homegrown insurgency. He has suggested before that militant activity in Pakistan’s tribal areas will dissipate when the U.S. ends the war across the border in Afghanistan.(PHOTOS:?)“We want to give a message to America that the more you carry out drone attacks, the more people will hate you,” Khan told the crowd.The anti-American sentiment, always high in Pakistan, was evident in the crowd that waved banners saying “Down with America,” and “The friend of America is the traitor of the nation.”Pakistan’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.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.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’t want to put his supporters in danger, so he turned the rally around to Tank.Regardless of whether he was able to enter the tribal region, Khan portrayed the two-day motorcade as a success.(MORE:?)“We have taken the voice of the people of Waziristan to the world,” he said.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’s political group and chanted: “We want peace.”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.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.The convoy aimed to throw a spotlight on the drone attacks, which many Pakistanis oppose as violations of the country’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.Critics denounced the rally as a piece of cheap theater designed to drum up votes for Khan’s political party ahead of next year’s elections.“A made-for-TV dog and pony show that will be high on drama and low on substance will resonate with Khan’s base,” wrote Pakistani newspaper columnist Cyril Almeida in the English-language newspaper Dawn Sunday.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.The main faction of the Pakistani Taliban, which is based in South Waziristan, issued a statement Friday calling Khan a “slave of the West” and saying that the militants “don’t need any sympathy” from such “a secular and liberal person.”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’s Party of Asif Ali Zardari, has disappointed many.By?ISHTIAQ MAHSUD?The parents of a Rutgers University student who killed himself after his roommate used a webcam to see him kissing another man have decided not to sue the university or anyone else involved in the case, preferring instead to focus their energies on the foundation started in his name.“They’re just in a spot now where they have this opportunity because of the fact that the media has made this case so well known to do some very good things through the foundation,” Paul Mainardi, an attorney for Joseph and Jane Clementi of Ridgewood, N.J., said Friday.The couple had accused New Jersey’s flagship public university of failing to prevent their son’s suicide in 2010, which occurred just days after the webcam spying, and had filed court papers preserving their right to sue.(MORE: )But Mainardi said the Clementis feel Rutgers has been “very responsive” and the school is working with The Tyler Clementi Foundation on a number of projects. “They’ve met with us a number of times at the highest level. They have undertaken a lot within the university system to respond to this voluntarily, responsibly,” the attorney said.Rutgers changed its housing policies after Clementi’s suicide, allowing opposite-sex roommates, with the idea of making gay and lesbian students more comfortable.The Clementis’ foundation has been a co-sponsor of an academic conference at Rutgers on social media.The family has said it wants the foundation to teach responsible use of social media and increase acceptance of gays in schools, communities and even churches.(MORE: )Tyler Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. His roommate, Dharun Ravi, spent 20 days in jail last year after being convicted of bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and witness tampering. He’s appealing.Ravi was not charged with causing Clementi’s death, but his family has said they believe his behavior was a factor, especially in light of tweets he made and which were part of the case against him.One of them read, in part: “I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”Clementi had told his parents he was gay before leaving college, three weeks before his death. But they believe that learning about the webcam recording in his dorm room humiliated him and made him realize that being out as gay on campus would not be so easy. MORE: ?(MANILA, ) ? Philippine President Benigno Aquino III announced Sunday that his government has reached a preliminary peace deal with the nation’s largest Muslim rebel group in a major breakthrough toward ending a decades-long insurgency.Aquino said the “framework agreement” ? a roadmap for a new autonomous region for minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation’s south ? was an assurance the Moro Islamic Liberation Front insurgents will no longer aim to secede from the country.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’s six-year term ends, officials said.“This framework agreement paves the way for final and enduring peace in Mindanao,” Aquino said, referring to the southern Philippine region and homeland of the country’s Muslims. “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.”(MORE: )He cautioned, however, that “the work does not end here,” and that the two sides still need to work out the accord’s details. Those talks are expected to be tough but doable, officials and rebels said.Rebel vice chairman Ghadzali Jaafar said the agreement provides a huge relief to people who have long suffered from war and are “now hoping the day would come when there will be no need to bear arms.”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.“The parties agree that the status quo is unacceptable,” the 13-page agreement says. It calls for the creation of a new Muslim autonomous region called “Bangsamoro” to replace an existing one created in 1989 which Aquino characterized as a “failed experiment,” where poverty and corruption have forced many “to articulate their grievances through the barrel of a gun.”The accord also calls for the establishment of a 15-member “Transition Commission” to work out the details of the preliminary agreement and draft a law creating the new Muslim autonomous region in about two years.Rebel forces would be deactivated gradually “beyond use,” the agreement says, without specifying a timetable.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 “equitable share of taxation, revenues, and the fruits of national patrimony … and equal protection of laws and access to impartial justice,” according to Aquino.Philippine officials said the preliminary accord would be posted on the government’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.“It’s been a long journey and this is an important milestone in our search for lasting peace,” presidential peace talks adviser Teresita Deles told AP.The United States, Britain, and other countries welcomed the accord.(MORE: )“This agreement is a testament to the commitment of all sides for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the southern Philippines,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement. “The next steps will be to ensure that the framework agreement is fully implemented.”The new Muslim region would be built upon an existing five-province autonomous territory, among the country’s poorest and most violent, with more than 4 million people.The Moro rebels earlier dropped a demand for a separate Muslim state and renounced .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.In Kuala Lumpur, Philippine government negotiator Marvic Leonen said both sides face the enormous task of working out the details. “We are not naive to say that there would be no obstacles. But the Philippine government will defend the agreement,” Leonen said.The challenges are many.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.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’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.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.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.by EILEEN NG and JIM GOMEZNg reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Associated Press writer Hrvoje Hranjski in Manila and Matthew Pennington in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.? 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. 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...? EMMY EDITION GOOD WEEK/BAD WEEK Mandy Patinkin Got a "holla" during Homeland co-star Claire Danes' acceptance speech Jon Hamm Was denied Best Actor honors for Mad Men--for the fifth time BOOKS Food Porn 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. HIDDEN TREASURE At Amsterdam's inaugural Unseen photo fair, low profiles reigned supreme: emerging artists displayed their work alongside lesser-known prints by masters like Edward...?() ? The pope’s butler was convicted Saturday of stealing the pontiff’s private documents and leaking them to a journalist in the gravest Vatican security breach in recent memory. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but the Vatican said a papal pardon was likely.Judge Giuseppe Dalla Torre read the verdict aloud two hours after the three-judge Vatican panel began deliberating Paolo Gabriele’s fate. Gabriele stood impassively as it was read out in the tiny wood-paneled tribunal tucked behind St. Peter’s Basilica.The sentence was reduced in half to 18 months from three years because of a series of mitigating circumstances, including that Gabriele had no previous record, had acknowledged that he had betrayed the pope and was convinced, “albeit erroneously” that he was doing the right thing, Dalla Torre said.(MORE: )Gabriele was accused of stealing the pope’s private correspondence and passing it on to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, whose book revealed the intrigue, petty infighting and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons that plague the leadership of the Roman .He has said he leaked the documents because he felt the pope wasn’t being informed of the “evil and corruption” in the Vatican, and that exposing the problems publicly would put the church back on the right track.In his final appeal to the court Saturday morning, Gabriele insisted he was no thief.“The thing I feel strongly in me is the conviction that I acted out of exclusive love, I would say visceral love, for the church of Christ and its visible head,” Gabriele told the court in a steady voice. “I do not feel like a thief.”Gabriele’s attorney, Cristiana Arru, said the sentence was “good, balanced” and said she was awaiting the judges’ written reasoning before deciding whether to appeal.(MORE: )Nuzzi’s book, “His Holiness: ‘s Secret Papers” convulsed the Vatican for months and prompted an unprecedented response, with the pope naming a commission of cardinals to investigate the origin of the leaks alongside Vatican magistrates.Arru said Gabriele would return to his Vatican City apartment to begin serving his sentence. He has been held on house arrest there since July after spending his first two months in a Vatican detention room.Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the possibility of a papal pardon was “concrete, likely” and that the pope would now study the court file and decide. He said there was no way to know when a papal pardon might be announced.Gabriele was also ordered to pay court costs.In something of a novelty in jurisprudence, the pope was both victim and supreme judge in this case. As an absolute monarch of the tiny Vatican City state, Benedict wields full executive, legislative and judicial power. He delegates that power, though, and Lombardi said the trial showed the complete independence of the Vatican judiciary.In reading the sentence, however, in a courtroom decorated with a photograph of Benedict on the wall opposite Gabriele, Dalla Torre began: “In the name of His Holiness Benedict XVI, gloriously reigning, the tribunal invoking the Holy Trinity pronounces the following sentence…”In her closing arguments, Arru insisted that only photocopies, not original documents, were taken from the Apostolic Palace, disputing testimony from the pope’s secretary who said he saw original letters in the evidence seized from Gabriele’s home.She admitted Gabriele’s gesture was “condemnable” but said it was a misappropriation of documents, not theft, and that as a result Gabriele should serve no time for the lesser crime.By NICOLE WINFIELD? 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...?Korean rapper Psy promised to give his fans a free concert in Seoul if his song reached the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Well, he hasn’t quite reached that milestone, but he decided that being second best was good enough.(MORE: )Thursday night’s concert lasted two hours ? yes, he has many more songs than “Gangnam Style” ? and attracted thousands of fans to Seoul Plaza, in the heart of the South Korean capital, with thousands more spilling out into surrounding streets.Media reports said the crush of people swelled to 80,000 as Psy took the stage. Oddly, the concert was rather far ? a 5-mile, 45-min. train ride away ? from Seoul’s now famous Gangnam district, the neighborhood Psy mercilessly mocks.(MORE: )At the Thursday show, Psy downed an entire bottle of soju?(Korean rice liquor) in one gulp, proclaiming, “This is for Korea!” He also sprinted up and down the runway that stretched out into the crowd. And he even kept his promise to perform the invisible horse dance without a shirt on.According to his agency, the concert was organized “to return the encouragement domestic fans have been giving to Psy.” He had just returned to Korea after spending several weeks in the U.S. on a rolling media tour that saw him appear on numerous television shows, from to Saturday Night Live ? and even .(WATCH: )The U.S.-educated musician (he studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston) has been famous in South Korea since 2001, when he released his first album, which also containing satirical lyrics and outlandish dances. Since then, he’s released five more, with another on the way later this year. Many of his songs have been chart toppers in South Korea, but “Gangnam Style” is the first to become a worldwide hit.MORE: ?British psychiatrist and Big Pharma gadfly David Healy is so controversial amongst his colleagues that some have tried to have his medical license revoked ? but there he was on Thursday, speaking at the American Psychiatric Association’s second largest annual meeting at a well-attended session on conflicts of interest.“It’s a miracle that I was asked along to give a talk [here] and I’m extremely grateful,” Healy said.His disquisition was perhaps less humble. Arguing that his profession is “committing professional suicide” by failing to address its dangerously close relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, he likened psychiatry’s attitude toward its faltering legitimacy to the Vatican’s widely derided response to its child sex abuse scandal by priests ? essentially that psychiatry is brushing off justifiable concerns as hype instead of dealing with the source of the problem.Few experts believe that psychiatry’s relationship with the drug industry is healthy. While several speakers at the session pointed out that other specialties are similarly entangled with industry, “everyone does it” is generally not a valid defense where conflicts of interest are concerned.(MORE: )The conflicts throughout medicine ? not just in psychiatry ? are clear.?In 2004 alone, pharmaceutical companies spent about $58 billion on marketing, 87% of which was aimed squarely at the roughly 800,000 Americans with the power to prescribe drugs.?The money was spent mainly on free drug samples and sales visits to doctors’ offices; studies find that both free samples and sales calls increase prescribing of brand name drugs and raise medical costs without improving care.Moreover, nearly half of all continuing medical education classes are sponsored by industry. By their third year of medical school, 94% of psychiatrists in training have already accepted a “small non-educational gift or lunch” from a drug company, according to Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a past president of the APA and director of Columbia’s Division of Law, Ethics and Psychiatry, who spoke on the panel with Healy.And while only 34% psychiatrists believe that receiving food or gifts affects their own prescribing patterns, 53% believe that it influences that of their colleagues, according to a study cited by Appelbaum. Research shows that this type of thinking ? “Everyone else is prone to biases and social factors, but not me!” ? is common and confounds attempts to address conflicts. “At least some of our colleagues are wrong,” Appelbaum said drily of the study.Healy’s jeremiad was more severe and sharply worded, but it seemed to be well received by the psychiatrists assembled in the audience. Many even asked questions that suggested they, too, were troubled by the status quo.“I’m going to argue that we need you to be biased. We want you to be biased by treatments that work,” Healy told his colleagues. “I don’t mind if you’re my doctor and you’ve given talks for industry.?My concern is not that you’ve been paid by industry, but that you’ve been fooled by industry.?The key conflict is whether people are hiding data from you.”(MORE: )Healy went on to discuss how drug companies have repeatedly concealed important information about the risks of their medications, whether by hiring ghostwriters to spin the results of scientific studies and then getting renowned experts to put their names on the published papers; by employing tricks in clinical trials like using inadequate doses of comparison medications to make the company’s own drug look better; or by simply keeping unfavorable data out of the public domain.Healy himself has also been targeted directly by drug companies who haven’t been happy with his critiques.?In fact, he’s to have lost an academic job offer at the University of Toronto as a result of one such critical lecture. At the session on Thursday, one slide in his presentation contained information he sought via a Freedom of Information Act request detailing drug maker Eli Lilly’s strategy for shutting Healy down. To counter his public insistence that drug companies reveal hidden drug data, Lilly proposed doing things like planting confederates in the audience of his presentations to ask questions that support industry’s view.Healy also described how in his own attempts to publish formerly hidden data ? which all now reside in the public domain ? he encountered legal issues with journals, which ultimately resulted in rejection of publication. The clinical trial data in question in this case showed a greater risk of suicidal acts associated with antidepressants than had previously been revealed.Healy also referenced hidden data from trials of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.?“None of them mentioned [that the drug could cause] or [had] the highest suicide rate in clinical trial history,” he said. Although drug companies are now required by medical journals to register all of their clinical trials with the National Institutes of Health if they wish to publish them ? including those that never end up being published ? this is not a legal requirement. They can still hide relevant data from the by not disclosing trials that they never attempt to submit to a journal.Healy noted further that when data surfaced showing a link between antidepressant use and risk of suicide in children, the APA issued a statement proclaiming that “we believe that antidepressants save lives.”“What I believe they should have said is that the APA believes that psychiatrists can save lives because it takes expertise to manage the risks of risky pills,” he said; if psychiatrists’ only role were to dole out drugs, then less-trained physician’s assistants could easily replace them, he noted.(MORE: )But when a questioner, claiming himself “speechless” in the face of Healy’s arguments, asked whether he should just stop prescribing antidepressants, Healy said no.?Healy prescribes them himself, but believes that the role of the doctor is to manage risks, not view drugs as harmless.?“Medical treatment is poison and the art of medicine is trying to find the right dose,” he said.As for what could be done to disentangle medicine from industry, Healy wasn’t entirely pessimistic. “The key issue in the short term is access to data. We have to insist on that,” he said. “We let industry come to our meetings and let them talk in our programs. I don’t think it’s huge problem that they get paid. The big problem is that if you ask for data, they can’t give it to you. That’s not science, that’s marketing masquerading as science.”But what of the issue of doctors being visited by paid industry types ? or being paid by industry themselves? The panel’s organizer, Dr. Daniel Carlat, director of the Pew Prescription Project, noted a new disclosure law, passed as part of President Obama’s health-reform bill in 2010.?Under the legislation, drug companies must reveal which doctors have taken any payment or gift from them worth more than $10, and describe the exact amounts taken and the purpose for them on a publicly available website. (Unfortunately that website will not be up and running until 2014 at the earliest.) All of the panelists agreed, however, that while public disclosure is good, it is not enough.Dr. Roy Perlis, who heads the Center for Experimental Drugs and Diagnostics at Massachusetts General Hospital, cited research showing that disclosure can actually backfire in unexpected ways. In one study, for example, people were asked to estimate the number of coins in a jar and provided an “advisor” to help them guess. Unbeknownst to them, the advisor had been paid to try to push people to make higher estimates than they otherwise might.In one condition of the trial, participants were told in advance that the advisor had this bias, but that made matters worse.?Under this circumstance, the advisor encouraged participants to make even higher estimates than in the situation without disclosure.(MORE: )“There are two different mechanisms” to explain the phenomenon, says Perlis. “One is strategic exaggeration: ‘I know you’re going to discount what I say, so I deliberately will be more effusive and tell you a higher number.’ The other is so-called moral licensing: ‘I’ve disclosed my conflict, therefore I’m allowed to be biased.’ This very thing may well also play out when disclosing conflicts of interest in medicine.”Maran Woolston, a woman with multiple sclerosis, also spoke on the panel about how betrayed she felt when she learned her doctor had referred much of her care to a drug company subsidiary ? but had not revealed it to her ? and had also taken $300,000 in funding from various drug makers.“In my opinion, transparency isn’t a silver bullet,” she said. “My ideal solution ? and this may be naive ? is that [doctors should] accept no payments whatsoever because then there can be no conflict of interest.”Maia Szalavitz is a health writer at TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at . You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland’s page and on Twitter at .?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. (PHOTOS:?)What things would you like to do when you get your passport? 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.If you were given your passport and allowed to travel, do you worry about being able to return? 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.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? 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.The government [knows] … 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.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, … no clear measurement of right or wrong? It [is] a very primitive … 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?(MORE: )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.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.When you say it is clear that the protests were organized, you mean by the government? 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.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? 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.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.(MORE:?)Can you tell me a little bit about the pattern of the rebar? 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.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.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? 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 … 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? … 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.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.You said that after you arrived in New York, you began to understand the work of Jasper Johns. What did you take from him? 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.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.”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? 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.MORE:?MORE:??(LONDON) ? Britain’s High Court is due to rule on whether radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri and four other terrorist suspects can be extradited to the United States ? judgments the government hopes will clear the final hurdle to their removal after years of legal wrangling.Judges Duncan Ouseley and John Thomas are handing down judgment Friday in the case of al-Masri, who turned London’s Finsbury Park Mosque into a training ground for radical Islamists and is wanted in the U.S. on charges that include helping set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon.Al Masri and the four other men have been fighting extradition for years, and both British and European courts have ruled that they can be sent to the U.S. to face charges.They applied to the High Court for a last-minute halt, with al-Masri’s lawyers saying his deteriorating health means it would be “oppressive” to send him to a U.S. prison.(MORE: )Lawyers for the preacher, who has one eye and hooks in place of hands he claims to have lost fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, said he suffers from depression, chronic sleep deprivation, diabetes and other ailments and is in need of medical tests. Al-Masri has been in jail in Britain since 2004.Also learning whether they can be extradited are Babar Ahmad, Khaled al-Fawwaz, Adel Abdul Bary and Syed Ahsan.Ahmad has fought for almost a decade to avoid being sent to the U.S., where he is accused of running terrorist-funding websites. Ahsan faces charges of supporting terrorism and conspiring to kill or injure people in a foreign country.Bary and al-Fawwaz were indicted with others, including Osama bin Laden, for their alleged roles in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa in 1998. Al-Fawwaz faces more than 269 counts of murder.The various extradition bids have dragged on for as long as 14 years amid wrangles over whether the defendants’ human rights would be respected by U.S. authorities.Government lawyer James Edie said this week that no further appeals would be possible if the High Court judges ruled against the suspects.He said in that case the government would be entitled to “move instantly” to deport the men.by JILL LAWLESS?It’s one of those rare times that ? just maybe ? it’s possible to turn $5 into $300,000. A rare bill that was proudly displayed in one family’s house in Pasadena, Calif. for decades is being put up for sale and is expected to fetch a whopping six figures.The extremely rare, century-old bill features an image of former U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, who served from 1889 to 1893. The $5 bill is incredibly rare: out of the entire country, it was only issued by three banks in Alaska, for a brief period at the turn of the century. The note will go to auction through Heritage Auctions in Dallas and online as part of an event being sponsored by the American Numismatic Association.(LIST: )In 1905 the bill was presented by the First National Bank in Alaska?to Charles W. Fairbanks, Theodore Roosevelt’s vice president, who was best known for negotiating the end to a border dispute between Canada and the U.S. Since then, it’s been passed through several generations and is now in the hands of Charles Fairbanks IV, the great-grandson of the former statesman.As the? reports:According to [the auction house director], the Fairbanks bill was just one of four notes of its kind in the $5 denomination that were issued in 1905 by the Alaska bank, which was acquired by KeyCorp and became part of KeyBank. One of those bills sold 15 years ago for close to $100,000 and the market has “really picked up for the rarest pieces,” he said.(MORE: )A third pristine bill is reportedly in storage at the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks ? a the town named for Charles Fairbanks IV’s ancestor. According to Angela Linn, a collections manager of ethnology and history, the bill being currently auctioned off by the family is also in excellent condition, ?although some minor restoration work had been done.Erica Ho is a contributor at TIME and the editor of . Find her on Twitter at and . You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s and on Twitter at .?Good Friday: The new jobs numbers are out, and the U.S. unemployment rate is back below 8%, which looks?. Or, maybe, . Or maybe it’s all just a . ()And Speaking of Conspiracy Theories: Did Romney use a cheat sheet stocked with zingers in his Wednesday night debate with Barack Obama? Or was it just a handkerchief? (Hint: it was a handkerchief.) ()Meanwhile, the Search for Obama’s Mojo Continues: And Andy Borowitz is on it. ()But Is He Single? Remember that personal injury lawyer who got a on live TV for calling a Wisconsin news anchor fat? Here he is. ()It Is Illegal to Own an Alligator in New York City: Because some of you apparently still need reminding. ()GWAR Covers Kansas’ ‘Carry On My Wayward Son’: This makes us so, so happy. ()10 Reality Shows that Have Jumped the Shark: Since as far as NewsFeed can tell, TV now mostly seems to be made up of bad reality shows and?George Lopez reruns, it’s time to thin the herd. ()Interrobang?! Thirteen punctuation marks we should be using more often. ()Best. Halloween Costume. Ever. Our ‘replacement ref’ outfit looks so pathetic now. ()J.Lo Takes Her Daughter to a Fashion Show. She’s very cute. Very bored, yes, but very cute. ()Meanwhile: A 29-Year-old Pakistani woman has become the first Muslim in Norway’s cabinet. ()Please Do Not Tailgate: Or you’ll get an enraged primate in the face. ()What Astronauts See at Night: Sit back, relax, and let this awesome time-lapse video from space ease you into the weekend. ()?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’s most notorious, homophobic playboy.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’s version of both Hugh Hefner and Donald Trump, on Thursday. The movie,?tentatively?titled ‘The Lesbian’, would be inspired by Chao’s public refusal to?acknowledge?his daughter’s same-sex partnership and his pledge to give a $65 million dowry to any man who would marry her.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,?.(MORE:?)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.Last year, as reported by?the , the real estate tycoon ? who lives in Villa Cecil, uses the car?number-plate?’Cecil’ 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.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 “unacceptable” or “strongly unacceptable”.“I hate to be the one bursting his daydream bubble, but hello, it’s 2012,” Cecil Chao’s daughter Gigi said in a prominent .?7:10 am ET: “Romney Claims of Bipartisanship as Governor Face Challenge”: “Fall in Jobless Rate Strips Romney of an Argument”: “Romney Gets Post-Debate Jolt”: “Key to Florida Victory Might Be Jacksonville Area”: “How Obama Reset His Campaign”: “Dems Say Romney Lied During Debate ? And It Will Cost Him”? 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. 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...?VOICEOVER: “This was dishonest.”MITT ROMNEY: “I’m not in favor of a $5 trillion tax cut.” VOICEOVER: “Romney’s being dishonest here too:”VOICEOVER FROM ROMNEY AD: “According to an Independent, non-partisan study, Barack Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class…”VOICEOVER: “The Chairman of that so-called independent group is from Romney’s former company. Dick Cheney’s on its board. Newt Gingrich was there too. It’s not independent. It’s just not true.”?VOICEOVER: “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.”STEPHANIE CUTTER: “Well, okay, stipulated, it won’t be near $5 trillion.”VOICEOVER: “Obama’s plan? $4,000 more in taxes on the middle class. We can’t afford four more years.”MITT ROMNEY: “I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message.”?GREG ANTHONY: “There’s a really soft spot in my heart for Nevada, having been born and raised there. And when you look at unemployment, it’s probably highest in the country, double digits right now. I voted for Barack Obama, thought he’d be a centrist. I really lost faith in him. I’m supporting Mitt Romney?he’s a no-excuse kind of guy. And I think over the last 4 years we’ve heard enough excuses. I just don’t believe we can afford four more years like the last four years.”MITT ROMNEY: “I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message.”?VOICEOVER: “President Obama says he’s creating jobs. But he’s really creating debt. The facts are clear. Obama’s four deficits are the four largest in U.S. history. He’s adding almost as much debt as all forty-three previous presidents combined. And over thirty cents of every dollar Obama spends is borrowed. Much of it from countries like China. He’s not just wasting money. He’s borrowing it, and then wasting it. We can’t afford four more years.MITT ROMNEY: “I’m Mitt Romney and I approved this message.”?MITT ROMNEY: “The question Ohio families are asking is who can bring back the jobs? Under President Obama, we’ve lost over half a million manufacturing jobs, and China has passed us in manufacturing. I’ll stand up to China. I have a detailed plan to create 12 million new jobs including producing our own energy, in the ground, in Ohio. I’m Mitt Romney, and I approved this message because Ohio families can’t afford four more years like the last four years.”?’s re-election effort once looked to be a tug-of-war between two powerful political forces: the magnetism of a charismatic incumbent vs. the drain of a slow economic recovery. But a month before Election Day, the President’s charisma went missing, at least for one debate night, while new numbers suggest that the economy isn’t such a disadvantage for Obama.The headline of the government’s monthly jobs report released Friday was that the economy added 114,000 jobs in September, while the unemployment rate fell to 7.8%. That’s not all that great: the jobs total barely keeps pace with population growth, and near-8% unemployment is far from ideal. But read into the report ? and between its lines ? and the news should be heartening for Democrats spooked by their candidate’s poor debate performance Wednesday.Large upward revisions to the jobs numbers from July and August, reflecting a total of 86,000 more jobs than initially estimated, suggest that the summer slowdown that had some observers crying stagnation was merely noise in the data. (They’re also a helpful reminder that economists’ predictions about jobs and growth have a large, but rarely mentioned, margin of error.) The trend over the past year has been a plodding march toward recovery, frustratingly slow but moving in the right direction. The drop in the unemployment rate in September was not caused by a shrinking labor force, by people giving up on finding jobs.?Instead it was accompanied by a significant influx and 873,000 new people who said they were employed. Government employment, which nearly every report claimed was recently bleeding, actually increased by 10,000.The political impact of such trivia from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shouldn’t be overstated. The state of the economy is largely baked into Obama’s re-election numbers at this point; a yearlong trend of modest recovery continues to favor the incumbent. And the most potentially important economic event every month is the one that still hasn’t happened: a sudden financial crash, instigated by Europe or something else, that could pull the presidential race from its moors. The number that the political press will obsess over is the unemployment rate. “No American President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2%,” goes the line in thousands of articles every month. But political-science research suggests this number doesn’t matter; the trend is more important than any absolute figure.(PHOTOS: )That said, the media’s obsession with the unemployment rate can have its own effect. Positive headlines (like this one) can affect voters’ views of the economy and the President. The 7.8% figure is especially likely to generate positive press, for mostly arbitrary reasons: it’s below the 8% mark under which Obama’s transition team infamously predicted the stimulus would keep the unemployment rate. It also happens to be a single tenth of a percent below the unemployment rate during the month Obama took office, robbing Republicans of some of their most biting economic talking points.This symbolic significance has led some conservatives ? including no less than business luminary Jack Welch ? to accuse the Bureau of Labor Statistics of cooking the books. The charge is absurd, and it says more about the frustrations of a Republican Party that was convinced for months that the economy would be Obama’s downfall than it does about the BLS’s bulletproof credibility. is left with a tricky case to make. “We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July,” he said Friday, in a nifty piece of spin. “This is not what a real recovery looks like.” But the penultimate monthly jobs report before the election ? the last one that will have a chance to influence many voters ? is harder to debate than Obama.? 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. 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...?Fall is the season for picking pumpkins, carving pumpkins, and drinking pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks.? But the coffee chain is having trouble keeping the $4 fall favorite in stock, driving customers out of their gourds, according to an article in today’s .(MORE: )Starbucks that while there is no “widespread scarcity,” the “infrequent deliveries” of the special pumpkin sauce have caused shortages at some locations:“There is an opportunity, in a pumpkin emergency, for them to be able to place an [extra] order,” said spokeswoman Lisa Passe.You can buy the instant packets instead, but apparently many stores are running low on those too.? Media blogger Jim Romenesko’s website has been blowing up with complaints about Via pumpkin spice shortages in Evanston, Illinois, Nashville, Tennessee, and the Denver area.? The Wall Street Journal created .? Some examples of the pandemonium:Oh really Starkbucks? You're "out" of Pumpkin Spice Latte? (laughs nervously) (goes on rampage, destroying everyone and everything)— Paul Chabai (@pchabai) Went to go get my after church pumpkin spice latte and Starbucks was out of it!! Dunkin it is! 😊🍂🍁— Kristin Ashley (@ksal) Starbucks fans, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take it easy on the pumpkin spice lattes: after all, there are 300 calories in a “tall” size.? Pumpkins on their own are actually very good for you, high in fiber and Vitamin A, as .? So while you are waiting for local stores to get more pumpkin spice lattes, try making yourself a healthy breakfast like pumpkin oatmeal instead. Recipe .MORE: ?Not all entrepreneurs need a business plan. Most start-ups succeed because the founder had an authentic vision and clarity of purpose, not a well-written document. While not all planning is bad, the content that most business plans focus on has little to do with the reality that will actually emerge. Instead of agonizing over a document, focus on identifying exactly why your business should exist. Clearly articulate the bigger goal at hand, whether you call it vision, purpose, or calling. This will guide you and the business. And remember that the team is more important than any plan. It’s worth spending time making sure you are working and partnering with the right people.Adapted from?? 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. 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...?(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.Authorities took the step to help identify everyone who may have gotten sick ? or may still get sick ? in the outbreak.“All patients who may have received these medications need to be tracked down immediately,” said Dr. Benjamin Park of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.“It is possible that if patients with infection are identified soon and put on appropriate antifungal therapy, lives may be saved,” he said in a statement.(MORE:?)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.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.On Friday, officials said they have found fungal infections in nine sick patients. They weren’t able to identify what types of fungus in every one of those patients, but did distinguish at least two types ? Aspergillus and Exserohilum.In all, 47 people have contracted fungal meningitis, the CDC said. Michigan became the seventh state to report cases, with four. Tennessee’s cases now total 29; Virginia, six; Indiana, 3; two each in Maryland and Florida and one in North Carolina.Three people have died in Tennessee and one in Virginia and Maryland.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.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.(Q&A:?)It’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.At the prompting of government officials, clinics are notifying all the patients who got shots from the recalled lots.“There’s a massive effort to contact all the patients,” said Marsha Thiel, the chief executive officer of MAPS, a company that owns surgery center clinics in Minnesota.She added, “If there’s any question at all, they’re being directed to go to their physician.”As a precaution, the Food and Drug Administration urged doctors not to use any of the company’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, “there is no indication of any potential issues with other products.”The steroid is known as preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate, which the compounding pharmacy creates by combining a powder with a liquid.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.Most of the anxiety now involves patients who got steroid shots for back pain and are worried about becoming seriously ill.“Our phone is ringing off the hook this morning. Patients are calling. Of course, they’re concerned,” 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.Meningitis is an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms include severe headache, nausea, dizziness and fever.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.By MIKE STOBBEMORE:?? Cosmic Comics A quartet of graphic novels explore song craft, soldiers and a sinister future 1 C. Tyler YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, BOOK THREE: SOLDIER'S HEART 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. 2 Chris Ware BUILDING STORIES This is more than a book; it's a profusion of printed paper: a box full of pamphlets, comic...?7:05 am ET: “Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises”: “Capitol Assets: Congress’s Wealthiest Mostly Shielded from Effects of Deep Recession”: “Romney Shows Softer Side; Obama Raising More Cash”: “Boehner Wary of Lame-Duck Deficit Deal”: “Mitt Romney Seizes Momentum with 30 Days Left Before Election”? 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. 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...?The four men had journeyed for seven hours by bus from the southern Turkish city of Antakya for a meeting they considered crucial. It was about to take place on the patio of a three-star hotel in the southeastern Turkish city of Urfa. The men — two young Free Syrian Army (FSA) commanders from Raqqa province in eastern Syria, a prominent civilian activist from the area and an FSA military adviser from the outskirts of Aleppo — were concerned with just one thing: which rebel group would control the border crossing of Tal Abyad, which had been taken less than two weeks earlier, on Sept. 19, from the forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar Assad.In the hotel patio were more than a dozen men, representatives of various rebel groups operating in Raqqa province, drinking water and milling about several tables organized into a long row. The four warmly greeted those they knew, but there were many they clearly did not. It was 8:45 p.m. The bordercrossing was a priority, but so too was dinner. Most of the group broke awayand headed to a nearby restaurant. The four men waited on the patio, along with several others, including a man named Abu Ahmad, who had participated in the fight for Tal Abyad.(PHOTOS: )All it took was one question for the night’s schedule to be upended. “Who is now in control of the border post?” the civilian activist, Mohammad, asked Abu Ahmad. “The Farouq Brigades,” Abu Ahmad said, referring to the one of the largest, best organized and most well-known of Syria’s many military brigades.Mohammad and his three companions exchanged exasperated glances.“Why did you all cede control to them? When did this happen? They aren’t even from here!” Mohammad said.“We don’t want problems between revolutionaries now,” Abu Ahmad replied. “We don’t want to take them on. They said they are in control.”And with that, just minutes after they arrived, the four men abruptly got up and left. There was nothing to discuss, they decided, giventhat the post was in the Farouq’s hands. “We as the sons of the area don’t want anyone to control the fate of our area,” Mohammad said. “The crossing is for everyone, for all the brigades that participated in its liberation, not for one group of outsiders.”(WATCH: )The Farouq Brigades emerged from the central city of Homs and nearby Rastan just months into the now 18-month Syrian uprising. In the period since, operating under the FSA umbrella, they have formed units across the country, from Daraa in the south near the Jordanian border to the northern region bordering Turkey. According to some of their leaders, they comprise a force of 20,000 fighters. The brigades take the name Farouq from Omar bin al-Khatab, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, political architect of the caliphate and, historically, the second Caliph.The brigades are both a source of envy and pride among the rebels. Dressed in their matching military fatigues emblazoned with the brigade’s black insignia, they look like a professional fighting force, unlike the many hodgepodge groups in their mismatched items of military and civilian clothing. The Farouq’s slick media operation ensures that their exploits are widely known. Their videos are quickly uploaded onto YouTube, along with the group’s statements. Most importantly, their support — both in terms of money and weapons — is strong and consistent.As the Syrian uprising grinds on, rivalries between the disparate rebel groups have come more sharply into focus. There has always been competition for weapons, money and influence, but now they seem to be angling to take each other on — even before their common enemy of President Basharal-Assad falls. The potential for warlordism is great, and worrisome.The Free Syrian Army was never more than an umbrella term that provided political cover for the loose franchise of defectors and armed civilians fighting Assad’s regime. It meant the difference between being perceived as part of a rebel army or a group of independent militias. New groups, or kataeb, continue to proliferate even amid efforts to unite the existing ones. Some of these kataeb consist of just 10 people. A large number of kataeb are also unaffiliated with the FSA, particularly those that exhibit varying shades of Islamist hues.(MORE: )Farouq al-Shemal (or the Northern Farouq), in particular, has drawn the ire of other FSA groups operating near the Turkish border, mainly because it controls two key border posts, Bab al-Hawa (near the Turkish city of Reyhanli) which was seized in clashes in mid-July, and Tal Abyad (near the Turkish city of Akcakale).All in all, there are seven main border posts on the Turkish-Syrian frontier, and a smattering of smaller ones. Four are in the hands of rebelsunder the FSA umbrella. Of the other two posts, Jrablous is controlled by Liwa al-Tawheed, an Islamist coalition of military groups that is strongest in Aleppo and its surroundings; Bab al-Salam is controlled by the Northern Storm brigade, led by Ammar Dadikhi, a smuggler who kidnapped 11 Lebanese men months ago whom he claimed were operatives of the Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim group Hizballah but whom Beirut insists are religious pilgrims.The border post at Tal Abyad remains closed and has continued tocome under heavy shelling from the Syrian army since regime forces were ousted from it and the town of the same name. Depending on who you talk to, the border post was liberated by two groups (Farouq and Ghoraba al-Sham ) or a combination of seven or eight groups, or two dozen.Mohammad al-Daher, better known as Abu Azzam, is the local Farouq leader in charge. He says the Farouq has no intention of maintaining control of the crossing, and that it is in talks to establish a civilian committee comprised of representatives from the city of Raqqa and former employees at the post. “We’re going to leave just a few members of the Farouq for the security of the crossing and start working toward Raqqa,” he says, referring to the city which remains firmly in the regime’s hands.(MORE: )Before taking Tal Abyad, Abu Azzam was in charge of the Bab al-Hawa crossing hundreds of kilometers away. (His colleague, Abu Ali Thaier, has assumed his role.) The Farouq does not take customs duties at the border, unlike Liwa al-Tawheed at Jrablous. There was no battle for Jrablous which fell in mid-July. The customs officers simply fled. While others are vying to snatch control of border posts from the Farouq, Liwa al-Tawheed doesn’t face the same opposition, mainly it seems, because military units from Jrablous control it.“It’s just like before,” says Sheikh Ahmad Mustafa, the head of the Revolutionary Council in Jrablous which incorporates all of the kataeb in the town as well as the revolutionary police. “Travelers with a passport pay 500 [Syrian pounds or about $7.50]. A private vehicle, 2,000, a public vehicle 1,000.” The sheikh, a soft-spoken 36-year-old who had served as the imam in the town’s mosque since 1997, doesn’t hesitate to say what the money is used for: “We buy weapons with it.”In a home on the outskirts of Raqqa city, meanwhile, a group of local brigade leaders were discussing the Farouq and Tal Abyad. “The border posts are like gold,” says one. “If somebody wants to send you weapons, and [the Farouq] control all the border posts, can they do it except under the Farouq’s conditions? How will you get weapons in? Does anyone cement their door closed?”Abu Azzam, the Farouq leader, dispels the fears, as well as allegations that the Farouq is involved in the smuggling of diesel, cement and even hashish along the border. It’s all a media campaign, he says, because “we don’t have good relations with the Muslim Brothers, and the Muslim Brothersdominate the media and its channels.”The 33-year-old native of Raqqa says the crossings are a key part of the Farouq’s strategy to help carve out a liberated zone in northern Syria. “Naturally, we must work on the crossings, liberate them. We can’t leave areas behind us that are not liberated as we push forward.” At the same time, the Farouq continues to gain men and strength. Some 17 local military units from Raqqaprovince joined the Farouq in the past few days, swelling its numbers at thecrossing to about 500. The men were key for any push on Raqqa city, Abu Azzam said.(PHOTOS: )As he spoke, within the span of 10 minutes, three Syrian regime shells landed less than 50 meters away from where we sat, in the semi-destroyed main building at the crossing, kicking up thick plumes of grayish-black smoke. The first and second floors of the building have partially collapsed, pancaked atop a ground floor office that now functions as the Farouq’s headquarters. The shelling was coming from the nearest regime outpost, “it’s 17,850 meters away to be exact,” Abu Azzam said.The Farouq? also faces opposition from rebels at Bab al-Hawa. It has already disposed of one of its rivals there, a Syrian Islamist extremist called Abu Mohamad al-Absi, who led a group of foreign jihadis who at one point controlled one of Bab al-Hawa’s two gates. Absi was kidnapped and killed in early September. The Jihadis are still waiting for the Farouq to hand over the 16 men who were reportedly involved in Absi’s murder.“They can wait,” Abu Azzam says. “The man made many mistakes. He raised the al-Qaeda flag and Al-Qaeda is not welcomed by us in the country. … We do not want to raise our weapons against anyone who is also fighting theregime, but when these people forget about fighting the regime and start preparing armed groups with a view to what comes after the regime, this is unacceptable. If these people want to raise their weapons against us, we have the right to defend ourselves.” The Jihadis have now retreated to a small pocket inside the Bab al-Hawa outpost.But the Farouq also faces some opposition from more secular forces, like General Mithqal al-Bateesh, a defector from Rastan who last week announced the creation of a joint command of all revolutionary military councils inside Syria. Bateesh, who holds court in a school in the Syrian village of Atme just across the Turkish border not far from Bab al-Hawa, says the crossing should be under civilian control and have a token military presence for security. “This is a transitional period. We want to bring interior security forces, police. We can’t have civilians there now because it’s still unsafe, still under threat from the regime, but once civilians take control, there will be no Farouq or anyone else,” he said. Bateesh said he was talking to the Farouq about it ceding control.Abu Azzam, a burly man with a disarming smile and a neat Salafi-style black beard, smirked when he was asked about the general’s request. “When somebody other than the Farouq liberates an area, then he can make such a request,” he said. “The military councils, whether Colonel Mithqal or anyone else, with all due respect, we would respect them more if they picked up a gun and joined the fight with us. …? If he or anyone else like him came here and told me that I must hand over the position that I liberated, I will ask him ‘by what right?’ We are the ones who spilt our blood here, who are sleeping under artillery bombardments.”WATCH: ?Taking on the DebatesIn this week’s cold open,?SNL alum Chris Parnell (who you might also know as 30 Rock‘s?Dr. Leo Spaceman)?returns to play PBS’s Jim Lehrer, moderator of Wednesday’s presidential debate.?SNL‘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’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.While new resident POTUS Jay Pharoah once again nails Obama’s timbre and verbal tics, one could argue that Mitt Romney (played by Jason Sudeikis) quietly overshadows — much like in the real debate. When Pharoah speaks early on — in his perfectly Obama-esque way — Sudeikis’s subtly hilarious facial expressions and eyebrow movements somehow manage to steal the show.?(EL PASO, Texas) ? A former superintendent is scheduled to be sentenced Friday for his part in a scheme to fraudulently improve high-stakes school testing scores in the El Paso Independent School District by getting rid of students likely to fail.Lorenzo Garcia pleaded guilty in federal court in June to two counts of fraud and faces up to 3? years in prison.Garcia admitted to devising a scheme to keep hundreds of low-performing sophomores from taking the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test. Some students were held back in the ninth grade while others were told to drop out before the 10th grades accountability tests.The district thus gave the appearance of improving academic performance, meaning it was able to qualify for more federal funds. Garcia personally received at least $56,000 in bonuses.Court documents indicate at least six other people helped Garcia organize the scheme. An FBI investigation continues.Garcia, who was hired in 2006, implemented a plan with several other administrators that allowed for pre-testing of 10th-graders to identify those who were likely to fail the standardized tests. He had one employee photograph students crossing the border so they could be forced out on the grounds that they were living in Mexico and not within the school district.In the short term, the strategy worked. Test scores improved in most high schools and the district’s overall rating improved from “academically acceptable” in 2005 to “recognized” in 2010 ? the second-highest rating possible.The Texas Education Agency cleared Garcia in 2010 of allegations brought by then-state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh. But in late 2011, the El Paso Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence between the federal Education Department and the school district. When the attorney general ruled that the records must be released, the district acknowledged the scandal.State officials have placed the district on probation, named a monitor to oversee it and said the schools had shown “utter disregard” for the students’ needs.Other large districts have been ensnared in scandals to raise test scores, most recently in Atlanta, where educators gave answers to students or changed answers after tests were completed. But none has been so brazen as to cast off low-scoring students.By Juan Carlos Llorca?Saturday night was our “family dinner” at our suicide-survivors’ in San Diego.TAPS provided us with fried chicken (I was one happy Texan!) and several other comfort foods.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’s top military officer — Army General Martin Dempsey — keenly aware of how the nation’s young men and women in uniform are faring and feeling. It’s a vital job after — as of Sunday — 11 straight years of war.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’ stories, and served as a grounding force for me while I my heart out.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.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.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.Lastly, he addressed the fiercest survivors among us, the children.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.Then, the not-so-musically-talented military hero led the group of tiny heroes in song. They sang , and brought the audience to tears.The lyrics to the song ring so true to the heart of TAPS:Keep smilin’, keep shinin’ Knowin’ you can always count on me, for sure, That’s what friends are for. For good times and bad times I’ll be on your side forever more, That’s what friends are for.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.After I lost my husband, I felt that I had no support within the military — that his death would go unnoticed, and that others would join him.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.TAPS’ 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.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 — but not limited to — . That is both powerful and amazing.I was encouraged and inspired by the night’s events.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’s what I learned Saturday night.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.?The Army recently National Suicide Prevention Month in one of its daily Stand-To memos. Thursday’s Stand-To troops that October is National Depression Awareness Month. Friday’s Stand-To them that October does double duty as Domestic Violence Awareness Month.Will Stand-To please stand down on such bleak back-to-back missives??A visitor rings the doorbell to a large gated villa in Benghazi, and a gardener slowly opens the heavy metal door.??He welcomes guests with a big smile, offering them tea before giving them a guided tour of the sprawling grounds with its swimming pool and hefty trees, which obscure the view from prying eyes.??But the villa is not just another secluded house owned by a wealthy Libyan seeking privacy.??It is the most sensitive crime scene in the world.For each day of the past two weeks, TIME has visited the American consulate in Benghazi where the ambassador and three others were killed on Sept. 11th.??And with the passing of every day, people cart off more and more evidence and sensitive information that couldendanger the lives of Americans still in , and impair the investigation into the attack just now getting underway.(MORE:?)After 23 days, Libyan authorities finally cordoned off the consulate Thursday and prohibited people from entering it as American investigators made their first brief visit to the site.??For weeks, has said it was too dangerous to send FBI agents to Benghazi.??But now, they may be too late to piece together the clues to the attack.??A number of Libyans and foreigners have visited the compound, according to the gardener Idris Muhammad Juma’a.??“Every day people come and look around,” Idris told TIME, sitting in a plastic chair under a palm tree on Tuesday.?“The other day some Turks came and took a big painting.”But it is not the disappearance of paintings that should disturb American investigators and intelligence officials.??Large white boards listing names and numbers of U.S. military and diplomatic installations abroad have vanished.??Documents with detailed accounts of previous attacks against the consulate have disappeared as well.??“It’s not our job to stop people from taking things,” Idris says.??“We are just gardeners.”Though Idris and his companion are tending to the grounds, the Americans have not secured the compound.??Idris saysAmerican officials only visited the consulate once around Sept. 24.??“They came with some translators and took some pictures.??They left after 10 minutes.”It is not only the consulate the FBI has neglected.??Libyans guarding the compound the night of the attacknote they have not been contacted by Americans since the incident.??“I thought they would want to speak to us,” says Muhammad, who saw some of the attackers.??“But no one has called us.”In such investigations, it is routine for FBI agents to wait until they can interview people directly, according to Ali Soufan, the lead FBI agent in the inquiry into the 2000 USS Cole attack.??“You don’t collect intelligence over the phone.??It must be face to face, not over Skype.”??Soufan, who detailed his role in the Cole investigation and his part in uncovering the men responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks in his book?The Black Banners, notes that there are several things that have delayed the FBI’s arrival in Benghazi.??“You need a country clearance.??If you don’t have a [local] partner to work with, how are you going to interrogate?”But with a Libyan central government too weak to stabilize the country, it has to rely on local militias to protect the consulate and provide security for the FBI. Since each brigade is led by a different man,??the Libyan government has had to coordinate FBI visits with a number of individuals.??And because the FBI needs a “significant team that includes different specialties ranging from forensics teams to communication specialists” according to Soufan, the group needs a level of security no one in Benghazi can provide.“It’s just not safe for the Americans to come now,” says a leader of one of the brigades in touch with the American embassy in Tripoli.In the interim, evidence at the consulate has been tampered with. It is clear that rubble in the annex where Ambassador Chris Stevens took refuge has been moved. “Securing the crime scene is very important to prevent contamination,” says Soufan.???But with so many people rummaging through the consulate in the past three weeks, ranging from curious visitors to possibly the attackers themselves, the compound is being compromised daily.??And that will make the FBI’s job all the more difficult when it finally pursues its investigation in earnest.MORE:?? Bookish dilemmas, solved in handy chart form [The following text appears within a chart. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual chart.] START DO YOU OWN A DOG? YES HAS YOUR DOG REACHED HIS GOLDEN YEARS? YES 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 NO 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 NO DO YOU OWN A CHILD? YES IS THIS CHILD MYSTERIOUS TO YOU?...?5:05 pm ETIn 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.Romney: Why would anyone expect the next four years to be better than the last four years if Obama wins re-election?Obama: Big Bird? Romney’s a liar? Romney is out of touch? Romney put his dog on the roof of his car?This dynamic could, of course, change again. But one of Chicago’s biggest advantages for months was message clarity, while Romney slipped and slid from one theme to another.Not to overstate the case, but, post-debate, advantage Romney on this vital score.?Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Theresa Richards impresses a young girl after giving her a piece of candy in Farah province on Sept. 29.?Tinseltown’s most iconic landmark is having some work done.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.(LIST: )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.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.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 “Hollywood” 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.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.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.PHOTOS: ?The air is electric at this posh London casino, where a beautiful woman has been losing big at chemin de fer. How can the stranger across the table keep drawing better cards out of the shoe? Desperately, she borrows more to cover her bets, and the stranger says, “I admire your courage, Miss . . .”“Trench,” the brunette answers. “Sylvia Trench.” She appraises her rival with an envy edging toward lust. “I admire your luck, Mr. . . .”“Bond.” The silver cigarette lighter snaps shut to reveal a face of elegant cruelty: dimples welded like scars, incredible long whips of eyebrows, a full mouth ready for any challenge ? to spit out a witticism, to commandeer a kiss, to sip from the cup of revenge. To say his name: “James Bond.”Moviegoers first heard that terse exchange in a London theater on Oct. 5, 1962. That same week, Johnny Carson became host of The Tonight Show, and Pope John XXIII adorned the cover of TIME. In two weeks, Khrushchev and Kennedy would go eyeball to eyeball in a dispute over Cuban missiles. So who cared about the world premiere of Dr. No, the first film made from Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, or about the introduction of Sean Connery as Her Majesty’s hunkiest secret servant? Who knew?(LIST:?)Fifty years later ? also nine Presidents, four Popes, two Tonight Show hosts and some 2,500 issues of TIME ? the Soviet Union has disappeared, depriving the West of its long-time world threat, and Bond of his favorite nemesis. The entertainment landscape has changed, as most people see movies on home video or personal computers. Fleming himself died in 1964, having written 12 Bond novels and eight short stories. Yet the Bond films abide, in movie theaters, on DVD and as spinoff animated series and video games.Before sequels became the most reliable way to make a buck, Bond set the standard for lavish serial adventures. Before Hollywood found gold in multimillion-dollar adaptations of comic-book characters ? in the Superman, Batman and Spider-Man blockbusters ? Bond was the movies’ first big-budget franchise superhero. Spanning fully half the century of English-language feature films, Bond is also the longest-running continuous movie series. Things change, including the actors who play him, but Bond goes on saving the world from megalomaniac crime masters, heartless femmes fatales and indifferently prepared vodka martinis.This multimedia legend has also weathered many changes of leading actors. Bond was first played on American television, in a one-hour adaptation of Casino Royale on the 1954 anthology series Climax!, by Barry Nelson. (Peter Lorre was the villainous Le Chiffre.) In the 1967 spoof version of the same novel, at least four actors ? David Niven, Peter Sellers, Terence Cooper and Ursula Andress ? laid claim to being 007.But in the official Bond films supervised by Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, and then by Barbara Brocolli and Michael G. Wilson, so far, there have been a half-dozen: Connery in six films (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever; the Australian model George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; Roger Moore in seven (Live and Let Die, The Man With the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy and A View to a Kill); Timothy Dalton in two (The Living Daylights and License to Kill), Pierce Brosnan in four (GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day); and Daniel Craig (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall).(READ: Coverage of a in London)Bond is a 50-year family business: Barbara Brocolli is Cubby’s daughter, Wilson his stepson. And over the decades, the creative team has remained remarkably consistent. Richard Maibaum wrote or cowrote 13 of the first 16 films; Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have written or cowritten the last five. Composer John Barry, production designer Ken Adam and Maurice Binder, who created the swirling opening-credits sequences, stayed with the franchise for a generation or more.Directors have been chosen usually from the middle rank of the British pack; the Broccolis, who run this producers’ franchise, haven’t followed the trend of Marvel comics movies, where quirky auteurs like Sam Raimi and Joss Whedon get to stamp their personalities on blockbuster projects. When they needed a new face behind the megaphone, the Broccolis would often promote from within: Peter Hunt, who served as editor on the first three films, directed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service; and the editor of that film, John Glen, helmed five other Bond features. This family loyalty extends to the supporting cast. Only three actors (Bernard Lee, Robert Brown and Judi Dench) have played Bond’s spy boss M; only two (Desmond Llewelyn, John Cleese) have played the gadgetmaster Q. If actors are replaced, it’s often because they’re deceased.The series is big business too. The first 22 Brocolli Bonds have earned something like $5 billion around the world. (Broccoli did not produce the 1967 Casino Royale ? the team would finally film that property in 2006 ? or Connery’s free-lance return to the role in the 1983 Never Say Never Again.) In “real dollars,” the series has earned much more; the 1965 Thunderball took in today’s equivalent of $1.1 billion. Nor has the series suffered a slump in audience esteem: each of the last six installments has grossed more at the North American box office than its predecessor. The tap keeps flowing with the Nov. 9 release of the 23rd episode, Skyfall, which serves as the capstone of a year celebrating the Bond movies’ golden jubilee.HOW BOND WON THE COLD WARMoney’s nice, and if Bond hadn’t made a bundle he wouldn’t still be around. But the true measure of the franchise is its cultural and political impact. Begun in the deep freeze of the Cold War, as the world suffered its worst case of the nuclear nerves, the Bond films lifted grim reality airborne into wish-fulfillment. It could almost be said that this fictional British spy changed the world as much as any actual secret agent. The great Soviet bear had missiles and tractors; the Anglo-American alliance has missiles ? and James Bond.Any actual MI6 operative in 1962, a year after the Berlin Wall went up, might have been underground in the U.S.S.R. or the German Democratic Republic, matching wits and fists with representatives of the Soviet spy syndicate known as SMERSH (a Russian acronym for “Death of Spies”). The agency figures importantly in Fleming’s first three Bond novels: Casino Royale, Live and Let Die and From Russia, With Love. Yet SMERSH is mentioned in just two of the Broccoli-Bond films, Dr. No and the 1987 The Living Daylights (and in the 1967 non-Broccoli Casino Royale). In the entire Bond canon, only scene is set at the Berlin Wall ? at the beginning of the 1983 Octopussy, released six years before that Cold War fixture crumbled. Otherwise, Bond left the grittier aspects of British spying to the films made from John Le Carre and Len Deighton novels.The Broccolis always had sharp business instincts. They realized that, with a worldwide audience lapping up the franchise, it would be fiscally irresponsible to write off the whole Communist world by casting Soviets as bad guys. So Bond found villains in rogue warriors, not cold warriors. In six of the first seven installments, Bond grapples with the international conspiracy known as SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), a clear inspiration for the League of Shadows in Christopher Nolan’s recent Batman films. Throughout the Bond series, the Soviet Union remained an irrelevance, occasionally a gruff ally. Indeed, in A View to a Kill ? released in 1985, two years before Ronald Reagan went to Berlin and challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall!” ? “Comrade Bond” was awarded the Order of Lenin.(READ:??by subscribing to TIME)“Make no mistake,” real-life U.S. secret agent Valerie Plame wrote in Variety, “Bond is an assassin, as his special ‘00’ number indicates. His job isn’t to form relationships but to end them.” Yet in the permanent fantasy land of popular entertainment, this assassin gave the traditional action hero modern attitudes and equipment. He brought a killer’s lightning instincts to Sherlock Holmes, a suave caress to crude Mike Hammer, the microchip age to Dick Tracy’s gadgets. His films were comic strips with grown-up cynicism, Hitchcock thrillers without the artistic risks.Bond, especially Connery’s Bond, was an existential hired gun with an aristocrat’s tastes ? just right for a time when class was a matter of brand names and insouciant gestures. “My dear girl,” Bond tells a new conquest in the 1964 Goldfinger, “there are some things that just aren’t done. Such as drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above a temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.” Minutes later the dear girl’s body is lacquered to death by Auric Goldfinger’s Korean manservant. But death doesn’t shake Bond’s assurance in his infallibility ? or in his mandarin musical prejudice against Britain’s other great cultural export of the 1960s.To an empire that had seen its realm shrink with the loss of the Indian subcontinent, and its secret service embarrassed by the Burgess-Maclean and Profumo scandals, the notion of an agent from the U.K. saving the free world was an intoxicating tonic. Britain mattered. Britain was cool. (And the U.S., as epitomized by Bond’s CIA ally Felix Leiter, was just a sidekick.) If the Beatles made England swing for the young, then Bond was a travel-poster boy for the earmuff brigade. The Bond films even put a few theme songs, such as Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die,” on the pop charts.In its first flush of fame, the Bond series spawned a whole genre of superspy imitators: Matt Helm and Harry Palmer in ’60s movies, Maxwell Smart and the men from U.N.C.L.E. on TV. The Beatles shot part of their second movie, Help!, in the Bahamas simply because they heard that the latest Bond film, Thunderball, had gone there for location work. The upstarts were following the big boy.Later a young generation of filmmakers found inspiration in the series’ success. You hear its echoes in hundreds of high-tech adventure movies, from Star Wars (with Darth Vader as a more sepulchral Dr. No) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (007 as an archaeologist) up to The Dark Knight Rises (superhero vs. maniacal, aphorism-spouting villain). Some of the influence was direct: John Stears, the effects wizard of Star Wars, supervised the visual tricks on six early Bonds. Other directors learned just by watching, as enthralled kids who grew up to bring their own spin to the brut effervescence and special-effects expertise bottled in Bond.THE BOND WOMENJames Bond could have been Jane Bond. In 1955, shortly after the publication of Casino Royale, the Russian-born producer-director Gregory Ratoff optioned the book and hired the young Lorenzo Semple, Jr. (who later did the screenplay for Never Say Never Again) to write a script. Neither man thought much of the main character. “Frankly, we thought he was kind of unbelievable and, as I recall, even kind of stupid,” Semple recalled in Variety. “So Gregory thought the solution was to make Bond a woman ? Jane Bond, if you will ? and he even had a plan to cast Susan Hayward in the role.” The notion of a top dramatic actress from Brooklyn to play the veddy British, Type-A male 007 came to naught, and a few years later Broccoli and Harry Saltzman snagged the rights to most of Fleming’s Bond books.As the first two decades of Bond films made celebrities of his enemies (Oddjob, Rosa Klebb, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Jaws), so they incited schoolboy snickers with the names of his women. Pussy Galore and Octopussy! Kissy Suzuki and Plenty O’Toole! Mary Goodnight and Holly Goodhead! They were as indispensable and interchangeable as 007’s other accessories, the Walther PPK and the Aston Martin. In the early ’60s? the Fleming books enjoyed a boost in popularity when President Kennedy sang their praises in Life magazine. The endorsement was apt, for Bond in the early Connery years comprised equal parts Jack Kennedy’s playboy glamour and Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Philosophy.(READ: Corliss on )In that man’s-man’s world, women were to be valued as playmates, as allies or adversaries, and mostly as ornaments. Goldfinger’s Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) might be a judo expert who could toss Bond like a crepe, but he would pin her with a wolfish double entendre: “We must have a few fast falls together some time.” Or, as he says when his bed time with another Goldfinger lovely, Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton), is interrupted by an urgent phone call from Leiter, “Not now. Something big’s come up.” Back in 1964, Bond’s allusion to his tumescent member earned a gasp or a giggle. That suited 007’s suave satyriasis; recall that most films gave him two “Bond girls” (the blond, the brunette) to tangle with. The playboy would enjoy his sport with them and move on.His roving eye was in part a function of a spy’s globetrotting itinerary. Other movie superheroes could form lasting domestic partnerships ? Superman / Clark Kent with Lois Lane, Batman / Bruce Wayne with Rachel Dawes ? because they lived and worked in one city (Metropolis, Gotham). For all their preternatural skills, they were tethered to their jobs as, respectively, reporter and philanthropist: essentially working stiffs. Bond was always working, and often stiff, but his jet-set escapades virtually demanded that he get in bed with the enemy. That job requirement would put a crimp in any affair back home with, say, Miss Moneypenny.Yet, even at the start, the Bond girl was as clever, efficient and often ruthless in combat as she was in bed ? a Jane Bond, if you will. And though the series never deserved a citation from Ms. Magazine, it gradually insinuated a certain furtive feminism. Bond was still susceptible to European beauties of no fixed abode or accent, but he began to rely on their intelligence and independence. They could fight manfully; he could fall in love. He married one of them, Tracy Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which of course meant she had to die violently.More than a few Bond girls had the IQ and skills set to match his: ace pilot and former CIA operative Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) in Licence to Kill; rocket scientist, also ex-CIA, Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) in Moonraker; nuclear physicist Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) in The World Is Not Enough. Some overage boys could drool as Andress emerged from the sea like Aphrodite in a bikini in the 1962 Dr. No, or 40 years later when Halle Berry reprised that scene in The World Is Not Enough. Others could cheer the high kung-fu kicks of Michelle Yeoh’s Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Knows, or lose their hearts to Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd in the 2006 reboot of Casino Royale.BOND TIMES SIXAsk Bond-watchers of a certain age about the six actors who have slipped into Bond’s Savile Row suits in the Broccoli franchise, and they might say it’s really Connery and five other guys ? since he, being first and being Sean, stamped the role with his sulfurous masculinity. When Connery tired of the role (and it showed), Broccoli cast Lazenby in the installment where Bond became a husband and a widower. In the game of casting roulette, it was Lazenby who disappeared as Connery returned for one more film.Then Moore took over for seven episodes. Amiable and reliable, he nonetheless walked through his part like a waxwork on casters, like Bond embalmed, and left most of the heavy work to stunt doubles. The best of his films, The Spy Who Loved Me, succeeded without serious intervention from its star. Most of the other Moore Bonds were bloated fantasies, heavy on the double entendres; the series was in danger of becoming a travelogue with gadgets and a smirk.(SEE: )The list of actors who have played 007 multiple times has alternated between Rough Bond and Smooth Bond. Dalton, a West End stage luminary with heartthrob looks, played Bond with the ironic scowl of a killer who was battle-ready yet war-weary. Dalton did a lot of his own stunts, and he cut a smart figure in a tuxedo ? especially the one with the Velcro lapels, in The Living Daylights, that could fold over to give him the guise of a priest-assassin. But he seemed to be performing under protest, and after two films he broke out of Bondage and went back to the theater.Paging a Smooth Bond: the puckish Irishman Brosnan, who imported his blithe persona from the Remington Steele series. Radiating TV-star warmth rather than movie-star heat, Brosnan escorted the series into middle age, through the 2002 The World Is Not Enough. Still immensely popular, the Bond films had become increasingly irrelevant, a chipper anachronism in a decade of tortured heroes from comic books (Nolan’s Batman Begins) and spy fiction (Matt Damon’s films as the amnesiac secret agent Jason Bourne).Bond needed a makeover, and goy it in the 2006 Casino Royale. The movie showed a perfect figure rising from the sea ? lubricated and lubricious, like Andress in Dr. No ? but this body belonged to Daniel Craig, with Sisyphus shoulders and pecs so well defined they could be in Webster’s. If Craig spent more time with his shirt off than all previous Bonds combined, it was to make the point that this secret agent was his own sex object. In any romance he had with a shady lady, he seemed to be cheating on himself.Figuring that modern audiences preferred murderous fights to martini-sipping, the Broccoli brain trust made Craig’s 007 a working-class bloke, as much thug as thinker. Instead of the 007 of the Fleming canon ? a tough but smooth gentleman spy, schooled at Eton and Cambridge ? Craig is nearly a cyber- or cipher-Bond, with a loyalty chip implanted in a mechanism that’s built for murderous ingenuity. In lieu of the bons mots assigned to Connery, Moore and Brosnan, Craig communicates in grunts and sullen, conceivably soulful, laser stares. For this 007, spying is no game; it’s a job that has become a compulsion. Craig’s 007 is a brute: Rambo with muscles bulging through his tux and, even more so, a Bourne-again Bond.Rather than losing faith in the traditional Bond by jolting 007 into gritty modernism, the Broccoli team is simply showing the adaptability that has sustained the series for a half-century. The Craig Bond could be what the Connery Bond would have been if the franchise had started from scratch now. Movie heroes no longer sit in tuxes and smoke cigarettes at a chemin-de-fer table; the fights are longer and more vicious, and every entendre is single. The Broccolis were right to bring 007 into the 21st century, rather than serve as curators of the James Bond Museum. After all, that archive is kept faithfully in the memories of millions of fans.LIFE’s new book,?50 Years of James Bond, is available?.?? 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. 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...? 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." The sermon that followed was titled "America's Destiny." Its preacher was Marion G. Romney, a member of the Mormon elite and cousin of...?The Navy’s new (LCS) is not only staggeringly overpriced and chronically unreliable but — even if it were to work perfectly — cannot match the combat power of similar sized foreign warships costing only a fraction as much. Let’s take a deep dive and try to figure out why.The story so far:– Congress has funded the LCS program since February 2002. Its publically stated purpose was to create a new generation of surface combatants able to operate in dangerous shallow water and near-shore environments.– By December 2009 the Navy had built two radically dissimilar prototypes, the mono-hulled USS Freedom (LCS-1) and the trimaran-hulled USS Independence (LSC-2).– A year later it adopted both designs and decided to award block buy construction contracts for five more ships of each type.– Since neither design had yet proven either its usefulness or functionality it seems that the Navy’s object was to make the LCS program “too big to fail” as soon as possible.– It may be working: the 55-ship fleet is to cost more than $40 billion, giving each vessel a price tag north of $700 million, roughly double the original estimated cost.Both LCS designs were supposed to be small (about 3,000 tons displacement), shallow-draft coastal warships that relied on simplicity, numbers and new technology to stay affordable and capable throughout their service lives.The new technology was mainly robotics (unmanned air, surface and underwater vehicles) and modular weapons and sensors. The modular systems were a series of or modules; each designed to fit a common cargo/weapons bay or slot and focus the ship on a specific mission.When the ship’s mission changed it could quickly swap its current module for one that supported the new mission. This was a way to combine the advantages of both single and multi-mission platforms.Foreign navies had already applied the concept successfully. The Danish Navy’s “” series of weapon modules had in particular grabbed the U.S. Navy’s attention.Each LCS also has a flight deck and hangar able to accommodate up to two H-60 helicopters or up to four MQ-8B helicopter drones (one helicopter and two to three drones would be a typical mix). In addition, an LCS can carry and operate surface and sub-surface drones. Current modules in development are for mine warfare (MIW), anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and anti-surface warfare (ASUW).The MIW and ASW modules are mostly sensors with only drone or helicopter launched weapons. The ASUW module is focused mainly on defeating speedboats and offers only two and some short-ranged low payload missiles. None of these modules will even be testable until well into FY13 and none will be operational before FY16.Outside of the modules an LCS has a permanent armament of a 57mm?MK-110?, some 0.50-caliber machineguns and a close defense missile system ().Even with its modules the LCS compares poorly with similar-sized but much less expensive ships in foreign navies.The new Russian -class frigate, for example, is (at 2,200 tons) about 30% smaller than an LCS and cost only 20-25% as much. Yet, it carries a 100mm automatic gun, 14.5-mm machineguns, close-in defense “Gatling gun” systems (AK-630), medium range surface to air missiles (S400 series), SS-N-25 anti-ship missiles (sub-sonic and shorter ranged than the US Harpoon but far more capable than the Griffin), 533-mm (21”) torpedoes, 324mm anti-submarine torpedoes and a helicopter. The ship is not only in production for the Russian Navy but also for the navies of Algeria and Indonesia. A version is also being built for China.The Swedish -class corvette was one of the models on which LCS was based. It carries the same 57mm gun plus antisubmarine rockets and torpedoes, anti-ship missiles, a radar-deflecting hull, and a helicopter pad (but no hangar, apparently). It can also reach 35 knots but it is only a fifth as large.The Chinese have more than 80 -class fast-attack boats in service. Each costs only $40 million to build and displaces only 220 tons (one-fifteenth as much as an LCS). Yet they carry C-801 series anti-ship missiles that greatly outrange any weapon the LCS has.About the only threat the LCS might handle is the “swarms” of Iranian machinegun and RPG-carrying speedboats in the Persian Gulf. Apart from the fact that the Iranian crisis will have been resolved for better or worse before most of the LCS fleet can be built, these Iranian small craft lack weapons big enough to menace any serious warship.However the LCS itself may be more vulnerable to these speedboats than the ships it is protecting from them. This is because the ballooning LCS construction costs caused the Navy to try to save money by ordering that future ships be built to commercial standards.This will reduce their level (protection of ship, crew, and vital systems) to (or below) the lowest level (of three) the Navy recognizes. Survivability testing has been cancelled, as it would cause too much damage to the test ship. Instead, the LCS is rated as not survivable in a “.”Worse, the Navy has admitted that, unlike the foreign systems they were modeled on, LCS modules will not be swappable within day or two as originally envisaged. Instead, the process . Practical and political limitations on storing modules and supporting them overseas are likely to make module swapping possible only in U.S. shipyards. An LCS entering a combat theater will have to be in a single “come as you are” configuration that cannot adapt to mission changes.The LCS does lead its foreign competitors when it comes to speed. At the Navy’s insistence, each LCS carries a set of diesels for cruising. It also has a suite of gas turbines that can at least for short spurts propel it at speeds as high as 50 knots.By contrast the LCS’ foreign competitors rarely exceed 35 knots (the heavily-armed Steregushchy is only good for 26). However, speed at sea is a terribly expensive capability. Except for large nuclear-powered ships, very high speeds are only possible for limited times and in good weather. Incremental speed increases require geometric horsepower increases. Gas turbines generating more than 100,000 horsepower and their associated fuel tanks must leave the LCS little space for armor, weapons, sensors or crew accommodations. Though the Navy has not said so, it is likely that these gas turbines have been the source of many of the LCS’ mechanical problems.Why is high speed so important? Even high-speed minesweeping does not require more than 25 knots or so. For chasing small boats the LCS’s size advantage will let it catch nominally faster craft if any kind of sea is running. If this is not enough, the LCS has its helicopters and drones. The LCS may need speed to deploy quickly over long distances but is unlikely to need it for tactical maneuver. Without its gas turbines the LCS could be small (and cheaper), like the Visby, or powerfully-armed, like the Steregushchy. Instead, it is neither.When asked why the LCS has sacrificed so much for speed, Navy spokesmen tend to become vague. In a recent ,?Rear Admiral Thomas , the Navy’s chief of surface warfare, could only explain the LCS’ speed requirement with cliches such as “speed is life” (is the LCS really an airplane? Does it outrun cruise missiles?) or “more is better” (more speed but less of everything else?). He even quoted John Paul Jones asking for a fast ship to go “in harm’s way.” Such fatuous statements might satisfy a fourth-grade civics class but this contemptuous dismissal of legitimate taxpayer concerns speaks volumes about what the Navy thinks of the people who ultimately pay its bills.The surface-warfare chief went on to say that the Navy had yet to settle regarding missions, tactics and the design features to support them. In a sane world, such issues would have been ironed out before any ships were built. Once they are settled, the results will have to be applied to existing ships (to the extent that is possible) at enormous cost. Such are the effects of a “build first, design later” shipbuilding policy.The level of incompetence the Navy has displayed with the LCS is truly breathtaking.The LCS was supposed to be small and cheap, able to relieve larger more expensive ships of secondary tasks and to dominate coastal “brown water” environments. Yet, it is not cheap. Construction costs have to more than triple their original estimates. It is incredibly extravagant for some of its missions (those than any Coast Guard cutter could do), and very inadequate for most of the others. Its MIW and ASW capabilities are only those of the aircraft it carries. Even with its ASUW module, its firepower falls far short of one-fifth the size. Its RIM-116 lacks the range to protect other ships. Its 57mm gun is short-ranged and cannot support troops ashore.Taxpayers ? and Navy personnel, past and present — may better appreciate the scope of the LCS disaster when reminded that current plans call for these pseudo-warships to comprise more than a third of the Navy’s surface combatants by 2020.Nevertheless, the Navy is not worried. Congress will bail them out and ensure the LCS program yields some sort of product, even if it is a terribly overpriced and only marginally meets program requirements.Meanwhile, foreign — not necessarily friendly — navies are building and cheaper ships.John Sayen retired from the Marine Corps in 2002 as a lieutenant colonel. He currently works in the defense industry and occasionally writes on current and historical military and naval issues.?7:55 am ETMe, on “Morning Joe,” on how Romney finally showed the American people what he is really like:[President Obama] ended up in a room with a guy, who, from his first answer, was not the version of Mitt Romney, I think, he practiced against. So, all the prep he did, and he didn’t do as much prep as he might have, all the prep was against John Kerry channeling the Mitt Romney of the past five years.…[Governor Romney] talked in a different way. His focus was different, in terms of what he talked about. He was comfortable with himself. He didn’t radiate the vulnerability of the kind that I think the President was planning to exploit. And he was very careful in the words he chose. Again, he didn’t leave a lot of openings for the President to go after him.…One of the things that, I think, is overlooked about why this could matter so much is these are both really politically appealing, talented guys. They wouldn’t be where they were without it. We all know what is politically appealing and personally appealing about the President. We see it almost every day. Even if you don’t like the President, you’ve got to respect his political skills. Romney-haters don’t understand why that was so potentially potent is his performance was real. That is what Mitt Romney is like off television. If he did it on television…that guy in the debate, that guy could win…. That’s why it’s so potent and dangerous. That’s a real guy.Watch the video above.? 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. VIRGINIA Former governor TIM KAINE (D.) vs. former governor and Senator George Allen (R.) 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. MONTANA Senator JOHN TESTER (D.) vs. Congressman Denny Rehberg (R.) 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. MISSOURI Senator CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D.) vs. Congressman Todd Akin (R.) 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. WISCONSIN Congresswoman TAMMY BALDWIN (D.) vs. former governor Tommy Thompson (R.) 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. NORTH DAKOTA Former state attorney general HEIDI HEITKAMP (D.) vs. Congressman Rick Berg (R.) 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. CONNECTICUT Congressman CHRIS MURPHY (D.) vs. businesswoman Linda McMahon (R.) 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. INDIANA Treasurer RICHARD MOURDOCK (R.) vs. Congressman Joe Donnelly (D.) 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. MASSACHUSETTS Senator SCOTT BROWN (R.) vs. Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren (D.)?9:55 pm ETMeet the Press ? . .Face the Nation ? . .This Week ? . .Fox News Sunday ? . .State of the Union ? . .?This weekend, relatives of many of the U.S. troops who have killed themselves in the suicide epidemic gripping the American military are in San Diego. They’re coming together to support one another and figure out how to move on with life. It’s the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors’ National Military Suicide Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp for Young Survivors.Leslie McCaddon and Rebecca Morrison, whose Army-officer husbands committed suicide in March, will both be there. We their compelling experiences ?in our July cover story on Army suicides. We’ve asked them to share some thoughts on this unusual get-together on?Battleland?in the coming days.They are two wonderful, and wonderfully strong, women. The session, TAPS says, is designed to Remember the Love, Celebrate the Life, Share the Journey. We thank Leslie and Rebecca for sharing with us.? There has never been a shortage of 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 Morón. In recent years, Morón has seen her brother-in-law, niece and 23-year-old son Roger murdered on Catia's streets the latter shot in the face by a gangbanger who wanted Roger's New Balance tennis shoes. "Have you seen our homicide statistics?" Morón, 53, a nurse, asks me as we sit down for a guayoyo, a Venezuelan-style cup of coffee. "We might as well be in...?Shannon, Tim and John.These names, prior to our trip to the TAPS National Military Survivors Seminar in , D.C., in May were not names I heard spoken in our home. Now, they receive nearly daily mentions and are always accompanied by big grins on my three children’s faces.TAPS provides Good Grief Camps for children who have experienced the loss of a military family member (usually a parent or a sibling). These camps are offered on the same days and at the same times as the children’s parents are receiving support through educational and sharing seminars throughout the day.The organization offers open arms to those affected by : “You are warmly invited to join TAPS for a special program of comfort and support for all those grieving the suicide loss of a loved one who served in the Armed Forces,” it on its website.I decided to ask my daughter, Madeleine, 8, about her experience at the Good Grief Camp last May as we traveled on an airplane to the in San Diego. This is what she shared with me:Before you arrived at the Good Grief Camp last year, how did you feel about going? I was nervous and excited. I was nervous to meet the new kids and the new mentors there to help. I thought we would play games and talk all day.What did you do all day at Camp? Was it just games and talking? No! We made crafts that were about our dreams or about our memories. We took a walk downtown Washington, D.C., got to sit on motorcycles and a had big balloon release sending letters up to our Moms and Dads who had died.One night we had a great big party with bounce houses, laser tag and face painting! Sometimes we talked about Dad. It helped to talk about him because I already missed him a lot. The other kids there understood how I felt.What was it like to meet your mentor, Shannon, and get to know her?It was really exciting to meet her because people told me before she got there “Oh! She is really nice!” Shannon and I got along great! Shannon has her own little girl and I really liked meeting her, too.Shannon taught me what she does when she gets mad or something. She throw a pillow on the floor or lays in her bed and screams into a pillow. I’ve tried it now. It helps a little!What would you tell another kid who is sad because their mom or dad just died?I would say, I know you are sad and I know how you feel. I would comfort her and tell her it is going to be OK. I think TAPS would be a good place for her to go to talk about her feelings and make new friends.What are you excited most about for this new TAPS experience in San Diego?I am excited to meet new friends, see old ones and get a new mentor! Shannon won’t be there, but we are still friends. I like it that I’ll have two mentors now!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.?When Enda Kenny became Prime Minister of Ireland in February 2011 he inherited a mess. The country was staggering under an enormous debt load and facing rising unemployment. Kenny took over from Fianna Fail, the party that had been in power for 14 years and was most closely associated with overseeing economic policies that produced what became known as the Celtic Tiger ? a period that saw remarkable economic growth in the previously struggling island country on the westernmost edge of Europe. That growth bubble, which was fueled by increased access to cheap money and an unsustainable property boom, began to burst shortly before the global economic crisis of 2008. The country’s rapid dive toward? caused Ireland to seek a bailout from the ?and the in November 2010.Currently the longest-serving member of Dail Eireann (the House of Representatives), Kenny has pressed on with the sort of cuts in government services that have brought protesters onto the streets of Greece and Spain, countries that are faced with similar debt burdens. Kenny, however, has not had to deal with as many public protests over austerity measures, and that has given him more political room than his Greek and Spanish counterparts. Many voters and commentators have long considered Kenny to be a lightweight figure in the Irish political scene, but with Ireland’s GDP beginning to sneak upward once again Kenny may prove himself anything but the “fool” that his predecessor called him in 2010.(MORE:?)TIME’s Europe editor Catherine Mayer met Kenny that year for the first time. She had encountered him twice more before she spent time with him in Dublin in September while reporting for her magazine story ?on Ireland’s economic fight back. TIME spoke with Mayer to get the story behind the story.Why were you interested in interviewing Enda Kenny in the first place? Enda Kenny is somebody who has a gulf between the way he’s perceived in his home country and the way he is perceived abroad. Also because Ireland, as the second country to ask for a bailout, is quite far along in the process of dealing with the ramifications of what went wrong. I was looking for a way to look at some of the wider European issues, and Ireland’s story seemed to me a good starting place.(MORE: )And why do you think a gulf exists between the Irish and international perceptions of Kenny? Politicians are often more popular abroad than they are in their own countries. That’s partly because familiarity breeds contempt. You could say it’s because the Irish know him better. But it’s also because the Irish focus on the smaller picture, and sometimes you really can see things better from a distance. It’s exactly the same if you think about what goes on in Washington or Westminster.Kenny has a reputation for being very likable in person. Is that reputation deserved? He’s extremely likable, that did not surprise me at all because that is very much part of his image. What I was really trying to see was what was behind that likability.?In small groups he is much more fluent and compelling than he would appear to be were you to judge him from his big media set pieces. When cameras train on him he seems to freeze up, which is an interesting problem for somebody in that position. But when he’s relaxed he’s interesting and has a lot to say.(MORE:?)His predecessor Brian Cowen called him a fool. Did he have any foolish moments when you interviewed him? He didn’t do anything that one would think of as particularly foolish. He’s certainly endearing and has a slightly childlike quality to his enthusiasm. There was a moment, when he was showing me around his office and showing me absolutely everything, including all his photos, where you found yourself thinking that he was sweet. But that is combined with a real sense of shrewdness, and that is the thing that doesn’t come across when you see him at a distance.How genuinely sensitive do you think he is to the financial woes of Irish people? I think all politicians are far too insulated from reality but in Ireland they are actually less so than in other countries. I mention in the piece that Enda Kenny walks to and from work, and he does actually have regular direct contact with people who tell him exactly what they think. You may wonder how much that actually means to him because he has a job and is being paid for his work. I suspect that in Ireland more politicians know people who are themselves directly in trouble than is the case in many of the more featherbed capitals of the world. So he’s not himself directly suffering but I’m pretty sure he does know what’s going on.(MORE:?)What is your experience of reporting from Ireland? I’ve been covering Ireland for years but mostly covering Northern Ireland because that was such a big story for so long. I first visited Dublin in the early 1980s and was absolutely fascinated and slightly shocked to find myself traveling backward in time. It was like a time warp in comparison with London ? a place where everywhere shuts down at night, and young women with small babies sat begging on the pavements. I didn’t really understand at that stage what was holding back Irish development. I then got to know the Republic of Ireland really well, but as I say I spent a huge amount of time north of the border right through the 1990s covering the conflict.Do you think Kenny can stem the emigration of educated young people to countries like Australia? While I was in Dublin I spoke to the ?[Economic and Social Research Institute], and one view they gave on the current outflow of young people is that it’s not necessarily a bad thing for Ireland. These people go abroad and gain experience but the moment the economy begins to recover they’ll come back again like homing pigeons bringing new skills with them. They also bring links from abroad, and given that Ireland’s such an open economy and relies so much on its trading routes, that’s not a bad thing. What worries me about Ireland, and what would circumscribe anything that Enda Kenny or any other politician could do, is that the euro-zone crisis is horribly interconnected. How well things turn out for Ireland will affect all of us and not just the Irish people. We will just have to wait and see what happens unfortunately.MORE:??(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.The Los Angeles County Sheriff’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.Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Bill Weiss says the semi driver was able to get out of the truck before the crash.The department says three of the train’s 220 passengers had minor injuries and were treated at a hospital. No one else was hurt.Weiss wasn’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.The rail line provided buses for the passengers to continue their journeys.MORE:??Even as Turkish Prime Minister pushed a bill through parliament on Thursday authorizing his armed forces to conduct operations across the border in , both countries played down the possibility of a war that could oblige to Turkey’s aid.“The bill is not for war,” said Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay, after opposition lawmakers branded the proposal a “war bill.” Instead, he insisted, its purpose was “deterrence,” following a mortar attack from Syrian soil on Wednesday that killed five people in the Turkish border town of Akcakale.(MORE:?)The measure is valid for a year and gives the government power to launch an attack without first seeking parliamentary approval. Turkish forces have shelled Syrian positions over the past two days and, according to Syrian opposition groups, that barrage has killed “several” Syrian troops.Despite the saber rattling, however, indications are that the Turkish side will be careful to avoid serious escalation, as will Syria. Atalay took care to point out to his domestic audience that “the Syrian side has admitted what it did and apologized” through U.N. mediators.“There is an ever widening gulf between what Turkey says and what it can actually do,” says Soli Ozel, an international-relations professor at Kadir Has University. “The bill was designed to let off steam for Erdogan, who has put himself in a spot from which he cannot climb down.”Once a close friend of President Bashar Assad ? their families even vacationed together ? Erdogan became one of the Syrian regime’s most vocal critics shortly after the uprising began. Turkey regularly hosts members of the Syrian opposition and houses some 100,000 Syrian refugees in camps in the southeast. It also provides sanctuary to the leadership of the Free Syrian Army, an insurgent group led by mutineers from Assad’s army. But Ankara’s oft repeated call for a Western-led military operation to establish no-fly zones and protected enclaves on the ground in the northern Syrian border has met little support from its NATO allies. And while the U.S. was quick to condemn Wednesday’s attack by Syria, it remains preoccupied with its presidential election and even beyond November is unlikely to develop any appetite for new military involvement in the Middle East.A solo military intervention in Syria by Turkey remains unlikely for a number of reasons, ranging from the capabilities of the Turkish armed forces to the problem of an endgame, with the high risk that such an intervention draws Turkey into a second open-ended insurgency besides the one it already faces within its Kurdish population ? and from the emerging autonomous Kurdish enclave in Syria. Turkey also depends on Syrian allies Russia and Iran for its natural gas supplies and is unlikely to risk incurring their wrath. And Erdogan, who was re-elected with more than 50% of the vote last year, is also in a tight spot at home, where polls show that only about 18% of Turks support his policy on Syria.“We’ve reached a critical point,” wrote columnist Melih Asik in the centrist paper Milliyet. “We’re not only up against Syria, but also Iran, Iraq, Russia and China, which support Damascus. Behind us, there is nothing but the provocative attitudes and empty promises of the United States.”NATO ambassadors met late on Wednesday, issuing a statement condemning the attack and demanding the immediate end of “aggressive acts against an ally.” The 28-nation group said the attacks presented “a clear and present danger” to the security of one of its allies. But there was no further intimation of retaliation.(PHOTOS:?)Thursday’s attack was not Syria’s first cross-border violation, but the deaths of five civilians ? two women and three children ? had raised tensions to a boiling point. Turkey responded with retaliatory fire, and the two countries have since been tit-for-tat shelling.“The negative impact of the ongoing crisis in Syria on our national security is more and more visible,” Erdogan said in the bill he submitted to parliament. “The aggressive actions targeting our national lands are at the threshold of armed attacks … For that reason, it has become necessary to take precautions in a timely and quick manner against additional risks and threats facing our country.”Last July, Syria had downed a Turkish fighter jet that Ankara said was on a training flight in international airspace, killing its two pilots. Turkey subsequently reinforced its border with antiaircraft missiles and threatened to target any approaching Syrian military elements.“What’s happening with Syria,” says Ozel, “is just another installment in the bankruptcy of Turkey’s foreign policy.” Before the Arab Spring, Turkey had made improving its relationship with Syria a centerpiece of its new regional foreign policy dubbed “zero problems with neighbors.” Ankara hoped to become a regional power broker, expanding its influence in the former Ottoman provinces that span much of the contemporary Middle East. But limits of that policy became clear when the Syrian uprising began, and Erdogan threw his weight behind the effort to topple Assad. That in turn has cooled ties with Russia and, together with Turkey’s interventions in Iraqi politics, also exacerbated tensions with both Baghdad and Tehran.Many Turks believe the upsurge in attacks by the Kurdish separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party?insurgents in Turkey’s southeast reflects Assad’s response to Turkey’s support for his overthrow, as well as fear that escalating hostilities could hurt the country’s economy and drag it into a regional conflict it will be unable to control.In explaining Thursday’s vote, Atalay said Turkey’s “main priority” remained to “act together with the international community.” That in itself suggests Turkey is not about to go to war in Syria.MORE:??(AKCAKALE, Turkey) ? An Associated Press video journalist says Turkish artillery fired toward Syria minutes after a Syrian shell landed on Turkish territory.(PHOTOS:?)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.Abdulhakim Ayhan, the mayor of Akcakale, confirmed that Turkish artillery immediately returned fire.The Turks have been returning fire since Wednesday when Syrian shelling killed five civilians in a Turkish border town.?This post is in partnership with Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The article below was originally published at .James Burke received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000 and was named one of history’s 10 greatest CEOs by?Fortune?magazine in 2003. But it was for his handling of the Tylenol tragedy back in 1982 that Burke, CEO of Johnson & Johnson from 1976 to 1989, will be remembered most.?Burke died last week at age 87.In 1982, seven people died after taking cyanide-laced extra-strength Tylenol capsules sold in five Chicago stores. Before that happened, Tylenol, sold by J&J’s McNeil Consumer Products division, had 35% of the $1.2 billion analgesic market. After the deaths, J&J’s market share dropped to 7%.Under Burke’s leadership, the company spent $100 million to recall 31 million bottles of Tylenol and re-launched the product two months later in tamper-proof packaging. Burke’s actions have become a legendary example of good crisis management, serving as the basis for case studies in numerous business schools and management books.(MORE: )Burke not only saved the reputation of the company, but he also saved the brand as well. By mid-1983, Tylenol’s share of the analgesic market had climbed to 30%, reaching 35% by the end of the year.In a 2004 Wharton School Publishing Book titled,?, Burke emphasized the value of the J&J credo, dating back to the company’s founding in 1887, which stated that the company is responsible first to its customers, then to its employees, the community and the stockholders, in that order. “The credo is all about the consumer,” Burke said. When those seven deaths occurred, “the credo made it very clear at that point exactly what we were all about. It gave me the ammunition I needed to persuade shareholders and others to spend the $100 million on the recall. The credo helped sell it.”In his interview for?Lasting Leadership, Burke also spoke about trust. “Trust has been an operative word in my life. [It] embodies almost everything you can strive for that will help you to succeed. You tell me any human relationship that works without trust, whether it is a marriage or a friendship or a social interaction; in the long run, the same thing is true about business.”Ironically, Johnson & Johnson has recently experienced??that “have caused many to question whether the firm has lost sight of that credo,” according to a Knowledge@Wharton article earlier this year. The company’s problems with plants in Fort Washington, Pa., Lancaster, Pa., and Puerto Rico ? the sites associated with recalls of over-the-counter products like Benadryl and Children’s Tylenol ? “dragged on for years,” the article notes. Two hip devices were recalled in 2010 for post-surgical complications, and the company agreed to pay $158 million to the state of Texas to settle claims it improperly marketed the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal to some patients. Other suits surrounding the marketing of this drug are ongoing. Recalls of surgical sutures and contact lenses have been announced as well.(MORE: )Years earlier, as?Lasting Leadership?noted, other companies had demonstrated what came to be seen as poor judgment in the way they handled defective product incidents. For example, Coca-Cola had mismanaged the “contaminated can” incident in Europe in 1999; Intel had initially failed to respond quickly to the calculation errors embedded in its Pentium chip in 1994, and Firestone had initially refused to accept responsibility for SUV roll-overs caused by poorly manufactured tires in 2000.Burke’s actions were the opposite. According to media reports at the time, the Tylenol crisis led the news every night on every station for six weeks. Burke, however, met the challenge head on, contacting the chief of each network’s news divisions in order to keep them informed. He also met with the directors of the FBI and the FDA. “There were many people in the company who felt there was no possible way to save the brand, that it was the end of Tylenol,” Burke said. “But the fact is, I had confidence in J&J and its reputation, and also confidence in the public to respond to what was right. It helped turn Tylenol into a billion-dollar business.”The person who placed the cyanide in the Tylenol capsules was never found.?(LONDON) ? Radical preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri and four other terror suspects can be extradited immediately to the U.S. to face charges there, Britain’s High Court ruled Friday.Judges John Thomas and Duncan Ousely rejected last-ditch applications by al-Masri, Khaled al-Fawwaz, Babar Ahmad, Adel Abdul Bary and Syed Ahsan. Thomas said these are the final proceedings in the suspects’ years-long battles to avoid going to the U.S.Britain has said it will act right away to remove them.Al-Masri, who turned London’s Finsbury Park Mosque into a training ground for radical Islamists, is wanted in the U.S. on charges that include helping set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon.(MORE:?)Al Masri and the four other men have been fighting extradition for as long as 14 years, and both British and European courts have ruled that they can be sent to the U.S. to face charges.They applied to the High Court for a last-minute halt, with al-Masri’s lawyers saying his deteriorating physical and mental health means it would be “oppressive” to send him to a U.S. prison.Lawyers for the preacher, who has one eye and hooks in place of hands he claims to have lost fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, said he suffers from depression, chronic sleep deprivation, diabetes and other ailments.The Egyptian-born former nightclub bouncer used north London’s Finsbury Park Mosque as a base to persuade young Muslims to take up the cause of holy war. The mosque was once attended by Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and “shoe bomber” Richard Reid.(MORE:?)He is wanted in the U.S. on multiple terrorism-related charges, including helping abduct 16 hostages, including two American tourists, in Yemen in 1998 and conspiring to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, between 2000 and 2001.He has been in a British jail since 2004 on charges of inciting racial hatred and encouraging followers to kill non-Muslims.Ahmad has fought for almost a decade to avoid being sent to the U.S., where he is accused of running terrorist-funding websites. He and Ahsan both face charges including using a website to provide support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country.Bary and al-Fawwaz were indicted with others, including Osama bin Laden, for their alleged roles in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa in 1998. Al-Fawwaz faces more than 269 counts of murder.MORE:??(LONDON) ? Britain’s High Court ruled Friday that three Kenyans tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule can proceed with compensation claims against the British government.The case involves Kenyans who say they were beaten and sexually assaulted by officers acting for the British administration trying to suppress the “Mau Mau” rebellion in the 1950s. Groups of Kenyans had attacked British officials and white farmers who had settled in some of Kenya’s most fertile lands.The British government expressed disappointment with the decision, though it stressed that it did “not dispute that each of the claimants in this case suffered torture and other ill treatment at the hands of the Colonial Administration.”The government sought to have the case dismissed, arguing it could not be held legally responsible for the long-ago abuses. It argued that the liabilities of the colonial administration passed to the Kenyan government on independence in 1963.“The normal time limit for bringing a civil action is three to six years,” the Foreign Office said in a statement. “In this case, that period has been extended to over 50 years despite the fact that the key decision makers are dead and unable to give their account of what happened.”The Kenyans say the British were aware the Kenyans were being mistreated, and want compensation.?(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.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.The restriction has made South Korea’s missile capability inferior to that of rival North Korea, and some key military installations in the North have been out of South Korea’s missile range.(PHOTOS: )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’s nuclear and missile threats.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.“The most important objective for our government in revising the missile guideline is to contain North Korea’s armed provocation,” Chun said.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 “strike all of North Korea, even from southern areas.”(MORE: )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.“These revisions are a prudent, proportional, and specific response to the (North Korean) ballistic missile threat,” he said.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.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.Cruise missiles fly at a lower altitude and slower speed than ballistic missiles, making them easier to intercept, although they are considered more accurate.North Korean state media didn’t immediately respond to the announcement, but analysts expected they would issue a harsh statement.(MORE: )“North Korea will say South Korea’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,” said analyst Baek Seung-joo of the state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul.North Korea has missiles that can hit South Korea, Japan and the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, according to Seoul’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.North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, but experts don’t believe it has yet mastered the technology needed to mount a nuclear weapon on a missile.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.By?HYUNG-JIN KIM?(UNITED NATIONS) ? The U.N. Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against al-Qaeda removed a Saudi businessman from its blacklist Friday.The committee chairman, Germany’s U.N. Ambassador Peter Wittig, said that Yasin al-Qadi had been de-listed, following a recommendation by the blacklist’s ombudsman to remove him.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.Al-Qadi’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.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.In 2009, the Security Council established an independent ombudsman to deal with requests to get off the U.N. blacklist.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.PHOTOS:??WASHINGTON — Average U.S. rates on fixed mortgages fell to fresh record lows for the second straight week. The declines suggest the Federal Reserve’s stimulus efforts are having an impact.Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan dropped to 3.36 percent. That’s down from last week’s rate of 3.40 percent, which was the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinancing option, dipped to 2.69 percent, down from last week’s record low of 2.73 percent.(MORE: )The Fed is spending $40 billion a month to buy mortgage-backed securities. The goal is to lower mortgage rates and help the housing recovery. The Fed plans to continue the program until there is substantial improvement in the job market.The housing market already is benefiting from the lowest mortgage rates on record. Sales of both previously occupied and newly built homes in the U.S. are up from last year. Home prices are rising more consistently. And builders are more confident in the market and are starting to build more homes.Lower rates are also driving more people to refinance.Mortgage applications surged 16.6 percent last week, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday. Of those applications, 83 percent were to refinance existing loans.Growth in refinancing could help the broader economy. When people refinance their mortgages at lower interest rates, their monthly payments typically decline. That leaves them with more money to spend. Consumer spending drives nearly 70 percent of economic activity.Still, some economists question whether further decline in rates will make much of a difference. The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage has been below 4 percent since early December. Yet home sales remain below healthy levels. And most people who can qualify have likely already taken advantage of the lower rates.(MORE: )Many people who would like to refinance or buy a home can’t because they fail to meet stricter lending requirements or don’t have enough money to make a down payment.To calculate average rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on Monday through Wednesday of each week.The average does not include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.The average fee for 30-year loans was 0.6 point, unchanged from last week. The fee for 15-year loans slipped to 0.5 point from 0.6.The average rate on one-year adjustable-rate mortgages fell to 2.57 percent from 2.60 percent. The fee for one-year adjustable rate loans held steady at 0.4 point.The average rate on five-year adjustable-rate mortgages rose to 2.72 percent from 2.71 percent. The fee remained at 0.6 point.?There are ways and ways of saying things.Robin Marantz Henig’s recent article??in the New York Times Sunday Review revisted the Myth of Mental Illness meme, this time in the form of an argument about how the once ubiquitous anti-anxiety pill, immortalized by the Rolling Stones in their 1966 song, “Mother’s Little Helper,” helped “people who were basically fine” deal with “the ups and downs of daily life. ”(MORE: )Anxiety (that is to say, any form of anxiety short of full-scale panic attacks, full-blown OCD, trip-to-the-emergency-room-level impairment) Henig went on to suggest, was a convenient fiction cooked up in mid-century America by the pharmaceutical industry and pill-happy doctors. Because, as the author once to an interviewer, “the ordinary, everyday anxiety it treats did not exist before Valium came along as a way to treat it.”A few days after Henig’s article, Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, a blog post where he too shared thoughts on the “fictive” quality of mental disorders. “We lack cures, we lack vaccines, and we lack diagnostic biomarkers,” he wrote. “Terms like ‘depression’ or ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘autism’ have achieved a reality that far outstrips their scientific value.”Like Henig’s piece, like so much popular writing on mental health today, Insel’s post had a certain emperor-has-no-clothes ring to it, as he deplored the relative lack of progress made in research psychiatry over the past half-century, when scientific advances in the treatment of other medical challenges, like childhood leukemia or cardiovascular disease, have simply soared.(MORE: )So why was the first article so troubling ? even potentially dangerous ? while the second inspired hope?It comes down to ?one very simple and basic point of difference: Insel’s piece pointed to the limitations of science in accurately capturing the complex truth of mental illness due to a categorizing system that has for decades focused on grouping together the symptoms of mental disorders, rather than on trying to break down the underlying brain characteristics associated with those disorders. Henig’s article, like so many of its ilk, made light of the symptoms altogether, denying the reality of the suffering that they convey and, by extension, the reality of painful mental disorders themselves.Valium has long served extremely well as a vehicle for proving the perfidy of psychiatrists and the drug companies behind them. It was indeed dispensed in outrageous-seeming numbers in the 1960s and early 1970s. It did indeed lead to tragic levels of abuse and addiction. Its use did correspond to the tail end of a time when an oppressive mystique of female domesticity was making life highly unpleasant for women who didn’t ? wouldn’t or couldn’t ? find happiness within its constraints.(MORE: )And yet ??the Valium Mystique, or the investment of all sorts of historical and social forces of oppression in one little pill?has its limits as a concept. For one thing, it only holds water if it was indeed true, as Henig? says, that? the women taking it were essentially perfectly well-functioning mildy neurotic types looking for happiness-enhancing “brain styling.” But, for the most part, they weren’t ??at least according to the conclusions of a team of researchers who, in the late 1970s, were charged by the Carter Administration with looking into whether or not perfectly fine American women were indeed being trivially overmedicated with Valium. “It was patients with high levels of distress who had received medication, and high distress correlated with diagnosable illness,” psychiatrist Peter Kramer, best known for his best-seller Listening to Prozac, and a member of that research team, has .It’s also inconveniently true that drugs like Valium were marketed as much to men as to women.(MORE: )Despite the fact that we remember them today as “salves for harried? housewives,” tranquilizers like Valium, and its predecessor, Miltown, were “nicknamed Executive Excedrin in the 1950s and widely used by businessmen, male talk show hosts and celebrities,” notes McGill University historian Andrea Tone in her excellent 2009 book, . And it’s true, as Tone reminds us in vivid historical detail, that anxiety, great or mild, is and has always been part of the human condition. ?As have been efforts to numb it ? 19th?century Americans, she notes, used patent medicines containing opiates or alcohol.What happens to our long-cherished Mother’s Little Helper tale if you replace the notion that women were being singled out and mentally shutdown via Valium with the counter notion that those women were in real pain? You get another story: of women visiting doctors in search of help. Of doctors then offering help that wasn’t very good help because, frankly, at that point, they didn’t have much by way of good help to offer. American psychiatry has had some really dark chapters, particularly in the mid-20th?century, when the use of tranquilizers like Valium skyrocketed. But to deny the reality of the suffering that motivates people ? men and women ??to spend time and money on seeing doctors is just inhuman. And, unlike widespread Valium prescribing, it’s a practice that hasn’t been reduced over time .MORE: ?Paolo Gabriele, the former butler to who was convicted Saturday of leaking the pontiff’s personal papers, has been sentenced to year and half in prison–but he’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 “likely hypothesis.” He added, “I can say this without fear of being contradicted.”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 “in the name of His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, gloriously reigning” ? and the ultimate arbiter of whether the sentence will be carried out.(MORE: )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. “Nobody knows what he’s feeling inside, but externally he was impassive,” 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, “The thing that I feel strongly inside me is the conviction of having acted out of exclusive?I’d say visceral?love for the church of Christ and its visible head [the Pope]. … I don’t feel like a thief.”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’s attorney Cristiana Arru sought to cast doubt on the rigor of Vatican investigators. The butler, she argued, had only photocopied documents?he hadn’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. “You could see that his motivation was to do something positive for the church, not damage it” she said. “He thought that the holy father wasn’t sufficiently informed.” She closed by requesting that the charges be reduced to misappropriation or that failing that, that Gabriele be given the minimum sentence. “What he did is condemnable,” she added.” But he was compelled by the evil that he saw.”(MORE: )Speaking to journalists after the trial, Lombardi twice stressed that despite statements by Gabriele before his arrest that “at least 20 people” were involved in the scandal, Picardi had found no evidence that the butler had acted in concord with others. “The important thing is that there was no proof of accomplices,” 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.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’s clean record, his years of previous service and his motivation for acting, which “though erroneous,” contributed to the reduction in his sentence. Gabriele was also ordered to pay the court costs.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.MORE:??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.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.Electoral officials gave no indication of when they might begin releasing first returns. Exit polling is forbidden in Venezuela.The electoral council’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.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.(MORE: )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.Chavez’s campaign manager, Jorge Rodriguez, told reporters there were no such plans. “This country has freedom of circulation,” he said at a news conference.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.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.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’s political machine thoroughly controls the wheels of government.“We will recognize the results, whatever they are,” Chavez told reporters after casting his vote in Caracas. He said he was pleased by the “massive turnout.”The stakes in the country with the world’s largest known oil reserves couldn’t be higher.(MORE:?)Just as polls closed, one of several dozen young red-shirted Chavistas on motorcycles said they were ready to begin celebrating.“Let them accept defeat,” one of them, Kleiver Gutierrez, said of the opposition.One pro-Chavez voter, private bodyguard Carlos Julio Silva, said that whatever his faults, Chavez deserves to win for spreading the nation’s oil wealth to the poor with free medical care, public housing and other government largess..“There is corruption, there’s plenty of bureaucracy, but the people have never had a leader who cared about this country,” Silva said after voting for Chavez at a school in the Caracas slum of Petare. “That’s why the people are going to re-elect Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias.”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.Maria Leonis was selling CDs of Chavez’s campaign theme music on a sidewalk next to a polling center. “Today I’ve sold about 100 CDs, just Chavez’s song,” Leonis said, adding that she supported Chavez because “I want to keep seeing change.”(PHOTOS: )Chavez’s critics said the president has inflamed divisions by labeling his opponents “fascists,” ”Yankees” and “neo-Nazis,” while Chavez’s loyalists alleged Capriles would halt generous government programs that assist the poor.“I’m really tired of all this polarization,” said Lissette Garcia, a 39-year-old clothes seller and Capriles supporter who voted in the affluent Caracas district of Las Mercedes. “I want to reconnect with all my friends who are ‘Chavistas.’”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.Troops guarded thousands of voting centers across the country.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 “disturb order, they should know there is an armed force prepared and equipped and trained … to put down any attempt at disturbances.”He didn’t identify the groups to which he was referring.Chavez’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.The 40-year-old Capriles, a wiry former governor affectionately called “Skinny” by supporters, infused the opposition with new optimism, and opinion polls pointed to him giving Chavez his closest election.Some recent polls gave Chavez a lead of about 10 percentage points, while others put the two candidates about even.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.“Chavez is going to fight until his last breath. He doesn’t know how to do anything else,” 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: “It’s a tough fight. The opposition has never been this strong.”Chavez won the last presidential vote in 2006 with 63 percent of the vote.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.But he has suffered declining support due to one of the world’s highest murder rates, 18 percent inflation, a deteriorating electrical grid and a bloated government accused of endemic corruption and mismanagement.(MORE:?)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.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.Capriles said Chavez has stirred up hatred, hobbled the economy by expropriating private businesses and squandered oil wealth. He criticized Chavez’s preferential deals supplying oil to allies, including one that lets Cuba pay with the services of Cuban doctors.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.“This situation can’t be permitted,” Gutierrez said, adding that she voted for Capriles “because I want this division in my country to end.”Political analyst Ricardo Sucre said he expected the election to show “two halves, more or less even.” Regardless of the result, he said, Venezuelans are likely to remain deeply divided by politics for years to come.By?FRANK BAJAK,?IAN JAMES Associated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez, Christopher Toothaker, Jorge Rueda and Vivian Sequera contributed to this report.?A San Francisco-area Boy Scout says he has been denied the organization’s most prestigious award because he is gay, ?Seventeen-year-old Ryan Andresen’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.“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.”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.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.(MORE: )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.“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.”Deron Smith, the national spokesman for the Boy Scouts, said on Thursday that Andresen does not abide by the organization’s religious principles.“Recently, a Scout proactively notified his unit leadership and Eagle Scout Counselor that he does not agree to Scouting’s principle of ‘Duty to God’ and does not meet Scouting’s membership standard on sexual orientation,” Smith wrote in a statement to Yahoo News. “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.”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.(WATCH: )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.?Steve Jobs, the master of singular less-is-more statements, would approve.Apple has replaced its today with a short video in honor of the one-year anniversary of Jobs’ death. T(PHOTOS:?)A message from current Apple CEO Tim Cook appears on the home page once the video ends.“I’m incredibly proud of the work we are doing, delivering products that our customers love and dreaming up new ones that will delight them down the road,” it says. “It’s a wonderful tribute to Steve’s memory and everything he stood for.”MORE: ?Meet Louise, the Eurasian eagle owl, and Annie the bird dog. They didn’t watch the presidential debate. They paid?no attention to Justin Bieber’s?, nor do they have any desire to watch Obama and Romney’s Gangnam-style?. There is only their love.In this YouTube video, Louise gently pecks Annie with kisses and strokes her hair with its claw. Toward the end, Louise seems to be whispering something to the dog, as if to declare that nothing was between them but sunshine and grass.?The head of U.S.-based appliance company KitchenAid surely missed much of the presidential debate Wednesday night, forced to do damage control after a tweet published on the brand’s official account contained a disparaging remark about President Obama’s late grandmother. After Obama mentioned his grandmother, who helped raise him and died just days before the 2008 election,? sent the following message to its 25,000 followers ? now deleted, but widely preserved in hundreds of retweets.Easy there. RT: @: Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! 'She died 3 days b4 he became president'. — Corrin Foster (@corrinrenee) The tweet sparked a massive backlash, and KitchenAid swiftly issued an apology tweet:Deepest apologies for an irresponsible tweet that is in no way a representation of the brand's opinion. — KitchenAid (@KitchenAidUSA) Cynthia Soledad, KitchenAid’s senior director of branding, then took control of the KitchenAid account to issue a follow-up tweet that sought to “personally apologize” to the President and his family, as well as to “everyone on Twitter” for the “offensive tweet.”In an , Soledad explained that an employee had intended to tweet the message through a personal account, but mistakenly broadcast it via the corporate handle.It was carelessly sent in error by a member of our Twitter team who, needless to say, won't be tweeting for us anymore.— KitchenAid (@KitchenAidUSA) KitchenAid deleted the original tweet and apologized within eight minutes, and as . Minutes are an eternity on Twitter, where retweets can spread like wildfire, especially during major news events ? and the widely watched presidential debate at the University of Denver saw more than 10 million tweets sent while the two candidates were on stage.KitchenAid isn’t the first brand to get burned by social media. In March 2011, a tweet from Chrysler used inappropriate language in describing Detroit drivers. It was deleted immediately, but the employee behind the message (MORE: )It is difficult for Twitter users to simply delete ill-advised tweets because of how rapidly they can be disseminated by your followers. reveals that 92.4 percent of all retweets occur within the first hour of a published tweet’s existence, and 96.9 percent of all replies also happen within the first hour. Tweets can be preserved in the form of screenshots and passed around?long after the original message has been removed, and social media search engines like Topsy keep logs of public tweets ? even those that were deleted. When U.K. journalist Guy Adams faced repercussions this year for tweeting the personal e-mail address of NBC Olympics President Gary Zenkel, his gaffe could still be found on Topsy after his account was shut down completely, .Still, perhaps the adage that any attention is good attention holds true; both KitchenAid and Chrysler both saw major boosts in their Twitter followers after their mishaps — though perhaps the new followers are just hoping to see another tweet blunder.MORE: ? 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...?“In recent years, Azerbaijani-Mexican relations have been developing dynamically,” wrote the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, in a to Mexican President Felipe Calderon on the occasion of Mexico’s Independence Day on Sept. 16. Many Mexicans however, particularly the residents of Mexico City, might be surprised to realize how warm and fuzzy relations are between the two countries ? and by the arrival of a new statue in Mexico’s Reforma Boulevard.(FROM THE MAGAZINE:?)The life-size bronze statue happens to be of Heydar Aliyev,?the former ruler of the oil-rich, ex-Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan (and the father of Azerbaijan’s current President). It sits in the newly renovated Azerbaijan-Mexico Friendship park in Mexico City ? a renovation that Azerbaijan , to the tune of $5 million in total for two parks and two statues in the city. (The second statue, a memorial to the victims of a 1990s massacre that?Azerbaijanis??as a genocide, sits in?Tlaxcoaque Park in downtown Mexico City.)(MORE:?)But the Soviet-style bronze of Aliyev has raised eyebrows among bewildered Mexicans as well as human rights groups. The monument sits on the City’s Reforma Avenue, home to statues of foreign leaders such as Abraham Lincoln and Gandhi.For human-rights groups, the placement of Aliyev ? who is accused of stifling dissent as the former Soviet republic’s Communist Party boss during the Cold War, and then as President from 1993 to 2003 ? among such company is disconcerting, to say the least.(MORE:?)Human rights group Azerbaijani-Americans for Democracy has written to the Mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard expressing their dismay. “Heydar Aliyev was not a noble man that deserves to be honored in public parks and squares,” :“Having his monument erected in Mexico City is an affront to the Azerbaijanis that suffer at the hands of his corrupt dictatorship and it can only be an insult to Mexicans who value their own nation’s long-established traditions of freedom, human rights and dignity, and justice.”Statues of the Order of Lenin recipient have popped up in other countries, although Mexico is the first Latin American nation to receive one. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has compiled an??keeping a track of the statues erected in Aliyev’s honor so far, most of which are dotted around Central and Eastern Europe. (Mexico’s special treatment is partially down to the fact that it was one of the first countries to recognize Azerbaijan following its break from the Soviet Union in 1991.)(MORE:?)Many Mexico City residents, however, appeared to be oblivious to the issue,? the BBC. “He who pays, gets to choose,” a?car washer who works near the park??the broadcaster. “I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea but what can we Mexicans say??We have to bite our tongues, as it’s their money which paid for all this.”Mayor Erbrard, who has kept quiet so far in the face of the criticism, did during the unveiling of the statue in August that Mexico City had not received an investment this large from a foreign government before.Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Mexico to the AP that the monument was not “intended to improve anybody’s reputation, because the world’s perception of Heydar Aliyev does not require any rescuing.”PHOTOS: ?Like most professional opinion havers who watched Wednesday’s debate, I thought , but I was puzzled by his volunteering that he wants to end government funding for public broadcasting.I wasn’t surprised that he said it; it’s been a conservative goal for about as long as there’s been PBS and NPR. But I was surprised by how he said it, as he was speaking to Jim Lehrer (ironically, of PBS): “I’m sorry, Jim. I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you too. But I’m not going to ? I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from to pay for it.”I’ve been covering the waxing-and-waning threats to cut public-media funding long enough to know one thing. It’s the defenders of public money who bring up Big Bird ? and Elmo and Arthur ? whenever this happens. It personalizes the debate. It gets people worried about their favorite characters and educational TV for their kids; it conjures the specter of heartless politicians killing Big Bird.And if you’re a conservative budget cutter or culture warrior, you do whatever you can not to cite Big Bird, or Sesame Street, or any cuddly figure that millions of people love. You talk about Bill Moyers, or a documentary you charge with liberal bias, or the elitism of NPR executives, or . You tell voters that coastal socialist elites are taking your money to undermine your values! You only mention Big Bird, if you must at all, to say that government money or no, Big Bird will be fine.Which is more or less true: popular shows like Sesame Street and Arthur can get a lot of money from licensing. I in a post that goes into it in a lot more detail, but the real disaster would be for local PBS stations in small markets ? often in rural red-state areas ? that provide an expensive service in poor regions. Big Bird won’t get fired; the question is whether you’ll still have a local station to bring you Big Bird. (I will, regardless, as will the Romneys and Obamas, because we’re all pampered coastal elites.)In any case: crying “Big Bird” is usually a way of muddying the issues over public-broadcasting defunding, which would have very real but very different effects. And it usually works, which is why the government still funds public broadcasting.So why would Romney invite Big Bird’s name into the discussion on purpose? Off the bat, he opens himself up to loaded attacks. Almost immediately, someone created a “” parody account on Twitter. The head of PBS against Romney’s proposal. And Barack Obama, diffident at the debate, was using it Thursday for : Romney was “finally getting tough on Big Bird … he’ll get rid of regulations on , but he’s going to crack down on Sesame Street.”But what Romney said was not a slip-up or gaffe. It wasn’t even new. Since the primaries, he’s . It’s an interesting tack: Romney is essentially saying, “Hey, I like the things you like too. We just can’t afford them.” It takes the debate out of the usual culture-warrior frame (liberals are using our money to undermine our values!) and puts it in a dollars-and-cents frame. (Speaking of that frame, it is true that $400 million?plus for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a teensy slice of the deficit, but that’s another, long-running argument.)I’m not sure it’s actually a good political strategy, given that it’s set up his opponents with a fight on their preferred terms. But it’s an interesting way of changing the strategy anyway ? seeing if he can win the argument by confronting the we-love-Big-Bird sentiment directly.And it’s worth noting that the old conservative tack ? NPR is liberal, Elmo will be fine ? has never actually succeeded in ending public-radio and TV support. I’ve always doubted it was ever really meant to, so much as it was a reliable way to whip up the base by bundling budget anxieties and the culture war in one overblown package.Romney’s angle may not work, and of course I don’t know who’s going to win the election. But it could be a sign that ? more than past politicians demagoguing the no-tax-money-for-PBS argument ? he actually intends to do it if he gets the chance.Update: Here, my standard disclosure: I voted for Obama in ’08 and plan to do so again in ’12. To paraphrase Walter Mondale: most people who write about politics have voting preferences; the difference is, they won’t tell you theirs and I just did. To read my fuller thoughts on political writing and disclosure,?.?There aren’t really many occasions in architecture for breaking news alerts?it’s hard for a building to sneak up on people?but this is pretty close: a hitherto little-known house . Its future is in doubt. But perhaps the real newsflash is: There are Frank Lloyd Wright houses that nobody knows about? How does that happen?The house, in a neighborhood of known as Arcadia, was originally designed by Wright for the architect’s son, David. This may go some way towards explaining the obscurity. David and his wife Gladys, who passed away in 2008, would have been fully aware of the perils of living in an architecturally significant home: namely, FLWpilgrims. Students and fans of architecture go to great lengths to see actual buildings; after all there’s only so much you can learn from photographs and plans.Wright’s more famous home, , in receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.? Phillip Johnson’s in New Canaan, Conn. got so many visitors when it was still a private home that sightseers sometimes had their tires let down by way of discouragement. (Nowadays it’s open to the public. )So Wright’s son can be forgiven for not widely publishing the existence or address of his residence, especially since , another Wright building is only a few miles away. Who wants their home to become part of a tour?But the fact that this was Wright’s house for his son makes it particularly worth saving, and not just for nostalgic reasons. Since it’s probable that the architectural fees Wright charged for his services were minimal and the client had several other reasons to not argue with his architect, Wright pere would likley have had a pretty free rein on the home and could use it as a kind of model/laboratory for ideas he was noodling.And indeed that’s what the house seems to be. Much of the home comprises a circular spiraling ramp that would be echoed in Wright’s New York City museum, which was completed seven years later. ?This is also an early instance of Wright’s use of concrete blocks rather than wood or stone, his preferred materials.The current owner, Steve Sells, who with John Hoffman is co-principal of 8081 Meridian, the developer that applied to raze the house, could not have been expected to know this. He told the that he was unfamiliar with Wright’s work until this year.? Reports are that 8081 Meridian bought it for $1.8 million. (That a Frank Lloyd Wright house can be had for the price of a three-bedroom apartment in Manhattan is also something of a newsflash). Several people have offered to buy the house, including, reportedly, at least one Hollywood Celebrity (best guess: Brad Pitt)?he says he needs at least $2.2 million to cover his legal fees. ?That mean seem cheap to some, but a warning to buyers: celebrity homes are like celebrity marriages. They take a lot of work.?Over at CNET, Casey Newton and Roger Cheng have a good story on .Every few months, it seems, we hear a new version of an old story: the maker of an expensive smartphone announces it won’t be upgraded to the latest version of Android, and consumers cry foul.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’t work together to make an upgrade happen.Finally, there are signs that for some Android devotees, Motorola’s abandonment of its year-old phones is the last straw.To me, the interesting part of this isn’t Motorola breaking its promise — although I’d be plenty steamed if I’d bought a phone based on it — 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’t have the .Google has gone from saying that to to . But for now, when you buy an Android phone, you shouldn’t assume anything at all about when, or if, you’ll get an upgrade. And most of the time, most new phones aren’t running the latest version of the software. (At the moment, that’s Jelly Bean — if Motorola had gotten its 2011 phones to run Ice Cream Sandwich, they’d still be out of date.)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’s why iPhone buyers know they’ll get updates the moment a new version of iOS is ready, while Android buyers don’t know what to expect. But as I , I don’t think that Google and phone makers have the option of ignoring the problem. The longer it festers, the more often it’ll come back to bite them, and their customers.I mean, it can’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?? 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. 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...? 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 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,...? Can the People Beat the Militias? 1 LIBYA 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. Ten days after the attack, though, the citizens...? 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 £562,...? I am amazed by your cover story's headline, "The End of al-Qaeda?" [Sept. 17]. 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. A. Rahim Yousefzai, ISLAMABAD Upon seeing "The End of al-Qaeda?" it struck me that TIME had a similar headline on its...?$50 million worth of moviegoers can’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’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.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’ top action star. This sequel to Neeson’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.(READ: Corliss’s )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’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’ll have a baby by then, which could make Taken?the Fockers of action-movie franchises.(READ: )As hostile as most reviews for Taken 2?were, that’s how supportive the critical response (85% favorable) was for Frankenweenie, Tim Burton’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.(READ: Corliss’s ) Frankenweenie?might not rack up a twentieth of that bonanza.?The black-and-white 3-D feature ? Burton’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’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.(READ: Corliss’s )The Frankenweenie opening was weak even for a stop-motion movie ? well below the $19.3 million for Burton’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’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits. The CinemaScore rating for Burton’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 “A” (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.(READ: Mary Pols’)Elsewhere, the college musical ? one of this week’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’ 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’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’s rough-hewn version of ?(her Heathcliff is black) found a chilly reception: $8,800 on a single Manhattan screen.Here are the Sunday estimates of this weekend’s top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by :1. Taken 2, $50 million, first weekend2. Hotel Transylvania, $26.3?million; $76?million, second week3. Pitch Perfect, $14.7?million; $21.6?million, second week4. Looper, $12.2?million; $40.3?million, second week5. Frankenweenie, $11.5?million, first weekend6. End of Watch, $4?million; $32.9?million, third week7. Trouble With the Curve, $3.9?million; $29.7?million, third week8. House at the End of the Street, $3.7?million; $27.5?million, third week9. The Master, $1.8?million; $12.3?million, fourth week10. Finding Nemo, $1.6?million; $39?million, fourth week of rerelease?Cool things an old spy can do:1. Believing his car is being followed through the streets of Istanbul by men who mean him no good, he can spit out precise and elaborate instructions for his wife to escape through shops and down streets of the city’s bazaar. Then he dispatches five of his pursuers in one brief battle.2. When kidnapped and blindfolded by Albanian gunmen, he can rely on his photographic memory, both visual and aural, to determine within a few blocks the location of the hideaway he and his wife have been taken to.3. Using a tiny cellphone, he can communicate from the hideaway to his daughter in an Istanbul hotel, telling her to lob grenades onto one rooftop or another so he can lead her to his secret location. (It helps that his captors haven’t frisked him or left a guard to observe his movements.)4. Noticing that his cell has a vent leading to the roof, he can tell his daughter to look for smoke coming from a rooftop stack, go there and drop a gun down it. (Some more luck required here.)5. When face to face with the villain-in-chief, he can apply the mystic face grip, which has the ability not only to cloud men’s minds but, in a trice, end their lives. His merest, mesmeric touch puts bad guys into the big sleep.Those are just a few of the espionage skills demonstrated by Liam Neeson’s Bryan Mills in Taken 2, a hyperdrive sequel to the 2009 thriller that cost $25 million to produce and earned nearly 10 times that at the worldwide box office. Taken?also elevated Neeson from supporting roles in big-budget franchises (Star Wars,?Batman Begins) and leads in artier films (Michael Collins, Kinsey) to a B-plus?level of action stardom. Other thrifty, manly fare followed ? Unknown, The Grey ? plus a stint heading The A-Team. Now a sturdy 60, Neeson is among the most reliable and appealing modern movie heroes.(READ: Corliss’s )Recall that, in?Taken, Bryan, a retired CIA agent, went to Paris to save his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), abducted by white-slave traders. In the sequel, directed by Olivier Megaton from a script by Robert Mark Kamen and producer Luc Beson, Murad (Rade Serbedzija), father of the gang leader whom Bryan had hunted down and killed, swears a mission of vengeance on behalf of his son and all the grieving widows, mothers and orphans in the Albanian underworld. Learning that Bryan has invited Kim and her mother Lenore or Lennie (Famke Janssen) for a family-rehab vacation in Istanbul, Murad kidnaps Bryan and Lenore, while the frazzled but resourceful Kim escapes another covey of killers in the hotel and combs the city to find her parents.The first movie established that Bryan was divorced from Lenore and deeply possessive of Kim ? so much so that paternal care approached felonious stalking. Three years later, he gives a neck-swivel of suspicion when Lennie tells him that Kim has a boyfriend. (Kim must be in her early twenties by now; the actress who plays her is 29.) To Bryan, any?guy who snuggles with his daughter is automatically in the pedophile category. He won’t even let the young woman drive the family car. “I’d rather do it myself,” he tells Kim. “I’m a little obsessive that way.”(READ: Corliss on?)He’s a lot obsessive in every way; perhaps it’s the residue of a secret-service career. So the forward movement of Taken 2, aside from doubling the number of kidnap victims, is in Bryan’s trusting Kim enough to save his and Lennie’s lives ? including insisting that she steer a stolen taxi through Turkish traffic while he fires away at the Albanians behind them. When she desperately demurs, he asks, “Do you know how to shoot?” “No.” “Then drive.”?The atmospherics in Andrea Arnold’s?Wuthering Heights are such that you may walk out of the film expecting your hair to be damp and windblown and perhaps find a dead rabbit in your satchel. For its two-hour plus duration, it’s like going on Outward Bound: There are moody teenagers learning bird species on the moors. There is the sense of virtuousness that comes with deprivation, although in this case, it’s not going without walls and flush toilets but enduring a film without engaging dialogue and strong performances. And yet the movie, as flawed and wild as Heathcliff himself, gets under your skin.That’s why, while it is tempting to mock this often patience-trying Wuthering Heights from here to kingdom come, I can’t do so in good conscience. Or at least not without mercy, because there are elements of Arnold’s film that aggravate in a good way. Like most film adaptations of Emily Bronte’s lone novel, first published in 1847, it focuses on the romantic aspect of the story, the abandoned child Heathcliff, who falls in love with the daughter of the man who rescues him. Cathy loves him too but marries Edgar Linton, the rich boy next door, and Heathcliff goes off to make his own fortune and plan his revenge. Arnold has all but abandoned the second half of the book, in which Cathy is dead, the passions are far less pretty and the focus on vengeance plays out in the next generation. At the painstakingly slow storytelling pace Arnold established for herself, doing so might have made for a six-hour movie.(SEE: Where Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights landed on .A primal sexuality permeates the movie: shots of horse’s rumps, young Cathy and Heathcliff rolling in the dirt together, feathers touched to skin?all set only to ambient sounds and shot in what looks like natural light. I haven’t seen a movie that paid this much loving attention to the flora and fauna since 2009’s?I Am Love. Much will be made of all the animals that are slaughtered on screen, including various bunnies, a goose and a lamb. Apparently it’s all faked, so this is not technically a bunny snuff film, but it certainly feels like one. The act bothered me less than the repetition; by the time we got to the goose, the point about how fragile and easily extinguished a life is had been amply made.Arnold’s boldest move is to use two young black actors to play Heathcliff, and she should be lauded for taking such an exciting?approach.?Solomon Glave plays Heathcliff at 12 or so, the one Mr. Earnshaw (Paul Hilton) brings home with him after he finds him on the streets of Liverpool. James Howson takes over the role in the movie’s second half, when he’s fully grown. Is this a stretch? The Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s book was a gypsy, a vagabond, an ill-mannered street child, regularly described as “dark” but in at least one passage as not “a regular black.” That suggests some leeway, that Heathcliff could have been of mixed race, part Gypsy, part black, part anything but white, a perspective that’s not new to literary scholarship even if the most notable cinematic Heathcliffs have been lily white types like Sir Laurence Olivier and Ralph Fiennes.(READ: TIME’s )In Bronte’s pages, the good-hearted servant Nelly tells Heathcliff, “Who knows, but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together?” Arnold and her co-writer Olivia Hetreed play with those words and put them in the mouth instead of flirtatious younger Cathy (the freckled, rounded Shannon Beer). “I bet your mother was an African Queen and your father a Chinese emperor,” she tells him, eliciting the fraction of a smile from this justifiably gloomy kid, who is regularly abused by Cathy’s brother Hindley (Lee Shaw). What’s unarguable is that Bronte posited Heathcliff as an “other,” a man tormented by his outsider status. Trying to create a sense of that otherness in the 21st century, is it reasonable for Arnold to use a black actor? Absolutely.But it would also be reasonable to find an actor who can act. Arnold famously plucked Katie Jarvis, the star of her gritty 2009 film Fish Tank, off a railroad platform, but you couldn’t tell from watching her that she was a complete novice. Howson is a total contrast, so wooden he’s only effective when he’s not talking. Neither he nor Kaya Scodelario, who came to the part of the older Cathy with British television experience and a small role in Clash of the Titans,?attempt any kind of period speech, and the sparse dialogue Arnold and Hetreed have written for them doesn’t help. “I’ll just go get my stuff,” Cathy says. There are moments when they seem like a pair of very contemporary young adults (although if they were texting each other, there would be no LOLs or hahas).?He’s beautiful, she’s beautiful, but their chemistry isn’t as powerful as it should be.?Arnold’s aim for a naturalism on the moors and in dank houses is noble and likely, rendered far closer to Bronte’s original vision than most filmed Wuthering Heights, particularly the classic 1939 Olivier-Merle Oberon version, with its?soundstagey?moors.?There’s nothing genteel or Masterpiece Theater about her viewpoint. But it’s also pushy; Arnold’s Wuthering Heights doesn’t just immerse you, it holds you under. Her over-done naturalism, with those endless shots of grass growing and moth wings flapping, becomes its own form of artifice.?Today, I am tired of suicide.I ache in my bones and muscles and soul for all the suffering that continues to occur.I am tired of learning about people who reached out for help, sometimes screaming for help, and they were dismissed by the military.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’s suicide.I am tired of an endless problem that seems to have no clear solution.My heart breaks for each of us.The moms, dads, siblings, widows and children. If we aren’t asking why any more (and many of us have learned to stop asking that question) we are asking what can we do?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 .I don’t have the solution. But, I refuse to give up. We all have to refuse to give up.Saturday one of the presenters, Franklin Cook — who is a suicide survivor himself — said: “You can survive anything if you keep showing up.”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.In the meantime, I’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.Thank you for sharing this journey with me for a while. I hope that together we can make it really count.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.?By Meghan Miller - NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) - The Grand Strand has become victim once again to a counterfeit merchandise sting last week when the Secretary of State's Office and the North Myrtle Beach Public Safety Department confiscated over $100,000 of fake designer products at Barefoot Landing. Tomer Ibi of Myrtle Beach has been charged with trafficking in counterfeit goods and the illegal distribution of recordings during the merchandise raid at Musical Genius, located at Barefoot Landing in North Myrtle Beach. A consumer complaint sparked the raid at Musical Genius at Barefoot Landing where $156,430 of counterfeit CDs, DVDs, jewelry, handbags and wallets were found. Among the merchandise, false designer brands including Baby Phat, Burberry, Christian Dior and Coach were seized. Investigators with the North Myrtle Beach Public Safety Department found over 200 metal labels with a Dolce & Gabbana logo tagged on them, ready to be studded into counterfeit handbags and sold to the public. Numerous handbags were previously punctured by an employee before the raid for an easy application of the metal tags. "Illegal activity, such as counterfeiting merchandise, abuses the public and honest businesses," said North Myrtle Beach Public Safety Director William Bailey. The Grand Strand is no stranger to counterfeit merchandise stings, as two local Broadway at the Beach shop owners were arrested in connection with trafficking counterfeit goods in June. Because of a high influx of tourists, authorities have called Myrtle Beach and its surrounding areas "hotbeds of counterfeit merchandise activity." Over the last five years, approximately $3 million of counterfeit merchandise has been sold to visitors in Myrtle Beach, resulting in the arrest of over 30 residents. c2008 WMBF News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.?By Kelly Montgomery Provided by The Internet is helpful for a million different everyday tasks, but one of the most helpful (particularly for those who hate malls) is online shopping. No matter what you want or need, with just a few clicks and a credit card you can have almost anything arrive on your doorstep within a day or two. This can be particularly helpful around the holidays when actual stores get crazy, or any time of the year should you never want to step into a mall or big-box store. There are thousands of online-only retailers that aim to bring you the best products, prices, and service from the comfort of your own home, so we've rounded up our favorites to give you some advice on which site you should use to order that iPhone case, pair of headphones, or new backpack.This is an obvious choice, but the truth is that you can get almost anything for a good price through Amazon. Whether you're looking for a new phone, Apple accessories, a new pair of shoes, or that long-lost brand of hair gel that your local drugstore stopped carrying, chances are you'll be able to find it on Amazon and have it shipped to you without hassle. The site offers good shipping prices and you can order from several different shippers in a single transaction. If you're an Amazon Prime member ($79/year) you get free 2-day shipping, unlimited streaming of the site's Instant Video section, and a free Kindle book to borrow each month.Good for: almost any tech gear, hard-to-find itemsIf you're looking for something tech-related, Newegg is a great place to start your search. This site has a great selection of tech products, including computers/laptops, computer hardware, TVs, home audio, gaming gear, and several other thorough categories. The prices tend to be good and the site is extremely well-rated when it comes to customer service. Newegg also offers user reviews and helpful sliders and drop-down menus to make your search results as accurate as possible.Good for: tech products like computer hardware, laptops, home audio, and TVsMoving away from the tech realm, Zappos is a great online-only retailer if you're looking to buy clothing, shoes, or accessories for anyone in the family. The site offers a wide selection of everything from the latest shoe trends to outdoor-brand rain jackets, and you can buy worry-free thanks to the site's free shipping both ways policy. Everyone gets free shipping on purchases and also on returns if you aren't satisfied with your item. Besides that winning shipping policy, Zappos also offers 365 days to return any purchase, so long as it's in the same condition as when you received it.Good for: shoes and clothing for men, women, and kidsOverstock offers a little bit of everything and is good for those who like to snag a good deal with a little hunting. The site offers limited brands in some categories, but steep discounts if you do happen to find what you're looking for. No matter what you're shopping for, be it electronics, jewelry, curtains, or furniture, it's a good idea to check out Overstock to see if you can find a deal. The other major plus of this site is that they offer a flat $2.95 shipping fee, no matter how large or heavy your order. Buying a couch and coffee table in the same order? Shipping will still only cost you $2.95. The site also has a rewards program and a Worldstock Fair Trade section with handcrafted items by artisans all over the world.Good for: jewelry, furniture, other home goodsIf you're a photography buff and like to shop online, there is probably no better place to start (and likely end) your search than B+H Photo. The site offers a huge selection of nearly everything photo-and-video-related that you could imagine, and often has difficult-to-find products that may be out of stock elsewhere. The retailer also offers studio equipment, a/v gear, and home entertainment categories. Prices are always reasonable and we like that they even have a Used Store where you can find all kinds of gear for a sweet deal.Good for: photo and video equipment, cameras, home entertainmentThis retailer is one of our favorites when it comes to finding quality brands at serious discount prices. Sierra Trading Post offers everything from clothing and shoes to home decor and furnishings, but we've had the best luck getting good deals on outdoor gear like rain jackets and hiking boots from high-end brands like Marmot and Keen. The site boasts that everything is marked at a 35% to 70% discount every day, and from a quick perusal of the site we'd have to say that it's an accurate figure. Sometimes sizes or color options are limited, but if you're looking for a serious deal, STP is a great place to hunt.Good for: outdoor gear, shoes, home goodsThis one isn't exactly a budget-friendly pick, but if you're a guy who likes high-style but prefers not to hunt too hard, Mr. Porter is a great resource. The retailer is something of a curated men's shop with high-style picks from luxury brands like Dolce & Gabbana and Burberry and more affordable brands like J.Crew and Polo Ralph Lauren. The site has a selective offering, but that is intentional, aiming to create a small-shop vibe where you can't go wrong with whatever you purchase. The site also offers interviews with dapper celebrities and helpful guides to what should be in your wardrobe.Good for: high-end men's clothing and accessoriesWe like this online retailer for its good selection and deals on home audio gear and home entertainment in general. Crutchfield has deals on everything from iPod docks and home audio receivers to car stereos and even TVs. Besides being a solid site with good selection and decent prices, Crutchfield has two other important claims-to-fame. First, anything you purchase is shipped for free. Second, anything you buy through Crutchfield includes lifetime tech support. That's two things better than most tech retailers can offer.Good for: home audio, car stereo, TVsThis online shop is a great resource for clothing, shoes, and accessories for women, men, and the kids. The site carries a wide, but curated, selection of top brands at good prices. Each section has stylish picks by celebrities and fashion insiders as well as magazine-like features to help you get inspired, whether you're shopping for yourself or gifting someone else. The site also offers free shipping and returns with no minimum purchase, and each order comes in swanky packaging with a Piperlime gift bag.Good for: Women's, men's, and kid's clothing and shoesWe visit this helpful site whenever we are on the hunt for any kind of outdoor gear, from your typical necessary rain jacket to ski, snowboard, and hiking supplies. The site offers current high-quality items from brands like Patagonia, The North Face, and Mountain Hardwear as well as season-old selections from the same brands at great discounts. If you want a high-end ski jacket but don't mind having last season's color palette, head over to Backcountry and you might find yourself a deal.Good for: Outdoor gear for men and women?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.SOURCE BurberryLONDON, September 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --"This has been an amazing year for London and the UK. The show today was a great moment for us to celebrate the incredible energy of our home town and the distinctively British fusion of design, craft and innovation.We wanted our audiences around the world to share in this experience, bringing a smile to their faces whether watching on their mobiles, in the show space or at our first live global event at Burberry Regent Street."Burberry Chief Creative Officer, Christopher BaileyCELEBRATING LONDON THROUGH THREE SIMULTANEOUS & CONNECTED LIVE SHOWSBurberry invited the world to celebrate London today, through three simultaneous live shows, blurring the physical and digital to bring the event from the runway in Hyde Park, to the new Regent Street flagship, to the world.To view the Multimedia News Release, please click:The Physical Experience: Live From Hyde ParkOver 1500 guests attended the Burberry Prorsum Spring/Summer 2013 Womenswear show at the brand's custom-built show venue in London's Hyde Park, including from the creative industries Sir Jonathan Ive, Thomas Heatherwick, Harvey Weinstein, Mario Testino, Anna Wintour,?Samantha Cameron and Secretary of State for Culture Maria Miller. 2012 Olympians Andy Murray (with girlfriend Kim Sears), Victoria Pendleton, Pete Reed, Allyson Felix, Paralympian Jonnie Peacock and boxer Amir Khan. Perfomer Dita Von Teese and actors Gabriella Wilde, Alice Eve, Maggie Cheung,?Dev Patel, Saif Ali Khan,?Giorgia Surina,?Do Youn Jeon,?Rosalie Craig, Jeremy Irvine, Julian Ovenden, Aaron Paul and Nicolas Vaporidis. Musicians Roo Panes, Harry Styles, Allison Mosshart,?Misty Miller,?Marika Hackman,?Florrie Arnold, Jade Williams,?George Craig,?Dan Gillespie Sells,?Adam Pickering, Paula Walker, Miles Kane, Rory Cottam and Samuel Fry and models Laura Bailey, Suki Waterhouse,?Tali Lennox,?Julia Restoin Roitfield and Florence Brudenell-Bruce also attended.The Digital Experience: Live From Burberry WorldBurberry World (Burberry.com) brought all facets of the live show to a global?audience through its most personalised cross channel viewing experience to date.Mobile users were able to explore the show, its on demand version and the collection in more detail than ever before.Blurring The Physical And Digital: Live From Burberry Regent StreetThe show was also streamed simultaneously onto the tallest retail screen in the world at Burberry Regent Street, where over 500 guests were welcomed personally to the store's first live event by a video message from Christopher Bailey.Burberry Regent Street blurs the physical and the digital to create?the brand's most digitally-advanced brand experience, bringing to life every aspect of Burberry World.All three show experiences were linked via a social stream, integrating real time content from the London events,Twitter and Instagram.ADVANCED PERSONALISATIONGuests at the events in Hyde Park and Burberry Regent Street were each welcomed to the show by personalised emails from Christopher Bailey sent to mobile devices, inviting them to explore the live stream and the collection in more detail.For the first time, online viewers were able to experience the show on their own personalised Burberry World show page by connecting through Facebook, unlocking bespoke show content, and the opportunity to share the experience and invite friends to watch the live stream.Through a new Burberry "love" button, Facebook fans were able to 'love' individual pieces from the collection, sharing them on Facebook - the first for any luxury brand.RUNWAY TO REALITY IN JUST EIGHT WEEKSThe Spring Summer 2013 collection is available for purchase on Burberry.com for one week bringing the collection to the consumer globally in just 8 weeks through the brands Runway to Reality initiative.BRITISH?SOUNDTRACKFeaturing British emerging musicians Ren Harvieu, Tom Odell and Birdy the show soundtrack was streamed directly from the show space across all platforms as part of the mobile and online show experience.?Contact:Anna Thomson, Freud Communications, BURBERRY Press Office, Video: ©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?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.SOURCE DFS GroupT Galleria Opens at Hong Kong's Hysan PlaceHONG KONG, Aug. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --?DFS Group (DFS), the world's leading luxury travel retailer, today opened its third downtown Hong Kong Galleria at Hysan Place in Causeway Bay. The new destination is the Group's first on Hong Kong Island.Since 1960, when DFS opened its first store at Hong Kong International Airport, the company has defined the essence of a unique luxury shopping experience dedicated to travelers, successfully operating two large downtown stores in Hong Kong on Mody Road, since 1988, and Canton Road, since 1996. Fifty-two years later, DFS now continues in that tradition, setting?new standards in luxury retail?with this opening on Hong Kong Island.Located in the heart of Causeway Bay - one of Asia's most traveled shopping destinations - the new store will attract a distinctive mix of visitors and travelers from around the world. The Traveler's Galleria - or simply?T Galleria?-?is?an homage to?DFS's?thorough understanding of global travelers' needs and its unique ability to offer them the finest luxury brands, impeccable service and a seamless shopping experience.? Philippe Schaus, Chief Executive Officer of DFS Group, said, "This city is our home, and we have truly come full circle now with the opening of T Galleria on Hong Kong island, only months after also winning back all three core concessions at Hong Kong International Airport."Set to become the curator of the global traveler's luxury lifestyle, T Galleria fulfills the needs of its international clientele through its combination of seamless, award-winning customer service and a holistic shopping experience. Spread over two levels, the first?focuses?on Prestige Beauty, offering a fresh array of 50 of the world's most renowned beauty brands through a complete and elegant selection of cosmetics, skincare and fragrances. Personalized beauty consultations and services?are?also?available?from?highly trained professionals. The second level features?a luxurious boutique environment,?housing?a tailored selection from 15 of the world's most sought-after Watch?& Jewelry brands.?"Now with T Galleria at Hysan Place, we?have taken?luxury to the next?level,?creating a fresh and imaginative new destination where travel meets shopping," said Benjamin Vuchot, DFS Group Managing Director for Asia North.With the opening of T Galleria, DFS - along with Hysan Place- becomes one of the first retailers in Hong Kong to be pre-certified under the international "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" (LEED) standard.?Throughout all its interior design,?it?features?high?energy efficiency?matched equally by?dazzling aesthetics.To celebrate the opening of T Galleria in Causeway Bay and further?strengthen?its?commitment to?the?Hong Kong community,?DFS is proud as well to announce?its?partnership with Foodlink Foundation, the leading charity in Hong Kong fighting hunger. From August 17 to 23, DFS will donate five?percent?of T Galleria's?sales to Foodlink in support of its operations throughout Hong Kong.Alongside Hysan Place, T Galleria will also extend?its?opening hours?for its first two weeks, making luxury shopping available until midnight from August 10 to 25.Location of T Galleria : Hysan Place 500 Hennessy Road Causeway Bay, Hong KongOpening Hours:?????????????? Sunday to Thursday 10 am to 10 pm. Friday, Saturday and the eve of Public Holidays 10 am to 11pm.About DFS GroupDFS Group, headquartered in Hong Kong, is the world's largest luxury travel retailer, with more than 200 stores in 15 countries, mostly in cosmopolitan and resort locations throughout Asia-Pacific, North America and the Middle East. DFS Group North America headquarters is based in Los Angeles. DFS Gallerias offer a luxurious shopping experience and incomparable services to discerning clients. The company is majority owned by LVMH Moet Hennessy - Louis Vuitton, with the balance of shares held by companies associated with DFS Group co-founder, Robert Miller.About Foodlink FoundationFoodlink Foundation is Hong Kong's leading hunger relief charity, fighting against hunger and poverty by reducing food wastage. Founded in 2001 and registered in 2010, the non-profit organization has built partnerships with the city's hotels and F&B outlets. Foodlink has generated a sustainable food-recycling system by collecting surplus food and delivering it to shelters and those in need. Their work aims to foster social responsibility in the food and beverage industry.About Hysan PlaceHysan Place at 500 Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay, is a major redevelopment project of Hysan Development Company Limited. It comprises 15 levels of Grade "A" offices and 17 floors of retail outlets, totaling 710,000 square feet. Situated at the heart of bustling Causeway Bay, Hysan Place's shopping mall will be a showcase of modern style, offering a number of international brands new to Hong Kong. The shopping mall is scheduled to open in August 2012. Hysan Place is Hong Kong's first building to be pre-certified at the highest Platinum level of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard by the United States Green Building Council. The building is also pre-certified at the top level in the Hong Kong Building Environmental Assessment Method (BEAM) standard Opening August, 2012.For further information please contact: Ruder Finn Asia Vickie Ho / Sherman Ho Tel: +852 2201 6438 / +852 2201 6416 Email: / For high resolution photos, please visit: User name: media_dfs_hk Folder: T Galleria Opening (Password is not required)Appendix Beauty Beauty Lab Fragrance Watches & Jewelry©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?By Provided by Summer has officially passed us by, and at least for those of us living in the Northwest part of the country, that means rain. Unless you live in the desert, you're probably in the same wet, soggy boat. Having a raincoat that matches your everyday style will make running out of the house in the morning that much easier when you realize it's going to be a rainy day. Instead of searching for that umbrella that always seems to go missing, throw on your perfect raincoat and face the weather in style. We've narrowed down our favorite picks for those who like to keep things high on style, those who just want something nice but casual, and those who prefer a sporty look. Pick your favorite and shelter yourself from those ever-present Fall showers. High StyleThese selections are for the style-conscious or those who have to wear a suit to work everyday, reluctantly or not. Nothing ruins the look of a great-fitting suit more than a sporty, bright colored rain jacket thrown on top. Pick something equally dressed up, like any one of these three options.You really can't go wrong with a classic trench, but be wary of looking like a detective in a full-length khaki version. We like this shorter black version because it looks more modern and is easier to pull off. The ($750) has classic styling and is made with polyester to keep you nice and dry. The jacket has plaid lining, double-breasted buttons, a rain guard, and a removable belt.Another classic version of the men's raincoat is the Mackintosh jacket, which has a similar classic style to the trench but is single-breasted with a folded collar, as seen above. This particular style, the ($515), has a preppy vibe with the red plaid lining and khaki color, but you can opt for a black or navy version to go a little more modern. The great thing about a coat like this is that it won't be going out of style any time soon, so consider it an investment.For something a little more stealth, a little less classic, but equally stylish, we like the ($950). This jacket is equal parts sleek minimalist and high-tech outdoorsman, with a simple design made from Gore-Tex that includes three waterproof pockets, a hood, and a unique fishtail design in back. CasualIf you tend to dress a little on the casual side but still want something that will look good over your whole wardrobe, one of these casual choices should do the trick. They don't go all the way into outdoorwear (like the options below), but they have a more casual look and vibe than your classic businessman options. All of these jackets would look good with casual slacks and a shirt or jeans and a tee.Our favorite classic casual jacket is without a doubt the ($299). This great pick has army-jacket styling with a hood and large front pockets. The jacket is made from Fjallraven's waxed G-1000 fabric, which swells when wet to protect you from the elements. To make it even more water-resistant, apply the company's signature Greenland Wax to coat the jacket.For a more preppy silhouette that still has a casual vibe, go for something styled like a classic parka. We like this ($350) for its sharp, clean details and waterproof fabric. Details like genuine leather trim, slanted pockets, and storm cuffs make this a high-quality style that will last for years.For those who are wary of anything with too much styling, go for something simple like the ($100), which is about as simple as casual jackets go. The Cordoba Jacket has a minimalist design with a short collar, large front pockets, and a smaller chest pocket. The company's Hex Fleece 180 lining provides light insulation for cooler days. SportyIf you have an uber-casual day job or need a jacket for your outdoor pursuits, your best bet is to go on a little shopping trip to REI. These sporty jackets are low on style in comparison to our other picks, but they make up for it in technical details and the best fabrics to protect you from the elements. We wouldn't recommend throwing them over your business suit, but they will function perfectly with casual weekend wear or for that hike in the Fall rain. The ($399) has a lightweight design and all the technical details you could want in a rain jacket, like a helmet-compatible hood, pit zips, 3-layer Gore-Tex, reinforced high-wear areas, and watertight pockets. This jacket will serve you well from city errands to winter mountain sports.If you'd like to keep things sleek but like all the technical upgrades that an outdoor-wear jacket has to offer, we like the Arc'teryx brand and the ($450) in particular. Great for slimmer frames, Arc'teryx tends to fit closer to the body, giving a sleeker silhouette. The AR Jacket is made from ultra-durable and waterproof Gore-Tex Pro Shell fabric and has features like a laminated chin guard to protect skin, a special backing that lets the jacket slide over mid-layers with ease, and a dropped rear hem for extra coverage.As a lower-priced option, the ($175) is a perfect choice for anyone who needs something lightweight but with fewer high-tech details. The jacket is made from extremely lightweight, waterproof fabric and has pit zips, a storm hood, and mesh pack pockets. The jacket has a slight looser fit that's designed to work on top of fleece jackets or soft shells. ? WASHINGTON, April 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Four Massachusettsresidents were sentenced in federal court for money laundering and traffickingand conspiring to traffic in more than $1 million of counterfeit luxuryhandbags and wallets, as well as the materials needed to make thesecounterfeits, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher for the CriminalDivision; U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan of the District of Massachusetts;Special Agent in Charge Bruce M. Foucart of U.S. Immigration and CustomsEnforcement (ICE) in New England; and Special Agent in Charge Douglas A.Bricker of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Criminal Investigation inNew England announced today. Minh Vu, 26, Katherine Luong, 28, Camphung Luong, 25, and Kim Luong, 34,were sentenced to the following terms in prison by U.S. District Court JudgeWilliam Young: Vu received 30 months, Katherine Luong received 36 months,Camphung Luong received 24 months, and Kim Luong received 30 months.According to the terms of their plea agreements, the defendants made over$48,000 in restitution payments to the victims and did not contest theforfeiture of five bank accounts, over $41,000 in cash, two vehicles, and thecounterfeit merchandise. At the defendants' earlier guilty pleas, Vu and Luong admitted that theyhad rented 13 self-storage units at a facility in Revere, Mass., as theircounterfeiting operation's home base. When raided by law enforcement officers,these storage units held approximately 12,231 counterfeit handbags; 7,651counterfeit wallets; more than 17,000 generic handbags and wallets; and enoughcounterfeit labels and medallions to turn more than 50,000 generic handbagsand wallets into counterfeits. These items copied Louis Vuitton, Kate Spade,Prada, Gucci, Fendi, Burberry, and Coach trademarks, but were of lower priceand quality. Ten of the storage units were used for storage; two wereconfigured to display items in the open, like showrooms; and one held a work-table and tools that could be used to turn the generic wallets and handbagsinto counterfeits. Vu and the others sold their counterfeit wallets andhandbags at a flea market in Revere, and to smaller gatherings atapproximately 250 "purse parties" throughout Massachusetts. According to government estimates, the counterfeit and generic handbagsand wallets were worth more than $1 million at average counterfeit prices(typically $35 for wallets and $40 for handbags). The storage units alsocontained numerous counterfeit handbags and wallets of other manufacturers,along with scarves, belts, umbrellas, sunglasses, duffle bags, hats, visors,garment bags, coats, shoes, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings bearingcounterfeit marks owned by these and other victim companies. The case was investigated by ICE and the IRS, building upon aninvestigation by the Massachusetts State Police, the Boston Police Department,and the Suffolk County, Mass., District Attorney's Office, which referred thematter for federal prosecution. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S.Attorney Adam J. Bookbinder of the District of Massachusetts Computer Hackingand Intellectual Property Unit, and by Senior Counsel Scott L. Garland of theComputer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal Division.SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice? BOSTON, April 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Four Massachusetts residentswere sentenced in federal court for money laundering, and trafficking andconspiring to traffic, in more than $1 million of counterfeit luxury handbagsand wallets, as well as the materials needed to make these counterfeits,Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher; U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivanof the District of Massachusetts; Special Agent in Charge Bruce M. Foucart ofU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New England; and SpecialAgent in Charge Douglas A. Bricker of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS),Criminal Investigation in New England, announced today. MINH VU, 26, of Chelsea, MA, KATHERINE LUONG, 28, of Chelsea, MA, CAMPHUNGLUONG, 25, of Chelsea, MA, and KIM LUONG, 34, of Quincy, MA, were sentenced byU.S. District Judge William G. Young as follows: VU was sentenced to 2 yearsand 6 months in prison; KATHERINE LUONG was sentenced to 3 years in prison;CAMPHUNG LUONG was sentenced to 2 years in prison; and KIM LUONG was sentenced2 years and 6 months in prison. According to the terms of their pleaagreements, the defendants made over $48,000 in restitution payments to thevictim companies and did not contest the forfeiture of five bank accounts,over $41,000 in cash, two vehicles, and the counterfeit merchandise. "Intellectual property is one of the United States' most valued resourcesin the modern world," said U.S. Attorney Sullivan. "Criminals who sellcounterfeit merchandise rob legitimate companies of billions of dollars eachyear, and those who buy the merchandise contribute to the crime. The U.S.Attorney's Office will continue to take strong steps to prosecute those whoviolate others' trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets." At the their earlier guilty pleas, VU and the LUONGS admitted that theyhad rented thirteen self-storage units at a facility in Revere, Massachusetts,as their counterfeiting operation's home base. When raided by law enforcementofficers, these storage units held approximately 12,231 counterfeit handbags;7,651 counterfeit wallets; more than 17,000 generic handbags and wallets; andenough counterfeit labels and medallions to turn more than 50,000 generichandbags and wallets into counterfeits. These items copied Louis Vuitton, KateSpade, Prada, Gucci, Fendi, Burberry, and Coach trademarks, but were of lowerprice and quality. Ten of the storage units were used for storage; two wereconfigured to display items in the open, like showrooms; and one held a work-table and tools that could be used to turn the generic wallets and handbagsinto counterfeits. VU and the others sold their counterfeit wallets andhandbags at a flea market in Revere, Massachusetts, and to smaller gatheringsat approximately 250 "purse parties" throughout Massachusetts. "Trafficking in counterfeit goods is not a victimless crime. It is multi-billion dollar theft. By enforcing our nation's counterfeiting laws, ICE isprotecting the rights of legitimate businesses and those who play by therules," said Bruce M. Foucart, Special Agent in Charge of ICE's Office ofInvestigations in Boston. "What the public really needs to know is that,oftentimes, the illicit funds from trafficking in knock-off and othercounterfeit merchandise flows back into the hands of organized criminalenterprises. ICE is committed to aggressively enforcing our nation'sintellectual property rights laws by targeting those who profit from thehonest hard work of others." According to government estimates, the counterfeit and generic handbagsand wallets were worth more than $1 million at average counterfeit prices(typically $35 for wallets and $40 for handbags). The storage units alsocontained numerous counterfeit handbags and wallets of other manufacturers,along with scarves, belts, umbrellas, sunglasses, duffle bags, hats, visors,garment bags, coats, shoes, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings bearingcounterfeit marks owned by these and other victim companies. The case was investigated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and theU.S. Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation building upon aninvestigation by the Massachusetts State Police, the Boston Police Department,Revere Police Department, and the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office,which referred the matter for federal prosecution. The case was prosecuted byAssistant U.S. Attorney Adam J. Bookbinder in Sullivan's Computer Hacking andIntellectual Property Unit, and by Senior Counsel Scott L. Garland of theDepartment of Justice's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section ofthe Criminal Division.SOURCE U.S. Attorney? Withfall approaching quickly, it's time to pull your cashmere sweaters and wool suits out of storage so you're not left out in the cold when temperatures drop. But after months in a dusty closet -- or worse, a dank storage unit -- they aren't going to look, or possibly smell, ready to wear right away. You need some professional help.So we called up Brian Crosby -- one of San Francisco's most trusted cleaners and the general manager of Peninou French Laundry and Cleaners -- for advice on how to get your fall duds looking dapper. Crosby works with persnickety clients, like Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys New York, Neiman Marcus and Burberry, so he truly knows how to treat garments right, and how you can make sure that your local dry cleaner does too. Wool Suits "Wool suits should only be cleaned when they really need it," says Crosby. "You don't need to wash them after each wear." Shoot for washing every three to five wears -- unless you tend to sweat heavily, in which case you might wash more frequently. Sweaters Sweaters -- especially cashmere -- can also be worn a few times before they need to be dry-cleaned. If you don't want the sweater to shrink or lose its shape during the cleaning process, Crosby recommends requesting a "measure and block service." The cleaner will measure the sweater's shape and size when it arrives, and then use steam and cold air to manipulate the sweater back to its original measurements. Shirts The most commonly laundered item is the shirt. If you're tired of them being returned from your local cleaner with broken buttons, it's time to upgrade your cleaner. "Broken buttons occur because the cleaner is using a large press that crushes the buttons, instead of ironing by hand," says Crosby. "A high-end laundry will cover buttons with foil to avoid scratching, or remove them for pressing and sew them back on at the end."Many people are shying away from traditional dry-cleaning or laundering for their shirts in favor of a service called "wet-cleaning," a hybrid, water-based cleaning process that uses cold water and extra-gentle detergents. "It's safe for things that are recommended for water, but also for items preferred for dry-cleaning," says Crosby. "If you have a water-based stain, like grass or wine, or if you sweat into the shirt a lot, wet-cleaning might be a better choice."If your shirts have only a few creases or need some sprucing up after storage, Crosby recommends hanging the shirt up and using a little bit of steam to release any wrinkles. "But don't iron it on a board unless you really know what you're doing," he says. How to Find a Quality Cleaner in Your Area Ask the experts! Crosby recommends calling your local high-end department stores or boutiques for recommendations. Many shops use high-end cleaners for their own garments, and they also hear reviews from customers. But be wary of any shop that offers one-hour or overnight cleaning. "It takes an average of 75 minutes for a cleaning cycle," says Crosby. "And you need to give them time to rewash it in case they don't get the stains out the first time. Cleaning is an art, and you shouldn't be afraid of a cleaner that is going to take a few extra days."Nick Burns is one of the leading grooming writers in the country. He has contributed to The New York Times, GQ, Details, Men's Journal and Esquire.com. He is also the co-author of The Bearded Gentleman: The Style Guide to Shaving Face.Copyright © 2011 Studio One Networks. All rights reserved.?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.SOURCE ReportlinkerNEW YORK, July 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue: http://www.reportlinker.com/p0459170/Global-Fragrances-and-Perfumes-Industry.html#utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=Fragrance This report analyzes the worldwide markets for Fragrances & Perfumes in US$ Million by the following Product Segments: Women's Fragrances & Perfumes, Men's Fragrances & Perfumes, and Unisex Fragrances. The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. 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 236 companies including many key and niche players such as Avon Products, Inc., Bulgari SpA, Chanel SA, Coty, Inc., Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, Inc., Gucci Group NV, Gianni Versace S.p.A, Liz Claiborne, Inc., L'oreal SA, LVMH Group, Procter & Gamble, Puig Beauty & Fashion Group S.L, Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, and Revlon, Inc. Market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research. Company profiles are primarily based upon search engine sources in the public domain.I. INTRODUCTION, METHODOLOGY & PRODUCT DEFINITIONSStudy Reliability and Reporting Limitations I-1Disclaimers I-2Data Interpretation & Reporting Level I-3Quantitative Techniques & Analytics I-3Product Definitions and Scope of Study I-31. Women's Fragrances & Perfumes I-42. Men's Fragrances & Perfumes I-43. Unisex Fragrances I-4II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. INDUSTRY OVERVIEW II-1Snapshots II-1Global Fragrances, and Perfumes Industry: A Primer II-2Recession Impact on the World Fragrances and Perfumes Market II-2Table 1: Customer Purchasing Criteria for Fragrances andPerfumes During Recession (2009): Percentage Breakdown byNumber of Consumers for US, Europe and Japan (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) II-3Brand and Segment Analysis II-3Effect of Recession on Raw Material II-4What's in Store? II-4Pure White Transparent Fragrances Gain Momentum II-4Popularity of Celebrity Perfumes Increases II-4Dark, Luxurious Fragrances Find Favor II-5Customized Fragrances at Affordable Prices Climb PopularityCharts II-5Need of The Day: An Overhaul of the Fragrances Business Model II-6Internet Retailing: A New Avenue for Growth II-6New Perfumes with Skin and Mood Enhancers II-7Exotic Middle East Fragrances to Re-Enter Western Markets II-7Women's Fragrances Get the Floral Touch II-7Celebrity Scents Impact on Men's Fragrances Market II-7Men's Fragrances Savor Gourmand Notes and Luxurious Ingredients II-8Where the Opportunities Lie? II-9Table 2: Global Market Penetration of Fragrances, andPerfumes: Percentage Breakdown by Women and Men'sFragrances, & Perfumes (includes corresponding Graph/Chart). II-10Fragrance Industry: Consumer Driven II-11Market Share Statistics II-11Table 3: World Fragrance Market (2010): Percentage ShareBreakdown of Value Sales by Major Players - Coty Inc, L'OrealS.A., Puig Beauty and Fashion and Other (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) II-11Table 4: Global Flavor and Fragrances Market (2010):Percentage Breakdown of Market Share by Leading Manufacturers- Givaudan, Firmenich, IFF, Symrise, Takasango, SensientTechnologies, Mane S.A., T. Hasegawa, Frutarom, Robertet S.A.and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-12TABLE 5: Global Perfume Market by Product Category (2010):Market Share of Prestige women's, Prestige men's, Prestigeunisex, Mass-market women's, Mass-market men's, and Mass-market unisex (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-12A Recent Past Perspective II-13Table 6: Global Premium Fragrances Market (2006): PercentageBreakdown of Value Sales for Major Players- LVMH MoetHennessy Louis Vuitton, L'Oreal Groupe, Coty Inc and Others(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-13 Table 7: Global Mass Fragrances Market (2006): PercentageBreakdown of Value Sales for Major Players- Avon ProductsInc, Natura Cosmeticos SA, Coty Inc and Others (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) II-13Table 8: Leading Brands of Perfumes and Fragrances Worldwide(2005): Market Share of Avon Products, Chanel No5, Pleasures,CK One, Charlie, Happy, Tresor, Beautiful, Eternity, Privatelabel, and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-14Demographic Trends II-14Men: A Practical Lot II-14Men's Fragrances in Fine Fettle II-15The Olfactory GAP II-15Fragrance Houses Target Toddlers II-15Fragrances No Longer a Dispensable Grooming Accessory II-16Table 9: Per Capita Expenditure on Fragrances in SelectRegions (2005) - North America, Latin America, WesternEurope, Eastern Europe, Africa & Middle East, andAsia/Pacific (In US$) (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-16 Table 10: Per Capita Expenditure on Fragrances in SelectCountries (2005)- United States, Canada, Switzerland,France, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Italy, China, India,and Australia (In US$) (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-17Market Trends & Issues II-17Teenagers - New Market for Premium Fragrances II-17Global Fragrance market for Teenagers II-17Tracking the Fragrant Trail II-18The Floral Edge II-18New Ingredients for the Modern Freethinking Independent Woman II-18Summer Fragrances: Significant Demand During Travel Time II-19Custom Fragrances: A Promising Segment II-19Fragrances & Perfumes: Attracting Fashion Designers &Hollywood Stars II-19Endorsements Drive Growth II-20Top Brand Honchos Don a New Look II-20Changing With Changing Times: The Magical Talisman II-21"Talking Profits" II-21Making the Right Cuts II-21New Players Foray Into the Perfume Industry II-22Brand Image Deters Small Players II-22Developing Nations: Key Thrust Areas II-22Colognes: Need Expansion in Product Focus II-23Advertising - A Vital Affair II-23Packaging: Crucial Component II-23Specialty Stores Outshine Chain Drug Stores & Supermarkets II-23New Product Launches: Low Success Rate II-24Counterfeiting Hampers Growth of Prestige Fragrance Sector II-24E-Business in Fragrances II-25Product Innovations II-25Sluggish Trends Ignite Creative Incandescence II-25Uncovering the Mammothian Catch Between the Fine Print II-25Restoring the Element of Luxury: Making the Right Moves II-26"Need of the Hour" II-26Regional Trends II-27Celebrity Fragrances Drive the Women's Fragrance Market inthe US II-27Looking East for Growth II-272. END USER PROFILE II-28Women's Fragrances II-28Scent of a Woman II-28Classification of Women's Perfumes based on Olfactory Feature II-28Celebration of Femininity II-29Growth Factors in Women's Fragrances II-29Vital Statistics: A Historic Perspective II-29Table 11: Leading Manufacturers of Women's FragrancesWorldwide (2005): Market Share of Coty/Unilever, ElizabethArden, Parfum De Coeur, Revlon L'Oreal USA, Private Label,and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-29 Table 12: Leading Manufacturers of Premium Women's Fragrance(2005): Percentage Market Share Breakdown by Value Sales forEstee Lauder, L'Oreal, Unilever, LVMH, Chanel, Gucci, andOthers (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-30Men's Fragrances II-30Emerging into a Dynamic Sector II-30Classification of Men's Perfumes based on Olfactory Feature II-30A Hint of Masculinity II-31Young Customer Base II-31Travel Fragrances II-31Fragrance Habits II-31Duty-Free Benefit II-32Table 13: Breakdown of World Duty Free Perfume Market byRegions (2008): Market Share of Europe, Asia and Oceania,North & South America, and Africa (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) II-32Steady Male Mass Fragrance Segment in Europe and the US II-32Fragrance Penetration II-33Table 14: Mass Fragrance Penetration among Men in SelectRegions (2008) - US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and UK(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-33Unisex Fragrances: For "Him" & "Her' II-333. PRODUCT OVERVIEW II-34Definition II-34Historic Facts About Fragrances II-34Latest Developments in Fragrances II-34Making of Perfumes II-35Harmful Effects II-35Industry's Defense Statement II-35Fragrances and Perfumes - An Indispensable Aspect of Life II-36Fragrances - A Backdrop II-36The Art of Perfuming II-36The Chemistry of Perfumery II-37The Art of Blending II-37Types of Fragrances II-37Applications of Fragrances II-38Cosmetic Fragrances (Perfumes, cologne, essential oils) II-38Household Fragrances II-38A Sniff Into the Past II-38History of Perfumes II-38Fragrances: Elicit a Range of Emotions II-39Distinction Between Fine Fragrance and Mass Fragrance II-40Fragrance Materials Market II-40Aroma Chemicals Industry II-40Types of Aroma Chemicals II-40Production Methods II-41Synthetic Aroma Chemicals II-41Select Fragrance Materials II-41Potpourri II-41Essential oils II-41Incense II-41Aroma candles II-41 4. TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW II-42New Perfume Technologies II-42Fragrance Encapsulation Technology II-42Fragrance Technology II-425. SELECT PRODUCT LAUNCHES-2007 & 2008 SNAPSHOTS II-43 6. PRODUCT INNOVATIONS/INTRODUCTIONS II-60Renowned Perfumer Robert Piguet to Launch Calypso II-60Jo Malone to Introduce English Pear & Freesia II-60Adidas to Introduces Adidas Fresh Escape II-60Victoria and Albert Museum to Launches Diaghilev II-60Loriblu Introduces Sensual Seduction II-60Brooks Brothers Introduces Black Fleece in UK II-61Lancome Launches O d`Azur II-61Nicolas Ghesquiere Unveils Balenciaga Paris II-61Moschino Introduces Toujours Glamour II-61Diptyque Introduces Vetyverio II-61La Senza Unveils La Seduction: Intimate Seduction II-62Demeter Fragrance Library Introduces Frozen Pond II-62Aftelier Unveils Trevert II-62Chloe Introduces Collection of Floral Fragrances II-62Salvador Dali Unveils Little Kiss Me II-62Givenchy to Introduce Dance with Givenchy and Eaudemoiselle II-63Palm Beach Beaute Introduces Kanon Norwegian Wood II-63Kenneth Cole Launches Vintage Black for Men II-63M&W Prestige Cosmetics Launches Strellson No. 1 II-63Inter Parfums Rolls Out Burberry Women and Men Summer Fragrances II-63Halle Berry to Unveil Pure II-63Coty Prestige and Joop Introduces Fragrances for Men II-64Italian Fashion House to Launch Costume National Homme for MenRasasi Unveils Al Wissam II-64Dover Street Market Launched Unisex Perfume II-64Lalique Parfums to Introduce Encre Noire Pour Elle for Women II-64Salvatore Ferragamo Introduces Fragrance for Men II-64Banana Republic Launches Republic Collection for Women and Men II-64Korres Introduces Three Fragrance Editions II-65Parfumerie Simes Launches French Perfumes for Men II-65Donatella Versace Unveils Versense II-65Marc Ecko Launches Ecko for Men II-65Brioni Unveils Brioni II-66bebe Stores Unveils New Fragrance Through In Store DeliverySystem of Prolitec II-66Halston Re-Launches Halston Man and Halston Woman II-66Carolina Herrera Introduces 212 On Ice II-67Nautica and Coty Beauty Unveils Oceans II-677. PRODUCT LAUNCHES: A HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE BUILDER II-68Oriflame Launches S8 Night II-68Space NK Unveils New Collection of Four Fine Fragrances II-68Esteban Introduces Les Orientaux II-68d'Armando Martinez Launches Silver Lining, BoHo and Les Fauves II-68Avon to Introduce Ironman Triathlon II-68Estee Lauder Introduces Pure White Linen Light Breeze II-69Coty Enters into a Licensing Agreement with Playboy II-69Godrej-Sara Lee Introduces Fresh Series of Fragrances II-69Body Shop Launches New Fragrance Range II-69Beckhams to Unveil New Fragrance Line II-70IBI Launches World's First Spiritual Perfume, Virtue II-70Studio at Fred Segal and Victoria's Secret Jointly Create NewFragrance and Body Products II-70Yves Rocher Launches New Fragrances II-70Pure and Petal Introduces Hair Fragrance Line That ProvidesFreshness II-71Ayala Moriel Introduces New Tirzah Fragrance II-71Oxbow and Lorience Set to Introduce New Fragrance II-71Scent Systems Introduces 5 Floral Fragrances in Parfum(Extrait) Concentration II-71Fragrance For You Introduces 'Perfumes of Zodiac' II-72Shiseido to Launch Perfumes Worldwide II-72Boticario Launches Fragrance and Color Line II-72Avon Collaborates with Christian Lacroix and Interparfums II-72Cofinluxe Unveils New Parfums Ailleurs Fragrance Brand II-73Aramis and Designer Unveils New Fragrance II-73Calvin Klein Rolls Out Fragrance Duo, CK IN2U II-73S&G Hampton Sun Introduces Privet Bloom II-73Versace Launches New Versace Fragrance II-74Beaute Prestige to Launch Narciso Rodriguez for Him II-74Dana Launches English Leather Black II-74Ann Taylor Introduces Fresh Beauty Range II-74Rasasi Introduces Ettr Al Mahabba II-74 8. RECENT INDUSTRY ACTIVITY II-75Liz Claiborne to Be Known As Fifth & Pacific Companies II-75BCBGMAXAZRIA and New Wave Fragrances Ink Licensing Agreement II-75Brand Matter and Palm Beach Beaute Sign Licensing Agreement II-75Vince Camuto Partners with Parlux II-75Gigantic Inks an Agreement with Lucien Lallouz II-76Elizabeth Arden Inks an Agreement with John Varvatos II-76Artifacts Enters into Joint Venture with StrApp II-76Elizabeth Arden Inks an Agreement with Kate Spade II-76Jimmy Choo Signs an Agreement with Inter Parfums II-77Sarantis Partners with Estee Lauder II-77Elizabeth Arden Inks an Agreement with Liz Claiborne II-77Coty Signs Agreement with Gemini II-77Azelis Signs Partners with International Flavors and Fragrances II-78Inter Parfums Signs an Agreement with Montblanc II-78Puig to Acquire License from P&G II-78Ellen Tracy Inks a Deal with Palm Beach Beaute II-78Paris Perfumes Rolls Out Betty Boop Fragrances II-79New Men's Launches Will For Men II-79Agent Provocateur Sings a Deal with Designer Parfums II-79Bottega Veneta Partners with Coty II-79Inditex Obtains Approval from FIPB for Joint Venture with Trent II-80Frutarom Takes Over Oxford Chemicals II-80Symrise Inks an Agreement to Acquire Futura Labs II-80Beauty Perfumes Merges with Beauty Encounter II-81CPL Aromas Takes Over Hagelin and Company II-819. STRATEGIC CORPORATE DEVELOPMENTS - A HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE BUILDER II-82Parlux Inks Global Licensing Agreement with Marc Ecko II-82Coty and Playboy Sign Licensing Agreement II-82Perfume Holdings to Purchase Majority Stake in SelectiveBeauty Holdings II-82Louis Vuitton to Acquire Stake in JSC Edinaya Evropa II-82Oriflame Collaborates with Marie Salamagne II-83Sai Gon Cosmetics Inks Contract with Musketeers II-83ScentAir Merges with EnviroScent II-83Takasago Acquires Wessel II-83Symrise Takes Over Manheimer and Intercontinental Fragrances II-83Perfumania Holdings Acquires Model Reorg II-84Art & Fragrance Acquires Lilaque II-84Coty Partners with Puig II-84Jimmy Choo Inks an Agreement with Inter Parfums II-84Kanoria Chemicals Enters into Joint Venture Deal with Soluciones II-85Parlux Acquires Licenses from Iconic Fragrances II-85ScentAir Inks an Agreement with DMX II-85Balenciaga Partners with Coty II-86Coty Enters into a Licensing Agreement with Playboy II-86Avon Collaborates with Emanuel Ungaro II-86Avon Enters into a Collaboration with James Bond Franchise II-87Avon Partners with Patrick Dempsey II-87Coty Enters into a Partnership with HSN II-87Parlux Fragrances Collaborates with Natori Company II-88L'Oreal Enters into an Agreement with Airness II-88LVMH to Construct New Perfumes R&D Center II-88Scorpio Signs Accord with L'Oreal, Elizabeth Arden and L'Occitane II-88L'Oreal to Acquire YSL Beaute II-89Investindustrial IV LP to Acquire Selective Beauty II-89Alcome Perfumes to Enter Indian Market II-89P&G Establishes New Fragrance Plant in Singapore II-90Marionnaud Makes Entry into Asia with New Perfumery II-90Elizabeth Arden Signs a Licensing Agreement with AEFFE II-90Liz Zorn Changes Name to Soivohle' II-91L'Oreal Partners with Maison Martin Margiela II-91Givaudan Inks an Agreement with Colgate Palmolive II-91Elizabeth Arden Ties Up with Liz Claiborne II-91Parfum d'Image Acquires Latitudes International II-91Blyth Divests HomeScents to MVP II-92Coty Unveils Fragrance Bay Retail Kiosk II-92Selective Beauty Partners with Zac Posen to Develop New Fragrance II-92Nicole Inks International Licensing Agreement with Parlux II-92Revelations Perfume Enters into an Agreement for 3121 Fragrance II-93Parlux Fragrances and Camuto Group Sign Agreement with JessicaSimpson II-93Ferragamo Selects Selective Beauty as Distribution Partner II-94Ascendia Completes the Acquisition of Calgon and HealingGarden Brands II-94Frutarom Acquires Abaco II-94Cream Perfume Company Signs Distribution Agreement for NutsR II-95Inter Parfums Takes Over Lanvin Brand II-95Coty and Karl Lagerfeld Enter into a Licensing Agreement II-95Frutarom to Acquire Blessing Biotech and Gewurzmuller II-96Lornamead Takes Over Woods of Windsor II-96Clive Christian Takes Over The Crown Perfumery II-96Jaeger Signs Agreement to Produce Fragrances II-96Avon Products Collaborates with Christian Lacroix II-96Prince Partners with Revelations Perfume and Cosmetics II-97Coty and Kate Moss Partner for New Perfume Line II-97Henkel Completes Divestment of Fine Fragrance II-97Morris Profumi Announces the Acquisition of Atkinsons II-97Modi-Revlon to Commence Perfumes Manufacturing in India II-97Stella McCartney Enters into an Agreement with Lane Crawford II-98Takasago to Enhance Business in China II-98Thailand and France Collaborate to Develop SMEs in Thailand II-98Symrise Reopens Singapore Research Center II-99Lifestyle Introduces Perfume Department at Sharjah City Center II-99Drom Takes Over Quorum Holding II-99Jimmy Choo Partners with Selective Beauty to Unveil New Fragrance II-100Givaudan Completes the Acquisition of Quest International II-100 10. FOCUS ON SELECT GLOBAL PLAYERS II-101Avon Products, Inc. (US) II-101Bulgari S.p.A (Italy) II-101Chanel SA (France) II-102Coty, Inc. (US) II-102Elizabeth Arden, Inc. (US) II-102Estee Lauder, Inc. (US) II-103Gucci Group NV (Italy) II-103Gianni Versace S.p.A (Italy) II-103Liz Claiborne, Inc./ Fifth & Pacific Companies (US) II-104L'oreal SA (France) II-104LVMH Group (France) II-105Procter & Gamble (US) II-105Puig Beauty & Fashion Group S.L (Spain) II-106Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation (US) II-106Revlon, Inc. (US) II-10711. GLOBAL MARKET PERSPECTIVE II-108Table 15: World Recent Past Current & Future Analysis forFragrances & Perfumes by Geographic Region- US, Canada, Japan,Europe, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Middle East & Africaand Latin America Markets Independently Analyzed with AnnualSales Figures in US$ Million for Years 2009 through 2017(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-108 Table 16: World Historic Review for Fragrances & Perfumes byGeographic Region - US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific(excluding Japan), Middle East & Africa, and Latin AmericaMarkets Independently Analyzed with Annual Sales Figures inUS$ Million for Years 2003 through 2008 (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) II-109Table 17: World 15-Year Perspective for Fragrances & Perfumesby Geographic Region- Percentage Breakdown of Dollar Sales forUS, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia- Pacific (excluding Japan),Middle East & Africa, and Latin America for Years 2003, 2011,and 2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-110 Table 18: World Recent Past Current & Future Analysis forWomen's Fragrances & Perfumes by Geographic Region- US,Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), MiddleEast & Africa and Latin America Markets Independently Analyzedwith Annual Sales Figures in US$ Million for Years 2009through 2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-111Table 19: World Historic Review for Women's Fragrances &Perfumes by Geographic Region - US, Canada, Japan, Europe,Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Middle East, & Africa andLatin America Markets Independently Analyzed with Annual SalesFigures in US$ Million for Years 2003 through 2008 (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) II-112 Table 20: World 15-Year Perspective for Women's Fragrances &Perfumes by Geographic Region- Percentage Breakdown of DollarSales for US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific (excludingJapan), Middle East, & Africa and Latin America for Years2003, 2011, and 2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-113Table 21: World Recent Past Current & Future Analysis forMen's Fragrances & Perfumes by Geographic Region- US, Canada,Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Middle East &Africa and Latin America Markets Independently Analyzed withAnnual Sales Figures in US$ Million for Years 2009 through2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-114 Table 22: World Historic Review for Men's Fragrances &Perfumes by Geographic Region - US, Canada, Japan, Europe,Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Middle East, & Africa andLatin America Markets Independently Analyzed with Annual SalesFigures in US$ Million for Years 2003 through 2008 (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) II-115Table 23: World 15-Year Perspective for Men's Fragrances &Perfumes by Geographic Region- Percentage Breakdown of DollarSales for US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific (excludingJapan), Middle East, & Africa and Latin America for Years2003, 2011, and 2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-116 Table 24: World Recent Past Current & Future Analysis forUnisex Fragrances & Perfumes by Geographic Region- US, Canada,Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Middle East &Africa and Latin America Markets Independently Analyzed withAnnual Sales Figures in US$ Million for Years 2009 through2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-117Table 25: World Historic Review for Unisex Fragrances &Perfumes by Geographic Region - US, Canada, Japan, Europe,Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Middle East, & Africa andLatin America Markets Independently Analyzed with Annual SalesFigures in US$ Million for Years 2003 through 2008 (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) II-118 Table 26: World 15-Year Perspective for Unisex Fragrances &Perfumes by Geographic Region- Percentage Breakdown of DollarSales for US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific (excludingJapan), Middle East, & Africa and Latin America for Years2003, 2011, and 2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) II-119III. MARKET 1. THE UNITED STATES III-1A.Market Analysis III-1Snapshots III-1US Fragrances Market Impacted by Global Recession III-1Declining North American Fragrances Market Takes Major BlowFrom Recession III-2Beauty Product Sales Witness Decline III-2American Buyers Prefer Cosmetics to Perfumes III-2Competitive Landscape III-3Table 27: Leading Players in the US Fragrance Market(2008): Percentage Share Breakdown of Value Sales by CotyInc., Estee Laude Companies Inc., L'Oreal S.A. and Others(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-3Competitive Factors III-3Table 28: US Fragrance Market By Product Type (2009):Percentage Share Breakdown for Women's colognes andperfumes, Women's gift sets & skin care packages, Men'scologne/lotion, After-shave cosmetics, Men's gift sets &travel kits, Pre-shave cosmetics, and Children's cologne &gift sets (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-4End-User Profile III-4Women's Fragrances III-4An Overview III-4Leading Brands and Player Statistics in the Past III-5Table 29: Leading Producers of Women's Fragrances in theUS (2004-2005): Percentage Share Breakdown for Coty,Elizabeth Arden, Parfums de Coeur, Revlon, Loreal SA, andOthers (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-5Table 30: Popular Fragrance Brands for Women in the US:Market Shares of Calgon, , Parfums de Coeur , Jovan,White Diamonds , Celine Dion, The Healing Garden ,Charlie, Davidoff, Red Door , Jean Nate, and Others for2005 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-6Highlights III-6Competitive Scenario III-6Key Players and Brands III-7Table 31: Breakdown of US Female Fragrances by ProductCategory (2009): Percentage Share Breakdown by Sales forFine Fragrances and Mass Fragrances (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-7 Table 32: US Women's Fragrances: Percentage Of HouseholdsBuying From Different Retail Outlets For The Year 2008(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-7Table 33: US Women's Fragrances: Annual PurchaseOccasions By Households Buying From Different RetailOutlets For The Year 2008 (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-8Trends/Issues III-8Celebrity Fragrances Drive the Women's Fragrance Marketin the US III-8Floral Fragrances Make Resurgence in Women's Category III-8Increasing Predominance of Sister Fragrances III-9Return of Romance III-9Touch of Exclusivity III-9Gift Sets - A Round-the-Year Business III-9Flankers: Reviving Sales III-10Fuzzy Lines between Bath, Body, and Perfumes III-10Demographic Trends III-10Fragrance Usage among African-American Women III-11Generation Y Shows High Potential III-11Fragrance Shopping Habits of Teens III-11Perfumes and Teen Girls III-12Aromachology in Women's Segment III-12New Aromatherapy-Based Perfumes III-12Aromatherapy Enhances Fragrance Sale III-12Role of Internet III-12Men's Fragrances III-13An Overview III-13Men's Fragrance Sector on Upsurge III-13Highlights III-13Competitive Scenario III-14Table 34: US Male Fragrances by Market Type (2009):Percentage Share Breakdown for Fine Fragrances and MassFragrances (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-14 Table 35: US Men's Fragrances: Percentage Of HouseholdsBuying From Different Retail Outlets for The Year 2008(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-14Table 36: US Men's Fragrances: Annual Purchase OccasionsBy Households Buying From Different Retail Outlets ForThe Year 2008 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-15Men's Fragrance Market: A Historic Review III-15Popular Brands of Men's Designer Mass Market Fragrancesin the US (2005): Ranking of Curve, Drakkar Noir, CoolWater, Tommy, Eternity, Nautica, Obsession, Polo, Hugo,and Halston Z-14 III-15Table 37: Leading Manufacturers of Male Fine Fragrancesin the US (2005): Percentage Share Breakdown for L'Oreal,Coty/Unilever#, Estee Lauder, Coty, Liz Claiborne Inc,Proctor and Gamble, and Others (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-16 Table 38: Leading Manufacturers of Male Mass Fragrancesin the US (2005): Percentage Share Breakdown of RetailSales for Coty/Unilever, L'Oreal, Procter and Gamble,Colgate Palmolive, The Gillette Company, Antonio Puig,and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-16Fragrance Penetration among US Men III-16Table 39: Factors Impacting Men's Fragrance Prior toPurchases (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-17Table 40: Factors Impacting Men's Fragrance Purchases inStores (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-17Trends/Issues III-17Excellent Prospects III-17Younger Customers III-18Brand Preference III-18Favorite Scents III-18Distribution Trends III-18Table 41: US Fragrances Market By Distribution Channels(2010): Percentage Dollar Share Breakdown for DepartmentStores, Specialist Stores, Supermarkets/hypermarkets andOthers (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-18Table 42: US Women's Fragrances and Perfumes Market ByRetail Outlet (2008 & 2009): Percentage Dollar ShareBreakdown for Discount Stores, Chain Drug Stores,Food/Drug Combination Stores, Independent Drug Stores,Supermarkets (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-19 Table 43: US Women's Mass Market Fragrances for The Year2009: Percentage Dollar Sales Breakdown By Retail Outlets(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-19Table 44: US Perfumes/Colognes Market by Retail Store(2010): Percentage Dollar Share Breakdown for Discounters,Drug stores, and Food stores (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-20 Table 45: Mass Market Sales of Fragrances by Store Type inthe US (2009): Percentage Share Breakdown for Drug stores,Supermarkets, and Other Mass Stores (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-20Mass Retailers: Open-Sell Designer Fragrance ProgramsRevive Sales III-20Chain Drug Stores Achieve Greater Gains III-21Direct Mail and Fragrance Strips III-21Promotional Activities III-21Regulatory Scenario III-22Chemical Use in Perfumes III-22B.Market Analytics III-23Table 46: US Recent Past Current & Future Analysis forFragrances & Perfumes by Product Segment - Women'sFragrances & Perfumes, Men's Fragrances & Perfumes, andUnisex Fragrances Markets Independently Analyzed with AnnualSales Figures in US$ Million for Years 2009 through 2017(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-23Table 47: US Historic Review for Fragrances & Perfumes byProduct Segment - Women's Fragrances & Perfumes, Men'sFragrances & Perfumes, and Unisex Fragrances MarketsIndependently Analyzed with Annual Sales Figures in US$Million for Years 2003 through 2008 (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-24 Table 48: US 15-Year Perspective for Fragrances & Perfumesby Product Segment - Percentage Breakdown of Dollar Salesfor Women's Fragrances & Perfumes, Men's Fragrances &Perfumes, and Unisex Fragrances for Years 2003, 2011, and2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-252. CANADA III-26A.Market Analysis III-26Market Demographics III-26Market Leaders III-26Table 49: Canadian Fragrances Market (2008): PercentageShare Breakdown of Value Sales by Leading Players- CotyInc., L'Oreal S.A., Procter and Gamble Co. an Others(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-26Industry Association III-26B.Market Analytics III-27Table 50: Canadian Recent Past Current & Future Analysis forFragrances & Perfumes by Product Segment - Women'sFragrances & Perfumes, Men's Fragrances & Perfumes, andUnisex Fragrances Markets Independently Analyzed with AnnualSales Figures in US$ Million for Years 2009 through 2017(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-27 Table 51: Canadian Historic Review for Fragrances & Perfumesby Product Segment - Women's Fragrances & Perfumes, Men'sFragrances & Perfumes, and Unisex Fragrances MarketsIndependently Analyzed with Annual Sales Figures in US$Million for Years 2003 through 2008 (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-28Table 52: Canadian 15-Year Perspective for Fragrances &Perfumes by Product Segment - Percentage Breakdown of DollarSales for Women's Fragrances & Perfumes, Men's Fragrances &Perfumes, and Unisex Fragrances for Years 2003, 2011, and2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-29 3. JAPAN III-30A.Market Analysis III-30Snapshots III-30Trends and Issues III-30Fragrance Market to Register Decline in Sales III-30Plagued By Economic and Cultural Problems III-30Japanese Consumers Get Acclimatized to Fragrances III-30Fragrances for Relaxation and Healing III-31Popularity of Low Fragrant Products III-31Perfume and Cosmetics Market Influenced by Younger People III-31Preferences for Fragrances Versatile III-31New Deodorizing Preparations Arouse Consumer Interest III-32Consumer Behavior Trends III-32Demographic Trends III-32End-Use Profile III-33Women's Fragrances III-33Table 53: Women's Fragrance Market in Japan by ProductCategory (2010): Market Share of Fine Fragrances and MassFragrances (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-33Player Statistics in the Past III-33Table 54: Major Manufacturers of Women's Fine Fragrance inJapan (2005): Market Share of Shiseido, Chanel, LVMH,Antonio Puig, Wella, Cofci, Procter & Gamble, Gucci, EsteeLauder, and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-33Table 55: Major Manufacturers of Women's Mass Fragrance inJapan (2005): Market Share of Shiseido, Kanebo, Wella,Mandom, Avon, and Others (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-34 Table 56: Leading Manufacturers of Men's Fine Fragrance inJapan (2005): Market Share of LVMH, Chanel, BPI /Shiseido, Coty/ Unilever, Parfums Givenchy, L'Oreal, andOthers (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-34Table 57: Leading Manufacturers of Men's Mass Fragrance inJapan (2005): Market Share of Kanebo, Shiseido, Mandom,Pola, and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-34Competitive Scenario III-35Distribution Scenario III-35Women's Fragrances III-35Table 58: Women's Fragrance Market in Japan (2010):Dollar Share of Department Stores, Specialist stores,Perfumeries, Drugstores, and Others (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-35Men's Fragrances III-35Table 59: Men's Fragrance Market in Japan by ProductCategory (2010): Market Share of Fine fragrances and Massfragrances (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-35Major Distributors III-36Table 60: Leading Distribution Channels of Male Fragrancein Japan (2008): Market Share of Department Stores,Specialist Stores, Perfumeries, Drugstores, Others(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-36Competitive Scenario III-36Table 61: Leading Producers of Fragrances and Perfumes inJapan (2005): Market Share of Shiseido, LVMH, Chanel,Coty/Unilever, Antonio Puig, and Others (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-36Density-Based Segmentation of Fragrances in Japan III-37Import-Export Scenario III-37Great Popularity of Imported Perfumes III-37Import Regulations III-37High Pressure Gas Safety Law III-37Plant Protection Law III-38CITES III-38Fragrance Ingredients III-38Table 62: Fragrance Market Mix by Major Ingredients-CitrusBased, Green Based, Floral Based, and Other (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-38Regulations III-38B.Market Analytics III-39Table 63: Japanese Recent Past Current & Future Analysis forFragrances & Perfumes by Product Segment - Women'sFragrances & Perfumes, Men's Fragrances & Perfumes, andUnisex Fragrances Markets Independently Analyzed with AnnualSales Figures in US$ Million for Years 2009 through 2017(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-39 Table 64: Japanese Historic Review for Fragrances & Perfumesby Product Segment - Women's Fragrances & Perfumes, Men'sFragrances & Perfumes, and Unisex Fragrances MarketsIndependently Analyzed with Annual Sales Figures in US$Million for Years 2003 through 2008 (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-40Table 65: Japanese 15-Year Perspective for Fragrances &Perfumes by Product Segment - Percentage Breakdown of DollarSales for Women's Fragrances & Perfumes, Men's Fragrances &Perfumes, and Unisex Fragrances for Years 2003, 2011, and2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-41 4. EUROPE III-42A.Market Analysis III-42Overview III-42Trends and Issues III-42Premium Fragrance Market in Europe Flourishes DespiteRecession III-42Eastern Europe: The most Lucrative Market III-43Small Sized Products Drive Demand III-43Looking East for Growth III-43Fragrance Renaissance III-44Natural Fragrances: The Future III-44Retail Scents Acquiring Importance in Fragrance Portfolio III-44Brand Attitude Among Europeans III-44Fragrance Flankers in Europe III-45Focus on Perfume Safety in the EU III-45Ethanol- Key Ingredient for Fragrances III-45Use of Diethylene Glycol & the Menace of Counterfeit Products III-45Men's Fragrances in Europe Put Up a Fine Show III-46A Different Beat III-46German & Italian Men Staunchly Loyal III-46Market Share Scenario III-47Table 66: Leading Fragrance Players in Europe (2008):Percentage Share Breakdown of Value Sales of Procter andGamble, Puig Beauty and Fashion, L'Oreal S.A. and Others(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-47Table 67: Western European Fragrance Market By ProductCategory (2009): Percentage Share Breakdown for Premiumfragrances for men, Premium fragrances for women, Premiumunisex fragrances, Mass-market fragrances for men,Mass-market fragrances for women, and Mass-market unisexfragrances (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-47Fragrances Market - A Recent Past Perspective III-47Leading Female Fragrances in the European Market for theyear 2004: Breakdown by Country - France, Germany, Italy,Spain and the United Kingdom III-47Table 68: Leading Fragrance Brands in Eastern and WesternEurope (2005): Percentage Dollar Share Breakdown for Avon,Oriflame, adidas, Gillette Aftershave Splash, J'adore,Chanel N (degrees) 5, Charlie, Yves Rocher, Old Spice, DiorAddict, and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-48 Table 69: Leading Fragrance Companies in Western Europe(2005): Percentage Dollar Share Breakdown by Sales for LVMHMoet Hennessy Louis, L'Oreal Groupe, Coty/Unilever, CotyInc, Estee Lauder Cos Inc, Chanel SA, Procter & Gamble Co,Antonio Puig SA, Gucci Group NV, Avon Products Inc, Privatelabel, and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-49Table 70: Leading Fragrance Brands in Western Europe(2005): Percentage Dollar Share Breakdown for Chanel N(degrees) 5, Allure, Avon, adidas, J'adore, Angel, cK one,Hugo, Fahrenheit, Boss Bottled, and Others (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-50 Table 71: Leading Producers of Fragrances and Perfumes inEastern Europe (2005): Percentage Share Breakdown forProcter & Gamble, L'Oreal, Beiersdorf, Chanel,Coty/Unilever, Sanofi, and Others (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-51End-User Profile III-51Women's Fragrance III-51Market Highlights III-51Market Scenario III-51Men's Fragrance III-52B.Market Analytics III-52Table 72: European Recent Past, Current & Future Analysisfor Fragrances and Perfumes by Geographic Region - France,Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Russia, and Rest ofEurope Markets Independently Analyzed with Annual SalesFigures in US$ Million for Years 2009 through 2017 (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-52Table 73: European Historic Review for Fragrances andPerfumes by Geographic Region - France, Germany, Italy, UK,Spain, Russia, and Rest of Europe Markets IndependentlyAnalyzed with Annual Sales Figures in US$ Million for Years2003 through 2008 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-53 Table 74: European 15-Year Perspective for Fragrances andPerfumes by Geographic Region - Percentage Breakdown ofDollar Sales for France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy,Spain, Russia, and Rest of Europe Markets for Years 2003,2011, and 2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-54Table 75: European Recent Past Current & Future Analysis forFragrances & Perfumes by Product Segment - Women'sFragrances & Perfumes, Men's Fragrances & Perfumes, andUnisex Fragrances Markets Independently Analyzed with AnnualSales Figures in US$ Million for Years 2009 through 2017(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-55 Table 76: European Historic Review for Fragrances & Perfumesby Product Segment - Women's Fragrances & Perfumes, Men'sFragrances & Perfumes, and Unisex Fragrances MarketsIndependently Analyzed with Annual Sales Figures in US$Million for Years 2003 through 2008 (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-56Table 77: European 15-Year Perspective for Fragrances &Perfumes by Product Segment - Percentage Breakdown of DollarSales for Women's Fragrances & Perfumes, Men's Fragrances &Perfumes, and Unisex Fragrances for Years 2003, 2011, and2017 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-57 4a. FRANCE III-58A.Market Analysis III-58French Fragrance Market in the Face of Recession III-58France and Fragrance: Intertwined III-58Market Structure III-59Table 78: Major Fragrance Companies in France (2005):Percentage Share Breakdown by Sales for LVMH, L'OrealGroupe, Chanel, Gucci Groupe Clarins, and Others (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-59Distribution Trends III-59Table 79: Leading Distribution Channels in the FrenchFragrance Market (2010): Percentage Share Breakdown forPerfumeries, Grocery, Department Stores, Specialist Stores,and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-60Women's Fragrances III-60Mass and Fine Fragrances III-60Table 80: Women's Fragrance Market by Product Category(2009): Percentage Share Breakdown for Fine Fragrances andMass Fragrances (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-60Fragrances Player Shares in the Past III-61Table 81: Primary Manufacturers of Women's Fine Fragrancesin France (2005): Percentage Share Breakdown for LVMH,Chanel, L'Oreal, Gucci, Clarins, BPI / Shiseido, AntonioPuig, PBS/Pacific, Wella, and Others (includescorresponding Graph/Chart) III-61Table 82: Primary Manufacturers of Women's Mass Fragrancesin France (2005): Market Share of L'Oreal, Chanel,Overall, Ulric de Varens, Laboratoires Sarbec, Coty,Shulton, and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-61Leading Companies III-61Men's Fragrances III-62Mass and Fine Fragrances III-62Table 83: Men's Fragrance Market in France by ProductCategory (2008): Percentage Share Breakdown for FineFragrances and Mass Fragrances (includes correspondingGraph/Chart) III-62Fragrances Player Shares in the Past III-62Table 84: Leading Manufacturers of Men's Fine Fragrance inFrance (2005): Percentage Share Breakdown for LVMH,Clarins, Procter & Gamble, Antonio Puig, BPI / Shiseido,Jean Patou, Chanel, Gucci, FFI, Caron, L'Oreal, and Others(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-62 Table 85: Major Manufacturers of Men's Mass Fragrance inFrance (2005): Percentage Share Breakdown forCoty/Unilever, L'Oreal, Henkel-Schwarzkopf, Chanel, SaraLee, Shulton, Ulric de Varens, Gillette, and Others(includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-63Major Distributors III-63Table 86: Leading Distribution Channels for Men'sFragrance in France (2010): Percentage Share Breakdown forPerfumeries, Grocery, Department Stores, SpecialistStores, and Others (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) III-63Competitive Scenario III-64Fragrance Penetration III-64Exports of Perfumes III-64Select Regional Player III-64B.Market Analytics III-65Table 87: French Recent Past Current & Future Analysis forFragrances & Perfumes by Product Segment - Women'sFragrances & Perfumes, Men's Fragrances & Perfumes, andUniseTo order this report:: More ? Check our ? Contact Nicolas Bombourg Reportlinker Email: US: (805)652-2626 Intl: +1 805-652-2626©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?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.SOURCE HBA Global Expo & ConferenceNEW YORK, July 10,?2012 /PRNewswire/ --?, the leading product development event for the entire beauty and personal care industry, announced the winners of several industry awards for innovations in package design, emerging brands and suppliers' new products.??With its online communities and show attendees voting, the HBA awards reached a worldwide audience of top beauty and personal care brand manufacturers, retailers, and consumers.? (Photo: )(Photo: )(Logo:? )For the first time, HBA Global attendees voted for their favorite new product from ?that were displayed in the on-site New Product Showcase.? The following products, from more than 150 submitted, were selected by top beauty and personal care manufacturers for the Exhibitor New Product Excellence Awards:Another new HBA feature was the .? ?During the 3 days of the HBA Global event, attendees visited the inaugural SPLASH Pavilion and voted for their favorite emerging brands.? ?The Best of SPLASH 2012, as voted by show visitors, ?were:The winners of the long-standing were also announced by Lady Emmy during a special ceremony and reception on the first day of HBA Global.?? The Grand Award Winner and category leader for Tools/At Home Devices was:The other HBA IPDA Category Wiiners included:In addition, a Facebook campaign where the entire HBA community could vote on their favorite new package took place and this new campaign generated 25,000 votes and close to 1 million impressions giving the HBA IPDA Finalists worldwide exposure for their products and brands.? The winner of the 1st Annual IPDA People's Choice Award was Socializer's Can You Keep A Secret? Lip Exfoliator & Conditioning Balm by Elizabeth Grant.? To view the winners of the HBA IPDA go to:? .? For more information on HBA Global, its exhibitors, and supplier resources go to: .About HBA Global Expo & Conference produced by UBM Live, is the premier product development source?from concept to market?for the cosmetics, personal care, skin care, fragrance and wellness industries and features a comprehensive educational program and exhibits floor.? HBA visitors comprise the top prestige, mass and emerging beauty and personal care brands worldwide. HBA Global Virtual Trade Show will take place September 27, 2012 and the next HBA Global Expo & Conference will take place June 18-20, 2013 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York.? Connect with the HBA Global communities on , and About UBM Live connects people and creates opportunities for companies across five continents to develop new business, meet customers, launch new products, promote their brands and expand their markets.??Through premiere brands such as MD&M, CPhI, IFSEC, TFM&A, Cruise Shipping Miami, the Concrete Show and many others, UBM Live exhibitions, conferences, awards programs, publications, websites and training and certification programs are an integral part of the marketing plans of companies across more than 20 industry sectors.Contact: Annie Scully, , 845-369-6382©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?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.SOURCE InterbrandCoca-Cola retains the #1 spot ? Apple jumps to #2; Facebook enters Top 100 as Google overtakes MicrosoftNEW YORK, Oct. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --?Coca-Cola, Apple and IBM lead Interbrand's 13th annual Best Global Brands report. While Coca-Cola retained its #1 position, Apple jumped to #2 with stellar sales in both developed and emerging markets over the last year. Social media giant, Facebook (#69), enters the report after making headlines as the third largest IPO in US history, and Google (#4) experienced a 26% increase in brand value over the last year, exceeding rival Microsoft's (#5) brand value for the first time in the history of Interbrand's report.? Interbrand, the world's leading brand consultancy, publishes its Best Global Brands report of the world's 100 most valuable brands on an annual basis. Interbrand's methodology - the first of its kind to be ISO certified ? analyzes the many ways a brand touches and benefits an organization, from driving bottom-line business results to delivering on customer expectations. To develop its report, Interbrand examines the three key aspects that contribute to a brand's value: 2012 OVERVIEW: Delivering Meaningful Brand Experiences Across All TouchpointsAgainst the backdrop of continued global economic uncertainty, this year's top 100 brands excelled in securing their market position and delivering more personal and enriching experiences to consumers -- across geographies and platforms. ?"As global competition increases and many competitive advantages, like technology, become more short-lived, a brand's contribution to shareholder value will only increase," noted Jez Frampton, Interbrand's Global Chief Executive Officer. "The world's 100 most valuable brands are leading the way by listening to consumers, employees, and investors alike and delivering a seamless and holistic brand experience across an ever-evolving range of touchpoints." In a fast-moving world where consumers' offline and online brand experiences constantly intertwine, the leading brands are staying actively engaged, tapping into the inexorable rise of data and information in order to drive innovation across all industries. They are spending the time and money required to understand the role their brand plays in consumers' lives ? and they are strategically weaving their brand proposition into every interaction. 2012 NEW ENTRANTS: Pampers, Facebook, Prada, Kia, Ralph Lauren, MasterCardPampers (#34): Pampers, the top-selling diaper brand in the US and P&G's number one selling brand in the world, earned the highest ranking position among this year's new entrants. Pampers has effectively used social media platforms and loyalty programs to connect to its consumer base. Such efforts (and increased financial transparency on P&G's part) have earned Pampers a high-ranking spot in this year's Best Global Brands report. Facebook (#69): Facebook's IPO in May enabled Interbrand to examine the social media behemoth's financials for the first time. Despite its rocky start as a publicly listed stock and lingering uncertainty about its business model, Facebook's growth as a brand, especially in developing markets, earns it a position in this year's report. Prada (#84): Prada returns to the Best Global Brands report this year. The brand's continued growth in revenue is fueled largely by 250+ DOS (Directly Operated Stores) worldwide ? a network that has expanded by keeping a careful eye on increasingly sophisticated customers in developing markets. Kia (#87): For the past few years, Kia has been one of the fastest-growing global automotive brands. In the US, Kia's market share has grown for 17 consecutive years and its sales numbers continue to rise, even in the troubled European marketplace.? Ralph Lauren (#91): Making its first appearance in the top 100 since 2009, Ralph Lauren's notable brand growth in the past year can be attributed to highly innovative communication patterns and consistency across all touchpoints and formats. MasterCard (#94): MasterCard makes its debut in the 2012 Best Global Brands report after an impressive year. The company's launch of its "Priceless Cities" campaign and a growing suite of solutions for business owners are steadily increasing consumer satisfaction ? and contributing to its rise in brand value. 2012 TOP RISING BRANDS: Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Nissan, Oracle Apple (+129%): Despite Steve Jobs' passing, consumers' emotional connection to the Apple brand remains stronger than ever - this was made clear just recently with the launch of iPhone 5. Even in the face of increasing competition from rivals Google and Samsung, the company continues to demonstrate its commitment to protecting the Apple brand and its intellectual property. Such commitment enabled Apple to post quarterly revenue of USD $35 billion and quarterly net profit of $8.8 billion in July.Amazon (+46%): Amazon has introduced the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire in 175 countries, stretching the Kindle beyond its e-reader origins and turning it into a serious rival to the iPad. The Kindle Fire now enjoys the world's second-largest tablet market share. Samsung (+40%): Samsung became the global leader for smartphone shipments in 2011 ahead of Apple and Nokia. Samsung also generated a great deal of online buzz by integrating its Galaxy SIII and Note into the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. Despite its legal battle with Apple, Samsung's global market share is 32.6% and its brand value increased by a meteoric 40% in the past year.Nissan (+30%): Nissan recovered quickly from last year's natural disasters in Japan and grew its market share by pushing the envelope on innovation and by creating bold vehicle designs like that of the Nissan Juke. Nissan's ability to overcome challenges and continually innovate caught the attention of consumers and helped increase its brand value by 30%.Oracle (+28%): Oracle has been branching out beyond database solutions in order to stay ahead of competitors. The company continues to make strategic acquisitions and grow its capabilities and offerings, especially in cloud computing. Oracle's 28% increase in brand value this year proves that such strategies have impressed customers and investors alike.TECHNOLOGY BRANDS CONTINUE TO DOMINATE Technology brands continued their strong push of recent years, with four of the five top risers hailing from the sector (Apple, Amazon, Samsung, and Oracle). In addition, five of this year's Top 10 brands come from within the technology sector (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Samsung). Apple, in particular, experienced record growth in brand value. While there is no question that products like the iPad and iPhone 5 are attractive to consumers around the world, Apple's values and unmistakable human touch are what set it apart from competitors in the end.AUTOMOTIVE BRANDS MOVE BEYOND RECOVERYAutomotive brands are becoming more attuned to the emotional connection consumers have with their cars. This has caused many automakers to develop more effective, technologically savvy ways to reach target markets and help prospective buyers better relate to car brands. Audi's (#55) digital showroom, Audi City, is revolutionizing the future of retailing by combining digital product presentations and personal contact with dealers. Similarly, Ford (#45) is working hard to improve MyTouch, its in-car communications and entertainment system. Brands like BMW (#12) and Hyundai (#53) are investing in global brand campaigns and are becoming more digitally connected and tailored to narrower target groups. For the most part, the entire industry appears to be focused on engaging customers and prospects in a more relevant and personalized manner throughout the entire purchase cycle. LUXURY BRANDS PROVE RESILIENT Despite the current economic landscape, all of the luxury brands in this year's report increased their brand value. As the meaning of luxury shifts, this year's top luxury brands reflect a changing global consciousness ? with success dependent not only upon a portfolio of superior products and superb quality of service, but also a strong cohesive brand, a formidable digital presence, and reputation that is timeless, elevated, and refined. The 2012 Best Global Brand report includes seven luxury brands: Louis Vuitton (#17), Gucci (#38), Hermes (#63), Cartier (#68), Tiffany & Co. (#70), Burberry (#82), and Prada (#84). FMCG/CPG (FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS/CONSUMER PACKAGED GOODS) BRANDS INCREASE IN BRAND VALUE AND EXPAND PRODUCT OFFERINGS The rise in value of several FMCG/CPG brands -- Kellogg's (#29), L'Oreal (#42), Heinz (#46), Colgate (#47), Danone (#52), Nestle (#57), and Johnson & Johnson (#79) -- reflect successful growth, especially in the developing markets. Another growing trend observed this year was the increasing number of FMCG brands expanding into the healthcare space. Avon (#71) and Kleenex (#80) were the only two brands to lose brand value (-4% and -7% respectively). FINANCIAL SERVICESFinancial services brands are continuing to feel the impact of 2008's global economic downturn. Recent events, such as the notorious Libor scandal, have tarnished the reputation of leading brands like Credit Suisse - it declined 5% in brand value and ranked #95. There is reason to be optimistic about the future of this sector, however: Five of the 12 financial services brands in this year's report increased in brand value, including American Express (#24), Morgan Stanley (#54), AXA (#58), Allianz (#62), and Visa (#74). MasterCard (#94) was a new entrant to this year's report, an indication that its "Priceless" campaign continues to succeed in building a stronger connection between the brand and its growing customer base.Interbrand's 2012 Best Global Brands report, including detailed sector analyses, is available in full on interbrand.com and bestglobalbrands.com. The Best Global Brands website also includes in-depth CMO interviews and interactive charts & graphs.Interbrand's 2012 Best Global Brands About InterbrandFounded in 1974, Interbrand is one of the world's largest branding consultancies. With nearly 40 offices in 27 countries, Interbrand's combination of rigorous strategy, analytics, and world-class design enables it to assist clients in creating and managing brand value effectively, across all touchpoints, in all market dynamics. Interbrand is widely recognized for its annual Best Global Brands report, the definitive guide to the world's most valuable brands, as well as its Best Global Green Brands report, which identifies the gap between customer perception and a brand's performance relative to sustainability. It is also known for having created brandchannel.com, a Webby-award winning resource for brand marketing and branding. For more information on Interbrand, visit interbrand.com.Interbrand: Daniel Diez: (212) 798-7729 Porter Novelli for Interbrand: Alan Marcus: (212) 601-8443 ?©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?SAVANNAH, Ga., May 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Savannah College of Art and Design honored Isabel and Ruben Toledo, internationally renowned artists in the worlds of high fashion, style and design, with the 2009 Andre Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award Saturday, May 16, at the universitya??s annual SCAD Fashion Show. SCAD President Paula Wallace and Vogue Editor-at-Large Andre Leon Talley presented the Toledos with the award.(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090516/DC18303)a??To present this award to them is a great honor,a?? said Talley. a??The Toledos represent a quarter century of love and brand building. Theya??re like two oaks, branches intertwined forever.a??a??It is an honor for us to be acknowledged by him, the god of fashion,a?? said Isabel Toledo. a??He is an inspiration to all of us. Thank you, Andre, and thank you to SCAD.a??In 2000, the college honored Talley with a Lifetime Achievement Award. The award thereafter bore Talleya??s name and has been presented to fashion legends Oscar de la Renta, Karl Lagerfeld, Miuccia Prada, Tom Ford, Vera Wang, Marc Jacobs and John Galliano. In 2004, Zac Posen was honored with the Andre Leon Talley New Look Award.Isabel Toledoa??s approach to designing clothing makes her an iconic and freethinking talent. Designing and exhibiting twice-yearly collections since 1986, Isabel has been described as a a??cult figurea?? by The New York Times, one of the a??100 designers that counta?? by Womena??s Wear Daily, and Vogue has named Isabel a??an important raw talent.a?? Her work has been sold in Barneys New York, Ikram in Chicago, Colette Paris, Shiseido Ginza in Tokyo and Liberty of London. Isabel has twice been named on the International Best Dressed List and most recently First Lady Michelle Obama wore her designs for the Presidential Inauguration in January 2009.Ruben Toledo is a painter, sculptor, illustrator, fashion chronicler and critic, and surrealist wit. The changing themes of fashion and the changing body language of style appear throughout his work. He has designed everything from mannequins, store windows, and award statuettes to scarves, fabrics, dishes and carpets. He has created illustrations for top fashion magazines and journals, among them The New Yorker, Vogue, Harpera??s Bazaar, Town & Country, Paper, Visionaire, Interview Magazine and The New York Times. He has created images and art installations for Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Tiffany & Co., and Barneya??s New York. His work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Victoria and Albert Museum and the Mode Museum in Antwerp.The Toledos met with aspiring SCAD fashion designers and artists at the annual SCAD Fashion Show, where more than 70 undergraduate and graduate students showed nearly 170 garments selected through a rigorous jury process.a??Tonight wea??re here to honor the students of SCAD,a?? said Ruben Toledo. a??This campus is a breeding ground for creating the future. I think wea??re in good hands, all of us.a??About the SCAD Fashion DepartmentThe SCAD fashion department partners with innovative designers and critics such as Mark Badgley, James Mischka, Lela Rose, Lars Nilsson, Yigal Azrouel and Michael Fink, bringing visiting industry professionals to network with, critique, and lead workshops for students. The fashion department is a a??style laba?? in design education and innovation, balancing the development of a studenta??s creative and intellectual skills with necessary practical and professional training specific to the needs of the global apparel industries. Alumni have started successful labels, won prestigious awards and landed jobs working for some of the biggest labels in fashion today. For more information, visit scad.edu/fashionSCAD: The University for Creative CareersWith more degree programs and specializations than any other art and design university in the United States, the Savannah College of Art and Design is uniquely qualified to prepare talented students for professional, creative careers. SCAD is a private, nonprofit, accredited institution that offers a choice of degree programs in 42 different majors, plus 52 minors. Students can pursue their degrees at campuses in Savannah and Atlanta, Ga., in Lacoste, France, and online through SCAD-eLearning. The career preparation of each student is nurtured and cultivated by nearly 600 full-time professors with extraordinary academic credentials and valuable professional experience. SCAD confers Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Architecture, Master of Arts, Master of Arts in Teaching, Master of Fine Arts and Master of Urban Design degrees. For more information, visit scad.edu.SOURCE Savannah College of Art and Design?Infringed Goods Valued at More Than $100 Million WASHINGTON, June 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Chong Lam, 52, and Siu Yung Chan, aka Joyce Chan, 42, both of New York, were convicted yesterday for their participation in one of the largest counterfeit luxury goods operations in the United States, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride for the Eastern District of Virginia and Assistant Secretary John Morton of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After a week-long trial and seven hours of deliberation, a federal jury in Richmond, Va., found Lam and Chan each guilty on one count of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods imported from the People's Republic of China (PRC); two counts of trafficking in counterfeit handbags, wallets, purses and carry-on bags; and two counts of illegally smuggling counterfeit goods into the United States. According to evidence presented at trial, Lam and Chan and their co-conspirators operated a massive international manufacturing, import and wholesale counterfeit goods business. Evidence introduced at trial proved that Lam and Chan were controlling officers of at least 13 different companies in the United States and overseas, and operated at least eight separate factories dedicated to producing handbags, including enormous quantities of counterfeit bags. According to evidence presented at trial, from 2002 until Oct. 31, 2005, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized numerous containers of counterfeit luxury handbags and wallets imported from China. A subsequent ICE investigation, including a review of documents filed with CBP, disclosed that Lam and Chan imported over 300,000 counterfeit luxury handbags and wallets into the United States from the PRC in the names of different companies, all under their control. In January 2008, investigators with ICE executed search warrants on the defendants' business address, Coco USA, located in Manhattan. According to evidence presented at trial, during the execution of the search warrant, investigators seized approximately 1,500 cartons of alleged infringing items. The total value of the corresponding authentic luxury goods manufactured by Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Coach, Fendi, Chanel and others is estimated to be over $100 million. "The defendants convicted yesterday led a massive counterfeit goods operation that stretched from China to New York," said Assistant Attorney General Breuer. "The Department of Justice will continue aggressively to prosecute intellectual property crimes and to protect business and consumers alike from those looking to cheat their way to a quick profit." "This case is about economic identity theft and blatant disregard of the law," said U.S. Attorney MacBride. "These convictions reinforce the integrity of our nation's intellectual property laws that the Eastern District of Virginia is committed to enforcing.""This landmark conviction represents the latest success of ICE in targeting intellectual property thieves," said John Morton, Assistant Secretary for ICE. "Through the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, ICE will continue working to stem the flow of counterfeit goods into the commerce of the United States."The government is seeking forfeiture of the illicit proceeds of the enterprise, including funds that the defendants had transferred to bank accounts in the United States and overseas in the names of companies under their control, as well as three properties in New York. All of these assets had previously been frozen by court order.At sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 15, 2010, Lam and Chan each face a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the conspiracy count, 10 years in prison and a $2 million fine for each trafficking count, and 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each smuggling count. A third defendant, Eric Yuen, 41, who was originally charged with Lam and Chan in January 2008, was found not guilty on all counts yesterday. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brian R. Hood and Jessica A. Brumberg in the Eastern District of Virginia and Trial Attorney John H. Zacharia of the Criminal Division's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS). The case was investigated by ICE.SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice?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.SOURCE Sears, Roebuck and Co.LOS ANGELES, Aug.?7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --?Jupi Corp is excited to announce the newest addition to the family - . Jupi Corp has collaborated with Inspecs USA, a design and innovation-driven global eyewear company, to manufacture the new collection of eyewear. Their latest business venture is targeted towards young, fashionable women who are budget-conscious but aware of the . The line hit stores in July 2012, offering both stylish optical frames and chic prescription ."It was only natural for eyewear to be the next product launch for the Kardashian Kollection brand. Our designs capture a wider clientele from those who are simple and structured in style to fashion risk takers. We're very proud and excited for this launch." said Bruno Schiavi, fashion designer and president of Jupi Corp.The Kardashian Kollection Eyewear is inspired by Kim's, Kourtney's and Khloe's unique individual styles, ranging from vintage boho to high glam. The optical collection will consist of five styles and will be offered in a total of nine different colors. Studded temples, tortoise shell, and leopard prints in retro shaped acetate frames will complement any signature style."Sears Optical saw the great success of the Kardashian Kollection in Sears stores across the United States and wanted to expand the Kollection into eyewear. Sears Optical partnered with Inspecs USA to create an exclusive eyewear line. The Kardashian Kollection Eyewear will be featured in both ophthalmic and prescription sun and sold exclusively at Sears Optical. The Kardashian Kollection Eyewear will officially be launched in stores and all parties involved could not be happier with the outcome," said Daryl Hammett, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Sears Optical, a division of Luxottica Retail.The Kardashian Kollection Prescription Sunglasses will offer five prescription sunglass styles in 11 color options. Luxe-vintage styles include oversized cat eyes and retro aviators with pearlescent temples and funky HD animal prints. Kardashian Kollection Eyewear will retail for $139.99 for both optical and prescription sunglasses, and will be available at 300 Sears Optical stores nationwide.? Please visit for a complete list of store locations.ABOUT SEARS, ROEBUCK AND CO., Roebuck and Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ: SHLD), is a leading broadline retailer providing merchandise and related services and? is part of , a social shopping experience where members have the ability to earn points and receive benefits across a wide variety of physical and digital formats through ShopYourWay.com.? Sears, Roebuck offers its wide range of home merchandise, apparel and automotive products and services through more than 2,000 Sears-branded and affiliated stores in the United States and Canada, which includes over 810 Full-line and more than 1,270 specialty stores in the U.S. ??Sears, Roebuck also offers a variety of merchandise and services through sears.com, landsend.com, and specialty catalogs. Sears, Roebuck offers consumers leading proprietary brands including Kenmore, Craftsman, DieHard and Lands' End -- among the most trusted and preferred brands in the U.S.? The company is the nation's largest provider of home services, with more than 11 million service calls made annually. For more information, visit the Sears, Roebuck website at or the Sears Holdings Corporation website at .ABOUT BRUNO SCHIAVI ? JUPI CORPNamed in the BRW Young Rich List for the last six years as a top Australian Fashion Entrepreneur, Bruno Schiavi has carved himself a unique position in the fashion industry and business world. Just nine years ago Bruno Schiavi started with assets of only $2000, since that day this creative and very intuitive fashion aficionado has grown to position Jupi Corp as a global powerhouse.? In August 2002 Schiavi launched the anabella line of lingerie followed by the sell out release of Delta by anabella in October 2004 in conjunction with Australian star Delta Goodrem. Schiavi joined other partnerships with icon1s & celebrities such as Priscilla Presley in 2005, Dr Robert Rey, renowned Plastic Surgeon and star of Dr 90210 in 2007, Cricket fast bowler Brett Lee and pop star Janet Jackson in 2008. Moving into high fashion but with the current economic climate in mind he has recently teamed with Australian designer Peter Morrissey to add a new fashion outer wear brand to his already impressive stable. Moving forward in 2012, Bruno Schiavi plans to take the Kardashian Kollection brand and expand the line to the UK, Europe and Middle East.? Additionally, new categories will be added to the line including swim and home. Bruno will continue to use his innovative marketing techniques involving Kourtney, Kim and Khloe in combination with Sears.Jupi International has retail collections in United States, Canada, South America, United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. For more information, visit .ABOUT LUXOTTICA GROUPLuxottica Group is a leader in premium, luxury and sports eyewear with approximately 7,100 optical and sun retail stores in North America, Asia-Pacific, China, South Africa, Latin America, and Europe, and a strong, well-balanced brand portfolio. House brands include Ray-Ban, the world's most famous sun eyewear brand, Oakley, Vogue, Persol, Oliver Peoples, Arnette and REVO, while licensed brands include Bvlgari, Burberry, Chanel, Coach, Dolce & Gabbana, Donna Karan, Polo Ralph Lauren, Prada, Tiffany and Versace. In addition to a global wholesale network involving 130 different countries, the Group manages leading retail chains in major markets, including LensCrafters, Sears Optical, Pearle Vision and ILORI in North America, OPSM and Laubman & Pank in Asia-Pacific, LensCrafters in China, GMO in Latin America and Sunglass Hut worldwide. The Group's products are designed and manufactured at its six manufacturing plants in Italy, two wholly owned plants in the People's Republic of China, one plant in Brazil and one plant in the United States devoted to the production of sports eyewear. In 2011, Luxottica Group posted net sales of more than ?6.2 billion. Additional information on the Group is available at .Media Contact: Taryn Deane Fingerprint Communications 310/276-7500 ©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?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.SOURCE La PerlaNEW YORK, July 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- La Perla, the Italian luxury brand celebrated the grand opening of its boutique at the prestigious Bal Harbour Shops, and the latest Spring/Summer 2013 Swimwear collection with an exclusive preview hosted by Creative Director Giovanni Bianchi and Suzy Biszantz, CEO of La Perla North America at the Soho Beach House on Sunday, July 22nd.? (Photo: )The boutique opened its doors in mid-June and the company marked the Grand Opening during the preview co-sponsored by Miami Magazine.? Miami socials such as Matthew and Kristin Lazenby of the Bal Harbour Shops attended, alongside Anne Owens, Publisher of Miami Magazine and Dana Hagendorf, Chief Marketing Officer for the Fontainebleau.? Other notable guests included:Bombay Sapphire stirred up a mix of signature cocktails while the crowd previewed the latest collection.? Models showcased the swimwear looks inspired by the beauty of Sicily.? The multi-colored tiles and tapestries of Baroque buildings lend their patterns to the prints, while traditional laces play contrast with smock stitches and draping.? The latest collection is a mixture of elegance, warmth, and imagination in every detail to portray this Mediterranean style in each piece.The new location is: The Bal Harbour Shops, 9700 Collins Avenue, 2nd Floor, Bal Harbour, FL 33154The store hours are: Sunday 12pm-6pm Monday - Saturday 10am-9pm Phone number 305.864.3173*Additional photography available upon request.About La PerlaFounded in 1954, La Perla is a leading Italian-based brand of luxury intimate apparel, swimwear and pret a porter. The company's elegant and sophisticated lingerie is sold through an international network of company-owned boutiques, prestige department stores, high-end shops and online at Contact: Marianna Biela 212-459-2775 ext.235 ?©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?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.SOURCE Hudson GroupEAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., Aug. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of the program to enhance the shopping experience at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport (STL), HG-St. Louis JV is delighted to announce that it has been approved by the St. Louis Airport Commission for the award of a 10-year contract to operate the retail concessions program in the airport. (Logo:? ?) HG-St. Louis JV is a joint venture comprised of Hudson Group (HG) Retail, LLC; Final Phase Marketing, Inc., based in St. Louis; OHM Concession Group, LLC of St. Ann, Missouri; and Newburns Management Group, LLC, an experienced ACDBE operator. Upon final approval of the contract by the City of St Louis, HG-St. Louis JV will deliver 14 new stores, including three distinct newsstand brands ? Hudson, Ebony News and CNN Newsstand ? St. Louis. Hudson: The future of newsstands is here, with our latest generation "Hudson" shop.? Hudson takes the best of our Hudson News shops and enhances them with a new, fresh look.? We've reorganized and refined our layout and product mix to better match the latest trends in traveler demands. Just as Hudson News has set the standard for magazines and books (through our proprietary Hudson Booksellers) and travelers' necessities for the past 25 years, our new Hudson store sets the new standard for the coming decade, with its streamlined look and accent on technology, healthy snacks and highly efficient "shopability."Ebony News: On the outside, this newsstand is branded with the leading publication catering to African-Americans, Ebony magazine. Founded in 1945 by the late John Johnson, head of Johnson Publishing, Ebony burst onto the publishing scene. From its earliest days, through its latest issues, this revered and respected magazine has set new standards in covering news of interest to the black community, inspiring instant loyalty and recognition. In cities across the United States, Ebony was the first publication on the scene to chronicle events important to civil rights.Inside, the store is 100% Hudson, with the same high standards of quality, operation and service that Hudson has delivered in newsstands across North America and around the world. CNN Newsstand ? St. Louis: The most trusted name in international news teams with nationally branded Hudson to provide travelers with travelers' necessities and convenience items, plus live news feeds in the stimulating setting reminiscent of a real television newsroom. CNN is recognized around the world and CNN Newsstands are an exclusive concept that only HG-St. Louis JV can bring to STL.One of the Hudson newsstands features a special section devoted entirely to the delectable indulgence of confectionery bliss from Natalie's Candy Jar, a successful candy concept with extensive experience catering to airport customers.Another Hudson newsstand features Natalie's plus a section called St. Louis Sports. Here employees and travelers of STL can obtain licensed merchandise from local college and professional sports teams, as well as mementos of famous St. Louis sports figures from Yogi Berra and Jerome Bettis to Sam Bradford and Carlos Beltran, presented in an appealing ballpark setting.??A third Hudson store features a wide range of U.S. Post Office products and services. ??The HG-St. Louis JV team will also deliver a range of specialty retail brands with local, national and international personality, along with the latest trends in retailing, to the concessions program of STL:Discover St. Louis: ?This eclectic and ever changing boutique will feature souvenirs and mementos from all the leading cultural institutions in the city, including all the attractions at the Jefferson National Parks (including The Gateway Arch), Peabody Opera, St. Louis Art Museum, as well as entertainment attractions like the St. Louis Zoo, St. Louis Blues and Washington University of St. Louis.Eddie Bauer: ?Classic outerwear, legendary down and casual denim, khakis, other apparel and accessories and footwear ? Eddie Bauer offers a full range of styles to complete the casual wardrobe for both men and women. Lewis & Clark would have loved this store, with its high-tech gear and outfits to face down any kind of weather conditions.Spectacles: The most well-known classical, fashion and sport sunglasses available anywhere are featured in two sleek and modern shops. It's all here: the world's most complete portfolio of premium sunglass brands including the latest designs from Oakley, Versace, Prada, Bulgari, Dolce & Gabbana, Donna Karan, Ray Ban, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, and many more in an ever-changing array of colors and styles. Bliss: This lotions and potions store doesn't take itself too seriously. But it is serious about connecting travelers to personal grooming products to make their trip more comfortable. Bliss is an island of calm in the busy airport, the ideal place to find spa products and get information from experts who can help anyone feel and look their best, while reliving the stress that travel can bring. Kids Works: For families traveling through the airport together, or for adults looking for the ideal gift for the youngsters in their lives, Kids Works is the answer. This is a fun, well-organized space, where youngsters are encouraged to try before they buy. Kids Works offers only quality, brand name items, sorted by age groups: interesting and exciting educational toys, crafts, travels games, plush, dolls, the latest fads, children's books and licensed apparel.? Said Joe DiDomizio, President & CEO of Hudson Group: "Our expert team of designers, merchandisers, marketers, concessions operators and developers canvassed the airport and the City to produce this proposal for innovative concessions at STL. We are proud to say that we have developed for the airport a concessions program that will exceed the core convenience needs of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport's employees and travelers. Our 14 stores will offer a wide selection of fun, compelling and up-to-date retail brands and concepts -- local, regional, national and international names that will appeal both to residents and visitors to St. Louis, as called for in the solicitation." All the shops will be operated according to the highest standards of each brand. That means that associates are trained by brand personnel of Eddie Bauer, Bliss, and Natalie's and as well as proprietary brands -- to ensure that they are well-versed in all aspects of the products, merchandising and marketing. Training goes on throughout the year, with frequent rewards to those associates who demonstrate the highest levels of sales and customer satisfaction.About Hudson Group: Hudson Group, the largest duty-paid travel retailer in North America, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of international duty-free travel retailer Dufry AG (DUFN) of Basel, Switzerland. The company operates some 650 Hudson News, Hudson Booksellers, cafes,? specialty retail and duty free shops in 70 airports and transportation terminals in the United States and Canada, and additional newsstands in 12 more countries around the world. The combined Dufry/Hudson entity oversees over 1,160 stores in 46 countries and 160 airports and terminals. For more information, please visit ? and . ©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?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.SOURCE Lane Crawford HONG KONG, July 30, 2012 /PRNewswire-Asia/ --?Mr. Andrew Keith, President of Lane Crawford, Asia's premier specialty fashion retailer, today announced two senior management hires for newly created positions that will drive the retailer's China stores, and global e-commerce expansion, underlining the company's strategic focus on omni-channel retailing.Ms. Andrea O'Donnell will join Lane Crawford as Executive Director commencing September 3. In this role, Ms. O'Donnell reports directly to Mr. Keith and is responsible for merchandising, marketing, store strategy and planning.Ms. O'Donnell comes to Lane Crawford from John Lewis in London, where as the Commercial Director she delivered the retailer's successful multi-channel strategy and opened eight new stores.Mr. Sebastian Picardo will join Lane Crawford as Executive Vice President Business Development & Online on August 6. In this capacity, he will report directly to Mr. Keith and oversee Lane Crawford's e-commerce business and work with Ms. O'Donnell to drive an omni-channel strategy, synergizing the retail and online channels in Greater China.Mr. Picardo comes to Lane Crawford from Burberry where he most recently served as Managing Director - Digital Commerce based in the London headquarters after transforming and integrating the brand's Spanish operations into the global business as Managing Director - Operations at Burberry Spain."As Asia's first omni-channel multi-brand fashion retailer, delivering the ultimate in customer experience is at the centre of our strategy. Both Andrea and Sebastian bring extensive knowledge from companies leading the way in omni-channel retailing. Their skills combined with our innovation and Asian market leadership will enable us to deliver a seamless and dynamic retail experience for our customers both in China and globally," Mr. Keith said.The announcement comes on the back of a landmark financial year ending March 31, 2012, in which the retailer booked record-breaking revenue of US$700M, with comp store growth of 23%.Lane Crawford will open a China flagship in Shanghai, its largest at 150,000 square feet in the second half of 2013. It represents a new Lane Crawford store model with integrated technology to enhance customer experiences, an elevated service model and new F&B concepts, creating a complete lifestyle destination.Through continued expansion, the retailer expects to increase its total retail square footage by 35% in the next three years."With more than 160 years of heritage we are committed to further growing our position as Asia's leading specialty department store. Our strategic investment in both physical store expansion and e-commerce allows us to broaden the scope of our customer service platform in the rapidly expanding and increasingly sophisticated Chinese market," Mr. Keith said.ABOUT LANE CRAWFORDLane Crawford is Asia's leading specialty department store, offering the largest assortment of international designer brands across Womenswear, Lingerie, Menswear, Shoes & Accessories, Jewellery, Cosmetics and Home & Lifestyle. It has four stores in Hong Kong, one in Beijing and an online store at . Lane Crawford is part of The Lane Crawford Joyce Group, Asia's premier fashion and brand management group, including multi-brand retailers JOYCE and The Pedder Group, and management and distribution arm, ImagineX. The Lane Crawford Joyce Group operates more than 500 points of sale across Greater China and South East Asia.©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ? WASHINGTON, June 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Two Massachusetts residents pleaded guilty today in federal court to money laundering and trafficking and conspiring to traffic in more than $1.4 million of counterfeit luxury handbags and wallets, as well as the materials needed to make these counterfeits. The guilty pleas were announced today by Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher, U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan of the District of Massachusetts, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge Matthew J. Etre of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New England and Special Agent-in-Charge Douglas Bricker of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation in New England. Minh Vu, age 26, and Katherine Luong, age 27, both of Chelsea, Mass., pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Court Judge William Young. Vu pleaded to eight criminal counts charging conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods, conspiracy to commit money laundering and a variety of counts alleging specific instances of trafficking in counterfeit goods and money laundering. Luong pleaded to seven similar charges of conspiracy, money laundering, and trafficking in counterfeit goods. A sentencing date was set for October 26, 2006. The indictment also alleges similar charges against two of Katherine Luong's sisters, also Massachusetts residents, who are scheduled for trial in October. "Intellectual property is one of the United States' most valued resources in the modern world," said U.S. Attorney Sullivan. "My office will continue to take strong steps to prosecute those who abuse others' trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets." At today's hearing, Vu and Luong admitted that they and Luong's two sisters used thirteen self-storage units at a facility in Revere, Mass. as their counterfeiting operation's home base. When raided by law enforcement officers last year, these storage units held approximately 12,231 counterfeit handbags; 7,651 counterfeit wallets; more than 17,000 generic handbags and wallets; and enough counterfeit labels and medallions to turn more than 50,000 generic handbags and wallets into counterfeits. These items copied Louis Vuitton, Kate Spade, Prada, Gucci, Fendi, Burberry, and Coach trademarks but were of lower price and quality. Ten of the storage units were used for storage; two were configured to display items in the open, like showrooms; and one held a work-table and tools that could be used to turn the generic wallets and handbags into counterfeits. Vu and the others sold their counterfeit wallets and handbags at a flea market in Revere, Mass., and to smaller gatherings at approximately 230 "purse parties" throughout Massachusetts. All together, the counterfeit and generic handbags and wallets were worth approximately $1.4 million at average counterfeit prices (typically $35 for wallets and $40 for handbags). The storage units also contained numerous counterfeit handbags and wallets of other manufacturers, along with scarves, belts, umbrellas, sunglasses, duffle bags, hats, visors, garment bags, coats, shoes, necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings bearing counterfeit marks owned by these and other victim companies. Vu and Luong face maximum sentences on the conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods charge of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gain or loss; on the substantive counterfeit goods counts of 10 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, a $2 million fine, and restitution; and on the money laundering conspiracy and substantive counts of 20 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release and a $500,000 fine. According to the terms of their plea agreements, Vu and Luong will make over $48,000 in restitution payments to the victims and will not contest the forfeiture of five bank accounts, over $41,000 in cash, two vehicles, and the counterfeit merchandise. The case was investigated by ICE at the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service, building upon an investigation by Massachusetts State Police, the Boston Police Department, and the Suffolk County, Mass. District Attorney's Office, which referred the matter for federal prosecution. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam J. Bookbinder in the District of Massachusetts Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Unit, and by Senior Counsel Scott L. Garland of the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section.Contact: U.S. Department of Justice, 202-514-2008; Web: http://www.USDOJ.GOV /c 2006 202-347-2770/?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.SOURCE Moda OperandiOnline luxury retailer to support Costume Institute's Spring 2013 Exhibition which Continues Legacy of Preeminent Research and Analysis of FashionNEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --?Moda Operandi announced today its support of The Costume Institute's PUNK: Chaos to Couture exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum; on view from May 9th through August 11th, 2013.? "The Costume Institute is the greatest celebration of fashion as art," said Aslaug Magnusdottir, Co-Founder & 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." PUNK: Chaos to Couture will examine punk's long lasting and continued impact on fashion from its origins in the 1970'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. "The Costume Institute has a proud legacy of producing the world's most thought provoking and ambitious exhibits on fashion shaped by their transcendent vision and unrivaled vast collection," said Lauren Santo Domingo, Co-Founder & Creative Director of Moda Operandi and Contributing Editor of Vogue.? "We are thrilled to be supporting this exhibition and look forward to the institution's analysis of punk and its long lasting impact on fashion today." 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'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.About Moda Operandi 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's styles today. Working closely with the world'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 ©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?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.SOURCE Neiman MarcusDALLAS, Aug. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- announces Erik Madigan Heck as the photographer in The Art of Fashion campaign for Fall 2012. The campaign includes 27 images of Fall fashions and will appear in the September edition of the . (Photo: )(Photo: )Debuting nearly 20 years ago, The Art of Fashion was a revolutionary step for a retailer as the campaign was designed to feature cutting-edge fashion and provocative photography. Designer merchandise featured in the Fall 2012 campaign includes: Gucci, Valentino, Tom Ford, Oscar de la Renta, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Celine, Dolce & Gabbana, Jil Sander, The Row, Etro, Akris, Alaia Paris, Proenza Schouler, Haider Ackermann, Burberry Prorsum, Lanvin Paris, Chanel, Mary Katrantzou, Jason Wu, Fendi, Lanvin Paris, Peter Piloto, Charlotte Olympia and Nancy Gonzalez.Erik Madigan Heck is the youngest photographer ever chosen to shoot The Art of Fashion for Neiman Marcus. ??Other notable photographers have included Richard Avedon, Arthur Elgort, Helmut Newton, Annie Leibovitz, Lillian Bassman and Paolo Roversi."We wanted to pair up this season's exquisite fashions with a true creative visionary," said Eddie Nunns, Vice President, Neiman Marcus Brand Creative. "Erik Madigan Heck's work blurs the lines between photography and art, and through his illustrative approach he created stunning images that differentiate this campaign from any other."In addition to the photography for The Art of Fashion, a trio of short films was shot and will be available at . Two original Erik Madigan Heck prints from The Art of Fashion portfolio will be auctioned October 20, 2012, in conjunction with the Two x Two for Aids (2x2online.org), a 13-year-old fundraiser that has raised over $34 million for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and the Dallas Museum of Art's Contemporary Art Acquisitions Fund. Watch for details in the next issue of the book.The Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. operations include the Specialty Retail Stores segment and the Direct Marketing segment. The Specialty Retail Stores segment consists primarily of Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman stores. The Direct Marketing segment conducts both print catalog and online operations under the Neiman Marcus, and brand names. Information about the Company can be accessed at . Keep up with the latest news and events happening at Neiman Marcus by becoming a fan on , following us on , and subscribing to our blog, ©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?Luxottica employees and OneSight volunteers see life through the eyes of millions who suffer from poor vision during "OneDay" for OneSight charity on October 14Public invited to participate online at www.OneSight.orgMASON, Ohio, Oct. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On October 14, OneSight, Luxottica's global charity which provides free vision care and eyewear to millions in need, will host a series of global vision awareness events as part of World Sight Day. Participants will spend the day imagining what life is like for the more than 314 million people who suffer from poor vision. During "OneDay," employees at Luxottica's manufacturing and distribution facilities, retail stores and offices around the world will have the opportunity to attempt everyday tasks while wearing glasses simulating three of the most common vision impairments: uncorrected refractive error, cataracts and diabetic retinopathy. "By taking time to experience these common vision problems firsthand, our employees can better understand the realities faced by our customers and OneSight patients," said Greg Hare, OneSight Executive Director. "Our employees are passionate about helping the world see. This kind of experience brings additional meaning to the significance of our everyday work and our charitable efforts to provide clear vision to millions in need through OneSight."In addition to the simulations, many employees will also participate in OneDay service events, including recycling used eyewear for use on OneSight global clinics and providing free eye exams and glasses to those in need in local communities.The public is invited to celebrate World Sight Day and join the "OneDay for OneSight" experience by visiting www.OneSight.org. The site features a "Blurry to Clear" tool that demonstrates the realities of not having clear vision through three OneSight program recipient stories. The site also provides information and videos about OneSight's charitable programs, including blogs and photography from current regional and global clinics.About World Sight DayOctober 14 is World Sight Day, an annual day to focus global attention on blindness, visual impairment and rehabilitation of the visually impaired. Created by the World Health Organization, this day is observed around the world by organizations that exist to help preserve or restore clear vision. About OneSightOneSight, Luxottica's 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the US, is a family of charitable programs dedicated to improving vision for those in need worldwide through outreach, research and education. OneSight's outreach programs include the hand-delivery of free primary vision care, eyewear and optical sun protection. Since 1988, OneSight outreach efforts have helped more than seven million people around the world see more clearly. The OneSight Research Foundation has granted millions of dollars towards research and education. Luxottica employees, affiliated and independent doctors, vendors, donors and other charitable partners worldwide, work together to give the gift of sight to those in need. Luxottica provides inspiration for OneSight and it is the organization's main sponsor. www.onesight.org.About LuxotticaLuxottica Group (MTA: LUX; NYSE: LUX) is a global leader in premium fashion, luxury and sports eyewear with more than 6,300 optical and sun retail stores in North America, Asia-Pacific, China, South Africa and Europe and a strong and well-balanced brand portfolio. Luxottica's house brands include Ray-Ban, Oakley, Vogue, Persol, Oliver Peoples, Arnette and REVO, while license brands include Bulgari, Burberry, Chanel, Coach, Dolce & Gabbana, Donna Karan, Polo Ralph Lauren, Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo, Tiffany and Versace. In addition to a global wholesale network covering 130 different countries, Luxottica manages leading retail brands such as LensCrafters, Pearle Vision and ILORI in North America, OPSM and Laubman&Pank in Asia-Pacific, LensCrafters in China and Sunglass Hut globally. The Group's products are designed and manufactured at its six manufacturing plants in Italy, two wholly-owned plants in China and a sport sunglass production facility in the US. www.Luxottica.com.Contact: Amanda Dunn, 513-765-6566adunn@luxottticaretail.comSOURCE OneSight?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.SOURCE salesforce.comMore than 70,000 registered attendees to experience the power of the social enterprise at the 10th annual DreamforceGlobal leaders Sir Richard Branson, General Colin Powell, Jeff Immelt, Angela Ahrendts and Tony Robbins to join Marc Benioff in Keynote SessionsRed Hot Chili Peppers to rock Dreamforce GalaSAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced Dreamforce 2012, the world's largest enterprise technology and cloud computing event ever. In its 10th year, Dreamforce expects to welcome more than 70,000 registered attendees to experience the social enterprise. Dreamforce 2012 will take place Sept. 18 ? 21 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. Registration is live at , including a Free Keynote and Expo Pass.(Logo: )Comment on the NewsTouch the Social EnterpriseAt Dreamforce 2012, attendees will be inspired by companies like Virgin America and Burberry who will share how they are transforming into social enterprises to drive growth and innovation. By leveraging social, mobile and cloud technologies, social enterprises can connect with their customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways. With more than 750 sessions and 350 cloud companies in the expo, attendees can attend visionary keynotes, participate in interactive sessions, experience hands-on training with cutting-edge technology, see thousands of live demos and join in unparalleled networking. Expanded Programming to Inspire Dreamforce CommunityDreamforce 2012 provides four days of programming designed to offer attendees everything they need to succeed as a social enterprise,?including:Additional InformationAbout salesforce.comFounded in 1999, salesforce.com is the enterprise company that is leading customers in their transformation to become . Social enterprises are able to connect with customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways. Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multitenant architecture, the company's platform and application services give customers the tools to create a true social front office and revolutionize the way they sell, service, market, collaborate, work, and innovate. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit , or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?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.SOURCE salesforce.com10th annual Dreamforce grows a record-breaking 96 percent year-over-year -- 90,000 registered to attend, including more than 3,000 C-level executivesAdditional 100,000 people expected to view Salesforce Live on FacebookGlobal leaders Sir Richard Branson, General Colin Powell, Jeff Immelt and Tony Robbins to join Marc Benioff in keynote sessionsSponsorships rise by 40 percent as Dreamforce partner ecosystem grows to more than 350 companies with a combined market cap of more than $1.3 trillionRed Hot Chili Peppers to rock Dreamforce GalaDreamforce integrates philanthropy with 3rd annual benefit concert for UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, featuring Lady Antebellum, Dana Carvey and an after-party featuring DJ MC HammerSAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- DREAMFORCE 2012 -- Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, will welcome more than 90,000 registered attendees to Dreamforce 2012, now the world's largest vendor technology conference, taking place from Sept. 18-21, 2012. (Logo: )In front of a record global audience, salesforce.com will demonstrate how companies are using social and mobile cloud technologies to connect customers, partners, employees and next-gen products in entirely new ways. With more than 750 sessions and 350 cloud companies in the Cloud Expo, attendees can participate in interactive sessions, hands-on training with cutting-edge technology, thousands of live demos and unparalleled networking.Comment on the NewsDreamforce 2012 Registration Soars The 10th annual Dreamforce has grown at a record-breaking pace, increasing 96 percent year-over-year with more than 90,000 people, from more than 65 countries, registered to attend. With an additional 100,000 people expected to view Salesforce Live on Facebook, Dreamforce 2012 is the must-attend conference for anyone interested in learning more about the future of enterprise software.This year's Dreamforce has more than 3,000 C-level executives registered to attend, an increase of 100 percent year-over-year. The number of C-level attendees has grown exponentially as Dreamforce becomes one of the most strategic and critical events for senior executives to attend each year. Executives come to Dreamforce to network with the most innovative companies in the world, exchange best practices on cloud deployments and learn how next-generation social and mobile cloud technologies are helping companies grow. Partner Economy Skyrockets at Dreamforce Dreamforce is the largest gathering of cloud companies under one roof. More than 350 exhibitors, with a combined market capitalization of more than $1.3 trillion, will showcase more than 1,000 solutions in the Dreamforce Cloud Expo. Partner investments in Dreamforce are up by 40 percent from last year. The partner ecosystem at Dreamforce includes exclusive Diamond sponsor Accenture, Titanium sponsors Bluewolf, Deloitte, Eloqua, and Marketo, and Strategic Alliance partner Google. Platinum sponsors at Dreamforce include Appirio, Apttus, BMC, Box, CapGemini, Docusign, Pardot and Silverpop.?? Dreamforce Gala is Red, Hot and Social For the first time in Dreamforce history, the Dreamforce Gala will be held in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza with seven-time Grammy award-winning and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees the Red Hot Chili Peppers performing on the steps of City Hall. Now Everyone Can Experience the Power of Dreamforce Salesforce.com invites everyone who would like to experience the excitement of Dreamforce to take advantage of the free keynote and expo pass and live streaming of the event from Salesforce Live on Facebook. The free Dreamforce keynote and expo pass provides access to: Those who cannot attend Dreamforce in person can experience Dreamforce from anywhere by visiting Salesforce Live on Facebook at , which will stream general session keynotes, interviews with industry luminaries and more. Select Dreamforce sessions with salesforce.com executives will also be available via live streaming audiocast. A complete list of these sessions can be accessed through the company's Investor Relations Web site at . The Concert for UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Continuing the tradition of integrated philanthropy at Dreamforce, the is thrilled to announce the third annual Concert for at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium on Thursday, September 20th at 6:30 p.m. PDT. The benefit concert will feature Lady Antebellum, Dana Carvey, and an after-party featuring DJ MC Hammer. To purchase tickets or for more information, please visit .The Salesforce.com Foundation and Dreamforce are also teaming up in other meaningful ways this year:Additional InformationAbout salesforce.com Founded in 1999, salesforce.com is the enterprise leader. Using salesforce.com's social and mobile cloud technologies, companies can connect with customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways. Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multitenant architecture, the company's platform and apps give customers the tools to create a social front office and revolutionize the way they sell, service, market, collaborate, work and innovate. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit , or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.Copyright c 2012 salesforce.com, inc. ?All rights reserved. ?Salesforce, Chatter, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Work.com, AppExchange, Salesforce Platform, and others are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc. ?Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?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.SOURCE SocialFlowSocial advertising platform increases conversions and improves targeting and cost-effectiveness of paid media campaignsNEW YORK, Sept. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --?, the industry-leading social marketing company that helps businesses and brands improve their social marketing ROI, today announced the launch of Crescendo, Attention Buying Platform. Using real-time social data and earned media insights, Crescendo amplifies the effects of ad buys on Facebook, increasing conversions and improving the targeting, flexibility and the cost-effectiveness of social media advertising strategies.? Using a proprietary algorithm that identifies linguistic patterns to predict attention and importance, the platform identifies the most optimal keywords to purchase based on relevancy and activity around topics.? Crescendo's social advertising platform reduces a business or brand's reliance on commonly popular and more expensive keywords and continuously informs ad-buying decisions with the use of real-time social data.? Campaign results are delivered in real time within a single dashboard so clients can monitor and compare campaigns and make crucial on-the-spot strategy decisions.? With this precision approach, Crescendo helps businesses and brands find the least-cluttered and most cost-effective way to reach a target audience and increase engagement."Social media advertising is no longer a supplement to an overall marketing strategy - attention is the new universal ad unit," says Frank Speiser, SocialFlow, Co-founder. "It is now possible to use social activity to inform your creative and targeting decisions in real-time and discover optimal ad buying opportunities. Products like Crescendo and our successful Cadence, Optimized Publisher use real-time data to capture the intersection between audience availability and interest, allowing our clients to integrate their business goals and coordinate their earned and paid social media strategies."Jennifer Pasiakos, Vice President, Digital, LIPMAN Advertising has worked with SocialFlow 's Crescendo in beta. She said, "SocialFlow has enabled?LIPMAN Advertising to significantly amplify a brand's message to the right audiences, at the right time in their journey; inspiring more users to join the conversation socially, share their own experiences and ultimately, create more engaged, deeply loyal customers."Crescendo is a companion product to SocialFlow's successful Cadence, Optimized Publisher.?? Cadence helps brands and businesses understand the constant flow of real-time data so they can deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time. For the first time, CMO's can respond to split-second shifts of attention and interest.? Recently, Cadence added a Promotable Tweets feature, allowing clients to double-down on a Tweet to expand their reach and grow their audience.?? Using the algorithms that power the intelligence of the Cadence product, the feature looks at the speed at which a Tweet is accruing clicks, ReTweets and audience growth to determine which Tweets would yield the greatest engagement outside of a client's following. About SocialFlow is a leading social media marketing company offering businesses and brands a solutions-based approach to connecting paid, owned and earned social media strategies.? Powered by high-performance, proprietary technology and predictive data analytics, the company offers a full suite of services that expand audience engagement and increase the average revenue per customer, seamlessly meshing businesses goals with a company's social media strategy. In addition to its precision products, Cadence and Crescendo, SocialFlow also analyzes social signals and identifies for marketers where money should be spent on Promoted Tweets, Promoted Posts and Sponsored Stories, extending the reach of successful content and connecting earned and paid strategies for Twitter and Facebook. Founded in 2009, SocialFlow is home to a world-class research team whose work has been featured in Reuters, New York Times the UK Guardian, Fast Company, Xinhua, the Huffington Post, MIT's Technology Review,?Nieman Journalism Lab, Business Insider, International Business Times, Salon and many others. Based in New York City, SocialFlow has helped numerous well-respected brands such as the Economist, Pepsi, Burberry, Forbes, Walmart, Buzzfeed, and Human Rights Watch dramatically improve ROI and maximize clicks, conversions, likes, ReTweets, shares and engagement.?©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?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.SOURCE The ACTCreators of New York- and London-based The Box to unveil new concept inside The Shoppes at The PalazzoLAS VEGAS, Aug. 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --?The ACT, which will usher in a new variety of nightlife, is slated to open in Las Vegas inside The Shoppes at The Palazzo in October 2012. Created by New York City nightlife and theater impresario Simon Hammerstein, The ACT will offer a uniquely decadent experience, presenting over-the-top theatrical performances, nightly rituals and audience involvement in the shows."The ACT is a new variety of nightlife where the audience parties onstage, the shows explode into the club, and everyone gets caught in The ACT," says Hammerstein. The 15,000-square-foot, multi-level space merges aesthetic elements ranging from an Italian opera house to European cathedrals, from New York City's Grand Central Station Post Office to a turn-of-the-century speakeasy. Guests will have the opportunity to experience the action unfold onstage from numerous perspectives, including private balcony boxes, banquettes on the dance floor and a backstage seating area that allows guests to mingle with all the talent. ?The ACT, managed by Variety Worldwide, is the latest venture by Hammerstein, a seasoned theatrical producer and artistic director with nearly two decades of experience and who has been recognized in publications including Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New York Times and New York Magazine. Hammerstein is also president of the widely popular variety theatre, The Box, with locations in New York City and London. The creativity that won The Box international acclaim for award-winning design, exclusive clientele, extraordinary service, innovative live theatrical productions, and attendance by more than a million people since 2007 will be channeled inside The ACT, making it the most exciting addition to the Las Vegas nightlife scene.About The ACT:The ACT is a performance-based nightclub located inside The Shoppes at The Palazzo at 3327 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas, Nev. 89109. The ACT is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10:30 p.m. to 4 a.m. For more information, visit or contact 702.792.1164.The ACT is managed by Variety Worldwide LLC ("VWW"), a global entertainment and hospitality company, led by Murtaza Akbar, Randy Weiner and Simon Hammerstein. Variety Worldwide invests in and manages projects that combine non-traditional theater with nightlife. Variety Worldwide partners created and manage successful brands such as The Box London and New York, along with providing entertainment for world-class events. Variety Worldwide manages The ACT brand, opening in Las Vegas and Dubai, as well as other key cities around the world.About The Shoppes at The Palazzo: The 450,000-square-foot retail component of The Palazzo Las Vegas is one of Las Vegas' finest destination luxury retail centers. Anchored by Barneys New York and featuring more than 60 of the world's most exclusive luxury brands, The Shoppes at The Palazzo caters to the trend-setting fashion elite and is home to many fashion "firsts" to Nevada. Signature names like Diane von Furstenberg, Chloe, Christian Louboutin, Michael Kors, Tory Burch, Thomas Pink, Jimmy Choo, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Van Cleef & Arpels and Piaget are just a few stand-outs in what is the country's most impressive collection of luxury brands under one roof.The Shoppes at The Palazzo is owned and managed by General Growth Properties, Inc. a fully integrated, self-managed and self-administered real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on owning, managing, leasing and redeveloping regional malls throughout the United States and Brazil. The Company currently owns, or has an interest in, 150 regional shopping malls comprising approximately 141.7 million square feet of gross leasable area. The Company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and publicly traded on the NYSE under the symbol GGP. For further information please visit .About The Palazzo Las Vegas:With more than 3,000 spacious suites, luxury shopping, world-class dining and entertainment, the $1.9 billion, Silver LEEDR (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified Palazzo Las Vegas literally takes luxury to new heights. Ranked as one of the top 25 hotels in the U.S. and Canada in Travel + Leisure "World's Best Awards" for two consecutive years, the AAA Five Diamond and Forbes Travel Guide Four Star-Award winning resort is highlighted by a flagship 85,000-square-foot Barneys New York. The Shoppes at The PalazzoR feature more than 60 luxury boutiques, including 20 remarkable stores and couture brands making their Las Vegas debuts at The Palazzo including Chloe´, Tory Burch, Christian Louboutin, Diane von Furstenberg, and Van Cleef & Arpels. The all-suite resort offers plush and opulent suite accommodations ranging from a Luxury Suite at an unprecedented 720 square feet to the 8,000-square-foot Chairman suite with private terraces and plunge pools. The Palazzo also offers a variety of cuisines from a collection of award-winning chefs such as Carnevino by Mario Batali, CUT by Wolfgang Puck and Table 10 by Emeril Lagasse. Other unique offerings include the chic dining and nightlife hotspot, LAVO; the world's largest Canyon Ranch SpaClubR; the ultimate sports bar, sportsbook and restaurant on the Strip, Lagasse's Stadium; and Prestige at The Palazzo ? an exclusive space designed to offer the sophisticated traveler an elevated level of services and amenities including private champagne check in, packing and unpacking services, exclusive bath and pillow menus, complimentary cocktail reception and more. Guests can earn points while they eat, sleep, shop and play with Grazie, the premiere loyalty program, which rewards guests with the ease and usability of just one card and one program. The Palazzo and its famed sister resort, The Venetian Las Vegas, are the first ever Alliance Resorts in the InterContinental Hotel Group global portfolio. For additional information, visit The Palazzo website at palazzolasvegas.com, follow on Twitter @palazzolasvegas and interact on Facebook at facebook.com/palazzolasvegas. ©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ? For most men, spending a day shopping for clothes is akin to going to the orthodontist for a root canal; necessary, but extraordinarily painful. Think about it: When was the last time you actually enjoyed spending more than, say, a half hour in a department store, even when you're looking for something you really want? Luckily, you no longer have to. There's never been a better time for a man to shop online. In the past, the Internet has been something of a black hole for fashion-conscious men in search of a satisfying click-and-buy experience. But a whole new generation of curated shopping sites -- a concept that has been around for women since practically the dawn of the Web -- is about to change all of that. These new, just-for-men destinations not only stock the best designer gear, but also style outfits for you, fit them to your shape and even let you know when they're going on sale. That means you're always about five minutes away from a slick new wardrobe -- without ever having to set foot in a store. How does that sound? Here are some of the more impressive men's-only shopping sites we've found: New Handpicked Essentials Ever flip through a men's fashion magazine, only to find you suddenly want to buy everything on the page? Well, just-launched offers products plucked straight from the pages of GQ -- including brands like Paul Smith, Brooks Brothers and Florsheim by Duckie Brown -- along with the ability to see how each item looks, head-to-toe. It's the first foray into full-priced shopping from the discount gurus at Gilt Groupe, who with this site turn out to be something like personal stylists: Each curated buying guide and individual product comes with tips on how to build a wardrobe around what you're about to buy. gets the Esquire stamp of approval, and also has an extremely useful virtual fitting tool. The Tapeless Tailor takes your measurements -- all of them -- and calculates what will fit you from each of the many brands (e.g., Levi's, Jack Spade, Rag & Bone) upon checkout. And all of the complex looks are broken down and explained, so you can take advantage of the site's free shipping, one piece at a time. And tries to give its customers an independent boutique-like experience, rather than the department-store thing. It offers one of the most comprehensive and coolest selections of designer fashion anywhere on the Web, pulling together its inventory from the trendiest, hard-to-find European names and labels. Quick On-trend Basics Sometimes, of course, a man doesn't need a new wardrobe -- he simply needs what he needs, and what's cool right now. A standout for its of-the-moment gear, offers its cutting-edge designer items, along with enough images to help you really see the big picture when you're buying an item. The site's organization sets its fashionable duds apart -- and it doesn't hurt that they were first to the game, which means lots of cred with big companies like Burberry, Gucci and Ralph Lauren.If J.Crew is your one-stop shop at the mall, consider -- the easiest way to get your hands on pieces no one else in town could find. This section of the mega-chain's site pulls together all of its other favorite companies, all in one place.And then there's always , which manages to get exclusive clothes from brand-new independent designers that no one else in this country could find. Prices can be steep, but it's great for a statement item you'll wear a thousand times. Secret Gems for Less If you like a deal as well as fashion-forward designs, consider . It is to your wardrobe what Spotify was to your iTunes library: a British invasion of cheap, accessible stuff you'll love, even if you've never heard of half of the designers before.Also from across the pond is , the Italian overstock site that more than makes up for its clunky interface with plenty of Dolce and Armani clothes to go around -- plus bar-ready accessories and that nice European fit. It's somewhere between an outlet mall and a fancy duty-free shop, which means you couldn't have gotten these duds in your backyard -- and certainly not for this price. Cheap Worth-the-wait Discoveries If budget is a major concern -- and for many it is -- there's hope. First of all, sign up for the ; it'll give you instant access to major sales every weekday at noon. But it's the new "Sunday Night Steals" email to keep out of your spam filter: The already-deep Gilt discounts can crawl to 75 percent off retail prices, so be the first to click at 9 p.m. and you'll have a new pair of trousers on its way before the opening credits for your favorite HBO show are done.Also check out the . It can be highly addictive, so stick to the -- particularly the watch-sellers therein, who come highly rated and seriously on the cheap.If that doesn't work, there are always coupon codes, like the ones over at , which are constantly updated and always reliable. Or, you know, there's Barneys and Saks and Neiman. But you might as well go try on their stuff.Happy shopping. Jake Ward is a men's lifestyle blogger who spends most of his time tweeting under a joke account and putting too many things into virtual shopping carts.Copyright © 2011 Studio One Networks. All rights reserved.?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.SOURCE Thor Equities25,000-square-foot parcel at 65 Croisette houses luxury designers including Burberry, Pucci, Brioni and Jimmy Choo Thor Equities, continues rapid expansion from U.S. to Europe and Latin America NEW YORK, Oct. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Building on its unparalleled record of purchasing, developing and redeveloping properties along the "high streets" of the world, Thor Equities has purchased the 25,000 square foot retail property at 65 Boulevard de la Croisette in Cannes, company executives announced today.Already featuring the best of the best of global retailers from Burberry to Brioni, 65 Croisette is the location where everybody who is anybody in Cannes does their shopping. "This is the marquis retail property along Boulevard de la Croisette with unparalleled cache for luxury shoppers, said Joseph Sitt, CEO of Thor Equities. "The location, situated along the ocean and in between iconic hotels, fits perfectly within Thor Equities' belief that high streets across the world never go out of style."Though Cannes has always been known for its film festival and as a getaway for Europeans, as globalization has taken hold, tourists from as far away as China, Brazil and India have started to flock to the French Riviera. Luxury retail, a specialty of Thor, has followed suit.About Thor Equities Thor Equities is a global leader in urban real estate development, leasing and management, pursuing premier hotel, commercial, residential, retail and mixed-use assets in high-density areas. Through its brokerage affiliate, Thor High Street, it is also a premier leasing agent for third-party property owners and exclusively represents global retailers in their search for prime urban locations in North America, Europe and Latin America. Thor Equities provides the best possible "High Street" retail, commercial, hotel and mixed-use building environments within urban centers across the United States ? all while delivering attractive, risk-adjusted returns to high net work and institutional investors. For more information about the company, visit .©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?Infringed Goods Valued at More Than $100 MillionWASHINGTON, Jan. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Chuck Rosenberg announced today that a federal court in Richmond unsealed an indictment of three defendants involved in one of the largest ever counterfeit luxury goods operations in the United States. All three defendants were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Arraignments will be held in Richmond on a date to be scheduled.On Oct. 2, 2007, a federal grand jury in Richmond, Virginia, returned a seven-count indictment charging Chong Lam, 49, Siu Yung Chan, a.k.a. Joyce Chan, 39, and Eric Yuen, 39, all of New York with one count of conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods imported from the Peoplea??s Republic of China (PRC), four counts of trafficking in counterfeit handbags, wallets, purses, and carry-on bags, and two counts of illegally smuggling counterfeit goods into the United States. The defendants each face 55 years in federal prison and $8.75 million in fines if convicted on all charges. On Jan. 16, 2008, the indictment was unsealed and ICE agents arrested defendants Lam and Chan and searched their clothing store on West 30th Street in New York City. On that date, ICE agents also executed a court order restraining defendantsa?? numerous assets, including 29 bank accounts and three properties in New York. ICE agents arrested defendant Yuen today in Las Vegas.a??This was a sophisticated criminal conspiracy that trafficked millions of dollars of counterfeit goods from China, profiting off the backs of legitimate companies and their hard-working employees,a?? said Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher. a??The Department of Justice is committed to continuing to aggressively prosecute intellectual property crimes that transcend our borders, harm our economy and victimize American companies and workers.a?? a??These criminal organizations cost legitimate businesses billions in lost revenue and they compromise the economic well-being of the United States,a?? said Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for ICE. a??ICE is committed to working with our partners at the federal, state and local level to shut them down.a??According to the indictment, Lam, Chan, Yuen, and their fellow conspirators operated a massive international import and wholesale counterfeit goods business. From 2002 until Oct. 31, 2005, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized numerous containers of counterfeit luxury handbags and wallets imported from China. A subsequent ICE investigation, including a review of documents filed with CBP, disclosed that Lam, Chan, and Yuen engaged in a corporate shell game whereby they conspired to, and in fact imported, over 300,000 counterfeit luxury handbags and wallets into the United States from the PRC in the names of different companies, all under their control. The value of the corresponding authentic luxury goods manufactured by Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Coach, and others, whose legitimate sales were displaced, is estimated to be over $100 million.The indictment alleges that the defendants sold or attempted to sell these counterfeit goods in the United States and elsewhere at prices significantly lower than those charged by the holders of the trademarks in question. Using very conservative sales prices for the infringing counterfeit items, investigators estimate that the defendants received $16 million in illicit proceeds, which the defendants then transferred to bank accounts in the United States and overseas in the names of companies under their control, as well as using the proceeds to purchase at least three properties in New York. The United States has restrained, and seeks to forfeit, the contents of these bank accounts and the three properties. The investigation of the cases and the arrests were conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian R. Hood of the Eastern District of Virginia and Trial Attorney John H. Zacharia of the Criminal Divisiona??s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section are prosecuting the cases on behalf of the United States. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice?All content © Copyright 2000 - 2012 WorldNow and WMBF, a . All Rights Reserved. For more information on this site, please read our and .?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.SOURCE VLOV, Inc.XIAMEN, China, Sept. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VLOV Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: VLOV) ("VLOV" or the "Company"), which designs, sources, markets and distributes VLOV-brand fashion forward men's apparel in the People's Republic of China, today announced the opening of its Zhejiang distributor's store in the Hangzhou Tower Shopping Center, regarded as one of the top performing retail enterprises in all of China.The newly opened store is located on the 4th floor of the Hangzhou Tower Shopping Center, No. 1 Wulin Square in Hangzhou City, the capital of Zhejiang Province. The Hangzhou Tower Shopping Center is home to such brands as Cartier, Burberry and Louis Vuitton."We are very excited to have a VLOV store in such a prestigious location," stated Mr. Qing Qing Wu, CEO and Chairman of VLOV. "The store reflects the latest generation of stores that have been opened or upgraded by our distributors."The Company's sales to its Zhejiang distributor amounted to $8,477,000 (unaudited) during the six months ended June 30, 2012, representing 21.0% of the Company's net sales and making it the largest distributor in terms of revenue for the period. "Our Zhejiang distributor has been important to the overall growth of VLOV," commented Mr. Wu. "Its ongoing commitment to expansion and upgrading its VLOV points of sale is a reflection of our continued investment in our brand."Photos of the new store can be found on the Company's website at . About VLOV Inc.VLOV Inc., a leading lifestyle apparel designer based in China, designs, sources, markets and distributes VLOV-brand fashion-forward apparel for men ages 20 to 45 throughout China.?As of June 30, 2012, VLOV products were sold by its distributors at 414 points of sale across northern, central and southern China, as well as at 18 stores in Fujian Province owned and operated by VLOV. Safe Harbor StatementThis press release contains certain statements that may include "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.?These forward-looking statements are often identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believes," "expects," "anticipate," "optimistic," "intend," "will" or similar expressions.??The Company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward- looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including those discussed in VLOV's periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on its website at .??All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors.??Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements.CONTACT: VLOV, Inc. Bennet Tchaikovsky, Chief Financial Officer 310-622-4515 ?©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?By ADAM SCHRECK AP Business Writer DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Vogue's fashion-loving fans will soon have a chance to drink in the magazine's aura at a new cafe in Dubai. The glossy's global publisher, Conde Nast International, said Tuesday that it expects to open the Vogue Cafe in the glitzy Gulf emirate's largest shopping mall by the end of the year. It will be the company's first such cafe in the Middle East, where luxury fashion labels such as Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Chanel are extremely popular among the region's well-heeled shoppers. "The expatriate community and the local Emirati community are very conscious of brands," said Stuart Nielsen, director of Conde Nast's restaurant division. "People always love to eat and drink, and we see an opportunity because they love fashion." Vogue will join a fast-growing list of American brands expanding their reach to Dubai, a cosmopolitan city-state in the Persian Gulf and trade a hub where guest workers from around the world far outnumber citizens. The emirate is home to the only Bloomingdale's department store outside the United States, and recently received its first branches of IHOP and the Cheesecake Factory. The cafe will be surrounded by high-end fashion and shoe stores in Dubai Mall. The sprawling shopping center is located at the foot of the world's tallest skyscraper, the 2,717 foot-tall (828 meter) Burj Khalifa, which is already home to a swanky hotel and several restaurants designed by Giorgio Armani. There is also a cafe, linked to the Italian designer inside the mall. Contemporary European food will be on the Vogue Cafe menu, but no alcohol will be served, Nielsen said. However, cocktails and other alcoholic beverages, will be available at another Conde Nast outlet designed to cater to male fans of its magazines. The publisher expects to open a bar based around GQ magazine in one of Dubai's high-end hotels next year. English-language versions of both magazines are available in the Middle East, though Conde Nast does not publish local versions of either. The publisher is partnering with a Dubai-based firm called Inspired Group on the cafe and the bar. Nielsen declined to discuss the financial terms of the partnership. Conde Nast opened a similar cafe in Moscow in 2004. It has since opened two other establishments tied to its brands in the Russian capital. The company is planning to open another GQ Bar in Istanbul this year, and has signed deals for Conde Nast establishments in Bangkok and Singapore, Nielsen said. It is also considering opening cafes in Mideast cities closer to Dubai, including Kuwait City and the Emirati capital, Abu Dhabi. Besides Vogue and GQ, Conde Nast's titles include The New Yorker, Wired and Vanity Fair. Conde Nast International, which publishes international versions of the American magazines, set up its restaurant division in 2010. It publishes more than 120 magazines in 24 international markets. Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.?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.SOURCE Magrabi OpticalLONDON, October 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Magrabi Optical is home to an eye-opening selection of brands. Each store in Egypt, KSA, Oman, UAE, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain has an impressive choice of glasses and sunglasses. Magrabi Optical has popular designer brands like , Oakley, Prada, Vogue, Persol, Versace, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, Dolce & Gabbana, Cartier, ?Blanc, Bvlgari, Chanel and many more.With so much to choose from, you'll definitely find your favourite brand and the perfect style for you. Since 1927, The Magrabi Company has been helping people see the world better. And this extensive selection of brands is part of this mission. You can find the glasses or that complements your fashion sense and reflects your personality.Magrabi Optical has a team of over 150 eye care practitioners, 400 opticians and many specialists in customer service, marketing, merchandising, operations and administration. This professional support network means you'll be expertly assisted when you want to purchase your next pair of glasses or sunglasses.Many glasses and sunglasses brands await you at Magrabi Optical. Seeing is believing.About Magrabi Optical:Magrabi Optical is a leading eyewear retail chain present in 9 countries in the Middle East, Gulf, and North Africa. It is committed to providing its customers with the world's finest and most exclusive selection of internationally recognized brands in prescription eyewear and sunglasses, as well as the latest technology in contact lenses.Contact: Magrabi Optical KSA head office: Tel: 966-2-6510655 Toll free number: +800-2440199 Egypt office: Tel: 202-2772 57 00 UAE office: Tel: 971-4-286 55 88 ?©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. ?Adele to create a clothing collection for Burberry?Handbag.com– has been approached by ’s chief of design , to create a new ‘bespoke’ collection.Though not yet confirmed and more importantly, not yet denied, it’s thought that Bailey has asked for Adele’s input on new plus-size designs, to cater for Burberry’s more voluptuous customer.Having dressed the singer for many a red carpet already ? including the 2011 Brits and MTV Video Music Awards ? reports suggest that Adele would work closely with Bailey and the Burberry team on a collaborative range.But between recording the for and having her first baby ? whenever that’s going to happen! ? will the star even have time for all this?Oooh, we hope so!What do you make of this latest fashion rumour? ?London, Sep 18 (IANS) Singer Adele has been approached by British luxury fashion house Burberry for ''plus-size collaboration.''The "Someone Like You" singer is in talks with the British fashion house's chief, Christopher Bailey, about creating a line after he personally helped design her outfits during this year's awards season, reports contactmusic.com.Adele, who is set to give birth to her first child with husband Simon Konecki later this month, and her stylist Gaelle Paul will reportedly team with the brand to create bespoke designs for stylish, curvy women.''Adele has always had an interest in fashion and Christopher is keen to get her involved because she knows exactly what suits her and likes to be involved in the creative process," contactmusic.com quoted a source as saying.''He invited her to come to the studio with Gaelle and together they collaborated on creating dresses for the awards season with her. Adele was hands-on with her dress for the BRITs, and she did the same for her gown at the Grammys. There could well be a plus-size collaboration in the future," the source added.? Adele is rumoured to be collaborating with fashion house Burberry.The British singer is reportedly in talks with label front man Christopher Bailey on a plus-size clothing collection. Adele is said to have been personally approached by creative director Christopher to become an ambassador for the British brand.The songstress was reportedly asked to work with the world famous designer specifically on a bespoke range for the fuller-figured woman.In the report on Vogue.co.uk neither Burberry or Adele's camp have come forward to pass comment on whether the rumours are true or not yet.Adele has a strong link to Burberry and has chosen the label to dress her for numerous red carpet appearances in the past. The pregnant star most famously wore Burberry creations to her appearances at high profile ceremonies the Brit Awards and MTV Video Music Awards last year.The 24-year-old has spoken previously about her love of the iconic British brand. ''I've always loved Burberry. I remember saving for three years to get my first bag before I got signed," she gushed. "Five hundred quid, I think it was, made of canvas with the logo like a satchel.''It is also rumoured Adele could be lined up to help on the Burberry Acoustic project, which showcases young British music talent. c Cover Media?Burberry Are Live Streaming Their Spring 2013 Show And You Can Watch It HERE!Grazia– and Grazia Daily are streaming the Brit brand's Spring Summer 2013 show LIVE.At 4pm today (Monday 17th September), the show kicks off in Hyde Park, so tune into this very page to see the VIP arrivals and catch all the catwalk action thanks to our portal to the action above. All you need do is take your place alongside the fashion editors, sit back and enjoy the show.So what can we expect this season? We already know Burberry beauty Cara Delevingne will be on the catwalk and here's hoping her campaign co-star Eddie Redmayne will be putting in a FROW appearance. In February we saw stylish types like Kate Bosworth, Alexa Chung, Anna Wintour and Laura Bailey also take their seats so fingers crossed for some major A-listers. As ever, Grazia Daily will be reporting LIVE from the red carpet so stay tuned to our Twitter feed .As we speak, Christopher Bailey, Chief Creative Officer of Burberry, is busy putting the finishing touches to his latest collection and he's just dropped off this little trailer for a taster of what's to come... ?LONDON (AFP) - Luxury British label Burberry dazzled a star-studded crowd with colourful metalics, corsets and capes at the most anticipated show of London Fashion Week -- despite a gloomy profit warning.Set in Kensington Gardens, the huge greenhouse-like tent which housed the show led by Christopher Bailey was plunged into darkness.A backdrop showed Burberry's new flagship store lit up against silhouettes of iconic London buildings and monuments -- Big Ben, St Paul's Cathedral and Nelson's Column.Models rolled out Burberry's latest spring-summer collection on Monday under the expectant gaze of burlesque style icon Dita von Teese, American Vogue editor Anna Wintour, tennis star Andy Murray and actor Dev Patel.First up is a long white cloak. Next, tailored jackets worn over swimsuits in pleated satin, followed by dresses and tops with fitted corsets.A cropped cape covering the shoulders often completes the look, setting off a feather dress in midnight blue or purple hotpants.Burberry's colour palette for the season ranges from dusky pinks and flesh colours, suggestive of lingerie, to green lace dresses and trench coats in red and fuschia.The clothes take on an increasingly aluminium hue, until a grand finale of rainbow-coloured metallic raincoats."It was an explosion of colour, it was really surprising," enthused British fashion editor Hilary Alexander who said she was "electrified" by the show.The event overshadowed the group's warning last week that it was expecting full-year profits to be at the lower end of market expectations after sales slowed in the second quarter.The announcement by Burberry, which obtains 37 percent of its revenue from Asia, sent its shares tumbling and created shock waves among other global players in the sector amid fears of a Chinese slowdown.The show also comes not long after the opening of the biggest of Burberry's 200 boutiques around the world, on London's busy Regent Street.The flagship store stretches across 2,500m2 of trading space spread over four floors in a building dating back to 1820, restored by creative director Bailey.The grandiose London shop, with its ornate ceilings and marble and oak floors, recalls the heritage of a brand formed in 1856, highlighted by vintage pieces such as a beige leather ladies coat from 1912, or a 1934 tweed overcoat.But it turns also to the latest technologies, notably allowing customers to see items of clothing on screens from every angle.Day four of London Fashion Week also featured a show by duo Peter Pilotto, who remained faithful to ther creed of colourful, computer-generated prints.On a podium covered in geometric patterns, under a neon light, black silhouettes exploded into a vibrant spectrum of cobalt blue, scarlet red, and fluorescent yellow.And just as colours were splashed together, so too were materials: netting juxtaposed with silk, sometimes covered with beading or mirror fragments.Some designs evoked the Op-art of French Hungarian Victor Vasarely, others took on an African theme.London Fashion week draws to a close Tuesday, when Mulberry -- another star brand in Asia -- takes centre stage.?Burberry ends BPI perfume licence talks -sourcesBy Astrid Wendlandt and Antonella Ciancio Reuters– on Twitter, become a fan on?Burberry Launches Biggest Store EVER On Regent Street - And The Spring Summer 2013 Show Will Be Live Streamed From Inside!Grazia– ?Burberry Launches Biggest Store EVER On Regent Street - And The Spring Summer 2013 Show Will Live Stream From Inside!Grazia– ?Olympic, Olympiad, the Olympic rings, Faster Higher Stronger, Citius Altius Fortius and related marks are owned by the International Olympics Committee, the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, or their related entities. This site is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with any of these entities.?After two years of renovation work, London Fashion Week favorite Burberry has unveiled its new Regent Street store in London.It's a space that is defined by contrasts," says creative director Christopher Bailey of the new flagship store, which aims to blur the boundaries between online and offline shopping. "I feel that contradictions are somewhat intrinsic to our brand -- we sometimes describe Burberry as a young old company; it has an incredible history, but with a very young spirit and energy. These contradictions also permeate throughout Regent Street, whether through the merging of craftsmanship and technology or the grand, imposing space that is very intimate at the same time." Burberry's ultimate luxury customer service includes futuristic on-screen technology, bespoke digital signage on all floors and clever radio-frequency identification (RFID) which provides audio-visual content on selected items carrying microchips. So when a customer takes a product and approaches one of the store's screens in the common areas or in a fitting room, they have instant access to relevant information ranging from craftsmanship to catwalk looks. To further the tailored shopping experience, sales assistants at the Regent Street store are armed with iPads to keep a log of purchase history and customer preferences.The opening of Burberry's first digitally-integrated retail space coincides with London Fashion Week.As well as selling Burberry's entire range of men's, women's and childrenswear, shoes and accessories, the 44,000 square foot flagship store will run a weekly program of events to showcase emerging talent in music, film, theater and art. Monday, the Burberrry Prorsum S/S13 ready-to-wear show will be live-streamed from London's Hyde Park at 4pm (GMT+1) both on full-length screens in-store and Burberry.com. Watch a trailer at .Pioneering the art of customer centricity, the 156-year old megabrand founded by Thomas Burberry boasts an unbeatable digital track record. Burberry, now the world's fourth largest growing brand can be credited with inventing the 3D holographic runway and the tweetwalk, which lets followers see the collections first on Twitter, before they hit the runway.Burberry whose trademark check and showerproof trench coats are worn by the Queen, Kate Middelton, Kate Moss and Alexa Chung, currently has 13 million fans on Facebook, its own twitter account and a dedicated YouTube channel.CJL?Copyright c 2012 Yahoo! Asia Pacific Pte Ltd (Co. Reg. No. 199700735D). All Rights Reserved. Yahoo! News Network?LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) - British fashion house Burberry's profit warning on Tuesday gave the clearest sign yet that a slowdown in China and Europe's debt crisis is bringing a nearly three-year boom in demand for luxury goods to an end. Burberry, famous for its raincoats lined with a distinctive camel, red and black check pattern, is the first major luxury brand to make such a stern warning following investors' concerns over the last few months that demand in the sector is flagging. Its shares tumbled 19 percent to an 11-month low and dragged down rivals in Europe and the United States including LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods group by market value. Luxury companies, which rebounded strongly from the 2008/9 financial crisis, have withstood the ensuing global slowdown as demand from fast-growing China and other emerging markets compensated for wobbling sales in Europe and the United States. But with China slowing, investors are now questioning how long and how well they will hold up. "These are tricky times for the luxury sector," said Rogerio Fujimori, analyst at Credit Suisse. Burberry said sales growth at stores open for more than a year slumped to zero in the 10 weeks to September 8 from 6 percent growth in the quarter to June 30, with a deceleration in recent weeks. As a result, underlying full-year profit would be around the lower end of market forecasts. It did not say where the slowdown was, leading some analysts to suspect trading conditions were worsening in all of its major markets - Asia, Europe and the United States. Shares in French rivals LVMH and PPR were both down more than 4 percent, while Swiss luxury group Richemont was down as much as 6 percent. The warning also hit U.S. luxury companies, with shares in jeweler Tiffany & Co down 1.6 percent and Ralph Lauren down 3.7 percent shortly after the New York market opened. "The global economic crisis is dragging on and the longer it drags on the less confident even wealthier individuals become. Unfortunately, people lacking confidence do not shop at Burberry," said Jaana Jatyri, CEO of fashion forecasting company, Trendstop.com. But some analysts said it was not yet clear whether Burberry's warning was a red flag for the whole sector. Last month Hermes, which makes 10,000-euro leather bags and silk dresses, raised its target for annual sales growth and smaller Italian brand Salvatore Ferragamo issued a buoyant trading update. Analysts said some brands were faring better than others with labels such as Prada, Bottega Veneta and Yves Saint Laurent performing well, while others such as Hugo Boss and Louis Vuitton were starting to feel the pinch. Sales growth in the first three months of the year for many luxury brands came in the low to mid teens and was slightly lower in the second quarter. Analysts expect the pace to slow to mid to high single digits in the second half. Burberry had been expected to post pretax profit for the year to March 2013 of between 407 and 451 million pounds ($652-$722 million), with a consensus of 433.2 million, according to a Reuters poll of 18 analysts. (Additional reporting by Neil Maidment and Phil Wahba; Editing by Erica Billingham)?Discover Yahoo! With Your FriendsExplore news, videos, and much more based on what your friends are reading and watching. Publish your own activity and retain full control.?Discover Yahoo! With Your FriendsExplore news, videos, and much more based on what your friends are reading and watching. Publish your own activity and retain full control.?[ [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], '27013743', '0'],[ [['keyword', 9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ]]?Shares in luxury fashion house Burberry dived 18% in early trading on the FTSE 100 after the company warned its latest profits would be at the lower end of expectations.The company, which has enjoyed rampant growth in recent years, said like-for-like sales ground to a halt in the 10 weeks to September 8 and started to fall over recent weeks.Total sales, which include new selling space, rose 6%.The group, which has 196 retail stores, 207 concessions, 48 outlet shops and 58 franchise stores worldwide, warned that as a result of the performance its full year results would come in lower than hoped for at around ￡407m.The share sell-off wiped more than ￡1bn from its market value to leave Burberry stock at its lowest point this year.Burberry, which was founded in 1856 and is famous for its red, black and camel check, spent much of the year bucking the gloomy trend in the wider retail sector due to its exposure to robust emerging markets, especially China.But in the company's trading update, Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts warned the external environment was "becoming more challenging".She added: "Given this background, we are tightly managing discretionary costs and taking appropriate actions to protect short term profitability."The flat like-for-like sales in the second quarter so far are a sharp slowdown from the 6% hike reported for the first quarter to June 30.Burberry reported a 24% surge in annual profits to ￡366m in its last financial year, while total revenues were also up 24% to ￡1.9bn as key Asian markets showed more strong growth and flagship stores in London and Paris performed well.In the wake of today's statement, retail analyst at Manchester Business School Tarlok Teji said: "These figures just show that Burberry is not immune to global economic conditions."Given that Burberry performed so well last year, flat performance against strong comparative numbers could be seen as being good news."Typically the luxury end of the market is more resilient than other sectors, and as Burberry has good management and a resilient strategy, it is still likely to be a retail winner in these tough and turbulent times."??LONDON (AFP) - Shares in luxury clothing and accessories group Burberry tumbled by more than 18 percent on Tuesday after the firm issued a surprise profits warning which hit the wider fashion sector.Analysts warned that the news could signal that the high-end luxury goods industry was no longer immune to weakness in the global economy.Burberry said in a trading update that like-for-like sales, stripping out the impact of new floor space, ground to a halt in the 10 weeks to September 8 and have started to fall.As a result, Burberry warned that annual profits would be at the bottom end of analysts' expectations of between ￡405 million and ￡445 million.In reaction, the group's share price plunged 18.24 percent to 1,124.15 pence in morning deals on London's FTSE 100 index of top companies, which was 0.28 percent lower.In Paris, shares in luxury fashion groups LVMH and PPR slid by 3.82 percent and 3.48 percent, to stand at 127.2 euros and 123.45 euros respectively. The overall French market was down 0.42 percent."Burberry currently expects adjusted profit before tax for the twelve months to 31 March 2013 to be around the lower end of market expectations," it said in a statement on Tuesday.The company, famous for its trench coats and trademark red, camel and black check design, had thus far bucked the gloomy trend in the wider retail sector due to its exposure to emerging markets like Asian powerhouse China.The group had revealed earlier this year that it faced "challenging" trading conditions."As we stated in July, the external environment is becoming more challenging," added Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts in Tuesday's statement."In this context, second quarter retail sales growth has slowed against historically high comparatives."Given this background, we are tightly managing discretionary costs and taking appropriate actions to protect short term profitability, while continuing to execute on our proven five key strategies."In recent years, Burberry has been at the forefront of the global surge in demand for luxury goods, bolstered by soaring sales in China. At the same time, many mid-market retailers have struggled for survival amid poor economic conditions."We have been fans of Burberry, and remain of the view that the strategy, luxury positioning and management team should lead to long-term sector outperformance," said Investec Securities analyst Bethany Hocking."Today's statement does, however, imply a significant slowdown and Burberry is not immune from wider macro-economic turbulence."?The Burberry Show is more of an experience than a fashion show.Over 1,000 people packed into the purpose-built marquee in Hyde Park for what has become one of the most exclusive and talked about events at London Fashion Week.Samantha Cameron, Anna Wintour, Mario Testino, Dita Von Teese, Harvey Weinstein, Dev Patel, Harry Styles of One Direction and Andy Murray took their seats on the front row.After a healthy amount of schmoozing in the aisles as the A-listers waited for the show to begin, all eyes were on the runway as the models showed off a collection Christopher Bailey, the chief creative officer (read designer) has described as "a little bit sassier, a little bit sexier, and a little bit more joyful".Suffice to say I was not on the front row with the celebs, I was actually standing behind the tallest woman I have ever seen, but craning my neck I still managed to appreciate the spectacle as the ceiling retracted and night turned to day with the label’s trademark trench coat displayed in an array of different colours and styles.The show comes during a mixed week for the company in which they announced predicted profits would be below expectations.However, they also unveiled a flagship store on London's Regent's Street, boasting a multi-media experience for the customer.Speaking to Sky News at the store, Mr Bailey explained the high-tech vision for the space and how it fits in with the ethos of such an established brand."I love tradition and I love craftsmanship as much as I love innovation and moving forward with things," he said."This store is a good example of what we've tried to do. Technology is so integrated into everything we do, through our shows, events, marketing, everything. We've never looked at it as a separate thing, it's fully integrated."We often describe ourselves as a young company, it's 156/7 years old as a company but it's a very young team and it's a very young energy and, when you have a young team, technology is just a part of all our lives."?[More from Mashable: ]Following two years of renovations, is set to unveil a digitally integrated, 44,000-square-foot flagship store on Regent Street in London.The flagship, by Burberry's description, has seamlessly integrated technology throughout. Full-length screens wrap the store, transitioning between audio-visual content displays, live-streaming hubs and and mirrors. At times, models will walk between video screens, mimicing the "Burberry World Live" experience staged in Taipei in April (see below). The sight and sound of rain will start quietly and build into a downpour, climaxing in a thunder crack that will show on every screen and echo in every space in the store, including fitting rooms.[More from Mashable: ]Perhaps the coolest bit of technology is Burberry's use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips. Chips have been attached to certain clothes and accessories so that when a customer approaches one of the screens in the common areas or in a fitting room, specific content -- say, information about a bag's stitching and craftsmanship, or a video showing how a skirt was worn on the catwalk -- will appear. The chips will be attached before products leave manufacturing centers to assist with inventory tracking and management as well. Models will walk between screens, mimicking the "Burberry World Live" experience staged in Taipei in April. All store associates will be armed with iPads containing a log of customers’ purchase history and preferences to enable a more personalized shopping experience. Customers will be invited onto store couches to complete purchases from mobile payment systems, rather than queue at a cash register -- a feature that was no doubt inspired by Apple.SEE ALSO: The aim of these efforts, says Burberry chief creative officer Christopher Bailey, is to bring its online brand environment, Burberry.com, "to life in a physical space for the first time."It's an interesting contrast: A 156-year-old brand in a 192-year-old building, with a very futuristic feel."It's a space that is defined by contrasts," Bailey explains. "I feel that contradictions are somewhat intrinsic to our brand -- we sometimes describe Burberry as a young old company; it has an incredible history, but with a very young spirit and energy. These contradictions also permeate throughout Regent Street, whether through the merging of craftsmanship and technology or the grand, imposing space that is very intimate at the same time."We'll see what else Burberry has up its sleeve when it debuts its S/S 2013 collection for London Fashion Week on Monday.This story originally published on Mashable .?Our social media engagement chart for this week turns to the world of fashion, where Burberry rules the social media roost, according to data aggregator .To some, the Burberry brand conjures up images of trenchcoats silhouetted by the foggy London skyscape, but to younger fans, Burberry is synonymous with social media.[More from Mashable: ]The brand works hard at building its social media following. In June, it reaching 1 million Twitter followers by sending 3,000 fans personalized GIFs thanking them for their support. Burberry also takes an approach to retail in which it incorporates social media into its brick-and-mortar stores rather than trying to simulate the retail experience online.SEE MORE: [More from Mashable: ]Burberry was rewarded for its efforts by hitting number one on 's list of the fashion brands with the highest social media engagement over the past week. In addition to to the top 10, Starcount also picked some up-and-comers including bench/, a Philippines-based brand and celebrity favorite Diamond Supply. What do you think? Did your favorite brands make the cut? This story originally published on Mashable .?LONDON (AFP) - Shares in luxury clothing and accessories group Burberry tumbled by almost 21 percent Tuesday after the British firm issued a surprise profits warning which analysts blamed on China's economic slowdown.Analysts warned that the group's poor second quarter could signal that the high-end luxury goods industry was no longer immune to weakness in the global economy, as Burberry's shock announcement dragged down the wider fashion sector.Burberry said in a trading update that like-for-like sales, stripping out the impact of new floor space, ground to a halt in the 10 weeks to September 8 and have started to fall.As a result, Burberry warned that annual profits would be at the bottom end of analysts' expectations of between ￡405 million and ￡445 million.In reaction, the group's share price closed down 20.9 percent to 1,088 pence on London's FTSE 100 index of top companies, which ended flat. It meant Burberry saw about ￡1.0 billion wiped from its market value in just one day.In Paris, shares in luxury fashion groups LVMH and PPR slid by 3.36 and 2.07 percent respectively, to end at 127.80 and 125.25 euros. The overall French market won 0.89 percent."Burberry spooked the market announcing a material downturn in second quarter retail sales," Seymour Pierce stockbrokers said in a note to clients."This seems to be macro driven," it added.In a statement, Burberry said it "expects adjusted profit before tax for the twelve months to 31 March 2013 to be around the lower end of market expectations."The company, famous for its trench coats and trademark red, camel and black check design, had thus far bucked the gloomy trend in the wider retail sector due to its exposure to emerging markets like Asian powerhouse China.Jon Copestake, retail analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said: "Burberry's warning could signal a retrenchment for luxury firms as Chinese growth slows. However, reliance on China is just one of a number of factors. Weakness in the eurozone remains influential."In recent years, Burberry has been at the forefront of the global surge in demand for luxury goods, bolstered by soaring sales in China. At the same time, many mid-market retailers have struggled for survival amid poor economic conditions.Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts on Tuesday said that "the external environment is becoming more challenging."She added in the group's earnings statement: "In this context, second quarter retail sales growth has slowed against historically high comparatives."?The rampant growth at Burberry showed signs of wavering as the luxury fashion house warned its profits would be at the bottom end of expectations.The group, which has 196 retail stores, 207 concessions, 48 outlet shops and 58 franchise stores worldwide, said like-for-like sales ground to a halt in the 10 weeks to September 8 and have started to fall over recent weeks. Total sales including new space were up 6%.The luxury goods firm, famous for its red, black and camel check, warned adjusted pre-tax profits for the year to March 31 will be around the lower end of market expectations.Burberry, which was founded in 1856, spent much of the year bucking the gloomy trend in the wider retail sector due to its exposure to robust emerging markets, especially China.?Discover Yahoo! With Your FriendsExplore news, videos, and much more based on what your friends are reading and watching. Publish your own activity and retain full control.?A gloomy profit warning knocked a billion dollars off the market value of Burberry last week; the house's chief creative officer Christopher Bailey must have put a lot of that back on today with a glimmering, path-breaking metallic show in Hyde Park in London.Inspired by pre-World War I company archive images of capes and corsets, the show was a gutsy statement that thumbed the nose at the market, a savvy reminder that when it comes to meshing technology and fashion no brand competes with Burberry. Just as we sat down on our front-row benches, editors received personal emails from Bailey, with links to a live feed, one of them a mini virtual show in Burberry's mammoth new Regent Street store, where the sales staff all come armed with iPads, the better to show clients any look at its best - on catwalk, look book or ad campaign. "Fashion shows have become major events; thanks to the Internet we have a global life audience of millions. So we have to provide entertainment," said Bailey backstage after the show, staged Monday, Sept. 17. He certainly did that with mini capes in orange see-through plastic or silver leather, mini capes cut for a super-heroine and Eisenhower jackets made as mini balloons and shorn of sleeves. It all felt a good deal more radical that Bailey's usually hyper edited shows, but the bravura cutting added glory to the meat and bones of this collection, which included the best coats we are going to see on any runway this season, anywhere. From rouched double sheen satin trenches to posh militarist double-breasted town-coats, where the panels, darts and sheer sleekness of the silhouette were truly great. Plus, you could see the front-row antennas practically twitching when Bailey wowed with a trio of peacock feather cocktail dresses in forest green or Yves Klein blue that were pretty jaw-droopingly good. Panache, power, pride they had it all, moreover, they looked fantastic on the web. Talk about a home run show, a clutch hitter moment for Bailey when the market is weak, but the creativity has never been stronger.?Copyright c 2012 Yahoo! Asia Pacific Pte Ltd (Co. Reg. No. 199700735D). All Rights Reserved. Yahoo! News Network? Christopher Bailey says Burberry’s new flagship store is one of the most “culturally significant projects” they have ever undertaken.The luxury label opened its largest ever London store on Regent Street, UK, today.The new shop is designed around the brand’s website and has rooms that mirror the different sections available online."Burberry Regent Street is one of the most architecturally and culturally significant projects we have undertaken," Christopher told Vogue Online."In renovating this iconic London building we have worked with some of the UK's finest craftsmen to restore a wealth of historic features, at the same time as pushing the boundaries of digital technology. The result is a space defined by contrasts: at once imposing and intimate, its juxtaposition of craft and innovation is designed to delight, surprise and entertain. It is a reflection of how we approach everything at Burberry - revealing the different layers of the brand's heritage within a modern context, and forever celebrating design and expert craftsmanship."The 44,000 square-foot store is housed in a beautiful Grade II listed building, dating back to 1820.The historical features of the building are designed to contrast cleverly with the shop’s technological edge.Weird and wonderful features include Burberry weather “moments”, where digital rainstorms rage as customers shop, and mirrors which flip to show the item you are trying on as it appears on the catwalk."Burberry Regent Street brings our digital world to life in a physical space for the first time, where customers can experience every facet of the brand through immersive multimedia content exactly as they do online," Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts explained."Walking through the doors is just like walking into our website. It is Burberry World Live."In honour of the new store, the label has launched an exclusive Regent Street collection, based around the colour gold. c Cover Media? Dita Von Teese is a fan of British label Burberry's "classic style".The legendary burlesque star revealed her passion for the brand's signature style at the Spring/Summer 13 showcase of Burberry's latest collection during the recent London Fashion week unveiling.The raven-haired beauty explained how she feels connected to creative director Christopher Bailey's designs as they compliment her own taste for timeless elegance.“Burberry was luxurious and classic style, it was very British," Dita told British television show Lorraine about the Burberry collection. "I love this kind of classic look.”At the Burberry showcase other celebrity fashion fans in attendance included One Direction boy band star Harry Styles. The cheeky chappie joked about his reputation for being a ladies' man when asked about his connection with the fashion world.“I think it’s nice to just put nice clothes on," Harry smiled.Also in attendance at London Fashion Week was Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel who admitted he receives some help in the wardrobe department from his girlfriend Freida Pinto.“No I’m not a fashionista. I feel kind of naked without my girlfriend," Dev humbly explained. "She does dress me usually, she gives me hints and things like that.” c Cover Media? European shares fell on Tuesday, with the fashion sector reeling after a profits warning from British firm Burberry and with attention also focused on the Federal Reserve's upcoming meeting.Traders also looked towards Germany, where a court was on Wednesday due to rule on the constitutional legality of Berlin taking part in the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) rescue fund to support debt-plagued eurozone countries.London's benchmark FTSE 100 index of top companies fell 0.42 percent to stand at 5,769.57 points in late morning trade.The Paris CAC 40 reversed 0.27 percent to 3,496.51 points and Frankfurt's DAX 30 dropped 0.03 percent to 7,211.33.Madrid stocks recoiled by 0.72 percent amid lingering speculation over a possible Spanish bailout, while Milan lost 0.84 percent in value.The euro rallied to $1.2819, the highest point since May 22, before pulling back to $1.2805. The unit has won strong support since the European Central Bank pledged last week to buy sovereign bonds of indebted eurozone nations.Asian markets mostly retreated Tuesday after losses on Wall Street as dealers waited to see if the Fed would this week announce a fresh round of stimulus."The FTSE is off to a shaky start after overnight losses in Asia and the US as investors look to take some money off the table in the run up to key decisions regarding the eurozone and tomorrow's Federal Reserve meeting," said Spreadex trader Matthew Nelson."Germany's constitutional court will tomorrow decide on the powers of the eurozone's ESM bailout fund.He added: "Following Friday's disappointing jobs data the consensus is that we will see some form of monetary easing (from the Fed) this week to underpin what is a fragile US recovery."On the company earnings front, shares in luxury clothing and accessories group Burberry tumbled by more than 18 percent after the firm issued a surprise profits warning which hit the wider fashion sector.Burberry said in a trading update that like-for-like sales, stripping out the impact of new floor space, ground to a halt in the 10 weeks to September 8 and have started to fall.As a result, Burberry warned that annual profits would be at the bottom end of analysts' expectations of between ￡405 million and ￡445 million.In reaction, the group's share price plunged by 18.48 percent to 1,120 pence.Analysts warned that the news could signal that the high-end luxury goods industry was no longer immune to weakness in the global economy.In Paris, shares in luxury fashion groups LVMH and PPR slid by 4.27 percent and 3.87 percent, to stand at 126.6 euros and 122.95 euros respectively."A worrying piece of corporate news this morning has come in the form of Burberry's profit warning," said Simon Denham, head of trading firm Capital Spreads."The retailer has enjoyed a few boom years as a result of the ever growing middle class in the Far East, in particular China."Does this set of results signal a flagging of the Chinese consumer -- and if it does, the ramifications for the rest of us could be greater than many think," he added.In Asia, the Tokyo stock market ended down 0.70 percent, Sydney dropped 0.18 percent and Seoul lost 0.24 percent. Shanghai shed 0.67 percent but Hong Kong staged a late rally to close 0.15-percent higher.Dealers were waiting to see if Fed chief Ben Bernanke would unveil a third round of bond-buying, or quantitative easing, to kickstart the US economy, which has seen a stuttering recovery from the global downturn.With dealers taking a wait-and-see approach, Wall Street tacked back on Monday. The Dow lost 0.39 percent, the S&P 500 dropped 0.61 percent and the Nasdaq slid 1.03 percent.burs-rfj/bcp/hd? European shares mostly rose on Tuesday, with attention focused on the Federal Reserve's upcoming meeting, but the fashion sector reeled after a profits warning from British firm Burberry.Traders also looked towards Germany, where a court was on Wednesday due to rule on the constitutionality of Berlin taking part in the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) rescue fund to support debt-plagued eurozone countries.London's FTSE 100 index of top companies closed just 0.02 percent lower at 5,792.19 points but Frankfurt's DAX 30 rallied 1.34 percent to 7,310.11 points and in Paris the CAC 40 gained 0.89 percent to 3,537.30 points.Madrid stocks rose 0.93 percent amid lingering speculation over a possible Spanish bailout, while Milan gained 0.84 percent in value."We are in a wait-and-see market," said Alexandre Baradez of Saxo Bank. "The (Paris) index hovered around equilibrium all day before gaining speed in the late trading. Investors hope for a positive verdict from the German judges and measures from the US Federal Reserve," Baradez said.The euro rallied to $1.2871, the highest point since May 14, up from $1.2758 on Monday. The unit has won strong support since the European Central Bank pledged last week to buy sovereign bonds of indebted eurozone nations, with speculation about further US monetary easing keeping downward pressure on the dollar. Asian markets mostly retreated Tuesday after losses on Wall Street as dealers waited to see if the Fed would this week announce a fresh round of stimulus.US stocks advanced in midday trade on expectations of new support from the Fed for the tepid economy.The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.63percent, the S&P 500-stock index added 0.48 percent, while the tech-rich Nasdaq gained 0.30 percent."Stocks looked to rebound from yesterday's losses as Thursday's policy decision by the Fed brought in hopes for an announcement of additional stimulus measures to help promote growth and lower unemployment," analysts at Wells Fargo Advisors said.On the company earnings front, shares in luxury clothing and accessories group Burberry tumbled by more than 20 percent after the firm issued a surprise profits warning which hit the wider fashion sector.Burberry said in a trading update that like-for-like sales, stripping out the impact of new floor space, ground to a halt in the 10 weeks to September 8 and have started to fall.As a result, Burberry warned that annual profits would be at the bottom end of analysts' expectations of between ￡405 million and ￡445 million.In reaction, the group's share price plunged by 22.11 percent to 1,088 pence.Analysts warned that the news could signal that the high-end luxury goods industry was no longer immune to weakness in the global economy.In Paris, shares in luxury fashion groups LVMH and PPR slid by 3.36 percent and 2.07 percent, to stand at 127.80 euros and 125.25 euros respectively."A worrying piece of corporate news this morning has come in the form of Burberry's profit warning," said Simon Denham, head of trading firm Capital Spreads."The retailer has enjoyed a few boom years as a result of the ever growing middle class in the Far East, in particular China."Does this set of results signal a flagging of the Chinese consumer -- and if it does, the ramifications for the rest of us could be greater than many think," he added.In Asia, the Tokyo stock market ended down 0.70 percent, Sydney dropped 0.18 percent and Seoul lost 0.24 percent. Shanghai shed 0.67 percent but Hong Kong staged a late rally to close 0.15-percent higher.burs-arp/gk ? European shares treaded water on Tuesday, with attention focused on the Federal Reserve's upcoming meeting, but the fashion sector reeled after a profits warning from British firm Burberry.Traders also looked towards Germany, where a court was on Wednesday due to rule on the constitutionality of Berlin taking part in the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) rescue fund to support debt-plagued eurozone countries.London's benchmark FTSE 100 index of top companies fell 0.37 percent to stand at 5,771.94 points in afternoon trade.After having spent most of the day in the red, the Paris CAC 40 was flat at 3,506.11 points while Frankfurt's DAX 30 rose 0.15 percent to 7,224.84 points.Madrid stocks slid 0.30 percent amid lingering speculation over a possible Spanish bailout, while Milan gained 0.24 percent in value.The euro rallied to $1.2819, the highest point since May 22, before pulling back to $1.2810. The unit has won strong support since the European Central Bank pledged last week to buy sovereign bonds of indebted eurozone nations, with speculation about further US monetary easing keeping downward pressure on the dollar. Asian markets mostly retreated Tuesday after losses on Wall Street as dealers waited to see if the Fed would this week announce a fresh round of stimulus."The FTSE is off to a shaky start after overnight losses in Asia and the US as investors look to take some money off the table in the run up to key decisions regarding the eurozone and tomorrow's Federal Reserve meeting," said Spreadex trader Matthew Nelson."Germany's constitutional court will tomorrow decide on the powers of the eurozone's ESM bailout fund.He added: "Following Friday's disappointing jobs data the consensus is that we will see some form of monetary easing (from the Fed) this week to underpin what is a fragile US recovery."US stocks advanced at the open on expectations of new support from the Fed for the tepid economy.The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.28 percent to 13,292.03 points in opening trade.The S&P 500-stock index added 0.20 percent to 1,431.96 points, while the tech-rich Nasdaq gained 0.14 percent to 3,108.25 points."Stocks looked to rebound from yesterday's losses as Thursday's policy decision by the Fed brought in hopes for an announcement of additional stimulus measures to help promote growth and lower unemployment," analysts at Wells Fargo Advisors said.On the company earnings front, shares in luxury clothing and accessories group Burberry tumbled by more than 20 percent after the firm issued a surprise profits warning which hit the wider fashion sector.Burberry said in a trading update that like-for-like sales, stripping out the impact of new floor space, ground to a halt in the 10 weeks to September 8 and have started to fall.As a result, Burberry warned that annual profits would be at the bottom end of analysts' expectations of between ￡405 million and ￡445 million.In reaction, the group's share price plunged by 20.5 percent to 1,093 pence.Analysts warned that the news could signal that the high-end luxury goods industry was no longer immune to weakness in the global economy.In Paris, shares in luxury fashion groups LVMH and PPR slid by 3.93 percent and 4.40 percent, to stand at 127.05 euros and 123.50 euros respectively."A worrying piece of corporate news this morning has come in the form of Burberry's profit warning," said Simon Denham, head of trading firm Capital Spreads."The retailer has enjoyed a few boom years as a result of the ever growing middle class in the Far East, in particular China."Does this set of results signal a flagging of the Chinese consumer -- and if it does, the ramifications for the rest of us could be greater than many think," he added.In Asia, the Tokyo stock market ended down 0.70 percent, Sydney dropped 0.18 percent and Seoul lost 0.24 percent. Shanghai shed 0.67 percent but Hong Kong staged a late rally to close 0.15-percent higher.burs-rl/arp?PARIS (Reuters) - Hermes enjoyed healthy sales growth in the summer and September, contrasting with other luxury brands such as Burberry and Tiffany & Co which have warned of deteriorating trading conditions. The upbeat trading update on Sunday is likely to cement the view that the global luxury market is becoming increasingly segmented with some brands such as Hermes, Prada, Dior, Balenciaga feeling no pain while others, more vulnerable, are starting to suffer. "We have not seen any inflexion of any kind in our sales," Hermes Chief Executive Patrick Thomas told Reuters after the brand's presentation of its next spring/summer collection . "Therefore our targets for the year remain unchanged." Hermes is known for its 15,000 euro (11,930 pounds) Kelly and Birkin leather bags and its 400-euro silk scarves. Dior Chief Executive Sidney Toledano on Friday said sales trends remained positive. Many luxury brands, such as Tiffany and Burberry, blame an economic slowdown in China and Beijing's crackdown on gift-giving for their souring fortunes after having heavily invested opening flagship stores there. Chinese customers, at home and abroad, are the biggest buyers for many well-established luxury brands such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton . But luxury analysts also noticed changes in luxury spending patterns which show a rise in purchases of discreet, connoisseur luxury products and a drop in money spent on flashy, logo-embossed items. "Chinese customers are becoming increasingly sophisticated very fast," Thomas said. "Before, they wanted ostentatious items, now they want quality objects. The future of the luxury market lies in products which demonstrate genuine craftsmanship." Thomas was speaking after the brand's fashion show held in the Jeu de Paume museum in central Paris. Ex-Lacoste designer Christophe Lemaire, presented his fourth ready-to-wear collection for Hermes, which featured simple, minimalist ample white tunics, draped exotic printed silk suits and safari-inspired beige and ochre raincoats and jackets. The collection seemed this year more eclectic than in the past, critics said, with oversized jackets on extra small shorts, and leather dresses in bright colours such as royal blue or emerald green which paid tribute to the brand's tradition of leather craftsmanship. (Reporting by Astrid Wendlandt; editing by Patrick Graham)?Harry Styles, Dita Von Teese, Victoria Pendleton And Olivia Palermo Among The Stars Of Burberry's MEGA Front RowGrazia–. ?Inside Grazia HQ: Things We Loved This Week From Crazy Catwalks To Burberry Quality Street MetallicsGrazia– ? is an iPad app that lets Pinterest users create colorful and clickable editorials out of their pins. [More from Mashable: ]If you've ever dreamed of being a fashion blogger or magazine editor, this iPad app puts your creativity to the test. With the , users can effortlessly create look books and curate inspiration boards. "We want to allow both brands and creative people to create amazing collage pages," Gili Golander, co-founder, told Mashable in an email.[More from Mashable: ]SEE ALSO: Bazaart creations can be instantly published back onto Pinterest as an image. The upgraded app released this week lets users click on individual items to access original links to make purchases. Bazaart reminds us of the popular social-commerce site that also lets users assemble collages of clothing and accessories. Boards can be embellished with prints, text, music, frames and borders. Users can click through to the item's native brand page for purchase. "We foresee that this new type of fashion interaction would appeal not only to fashion lovers, but also to their friends and family who would benefit from the fashion inspiration created for them," Golander said. Would you use this interactive iPad styling app? Tell us in the comments. This story originally published on Mashable .?Fashion is putting Britain back into the global spotlight as the industry enjoys an unprecedented spell in the sun thanks to the Olympics and the 'Kate effect'.London Fashion Week kicks off today with more than 60 shows from 110 designers, including Burberry, Alice Temperley and Philip Treacy.Caroline Rush, chief executive of the British Fashion Council, told Sky News why she thinks it is an exciting time for the industry."London has this very unique position, we're known as the creative capital of this global fashion industry. That's an incredibly exciting and dynamic sector," she said.Caroline says the heightened level of interest in British fashion is due to a number of factors."In addition to it having been the jubilee, an incredibly successful Olympics and, of course, the Duchess of Cambridge effect, she travels the world wearing our incredible designers," she explained.Burberry is one of the most anticipated shows of the week, and so far it's been one of those British brands enjoying success despite the economic downturn.Its new flagship store opened this week in London, its scale showing both its confidence and vision for the future.But the news was not all good, with Burberry announcing earlier this week that profits would be below expectations, leading to ￡1bn being wiped off its market value.Neil Saunders, a financial analyst, says the results say more about the luxury market than Burberry in particular."This is not disastrous for Burberry, it's a marked slowdown and I think it starts the beginning of a more difficult time for the company," he said."But actually it says less about what Burberry is doing and more about some of the difficulties we're seeing."The economic conditions we're seeing in Western markets is slowing consumer appetite for luxury goods and that's also starting to spill over into some of the emerging markets which have had a very good run of growth and still will grow going forwards."But it's going to be much more difficult to get that growth because it's starting to moderate. Those markets are very crowded and competitive so this I think is the start of a new era in luxury which is a bit more challenging for the companies involved."However, at a launch event for London Fashion Week to promote ethical fashion, designer Alice Temperley said she was optimistic about the future."It's the most exciting place to be in terms of new, interesting, exciting talent that knows how to deliver and sell, and they have business savvy," she said."So we've got a really good new generation that knows how to make clothes and deliver them, and you've got really good established brands converging back to London to put on a really good fashion week."Highlights of the week are expected to include Burberry, Christopher Kane and the Vivienne Westwood Red Label show which takes place on Sunday, when Matthew Williamson, Temperley London and Topshop will also showcase their spring/summer 2013 designs.? A look from Jonathan Saunders's F/W 2012 collection, courtesy of Jonathan Saunders. , London Fashion Week is aiming to prove it has just as much muscle in the digital department as its counterpart in New York.[More from Mashable: ]Innovation kicks off at Topshop. Newly installed chief marketing officer Justin Cooke, formerly vice president of public relations at Burberry, has developed an for its Unique show on Sunday afternoon.On , viewers will be able to browse product shots and color options for certain apparel and accessories as they come down the catwalk. Viewers can then place orders for delivery in six to eight weeks. Beauty products worn on the catwalk will likewise be available for purchase with delivery in 48 hours. And each look will be instantly shareable with Facebook friends thanks to a “shoot the show” feature developed in conjunction with Facebook engineers.[More from Mashable: ]Jonathan Saunders is similarly offering fans the chance to pre-order his collection, this time on social platform , which allows users to shop together through live video and chat.Ten of the looks from Saunders's Spring/Summer 2013 line will be made available immediately following the livestream, which is being hosted in a on the Motilo site.Visual DiariesThe British Fashion Council (BFC) will be hosting livestreams of 47 shows at this season, including those showing apart from the main catwalk venues, such as Christopher Kane, Mulberry and Paul Smith. The BFC's in-house team will also be narrating the LFW story with behind-the-scenes snapshots on Instagram via the "BritishFashionCouncil" account.Meanwhile, designer Anya Hindmarch, taking inspiration 's bridal and spring shows, is working with the BFC to bring fans all the live action of her show via Pinterest.Her experience throughout London Fashion Week, as well as of her show itself on Tuesday, will be pinned to the , providing a real-time visual diary for fans to engage with. Inspiration shots, backstage prep, even seating plans and invitations -- not to mention the collection as it hits -- will all be included. The Osman show on Monday will also be live-pinned. The recently relaunched promises to give a comprehensive overview of Fashion Week from both the front row, the street and, increasingly, backstage. The e-commerce site’s meanwhile is equally as strong, hosting all manner of daily video insights and editorial content about trends.Blogger, illustrator and photographer Garance Dore is also creating a series of videos for Net-a-Porter from each city, introduced in New York with at her prep for the week, and continuing through London with a second release on Tuesday.Expert CommentaryFor those looking for some more expert analysis and professional insight on the collections, the place to head is . Here, an exciting dose of live commentary and conversation is taking place alongside the livestreams on a number of key shows.Hosted by SHOWstudio’s Lou Stoppard and writer Camilla Morton, you'll find panel discussions with fashion experts including journalists, stylists, buyers and image-makers. “It’s about communicating fashion in a raw, unedited and honest way… and bringing the excitement of the front row to a broader audience,” the team explains.SHOWstudio founder and director, Nick Knight, adds, “There is so much potential to cover the fashion shows in an entertaining way that can involve and excite a huge range of people. Sport events, for example, are always explained to their public by a panel of ‘experts,' whereas fashion is just presented as if its only audience is the industry. Fashion coverage is also so inoffensive; everyone is too scared to rock the boat. Any art form benefits from a strong and robust critical forum -- including fashion.”Whistles CEO Jane Sheperdson, writer Colin McDowell, filmmaker Ruth Hogben, artist Daphne Guinness and more will all be featured. The initiative is occurring throughout fashion month (so New York, Milan and Paris too) from the company’s headquarters in London. LFW will see three shows covered: Burberry, Christopher Kane and Fashion East.The BFC is looking to Twitter as always too, continuing its #AskLFW conversations from with guest tweeters this season, including New York socialite Olivia Palermo, designers Matthew Williamson and Roksanda Ilincic, and Grazia magazine’s style director (and soon-to-be fashion director at Harvey Nichols), Paula Reed.Geo-tracked TransportAnd finally, Vodafone is set to help LFW VIPs get about the city more easily throughout the week, thanks to an innovative bespoke app.Each of the Mercedes-Benz cars VIPs travel in will include a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet pre-loaded with “fleet management technology” so they can track their progress in the city. In other words, they'll be able to view their location and speed -- similar to how you would on an airplane -- in relation to the press and photographer buses, helping them judge how long they have until the next show begins.As Rosanna Falconer, digital marketing executive at the BFC, explains, “It lets them know how quickly they need to be there, and whether they have time to stop off for that all-important cup of coffee.”The app also includes a calendar of the show schedule, a list of PR contacts, a Twitter feed displaying relevant hashtags and a stream of post-show videos from YouTube. The initiative helps ensure those all-important attendees remain as on the ball so as to keep providing content for the rest of us.Despite being a city largely comprised of young, independent designers -- with therefore decidedly low budgets -- London’s support network sees it once again upping its game for Spring/Summer 2013, cementing itself as a true contender in the digital space. Of course, we will have to see what Burberry has planned for us on Monday.This story originally published on Mashable .?London Fashion Week launches on Friday in a city still triumphantly riding the wave of a summer of Olympic glory, but with a shock for luxury clothing group Burberry clouding proceedings.Less prestigious than its counterparts in New York, Milan and Paris, London Fashion Week relies on its funkier outlook and its reputation as a hothouse for emerging design talent.The British capital has also been named "global fashion capital" by the US-based Global Language Monitor (GLM), a key trend watcher, for the second consecutive year."London's two-year run has been propelled by two rather extraordinary circumstances: the emergence of the former Kate Middleton as a top fashion icon and the recent completion of what have been hailed as an extremely successful Summer Olympics," said GLM's Fashion Director Bekka Payack.Britain's Olympic and Paralympic heroes won their gold medals in clothing designed by one of London fashion's biggest stars, Stella McCartney, in collaboration with Adidas.Yet the proof that one of London's few powerhouse brands, Burberry, is suffering from China's economic slowdown has threatened to spoil the party.The luxury clothing and accessories group saw its shares tumble by almost 21 percent on Tuesday after it issued a surprise profits warning, although the stock price has climbed since.Caroline Rush, chief executive of the British Fashion Council, admitted the state of the global economy was forcing the industry to change its behaviour."Every sector is hit by the crisis," she said. "I think what it is making us think and do is look at global markets, look at opportunity, look at products and look at design and look at things that are different."It's that creativity and interesting product that we have in London that is continuing to see many of our designer businesses continue to go from strength to strength."Another British brand which has scored success in Asia, Mulberry, will once again be one of the most eagerly awaited shows when it takes to the catwalk on Tuesday.Vivienne Westwood, the queen of punk who is still spawning imitations four decades later, will present Red Label, her diffusion collection or secondary line.Westwood has followed McCartney and Alexander McQueen in refusing to show her main collection in London, but the organisers point to the presence of influential names such as Christopher Kane to redress the balance.Hatmaker Philip Treacy, who designed the extraordinary headwear sported by Princess Beatrice at last year's wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, returns to London to show his latest creations.Names such as Mary Katrantzou, Peter Pilotto and Erdem promise to add a splash of colour to the shows, while several designers have created a special one-off collection inspired by the unique style of Minnie Mouse.?London, September 28 (ANI): Burberry won the social media battle at London Fashion Week, generating over 21,000 mentions on Facebook, Twitter and other blogs, trumping Victoria Beckham's 17,000.While two thirds of the comments were about the label's clothes, 25 percent focused on 'One Direction' heartthrob Harry Styles, who took pride of place on the front row beside burlesque star Dita von Teese.According to business information group Precise, Burberry's stellar guest list, which included TV presenter and model Alexa Chung and Paralympic champion Johnnie Peacock, was a major part of the appeal.The brand enjoyed double the exposure of its nearest rival, Topshop, whose Unique show attracted around 10,000 mentions.Burberry and Topshop racked up the largest number of tweets - with 20,924 and 9,161 respectively - Vivienne Westwood came next with 3,031, followed by Matthew Williamson in fourth with 2,228, and Erdem in fifth with 1,402.Burberry and Topshop also came first and second when comments on all blogs were taken into account, while third place was taken by Philip Treacy and Lady Gaga, with 8,000 between them.Fourth and fifth places went to Greek-born designer Mary Katrantzou, who accrued 2,700 comments, and Henry Holland's House of Holland, which racked up 2,500.Lady Gaga attracted over 5,000 mentions on social networking sites in the wake of her appearance on the catwalk at Philip Treacy, although the designer himself only received 3,000."The massive growth in social media buzz around this year' event shows how important social media now is to the fashion world," the Daily Mail quoted James Withey, Head of Brand Insight at Precise, as saying."Where once a brand could rely on having a few key editors on-side, today's arbiters of a brand's success or failure are the thousands of enthusiasts who follow them closely. "This year's exhibitors will doubtless be pleased to know that over 95 percent of the posts we have tracked over the past week were positive."What also stood out about this year's event was the extent to which the 'front row celebrities' have shaped these conversations - even overtaking the brand completely at times. "Will such big spikes help these brands cement their reputations with target consumers? Only time will tell."Meanwhile, it has been encouraging to see many up-and-coming designers harnessing social media with a different rule book - using their events to widen the awareness and appeal of their work," he added.Burberry's social media success comes in the wake of Victoria Beckham's triumph at New York Fashion Week.Beckham racked up a whopping 57,000 new Twitter followers over the five-day event, and was mentioned 17,173 times on social networking sites. (ANI)?PARIS (Reuters) - European luxury stocks, once a must-have for portfolio managers seeking to avoid the European economic doldrums and get exposure to surging China sales, are falling out of favour, hit by concerns about slowing growth there. Hedge fund bets against the sector are up and technical charts suggest further price falls after a stellar two-year run turns to profit-taking and investors turn their attention to less richly valued sectors, helped by an easing of euro zone debt crisis fears. "Luxury stocks are losing their safe-haven status. The time when people were 'overweight' on the sector is over," said Isabelle Enos, deputy head of asset management at B*Capital. Since a profit warning by Burberry in mid-September which spurred panic in a sector that has been used to regular profit upgrades, luxury stocks have tumbled, led by the UK fashion house itself, down 26 percent to near-two year lows. The damage has been broad-based, with Louis Vuitton owner LVMH , Swiss watch maker Richemont and Gucci owner PPR also losing 6 to 10 percent since Burberry's warning. SOURCE OF WORRIES "China used to be a driver, now it's a source of worries," Diamant Bleu Gestion fund manager Christian Jimenez said. "While portfolio managers trim their exposure to the sector and take profits, hedge funds have spotted the trend and are going 'short' on luxury, which usually amplifies the trend." Although levels still remain relatively low, short interest in a number of luxury shares has been rising since Burberry's warning, with watchmakers particularly targeted by short sellers - who profit from falling stock prices by borrowing shares, selling them, then buying them back more cheaply. According to data provider Markit, Richemont has 3.2 percent of its outstanding shares out on loan, up from 2.6 percent in late August, and Swatch Group has 7.2 percent of its shares out on loan, up from 4.8 percent in late August. Fuelling the negative sentiment about the sector, Swatch Chief Executive Nick Hayek last Thursday said the group would have to fight to reach its sales target this year. "The sector has been pleasing the market with strong results and resilient margins, which pushed many luxury stocks to record highs earlier this year. But the tone from executives started to change during the summer," B*Capital's Enos said. Even reassuring comments - such as Hermes's CEO statement on Sunday that the group's targets for the year remained unchanged - are not convincing investors. Hermes stock hit a near 15-month low on Tuesday. LONG/SHORT STRATEGIES IN VOGUE If an outright short is too aggressive a trade, portfolio managers can set up a 'pairs trade', a market-neutral strategy that bets on the gap in the performances of two assets regardless of the overall market direction. "There's just no potential catalyst for a bounce. At best, these stocks will be moving sideways for a while. For investors who are not as daring as hedge funds, the best idea is a pairs trade 'long Euro STOXX 50' and 'short luxury stocks'," a Paris-based trader said. That trade would have added 8 percent since early September. On the technical front, charts have signalled the end of the bullish outlook for the sector. Virtually all the stocks suffered a break-away gap - a gap between the lowest price of one session and the highest price of the following session which indicates a brutal change in investor sentiment - on the day of Burberry's warning. Technical analysis firm Day-By-Day has 'negative' short-term ratings on LVMH, PPR, Burberry, Richemont and Swatch, citing the recent breaks below 50-day and 200-day moving averages, seen as strong support levels. Despite the violent pull-back in luxury stocks since Burberry's warning, shares in the sector have not dropped enough to attract bargain hunters, a number of traders warned. Hermes still trades at 29 times expected 2013 earnings, while LVMH is at 14.7, Burberry at 13.4 and Richemont at 12.8, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data. Overall, the sector trades at a P/E ratio of 15.3, roughly in line with its five-year average but still at a hefty premium to the market, with the STOXX 600 at 11.1. Ratios in the sector have been buoyed by double-digit sales growth in emerging markets, but the premium is now questioned. "These names have been the darlings of the market for a long time, but people are now realising that the luxury sector is not immune to the economic reality," Louis Capital Markets trader Jerome Troin-Lajous said. On Monday, China's manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) showed factory activity contracted for a second month in September, fuelling fears the country might be set for a 'hard landing' in which growth weakens too quickly. "The question is: will it be a soft or a hard landing in China?," B*Capital's Enos said. "With the sharp correction in the stocks since Burberry's warning, a mild slowdown in growth in China is now priced in, and valuation levels are back to more reasonable levels. But if it's a hard landing, then that's going to be a different story." (Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)?Metallics, florals and futuristic edge rock London fashionBy Li-mei Hoang and Piya Sinha-Roy Reuters–?A look at the catwalks in Milan and the general style consensus is that opposites attract. The Italian capital has shown us that it excels in contrasts. Sexy vs demure, prints vs color-blocking, bodycon mini vs flowing, floor-grazing gowns... This season, designers in Milan are ticking all the boxes.Carrying on Burberry's theme for eye-popping brights, on day 1 Gucci 's extreme color palette set a decidely upbeat tone for Milan Fashion Week. Frida Giannini's color block-tastic collection was heralded "an orgy of gorgeousness" by the IHT's Fashion Editor-in-Chief Suzy Menkes while Donatella Versace and Christopher Kane's playful Versus collection put primary colors high on the Spring radar. Spring-summer 2013 favorites bright chartreuse and orange made appearances at Roberto Cavalli alongside the label's signature motifs.Although mono hues and two-tone silhouettes were seen at Ermanno Scervino and Fendi and black and white monochrome at Moschino, Gianfranco Ferre, Jil Sander and Pucci, Milan also offered a plethora of crazy patterns -- a craze Prada kicked off seasons ago. For S/S13, Miuccia Prada decorated her Far East-inspired creations with larger than life daisies and arty sprigs of cherry blossom. Etro's S/S13 collection which also had a taste for all things oriental worked contrasting florals into loose, kimono styling. Just Cavalli created an original linear effect with panels of busy florals on jackets and trousers, also echoed at Etro. Bottega Veneta, Moschino and Dolce & Gabbana also took part in spring's 'petal pusher' movement.Italy's celebrated "urban goddess" will not be disappointed this season as new entries to her spring wardrobe include ethereal tie-dye or medusa-print silk chiffon, soft organza and floor-skimming hemlines -- were key looks which Missoni, Versace and Elena Miro mastered this season. Gucci's aristographic styling which featured frills and balloon sleeves created a holiday vibe. The peplum took a hike both north and south, to grace the shoulder or the hemline. Collections by Fendi and Trussardi hit a rarer masculine note with sharply tailored cuts.One of the most significant micro trends to emerge on the Milan runways is the X-ray effect. From flesh-baring cutouts to perspex and plastic inserts, brilliantly worked into shoes and bags at Fendi and Marni, the trend for sheer fabrics - as seen in New York and London -- caught on in the Italian capital. Versus and Pucci treaded on Burberry territory by bringing back the plastic mac. A Pucci, a see-through trench was adorned with delicate dragon embroidery in an ode to the "opulence of Indochina." Over at Versus, Christopher Kane had a field day with both plastic chain detailing and plasticized fabrics.While they are strictly more at home with the A/W aesthetic, metallics are gaining ground for next spring. The Just Cavalli, Fendi and Blugirl runways all sported at least one (if not more) gold sparkler while Etro and Emporio Armani opted for a more subdued approach with daywear displaying a softer sheen: pastel satin shorts and diaphanous separates, reminiscent of Giorgio Armani's haute couture line. Pure runway delight!CJL?Model Cara Delevingne Ruled The Runway At London Fashion Week: Check Out Her Catwalk Looks At Burberry, Giles And MoreGrazia–. Despite angry , this could be the hottest model/musician hook-up since Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall. Possible pop star boyfs aside, Cara is not just hot stuff, she's a right laugh too. Take for instance this photo of herself dressed as a giant hotdog she posted on her twitter account. She may walk the runway like a true Glamazon, but she’s not afraid to pull a goofy face and share it with her 65k followers. Plus she’s bessies with Karlie Kloss and Jourdan Dunn and has her own Whistles personalised varsity jacket. For this and many other reasons we find ourselves caught between jealousy and love. Mostly love. ?My Fashion Week: Burberry Make-up Artist Wendy Rowe On How To Achieve The Burberry Look And Model Cara Delevingne And Harry Styles!Grazia– ?Strictly Come Dancing contestant Victoria Pendleton fulfilled a "lifetime ambition" when she attended the Burberry Prorsum runway show at London Fashion Week.The gold-medal winning cyclist, who has joined the latest series of the BBC ballroom show, has been pictured looking glamorous recently, and it is an image she enjoys.Olympian Victoria said: "I've wanted so long to come to an event at fashion week, and Burberry have asked me for a couple of seasons and I've been so busy training that I had to say no, so this feels like a lifetime ambition fulfilled. I've loved it."The 31-year-old, who swapped her lycra for a chic mauve dress at the event in London's Kensington Gardens, will be hoping for a substantial run on Strictly, even if it's just to wear a different dress every week."It makes such a change and it's just so exciting. The idea of someone wanting to lend me an outfit, dress me up, looking like a girl - it's all new territory for me, and I like it a lot," she said.Victoria was not the only sporting star checking out the British brand's Fashion Week show, as she watched it alongside tennis superstar Andy Murray and his girlfriend Kim Sears.Also taking their seat at the Burberry event were US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, One Direction's Harry Styles, Slumdog Millionaire actor Dev Patel and burlesque star Dita Von Teese.?HONG KONG (Reuters) - Shares of Italian fashion company Prada SpA fell nearly 4 percent on Wednesday to their lowest in three weeks as investors cashed out after British fashion house Burberry warned that a slowdown in China could hit earnings. The profit-warning came as recent Chinese data signalled a further slowing of the world's second-largest economy, unnerving investors about its impact on consumer demand. China's retail sales growth of all consumer goods including luxury goods slowed to 13.2 percent year-on-year in August to 1.67 trillion yuan ($263.6 billion) from 18.1 percent growth in December, official data showed. Retail sales of gold, silver and jewellery grew 14.9 percent year-on-year to 17.9 billion yuan in August, compared with 35.6 percent growth in December. "Investors are more down-to-earth nowadays. They look at a luxury stock in a sensible way and would make no mercy to unload the shares if there is any sign of slower growth," said Alfred Chan, chief dealer at Cheer Pearl Investment. "Burberry's warning has rung the bell of a potential major correction ahead." Shares of Prada, which competes with Louis Vuitton and PPR's Gucci, fell as much as 3.9 percent to HK$57.65, their lowest since Aug 24, lagging a 0.84 percent gain in the benchmark Hang Seng Index . Burberry's profit warning on Tuesday gave the clearest sign yet that a slowdown in China and Europe's debt crisis are bringing a nearly three-year boom in demand for luxury goods to an end. "Prada will not be immune," Gloria Tsuen, an analyst at CIMB, wrote in a research note. "We think the long-awaited slowdown in luxury consumption driven by global economic and political uncertainties is finally starting to have a meaningful impact on performance." Tsuen downgraded Prada to neutral from outperform. Shares of luxury retailer Emperor Watch and Jewellery Ltd were also hit, with the stock down 1.3 percent. China is the world's third-biggest market for personal luxury goods, with total sales of about 160 billion yuan ($25 billion) a year. In the next three years, it is expected to leapfrog Japan and the United States to take the top spot. Luxury companies, which rebounded strongly from the 2008/9 financial crisis, had withstood the ensuing global slowdown as demand from fast-growing China and other emerging markets compensated for wobbling sales in Europe and the United States. But with China slowing, investors are now questioning how long and how well they will hold up. Analysts said some brands were faring better than others with labels such as Prada, Bottega Veneta and Yves Saint Laurent performing well, with others such as Hugo Boss and Louis Vuitton starting to feel the pinch. ($1 = 6.3351 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Donny Kwok and Twinnie Siu; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)?(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012. Check for restrictions at: http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp?LONDON (Reuters) - Designer Christopher Bailey sent his models down the runway in an explosion of rainbow-colored metallic trench coats as part of his latest spring/summer collection for Burberry. Models strode the catwalk in corsets, pencil skirts and sleek silk dresses in raspberry pinks, emerald greens and sapphire blues, laced with a metallic edge. Trench coats, a Burberry staple which reaches back to the company's foundation, appeared in a variety of different forms. Classic styles were covered in colored metallic lace, capes came in both long and short versions and cropped jackets came with boxy shoulders and slim silhouettes. The collection was inspired by Norman Parkinson photographs from the 1940s and 50s, Bailey said. Burberry's chief creative officer said he looked into the archives for inspiration, where he found corsets and capes the brand had produced in the early 1900s, and combined the elements to create his latest collection. "The collection was a bit more joyful and quite sassy and a bit sexy," Bailey told reporters backstage. "It's about taking those kind of authentic signature DNA elements from what Burberry is about, our heritage and our history. But then making them, of the moment and kind of giving them a spirit." Burberry held three events to celebrate their latest collection, which incorporated live video streaming and social media across the world to its fans. "We were kind of looking at it in three different ways and we did different messaging for each different audience and community but they all were part of the same energy," Bailey said. "Fashion is also about entertainment and people are intrigued and excited about fashion and I think when you do a show, it's kind of a perfect opportunity for people to feel your brand and your image and kind of these ideas, music, lights and beautiful girls." The star-studded event was attended by U.S. Vogue Editor Anna Wintour, tennis player Andy Murray and burlesque performer Dita von Teese. "The coats are always one of my favorite things, but I'm really loving all the accessories right now too," she told Reuters. "When Christopher swings towards my direction and does retro, I always find myself in the store buying important pieces to have in my wardrobe." The designer addressed concerns over Burberry's future following the company's profit warning last week that had many investors worried about a slowdown in the luxury market. "I'm not going to pretend it's not challenging out there but I think what's important is that we stay very true to our DNA, to our heritage but also excite people," he told Reuters. (Reporting by Li-mei Hoang, editing by Paul Casciato)?New Delhi, Sep 18 (IANS) Bollywood actor and Pataudi royal Saif Ali Khan took a seat on the front row at the London Fashion Week during a showcase of the Burberry spring-summer 2013 collection.Saif looked dapper in an elegant black tuxedo teamed with a polka-dotted neck-tie. He sported a beard at the show, held at West Albert Lawns in Kensington Garden Monday.Others on the front row included "Slumdog Millionaire" star Dev Patel, actresses Alice Eve and Gabriella Wilde, TV personality Giorgia Surina, socialite Olivia Palermo and British track cyclist Victoria Pendleton, said a statement.Christopher Bailey, chief of the iconic luxury brand, presented the collection with a bold theme marked by a rich and extensive colour palette.?Discover Yahoo! With Your FriendsExplore news, videos, and much more based on what your friends are reading and watching. Publish your own activity and retain full control.?LONDON (AP) ? It looks like for some designers, next spring is fashion's moment to shine ? literally.Metallic leather, shiny satin and foil-like fabrics in rainbow colors dazzled on the catwalk at Burberry Prorsum Monday, reinforcing a trend that already saw lashings of sequins and space-age style designs earlier in London Fashion Week.Burberry, which typically puts on the most extravagant and celebrity-studded display during the week-long style extravaganza, went for flamboyant luxury for its latest spring collection. The catwalk was packed with iridescent swimsuits, metallic leather trench coats and satin corsets, and the palette was that of precious metals and gemstones: Gold, silver, emerald, turquoise and ruby."I wanted to do a collection that makes people smile," creative director Christopher Bailey said after the show. "I want it to be joyous, a bit sassier and sexier."The show's front row guests included boy band One Direction's Harry Styles, burlesque actress Dita von Teese, "Slumdog Millionaire" star Dev Patel and tennis player Andy Murray.Bailey opened with a structured white silk cape draped over a rose gold bodysuit with fine ruching.Coats ? especially Burberry's signature trench coats ? featured prominently, but there was also a notable move toward capes and a puffy, button-less cocoon jacket shape.Standout variations on the cape included one in silver leather, draped over an emerald shift dress, and another in clear orange plastic trimmed with python leather.The repeated pairings of capes with corsets was inspired by early 1900s photos from the Burberry archive, Bailey said.Meanwhile, trench coats were reimagined in a luxurious gold lace, a hot pink-to-red ombre, and in the finale, a rainbow of metallic textured leather in shiny fuchsia, purple, cobalt and bronze.That same shiny colored leather was seen on the bags, too, paired with matching shades of clear plastic.Burberry's Bailey wasn't the only one bit by the shiny, metallic bug. Holographic material and full-on sequined party dresses appeared at Jonathan Saunders, Topshop Unique had silver paired with white organza, and Preen's show featured metallic lace.Scottish heritage brand Pringle also featured plastic details, though it was only a nod. The brand, best known for its fine argyle knits, updated frumpy '50s crew neck twinsets with vibrant colors like jade and canary yellow, and embellished them with geometric plastic beading.Pringle, which presented its collection in a hotel room instead of on a catwalk, also featured a host of pretty sorbet shades, the other trend for next season. Knits and jackets were made in soothing hues of dove grey, lilac, pale lemon and powder pink.Also showing on Day Four were Christopher Kane, Erdem and Peter Pilotto. The action will be winding down on Tuesday, the last day of womens' wear previews at the fashion week.??Name: [More from Mashable: ]Quick Pitch: An online marketplace that connects fashion buyers with brands.Genius Idea:?Joor makes wholesale buying more like shopping at your favorite online store.[More from Mashable: ]As a senior buyer for Ann Taylor, Mona Bijoor's job involved many back-to-back showroom appointments, spreadsheets and even a fair bit of paper and glue. "My husband would tease me about playing with paper dolls again," Bijoor recalls of the lookboards of apparel and accessories she made before placing orders every season.In March 2010, Bijoor launched , an online wholesale marketplace that connects retail buyers with designers and brands. Brands can upload their collections to Joor, reach out to store buyers that might want to carry their merchandise (rather than cold calling over the phone) and process orders. Buyers, in turn, can discover new designers and submit orders.In design and functionality, Joor closely mimics the shopping experience on consumer-facing retail sites, like Net-a-Porter or Bloomingdales.com. Buyers can search and browse by brand, category, price range, tag and style number, and add looks they like to a shopping cart. They can also send and receive messages via an on-site inbox. Both brands and retailers can adjust their settings so they can't be randomly solicited.Joor now has around 20 employees, and has signed on more than 400 brands and 10,000 retailers, including recognizable names like Diane von Furstenberg, Theory, Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys. The startup raised $3.25 million in funding in September from several venture capital firms, including Battery Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Captial, Landis Capital and Forerunner Ventures, following a $2.25 million Series A round in July 2011. Joor plans to use the funds to open an L.A. office and double its staff.Joor makes money by charging brands a $3,500 setup fee and a 3% cut of every sale. Competitors include , and .Over the next six months, Bijoor says she's focused primarily on international growth -- in fact, when we last spoke earlier this week, she was boarding a plane to meet designers and retailers in Milan and Paris. At present, 10% of brands and 20% of retailers on Joor are international.This story originally published on Mashable .?One Direction's Harry Styles has teased that he likes women to cover up - in designer coats.The cheeky boyband heartthrob had a front row seat for the Burberry Spring/Summer 2013 catwalk show at London Fashion Week, to watch his rumoured latest squeeze, model Cara Delevingne, strut her stuff.Asked what he likes about British women's style Harry said: "I like coats and it's cold so they always have to wear coats, so it's great."Harry, 18, was snapped congratulating Cara, 20, and exchanging kisses and a joke. During the show Cara strutted her stuff wearing nothing but a leather coat and bikini bottoms.Harry said afterwards of Burberry: "I thought the show was great. I liked the colours - they're not too much, they're quite subtle. I think their winter stuff's wicked."The 1D singer and Cara were linked after they were snapped in his car together following a night out clubbing. Harry said he was giving he was giving her a lift home.But the mop-haired lothario has been linked to another model, Pixie Geldof, 22, after they were pictured leaving a club together and heading to Harry's car earlier this week.They had been out partying following Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw's final late-night show before he takes over Chris Moyles' breakfast slot next week.?Discover Yahoo! With Your FriendsExplore news, videos, and much more based on what your friends are reading and watching. Publish your own activity and retain full control.?Trend Spotting: 10 Hot Lips For Spring 2013 From Burberry to Jason WuGrazia–? Take the deep hues of Autumn Winter and give them a bright spring cleaning! While (see our faves here), lips are burning firey hot! Jonathan Saunders and Burberry made plum wine lips summery fresh with a clean, minimal canvas, Giles gals sported bright fuscia pouts and Holly Fulton combined fuscia and orange for a delicious tropical twist. And step away from the gloss, girls -- these hues are intense without iridesence complete with a matte finish. Take a look through the gallery to see which lip is the loudest... ?[More from Mashable: ] has launched a new Spotlight section, its 56th, to highlight blogs dedicated to street style photography.The features 13 street style blogs, several of which, including and , are also showcased on the platform's popular vertical. [More from Mashable: ]Burberry has signed on as the launch sponsor for the Street Style spotlight. Its , which was quietly introduced to Tumblr in late August, is featured prominently at the top of the page.The Art of the Trench blog, like the Burberry launched in 2009, showcases photographs of stylish men and women wearing trench coats on the street, some taken by photographers contracted by Burberry, others submitted using a "Upload Your Trench" form linked at the top of the blog.Why did Tumblr want to break out street style from the main fashion vertical? "Because the fashion vertical has grown so much on Tumblr, we wanted to introduce Street Style to focus on the fashions of the creators, rather than creativity of the brands," Valentine Uhovski, fashion evangelist at Tumblr, wrote in an email to Mashable. "Ultimately some of the coolest sartorial street blogs live on Tumblr and we want to grow and celebrate this amazing community." Similarly, Tumblr carved out a separate vertical for beauty in mid-2011, Uhovski said.This story originally published on Mashable .?WATCH All The Action From Burberry's Spring Summer 2013 Show LIVE!Grazia– and Grazia Daily are streaming the Brit brand's Spring Summer 2013 show LIVE. At 4pm today (Monday 17th September), the show kicks off in Hyde Park, so tune into this very page to see the VIP arrivals and catch all the catwalk action thanks to our portal to the action above. All you need do is take your place alongside the fashion editors, sit back and enjoy the show.So what can we expect this season? We already know Burberry beauty Cara Delevingne will be on the catwalk and here's hoping her campaign co-star Eddie Redmayne will be putting in a FROW appearance. In February we saw stylish types like Kate Bosworth, Alexa Chung, Anna Wintour and Laura Bailey also take their seats so fingers crossed for some major A-listers. As ever, Grazia Daily will be reporting LIVE from the red carpet so stay tuned to our Twitter feed .As we speak, Christopher Bailey, Chief Creative Officer of Burberry, is busy putting the finishing touches to his latest collection and he's just dropped off this little trailer for a taster of what's to come...?[More from Mashable: ]Talk to a fashion executive about ecommerce, and he will inevitably cite of creating an online shopping environment on par with his flagship stores. Online shopping may be convenient, he will say, but customers will be denied the ability to try on a garment for fit, to feel the texture of a python bag, to be surrounded by the products, architecture, music and personnel that make up the store experience.It's no surprise, then, that many apparel retailers, particularly those that fall in the luxury category, have invested heavily in bringing elements of the in-store shopping experience to their websites. While shopping on , you'll be encouraged to connect to a personal shopper through live chat to address your questions. At , you're invited to zoom in on photographs of products and watch videos of clothing worn by models to get a better sense of fit and movement. J.Crew recently collected its shoes and handbags under to replicate the in-store experience of browsing, while has its own store soundtrack.[More from Mashable: ]Given the above, I was somewhat surprised when Christopher Bailey, chief creative officer of Burberry, earlier this month that the company was investing not in replicating more of its store experiences online, but bringing the Burberry.com experience to its stores -- specifically, the 27,000-square-foot flagship in London.The flagship, by Burberry's description, has seamlessly integrated technology throughout. Full-length screens wrap the store, transitioning between audio-visual content displays, live-streaming hubs and and mirrors. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips have been attached to certain clothes and accessories so that when a customer approaches one of the screens in a fitting room, specific content -- say, information about a bag's stitching and craftsmanship, or a video showing how a skirt was worn on the catwalk -- will appear.I followed up by phone with Bailey earlier this week. In addition to the new store, we discussed why Burberry didn't serve up any new digital tricks for its Spring/Summer 2013 collection show, and how customization and other emerging trends are shaping Burberry's business. Check out an edited transcript of our talk, below.Q&A With Christopher Bailey, Chief Creative Officer, BurberryYou spoke in several earlier interviews about your desire to carry the Burberry.com experience to the Regent Street store. That surprised me. Nearly every other retailer is trying to do the opposite.We put so much energy and design, and created all these unique experiences on , but we didn't have any physical version of them -- , for example, or our , or , or even our division. So what we did was the exact opposite of the way people build physical spaces. We started looking at Burberry.com and making the experience you have there very rich, one that shows the whole world what Burberry is about. We wanted, when you walked into the Regent Street store, to feel exactly the same atmosphere, [for you to be] able to engage with it in the same way that you might be able to engage online. That meant silly as well as tangible things. We installed several hundred speakers and built a stage, as well as an in-and-out satellite link so we could stream live shows in, and stream out live gigs, all of which emulates the Burberry Acoustic site.We also did a lot of residential seating around the space, so you can sit down and relax as might you at home with your laptop or iPad.What kind of impression do you want people to have about Burberry's brand when they leave the store for the first time?That they were able to experience lots of different things, also [that they found it] entertaining. For example, throughout the store we have a couple of hundred of screens, some of them are huge, and then there are a couple hundred little screens around the store that has content specifically designed for the environment it's in. And every hour or so -- we're figuring out timing about it still -- we'll basically change the whole store to one thing, have this kind of rainstorm we've done with people clicking their fingers, and all of a sudden we'll dim the lights throughout the whole space and every video screen will suddenly turn to this video we've created. Everybody just stops and stares at the screen; we turn the sound up a bit, it becomes entertainment, makes people smile and stop, and then they go back to what they were doing. I think it's about more than just shopping, exploring.Is the experience you created in Regent Street something you plan to bring to other stores?Regent Street is really a one-off even just because of scale of store, but there are definitely elements of what we've done in Regent Street that we'll take to different stores around world. Customization and personalization seem to be two key themes emerging from Burberry as of late, particularly with Burberry Bespoke and the RFID/custom content experience you're using in the store. Is that fair to say? What's driving that?When you start interacting and engaging in a very authentic way with social media, you also have to look at the way you do things. Things need to be quicker, more personalized; there needs to be a dialogue, rather than the industry standard of working always in this way and on this calendar. You need to question everything that you can. We did this show yesterday; you can literally buy all the outerwear off the runway immediately, deliver in six to eight weeks, that sort of thing.As for RFID: People are interested in what goes behind products now. You can show so much more on the web through video and text and moving imagery. So what we wanted to do, for example, is if I try on a trench coat and approach one of the mirrors that we've enabled with RFID, content comes up on the screen that shows how we've made that trench coat, what it looked like on the runway. We're putting stories behind clothes and fashion.Let's talk about show. We've gotten used now to Burberry unveiling something totally new digitally every season -- 3D live streams, , , -- that gets a lot of press. So far as I'm aware, you didn't do anything of that sort for this show. How come?This time we did do a lot of personalization with the show. For example, we invited people personally with their names to watch the show, and when people came in to show space, they immediately got an email from me saying, 'Welcome, I hope you enjoy the show.' We tried to make it a little more intimate, a little more personal.I've never thought that we have to check a box every season to do something new, something that was newsworthy. It's more for me that we're doing things authentically. The tweetwalk was something I wanted to do because it was something I felt. On the runway everything is perfect, glossy and finished, audience looks pretty amazing, but then backstage as with everything, there's usually a bit of chaos. It was fun to show that real life as well. That's what social media or Twitter is about; I like those contradictions. We've talked about integrating digital in-store, customization, live streaming -- what digital trends do you see impacting Burberry's business going forward?I think connecting everything. There are so many different platforms, so many different forms of communication; how do we make sure they're all coming together in some way, that they're not all sitting alone?This story originally published on Mashable .

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