Messy Muse

2006-05-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

US Elle June 2006
Mandy Moore

2006-05-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

US Vogue June 2006
Uma

A Kate Fix (For Miss Julia)

2006-05-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

Hot to Trot!

2006-05-08T14:39:00.000-07:00

2006-05-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

V 41

2006-05-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

Vogue Japan June 2006

2006-05-05T16:30:00.000-07:00

Minkoff @ Flickr

2006-05-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

Vogue Italia May 2006
Heather Bratton

More Madonna W Pictures

2006-05-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

2006-05-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

Vogue UK June 2006

No model working, right this second commands more covers (Vanity Fair, French Vogue, British Vogue, V and 2x W magazine) and campaigns (SS/06: Roberto Cavalli, Stella McCartney, Rimmel, Longchamp) than the iconic Miss Moss. The girl who once memorably opined "Never complain. Never explain." has certainly got the last word.

A Few of the Madonna W Pictures

2006-05-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

Rowley TV

2006-05-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

Marc Jacobs wannabes have their chance with Project Runway, aspiring Tyras can try their luck at America's Next Top Model, and those who worship Rachel Zoe can try dressing Rachel Hunter on Style Me. Now the next Thom Filicia might also be found, as HGTV launches their next reality show, Design Star.

A competition to find the next great interior designer, Design Star features Cynthia Rowley as a judge—fitting, since the fashion designer also launched a china collection at Fishs Eddy and a series of bed and bath products at Target with her partner, Ilene Rosenzweig. Cynthia and Ilene also penned the best-selling book Swell, about their style secrets.

Rowley will share the stage with Trading Spaces’ Vern Yip and InStyle’s executive editor Martha McCully. The show airs next season, and HGTV claims they’ve had no trouble finding contestants—says network exec James Bolosh in a statement, “who wouldn’t want to win their own TV show?”
source: fwd

2006-05-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

W June 2006

2006-05-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

Vanity Fair June 2006

Whay They Say vs. What They Mean

2006-04-28T13:46:00.000-07:00

Are you a reader of David Lebovitz's Food Blog from France?

When they say, "Non", they mean, "Convince me."

When they say, "We do not take returns", they mean,"Convince me."

When they say,"It's not broken", they mean,"Convince me."

When they say, "You need a prescription for that", they mean,"Convince me."

When they say,"The restaurant is completely full", they mean,"Please come up with a better story."

When they say,"The restaurant is completely full", they mean,"We already have enough Americans in here."

When they say,"Do you mind if I smoke?", they mean,"Don't answer 'yes', or we're going to pout and scowl while you try to enjoy your dinner."

When they say,"It does not exist", they mean, "It does exists...just not for you."

When they walk right into you on the street and say nothing, they mean,"I'm Parisian."

When they say,"I don't have change", they mean,"I want a tip."

When they say,"Do you want directions?" they mean, "I look forward to telling you what to do for the next five minutes."

When they say, "I'd like the practice my English", they mean,"For the next 20 minutes, you'll idiot while I speak perfect English and demonstrate a far better understanding of world affairs than you do."

When they say, "They're up on the seventh floor", they mean, "They're right around the corner from where you're standing."

When they say, "We don't have any more", they mean, "We have lots more, but they're in the back."

When they say, "It's not my fault", they mean, "It is my fault...but I'm not taking the blame."

When they say, "That is not possible", they mean, "Loser."

When they say, "I am a Socialist", they mean, "I'm not responsible for picking up my dog's poop."

When they say, "You package hasn't arrived", they mean, "I'm just about to go on break. Come back and wait in line for 30 minutes again tomorrow."

When they say, "The fat's the best part!" , they mean, "I'm under 40."

When they say, "The cheeses in France are the best in the world", they mean, "We are indeed a superior culture."

When they say, "America is culturally-deprived", they mean,"Please don't show us Sharon Stone's vagina again."

At Prada, a Grand Premise Comes Unhemmed

2006-04-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

April 27, 2006
Critical Shopper
By ALEX KUCZYNSKI

An architect once told me a story that illustrated the futility and impermanence of all grandly conceived construction projects. A wealthy client had commissioned a complicated living room that required the labor of a dozen workers skilled in hand-set stonework. After a year of work it was clear to the architect that the workers were fiercely proud of the project and considered it not just a room in a house, but also a piece of art in which their souls were invested.

When the client saw his new room, he told the architect it was all wrong; they were to knock it down and start over, to new dimensions the client was just then sketching on a napkin and which he would gladly pay for over and over again until it met his requirements. The architect went back to his workers: the project was perfect, their work done. The next day he hired a new crew to demolish everything and start over.

I was reminded of this story as I toured the Prada store in SoHo, a grand and theatrical space that stands in the footprint of the Guggenheim Museum's former downtown location. Designed by Rem Koolhaus and erected at great expense in late 2001, the Prada "epicenter," as the company refers to it, could have become a blackly comic joke, a paean to extravagance and consumerism that opened three delicate months after 9/11. Instead, critics praised it for its ambitious interior design, technological innovations and daring architecture.

In January, a fire damaged the store, and it reopened only two weeks ago with an exhibition called "Waist Down: Skirts by Miuccia Prada." The skirts, designed for previous collections, twirl from the ceiling on motors or hang on the wall, their flounces animated by windshield wipers. Each is accompanied by a piece of explicative literature.

These disquisitions, in a crude blend of English and artspeak, resemble in miniature the essays one might find in a museum, but succeed in illustrating the commerce at the heart of Prada. One skirt "exudes a luxuriant grace," while the cut of another is "a clever way to show off how gorgeous it is inside and out." Thanks. I wouldn't have noticed the luxuriant grace. Really.

Several skirts are homages to arte povera, the school of conceptual art that celebrates ephemerality and decay: one skirt is dyed in such a way as "to create a damaged effect," while another assumes "a dirtied look of almost destroyed beauty." Another is "painted with shadows to obtain a dirtied effect in a cancellation of beauty." Sharp-edged miniature mirrors, which plate the hem of another, can render the garment "somewhat uncomfortable when walking."

Clothing designed to facilitate self-mortification. Now I know what I'm wearing to the premiere of "The Da Vinci Code."

For the duration of the show, the women's clothes for sale are mostly downstairs, underneath the zebrawood half-pipe that takes up the center space. It's as if Mr. Koolhaas and Ms. Prada decided to thumb their noses at the enterprise of shopping, creating a showroom for clothes that hardly has room to show clothes, a place where the grandiosity of the architecture takes a premium over the merchandise. At its heart this store seems almost ashamed of the fact that it is a store, veiling its commercial intentions beneath an apologetic veneer of art.

But there is a history of ambivalence here. Ms. Prada herself is a former Communist, according to past iterations of the company's literature. Yet she has adapted herself quite fluently to the world of high-end fashion, and its prices. Often I found myself wondering if I was reading a price tag or bar code. A hand-beaded bolero jacket in navy-blue duchesse satin costs a bit more than $20,000. An elaborately embroidered skirt in orange taffeta is $11,515.

Downstairs, two young women, their eyes ringed in kohl, pawed the clothes. "I can't believe they let us touch this stuff," said one, pointing out the beautifully unfinished hem on a short evening jacket. It was the most finished-looking unfinished hem I have ever seen. A row of subtle drop-waist dresses in chalk, pink and gray looked wearable, as did a cotton dress with elaborate wooden beading. I liked the sandals teetering not on wedge soles but cantilevered up on bamboo stilts, like a Balinese beach shack, and the jeweled wedge sandals ($850). I didn't like the espadrilles with a big Prada nameplate on the front ($460), which look too logo-conscious to me, in a way that suggests a Chanel logo — circa 1986.

Some of the practical machinery at work in the store is fascinating, like the wheels that can be turned to change the perimeters of the lower-level rooms, much like the rolling bookshelves in libraries. The men's clothing is now on display upstairs, at the Mercer Street end of the store; boxes and cases hang from a complex metal gridwork overhead and can be switched easily to change the layout.

But the most heralded technological promises fail to deliver. The round elevator, which was constructed at a cost of $1 million, didn't work during my two recent visits. And even if it did, it (theoretically) travels only between the ground floor and the basement floor, a distance shoppers can travel in about four seconds by foot.

In 2001 the dressing rooms were heralded as techno-wizardry: touch a button, and the glass enclosing each room is supposed to go opaque. But they were not working either (there are conventional dressing rooms at the back). So much hard work has gone into this place, and yet it has succumbed to the insults of time and the colloquial nuisances of city life, like the fire that, adding insult to injury, started in American Eagle Outfitters next door. The interior is such a major structural statement, and so impractically suited to most ventures, that whoever the next tenant is will be forced to destroy it and rebuild it.

I also suspect that the store has not fully recovered from the fire's water damage. In one room on the lower level, dimly lit and quite cool, I inhaled and was suddenly seized by an attack of homesickness. I missed my parents terribly and craved a Snickers bar. And then I realized: the room was damp, and I was remembering summer camp. It smelled, unhappily, of mildew.

Prada SoHo
575 Broadway (Prince Street); (212) 334-8888
ATMOSPHERE Squint your eyes and you could be in a contemporary art museum in a chic small city in, say, Spain or Switzerland.
SERVICE Generally quite friendly.
PRICES Plastic aviator sunglasses, $220; trolley suitcase in bronze leather, $2,095; men's suede car shoes, $370.
source: nytimes.com

2006-04-26T17:12:00.000-07:00

On Newsstands Today $1.99

2006-04-26T17:11:00.000-07:00

W Korea May 2006
Karolina Kurkova

2006-04-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

Trench Coats

Kate Moss to Attend Anglomania Gala!

2006-04-25T16:49:00.000-07:00

Kate to arrive as guest of Burberry
Tuesday, April 25, 2006(NEW YORK) What better way for Kate Moss to celebrate her return as the face of Burberry then by attending the upcoming Anglomania-themed Costume Institute Gala? The supermodel will be attending Monday night’s party of the year as a guest of the British fashion house (who is sponsoring this year’s exhibition of British fashion) and will sit at the table of its creative director, Christopher Bailey. Burberry is taking its newly strengthened relationship with Moss one step further by creating a custom, one-of-a-kind gown for her to wear while she vamps it up for the dozens of red-carpet photographers. But while the designer label is no secret, the style, color, and even length of the dress are all being kept under lock and key, as according to a source, “it’s going to be a big surprise.”

source: fwd

Paris Vogue May 2006 / The Anna Mariya Moment

2006-04-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

Since her opening and closing turns at the FW 06 Prada show, modelwatchers have been waiting for the first editorial bursts from IMG’s chic newcomer, Anna Mariya. Appropriately enough, it’s French Vogue first on the case with this classically gorgeous cover snap of the new beauty in town. Very 80’s Avedon circa his Revlon “Unforgettable” campaign, no?

2006-04-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

Vogue Spain May 2006 w/Supplement

Being Bad: The Career Move

2006-04-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

It would probably require a stopwatch to clock the lag time between sin and redemption lately, as media disgrace is transformed into a bargaining chip in a celebrity's career often before a bad boy or girl has stumbled home from the crime scene and showered off the taint of shame.
What seems evident is that public humiliation has lost its barb. There might have been a time when being caught on camera in flagrante delicto or hoovering up lines of coke would have ended a career. But as Paris Hilton proved, being videotaped by one's boyfriend in a zonked-out state and naked on all fours does not put a hitch in one's five-year plan. If anything, the bubble-gum divinity apotheosized on the basis of a homemade pornography loop, a moronic catchphrase and a mental vacancy cavernous enough for storing yellowcake appears set to enjoy a media half-life about as long as that of a spent plutonium rod.

And this odd realization goes a long way toward explaining recent events in the life of another creature of the age: the model Kate Moss.

The recent career arc of this British model, style emblem, rocker's moll and anointed reprobate of the fashion world could be found unexpected only by those whose attention has strayed from the celebrity mosh pit that now crams the main stage of pop culture. Readers whose Star subscriptions have lapsed may not recall that it was just seven months ago, on Sept. 15, that The Daily Mirror of London ran front page photographs that, it claimed, showed Ms. Moss cutting and snorting cocaine in a London photo studio where Babyshambles, the band of her boyfriend, Pete Doherty, was in the middle of a recording session.

The pictures looked gritty, candid and sufficiently libel-proof that both images and coke-snorting allegations were soon plastered like sleazy wallpaper across the blogosphere. The immediate effect on Ms. Moss's career was less than promising. She was booted by a group of the clients who had made her one of the richest women in her industry, with estimated annual earnings of $9 million. The Swedish retailer H&M, Europe's largest clothing chain, led the charge, dropping her from an advertising campaign showcasing clothes designed by Stella McCartney after first coming to Ms. Moss's defense.

"If someone is going to be the face of H&M," a spokeswoman said at the time, "it is important that they be healthy, wholesome and sound."

Ms. Moss simultaneously discovered that lucrative contracts with longstanding clients like Burberry and Chanel were not renewed or else dropped. And while she stopped short of admitting to drug use, Ms. Moss did what spin doctors always advise troubled clients to do in a pinch: issue an apology and head for the hills. In Ms. Moss's case, the hills surrounded an Arizona clinic where she went to treat "the various personal issues I need to address," as she said in a prepared public statement, "and to take the difficult yet necessary steps to resolve them."

Yet a strange thing happened to Kate Moss on the way to rehab. Far from becoming a pariah or experiencing a serious fall from public grace, she developed an unexpected level of luster. The 32-year-old woman who has been the subject of controversial press since she was discovered at 14, the onetime waif, the person pilloried for allegedly promoting anorexia, the freewheeling seductress of the British tabloids, the tempestuous destroyer of hotel rooms, the confidante and bosom buddy of Anita Pallenberg and other rock chick survivors from the heyday of hard drugs, found herself bumped up a notch to the status of that most nebulous of beings, the cultural avatar.

And even before the model had checked out of the drying-out clinic, she was inundated in attention and work. W magazine ran a cover story on Kate Moss in November 2005. Vanity Fair made her its cover subject the following month. An issue of the influential fashion magazine French Vogue was dedicated to Ms. Moss, who also served as guest editor.

If her notoriety was bad for the brand, it is hard to see how. Even as the London police were questioning Ms. Moss in January, clients were clamoring for her services. Already by early 2006 she had booked campaigns with Virgin Mobile, Dior, Roberto Cavalli and CK Jeans. She had renewed her contracts with the leather and accessories company Longchamp and, it was rumored in the industry, also with Burberry, whose runway show in Milan she attended in February as the front-row guest of Rose Marie Bravo, the company's chief executive. "It shows how relevant she is," Jenn Ramey, Ms. Moss's American agent, said this week, just days after Nikon introduced a new campaign for its Coolpix S6 digital camera built around a series of photographs of a mostly naked Ms. Moss.

"Kate is the height of style and sophistication," said Bill Oberlander, the executive creative director of McCann Worldwide, the agency that created the Nikon ads, for which Ms. Moss is reputedly being paid several million dollars. "She has this almost superhuman quality."

For Anna Marie Bakker, the director of communications at Nikon, Ms. Moss seemed an obvious choice to promote a brand aggressively trying to shed its fusty image and seduce the notoriously fickle imaginations of young consumers. "Part of the appeal is that she is truly an enduring style icon," Ms. Bakker said. "But most importantly, she appeals to Nikon as we try to move our product forward, because she has an edge."

Doctoral dissertations could be written on the layered meanings of "edge," the most overused marketing term of the last decade and one most often deployed to lend freshness to ideas and objects whose use-by date has clearly expired. Yet Kate Moss, whose cool not only fueled an 18-year career at the top of her profession, but also attracted the attention of artists from Lucien Freud to the British sculptor Marc Quinn, can now fairly be said to have added "edge" to her résumé, largely on the basis of her sporadic relationship with the unregenerate bad boy, Mr. Doherty, and the resulting brouhaha about a druggy night spent in a London studio.

"She's ubiquitous, she never speaks publicly and so she's someone who has this muteness, this silence that allows people to project onto her image," said Mr. Quinn, whose painted bronze sculpture of Ms. Moss, in an elaborate yoga posture and with her feet behind her ears, will be the centerpiece of a show opening in May at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York. "Her image has a life of its own. What was interesting when she had all those troubles with the tabloid press about her drug-taking was that the image and the drug-taking didn't fit and people couldn't take that."

Yet just as likely the reverse is true; Ms. Moss's tabloid adventures added to the nest of magpie details that, wittingly or not, we all now seem to accumulate about celebrities and then mold into specious narratives about people we've never met. "And that, after all, is what a brand is," said James Twitchell, an author and professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida.
"Celebrities are these extraordinary characters who have no plot, but who are in many ways the easiest characters to follow. They don't violate expectations because there really are none."

And so Ms. Moss's cool — the historical cool of bad boys and girls doing things that most of us, being properly middle class, might wish to do but will never get around to, explained Dr. Michael Brody, chairman of the media committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry — becomes something different and better in a marketing sense when one adds a dollop of scandal or edge.

"Edge denotes shame," said Dr. Brody, the kind invoked when, for example, one is caught by a camera huddled over a mound of white powder, neatly chopping lines. "People use cameras to take all kinds of pictures now," he added, alluding to the proliferation of too-intimate images widely available on sites like Craigslist.com or MySpace.com. "If you're selling a camera in our celebrity-obsessed culture, why not use a celebrity and one who was captured at the scene of a crime?" he said.

The idea is not just sexy, in a dubious but distinctly transgressive fashion. It is also a shrewd exploitation of brand. "From the minute her name came up, we loved the idea of Kate endorsing a camera," said Mr. Oberlander, the McCann Worldwide executive. What could be better, Mr. Oberlander said, than giving a camera to the woman who has spent her life as the focus of its gaze and letting her "take the lens and turn it on the audience?"
source: nytimes.com

People of the World....We Give You Moses!

2006-04-20T07:50:00.000-07:00

What a little cutie. And...we're over it. Yeah, yeah, sorry Gwynnie but nobody really gives a shit anymore. We have Suri and baby Jesus Jolie-Pitt to preoccupy our biological brains. But don't feel too bad. At least he's not Brooke Shields' kid.

Why Stars Name Babies Moxie, Moses & Apple

2006-04-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

source: nytimes.com
It's a measure of what we have come to expect from celebrities to consider that if Henry Fonda were alive and having children today, it would seem as likely for him to name his daughter, say, Hanoi, as simply to call her Jane.

It seems almost unimaginable for any 21st-century movie star to send his children out among the Hollywood elite equipped with ordinary names like Michael, Eric, Joel and Peter, as Kirk Douglas once did.

This point was driven home again last week, when Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Chris Martin, the frontman of the band Coldplay, named their newborn son Moses. It was an unlikely enough name for a baby boy born in 2006, but perhaps less startling than the much discussed (and mocked) handle his sister, Apple, born two years ago, will carry through life.

Not that a name like Apple Martin stands out among celebrity children anymore. The director Peter Farrelly plucked that very name for his daughter before Apple Martin came along. Even that name seems drab compared with Hollywood baby names like Pilot Inspektor, cooked up by Jason Lee, the star of "My Name Is Earl," or Banjo, the inspiration of the "Six Feet Under" star Rachel Griffiths, or Moxie CrimeFighter, a name chosen last year by the comedian and magician Penn Jillette for his daughter.

Skeptics scoff at the mad rush by stars to come up with exotic baby names as another means for the attention-hungry to grab headlines. But psychologists and others who have worked with high-profile performers say that the naming of children can function as a window into a psyche. Perhaps subconsciously, they say, stars seize the opportunity of parenthood to express their obsessions, ambitions and inner quirks in a way that is, for a change, unscripted and not stage-managed by publicists.

Mr. Jillette, for example, managed to satisfy a number of interests and objectives when he and his wife, Emily, gave their daughter her highly individual name.

"You're likely to be the only one in any normal-size group with that name," Mr. Jillette said by e-mail, adding, " 'Moxie' is a name that was created by an American for the first national soft drink and then went on to mean 'chutzpah,' and that's nice."

Besides, Moxie CrimeFighter fits right into the creative world.

"Everyone I know with an unusual name loves it," he wrote. "It's only the losers named Dave that think having an unusual name is bad, and who cares what they think. They're named Dave."

Not all performers present their decisions in such terms.

"Apples are so sweet, and they're wholesome, and it's biblical," Ms. Paltrow said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2004. "And I just thought it sounded so lovely and clean." ("Moses" meanwhile is a song that Mr. Martin wrote for Ms. Paltrow in 2003.)

But while middle-class parents increasingly trade in standard names like Karen and Joseph for fancier ones like Madison and Caleb, movie stars seem compelled to push the baby naming further. The names may be merely distinctive (say, Maddox, Angelina Jolie's Cambodian-born adopted son) or bizarre, like Makena'lei Gordon, Helen Hunt's daughter, inspired by a place name in Hawaii. Celebrities may not so subtly be saying that for them ordinary rules need not apply.

If celebrities are the new American aristocracy, the exotic baby name can sometimes function as the equivalent of a royal title, a way for a privileged caste to bestow the power of its legacy on future generations.

"There's a sense of 'I'm special, I'm different, and therefore my child is special and different,' " said Jenn Berman, a clinical psychologist in Beverly Hills, who has worked with actors. "It's unconscious, but they think, 'We're a creative family, you have the potential to be creative, so here, I bestow you with the name 'Joaquin,' " Dr. Berman said.

As artists, actors often consider it their duty to shake up assumptions, defy conventions and push the frontiers of the possible. To settle for a tedious name for the child would almost be a form of spiritual surrender, said Stuart Fischoff, a psychologist, who has also worked with Hollywood clients.

"They're expressing their creativity, and they're also expressing their fear," Dr. Fischoff said. "It would be very embarrassing for people to think of them as normal."

The unusual celebrity baby name is not new. Decades ago, Anthony Perkins named his sons Osgood and Elvis, and Marlon Brando named his daughter Cheyenne. And Ms. Paltrow, the daughter of the actress Blythe Danner and the director and producer Bruce Paltrow, is named Gwyneth, after all.

But those who track the popularity of baby names say that the pressure for stars to come up with creative names for their children has grown in recent years, particularly as Hollywood members of Generations X and Y have moved into their peak years of child rearing, carrying with them their generation's taste for obscure pop cultural references, iconoclasm and smirky irony.

Just as Frank Zappa proved himself the classic hippie prankster by naming his children Moon Unit and Dweezil in the 1960's, the actress Shannyn Sossamon, 26, established herself as a proud product of her times by naming her son, born in 2003, Audio Science.

"A name is free, it is something that everyone has, so if you are a celebrity, you are going to have to work that much harder to set yourself apart as a person with a specialized knowledge or a rarefied taste," said Pamela Redmond Satran, who has written baby-name books with Linda Rosenkrantz, including "Beyond Jennifer and Jason" (St. Martin's). She said a competitive impulse among stars seems to account for the recent bonanza of unlikely baby names.

"In a weird way, it's like anorexia" in Hollywood, Ms. Satran said. "Anyone can be thin. The famous have to be thinner."

They also have a traditional role as tastemakers. It's hardly a coincidence that the name Ryder, which was the 901st most popular boy's name in the country in 2001, according to Social Security Administration statistics, jumped to 341 in 2004, the year Kate Hudson and Chris Robinson chose it for their newborn son.

But as regular people — the sort who wait in line at restaurants and pay for their own clothing — try to catch up, the stars are pushed further into the realms of obscure names, in an effort to stay ahead of this particular fashion curve. So stars troll deeper into the Old Testament for name ideas (both Bono and Wynonna Judd have an Elijah, and Cynthia Nixon has a Charles Ezekiel), into world geography (David and Victoria Beckham have a Brooklyn, and Summer Phoenix and Casey Affleck have an Indiana) or even into Grandmother's attic. (Jude Law dusted off the name Iris for his daughter, and Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams exhumed the name Matilda for their first child last fall.)

Some therapists said the celebrity impulse to foist odd names on their children amounts to simple narcissism by the parents, and the resulting status comes at the child's expense. The children, after all, are the ones who will have to raise their hands every time a teacher calls out "Coco" or "Eulala."

"It's like having a mini me," said Robert R. Butterworth, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, who has had actors on his patient roster. "The child is a part of them, not an individual. It's an appendage."

The burden of celebrity falls even on the unborn. The child Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are expecting has already been a cover subject for magazines.

Other psychologists, however, believe fears for the child's well-being are overblown. If, for example, Harvey Keitel's son, born in 2004, feels a bit conspicuous being named Roman, he will at least have company. Both Cate Blanchett and Debra Messing named sons Roman that year.
Besides, the offspring of the Hollywood elite have other matters to discuss in therapy, said Dr. Berman, who said she has counseled several: "With kids of celebrities, in all honesty, the other issues are so big this one pales in comparison."

Cat has Heart Eyes!

2006-04-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

2006-04-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

Tomkitten Est Arrivée!

Welcome to Earth, Suri Cruise! Us lifeforms are called humans. Huuuuuu-maaaaaans. [Waves hello] Your journey was unexpectedly long but your parents, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, are proud to welcome you into this world as their first child, a bouncing baby girl. You weighed in at 7 lbs 7 oz and your name Suri means "princess" in Hebrew or "red rose" in Persian. You have two siblings from your father's previous marriage to Nicole Kidman (she's also an actress) -- Isabella, 13, and Connor, 11, who were adopted as infants. This news comes the same exact day that your daddy's sworn enemy, Brooke Shields, gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Grier Hammond Henchy. You can look forward to your daddy setting up many playdates for the two of you. Be excited! Congrats to you and your parents! TOM 'N' KATIE 4EVA!!

2006-04-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Teen Vogue May 2006
Mandy Moore

Helena Christensen

2006-04-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

It's not easy being a superannuated supermodel. You can sponsor an animal sanctuary. You can become a UN goodwill ambassador. Or - like Helena Christensen - you can open a boutique.

Promptly at noon, as scheduled, Helena Christensen strides, long-legged and efficient, into Butik, her shop in the West Village, New York. Before she's even taken off her coat, she's sat down at a computer, sent an email, made a call and calmly rearranged a conflicting appointment, a model of professionalism and problem-solving in action.

If it weren't for her still-stunning looks - at 37, a bare-faced Helena displays the dewy skin and perfectly full lips found only on the most genetically blessed - it would be hard to imagine that this whirlwind presence ever spent as much time as she did in the relatively passive life of a model. She absent-mindedly clips her brownish-auburn hair into a bun as she sits down to talk, as if doing the female equivalent of rolling up her sleeves for a bit of work.

'I thought, when I stopped modelling and slowed down, I'd want to find peace and settle down somewhere,' she says, talking about this new phase of her life, her accent a blend of American and Scandinavian influences (Christensen's mother is Peruvian; her father, Danish). 'But that didn't happen. I just became more manic about experiencing everything.'

Although she's probably still best known for her work in front of the camera, posing for the likes of Herb Ritts and Peter Lindbergh and Bruce Weber, in recent years Christensen has been revealing much more of herself. No, not the body that Gianni Versace once decreed the most beautiful in the world, but the considerable talent and creativity that happened to come with that perfectly formed package.

She has established herself as a serious photographer in her own right, with shows in Paris, London and New York, as well as regular work shooting for prestigious fashion magazines.
All the while raising her son, Mingus, who's now six, and last year opening Butik, which sells a whimsical mix of fashion, antiques and desirable objets reflecting Christensen's love of the granny chic aesthetic both in decor and clothing.

'I would describe Helena's style as bohemian,' says Leif Sigersen, the Danish friend and flatmate with whom Christensen opened the shop. 'She can take something very expensive and make it look casual, or she can buy something for $2 at a flea market and make it look a million dollars.'
When Christensen walks in, Sigersen gives a quick approving appraisal of her sweater: a Jane Mayle royal-blue cardigan, a chunky knit that looks streamlined thanks to a belt at the waist. She wears it over jeans by Edun - the socially conscious clothing line created by Bono's wife, one of her many rocker friends - with a delicately sexy, brown peasant blouse under the sweater, open just enough at the collar to show a span of tanned décolletage.

And is the shirt also Jane Mayle? 'It's H&M,' says Christensen. 'A lot of things there, once you wash them, they get better and better.' Everything in the shop has that quality, though heaven forbid it should be mass-produced. A late 19th-century wicker rocker, one of Christensen's favourite finds, purchased at an estate sale in upstate New York, is proudly displayed on a ledge. Elsewhere, a century-old Bulgarian wedding dress, all organza and embroidery, hangs as if it were a piece of art.

Children's clothing and mittens are spread on a white couch; when swept away, they reveal that the couch, which Christensen calls 'the life of the store', also serves as a kind of scrapbook.
'Today I am a star,' someone called Michael has scrawled on the couch - Christensen's friend Michael 'REM' Stipe, it turns out. 'Helena and Leif, it's magic here!' someone called Maggie has written (the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, that is). Meanwhile, Liv (Tyler) writes that she thinks the shop is beautiful.

Similar sentiments come courtesy of Sarah Jessica Parker and Julianne Moore. The couch seems to embody the shop's ethos: lovely objects are also playthings, made to be used, not put behind glass. 'I like the feeling that the pieces are filled with soul,' Christensen says. 'It makes you feel closer to life and nature.'

Christensen herself has never been one to hide behind glass. While other supermodels were too scared to go to the Paris shows in 1991 because of the imminent first Gulf War, Christensen got herself on a plane and landed a great season. 'Of course the designers were happy to see me,' she has said of that successful run. 'I was the only one on the plane.'

Christensen is one of the few supers of her generation not to have attracted tabloid attention for her partying or her attitude problems. But nor has she opted for a safe and staid private life with some billionaire hedge-fund manager or minor royal. She was drawn instead to the INXS star Michael Hutchence, whom she dated for five years. (They broke up in 1995, five years before Hutchence's death.)

In 1999 she met, through Herb Ritts - possibly the world's most glamorous matchmaker - the former Prada model and actor Norman Reedus, with whom she had Mingus. The two have since separated, but live around the corner from each other and remain friends.
As for why the romance ended, Christensen is vague. 'You couldn't say whether it was one thing or another,' she says. It's seems, though, that the pressures of child-rearing might have played their part.

Asked how couples can stay close throughout that first difficult year of parenting, Christensen looks weary. 'It's something everyone has to work out for themselves, and all I can say is good luck.' Christensen has primary custody of Mingus, although Reedus steps in when she's away with work. If they're both working, her mother, who has already taught Mingus to speak Spanish, flies in to help out.

Mingus is now old enough to have his own opinions about fashion, to his mother's pride and dismay. 'I like to put him in beautiful old-fashioned children's clothing, but he goes, "You've got to be kidding!"

'He wants to wear the sporty, hip-hop look. I'm like, "What do you mean you don't want braces any more, they're so cute!" And he says, "They're for a baby." And I say, "You are a baby! You shouldn't even be able to form the sentence to tell me you don't want to wear it!"'

Not that Christensen is in a position to complain: she herself was an early starter in experimental fashion. At high school, a typical outfit would consist of a vintage dress worn over a hospital gown worn over long underwear - with sneakers.

'The boys would say to me, "Maybe you should get up a little bit earlier so you don't come to school in your pyjamas,"' she says, laughing. But her mother never stopped her as she walked out of the door. 'She might not have said, "That looks beautiful," but she might have said, "That's really interesting."'

These days, Christensen travels for three months of the year, and spends four with Mingus in Copenhagen, where he was raised for the first two years of his life. Although she divides her time between New York, Copenhagen and her home in Monaco, she's also a frequent visitor to London, usually squeezing in a trip to Topshop, where no one so much as asks for her autograph, let alone an opinion on the stock. 'I don't get stopped, because everyone is so manically shopping.

No one gives a shit who's next to them - all they care about is who's going to get to that piece first,' she says. 'It's very hectic - the music is pumping, you really feel they are all teenagers, and you're not. But I like wearing new things. I'm not talking about expensive new things, but there's just something joyful about putting on something new, walking out of Topshop with ten things.'

Christensen says she looks for straight, clean lines, rather than tight, fitted skirts or trousers. 'There's a lot of man in me,' she adds, mentioning a Dior men's suit she recently had lightly tailored to fit. 'Or maybe it's that I don't want to wear anything too tight because I need to feel
like I can eat. Food is the most important thing to me.'

As Christensen is talking, the photographer gears up for the shoot and a make-up artist applies the lightest of touches to her face.

'I like it to look natural,' she says. 'I'm always telling young models to take all that shit off their faces. They're so much more beautiful without it.' Some shimmer on her eyes, a little mascara that she applies herself, a touch of lip stain, and the striking, 37-year-old beauty suddenly gives way to a full-blown supermodel, her green-blue eyes emphasised so they take on an otherworldly quality.

For the first of the shots she puts on a dress and jacket by one of her favourite Danish labels, Rützou, which she stocks in the shop. It's a springy, loose-flowing look with a bit of spangle at the waist, a combination typical of the designers at Butik: even the chunky-knit sweaters have a bit of glitter woven through them, giving a girlish influence to the otherwise faded, sea-worn colours Christensen favours.

Although she clearly loves the freshness of the Danish designer's work, it is a delicate vintage dress in taupe that gets Christensen most excited. Tightly fitted above the waist and flowing below, it's sheer enough that it needs to be positioned just-so for the embroidered flowers to cover her decently.

The dress hangs on display in her home and every six months, she says, she takes it down to make sure it still fits (it does, thanks to a fast metabolism and a recent interest in boxing). 'I keep thinking it has to be worn at the most exquisite event ever. If I was going to get married, I'd wear it, but that probably means I'll keep it for ever. Or I'll probably get married when I'm 92, and then the dress won't fit me any more.'

Letting her favourite vintage fashion finds go to the shop has been a bit of a struggle, she admits. 'Sometimes Leif comes home, and he seems really quiet, and he'll say, "You know that dress you loved? Well, I'm sorry to tell you it was sold today." And we'll both be like, "Oooh." And it will be a really sombre evening.'

source: Telegraph

2006-04-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

Minkoff @ Flickr

2006-04-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

For Kate

2006-04-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

Keira Knightley US Vogue May 2006

2006-04-14T11:40:00.000-07:00

US Vogue May 2006
Keira Knightley

Will Lohan Pose for Versace?

2006-04-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

Lindsay to "spend time with Donatella on her boat..."
Thursday, April 13, 2006 source: fwd

(NEW YORK) First Marc, now Donatella—Lindsay Lohan as certainly been getting around lately. At the Calvin Klein Jeans dinner honoring Kate Moss Monday night, Lohan disclosed that she was in talks to be the face of Versace for the upcoming fall season. “I’m going to spend time with Donatella on her boat,” Lohan said, adding however that no contract had been signed. A Versace spokesperson also said “nothing has been decided yet.”

If Lohan were to score the coveted fashion campaign, she would join the ranks of Halle Berry, Madonna, and Demi Moore as the youngest Versace icon ever. So what is Lohan doing in the fashion realm these days? “I’m holding out for Karl [Lagerfeld] and Ingrid [Sischy],” said Lohan, perhaps referring to an editorial in Interview magazine. Ah, the fickle ways of the new Youth Quake. Only this February La Lohan told friends she was walking in Marc Jacobs show, and had WWD run the info on its venerable pages. But the teen goddess sat in the front row instead.

What is concrete for Lohan this week is her plans to be photographed for an upcoming cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Jacquetta Wheeler’s photographer beau, Alexi Lubomirski, will do the honors.

Memoirs of a Muse

2006-04-12T16:56:00.000-07:00

In Lara Vapnyar's amusing first novel, a young Russian immigrant strives to emulate Dostoevski's mistress and become a great man's inspiration.

"Memoirs of a Muse," Lara Vapnyar's first novel (after the 2003 story collection "There Are Jews in My House"), is a little bit of many things: an immigrant novel, a literary satire, a bildungsroman. But most of all, it's a cautionary tale for that particular sort of young woman who yearns to attach herself to a man of genius. Vapnyar's narrator, Tanya, gets this notion into her head during her teenage years in Russia, and she tries to pattern her career as a muse after that of Apollinaria "Polina" Suslova, the mistress of Dostoevski. It almost goes without saying that both women end up disappointed with the muse's lot, but if Vapnyar goes on to say it anyway, she does so in an amusingly rueful way.

Tanya -- raised by a harried single mother and twice deserted by a father who left the family and then promptly died -- grows up feeling frustratingly unexceptional. She's neither especially pretty nor especially smart. She can do several things passably well. She longs to "become somebody accomplished, a luminary," but "that long-anticipated extraordinary talent still hadn't emerged. My many gifts rattled about like cheap jewelry in a sequined bag -- there wasn't a single gemstone." A lecherous schoolteacher insists that she is destined to become "the companion to a great man," and this, combined with the photographs of famous Russian writers her mother hangs on the walls of their Moscow apartment, persuades her that she is a born muse.

source: salon.com

2006-04-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

Harper's Bazaar Russia May 2006

Discuss

2006-04-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

Will Sofia guest-edit for Anna? (source: fashionweekdaily)

Carine Roitfeld may be rumored to be taking Glenda Bailey’s top position at Harper’s Bazaar, and now it looks like Anna Wintour might be drawing inspiration from the French Vogue editor as well. According to sources at several rival magazines that have been lobbying to photograph Kirsten Dunst for their fall issues—ideally September and October to coincide with the Oct. 13 release of Marie Antoinette—publicists for the actress have been holding out for Vogue. What’s more interesting is that sources are saying Wintour is said to be asking director Sofia Coppola to guest edit the issue. Sound familiar? That’s because Coppola edited the December/January issue of French Vogue in 2004. A Vogue spokesman said he could not comment, and a representative for Dunst did not return calls.

Why the French Don't Suck!

2006-04-11T09:42:00.000-07:00

A Man, A Plan & A Food Blog

2006-04-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

Wonderful Story

Read it at Orangette!

Nigella Coming to US Food Network Fall 2006

2006-04-10T13:03:00.000-07:00

Nigella Feasts
"The interesting thing about food is that it's both reality and escape. …Before you know it, you have made something that seduces people."

Seducing people with food comes easily for Nigella Lawson. Beautiful and talented, she has forged an empire by demonstrating that, in the right hands, food is eminently sensual.

Hard on the heels of her recent bestseller, Nigella Feasts brings London's "domestic goddess" to Food Network viewers for the first time. Presented with the same sensuality and flare that made Nigella Bites a phenomenon, Nigella Feasts is about celebrating family, public holidays and private passions with dishes that stir the senses and delight the palate. From dinner with in-laws to breakfast in bed, Nigella Feasts declares our newest star's passion for food—and life.

2006-04-10T11:01:00.000-07:00

British Vogue May 2006

2006-04-10T10:59:00.000-07:00

Vogue China May 2006

Kinky Boots

2006-04-07T14:08:00.000-07:00

Director Julian Jarrold kicks up the kink quotient in Kinky Boots, a silly/sweet story of a young man's efforts to save his father's shoe factory with a little help from a transvestite cabaret queen named Lola.

2006-04-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

Vanity Fair US May 2006

2006-04-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

Easy Living UK May 2006
Iman

Anna Piaggi: An editor with h-attitude

2006-04-06T14:25:00.000-07:00

By Suzy Menkes International Herald Tribune
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2006

LONDON It was "hats off!" to Anna Piaggi, as the legendary Italian editor was in conversation with the milliner Stephen Jones at the Victoria and Albert Museum last week. Piaggi, with a tottering tower of a hat standing out from the surreal black-and-white set, changed headgear as she spoke, from shiny metallic top hat to newspaper- print confection, perched above her signature smoke-blue kiss curl and Clara Bow lips."

English hatmakers for me are really the best - and I feel better if I have a good hat on," said Piaggi, whose work is drawing 4,000 visitors a week to the V & A. "Fashion-ology" (until April 23), devoted to the visual image maker and stylist extraordinaire, is curated by Judith Clark, who presented the Piaggi seminar in conjunction with Jones.

"It is all about the hats - but we are very good friends and really trust each other," said Jones, as the conversation was punctuated with slides of the milliner's creations for Piaggi over 25 years."

But her style is all about Anna - not about the hat," he said. Piaggi proved his point by explaining how she had layered a white work shirt, cream knitted cape and zebra-patterned Manolo Blahnik boots.

Piaggi's wardrobe has become a perambulating treasure of fashion history, and even her scarlet Olivetti Valentine typewriter, designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1969, has become iconic.

By the time she was snapped by her current photographer, Bardo Fabiani, in a field of yellow sunflowers in a vivid pink vintage Simonetta cloak in 1994, Piaggi had acquired the objects on the list that opens the show. It makes compelling reading: 265 pairs of shoes, 29 fans, 932 hats, 2,865 dresses, 24 aprons, 31 feather boas - and so much more. The list includes "six Christmas cards from Manolo Blahnik," the haute shoemaker who was at the seminar and whom Piaggi also considers a close friend.

Looking at a wall of images of Piaggi and her theatrical get-ups, it is easy to imagine her as some exotic bird perched on the outpost of fashion. In fact, she has been at its epicenter for nearly 50 years, as a Vogue fashion editor; as editor of Vanity, the avant-garde magazine in which she worked with the illustrator Antonio Lopez in the 1980s; and for the last 18 years in her "Doppie Pagine" or double pages, for Italian Vogue. They are a collage of visual and cultural references sweeping around a current trend.

The fascination of Piaggi the personage is captured in Karl Lagerfeld's sketches of the woman who was part of his tight-knit band in Paris throughout the 1970s. Piaggi's roots go further back to her husband of 30 years, the late photographer Alfa Castaldi, and to her friend and soul mate Vern Lambert. The Australian fashion historian first introduced her to London and to the joy of antique clothing. Vintage finds such as the Simonetta cape are on display, as well as Jean Paul Gaultier's black velvet cornet-breasted dress of 1985.

Piaggi's essence is in that well-worn phrase: "It is all in the mix." A black- and-white 3-D tableau by Richard Gray, who also made the seminar's set, creates a "habitat" for animal-print clothes, while outfits Piaggi wears juxtapose a Vivienne Westwood naughty- school-girl blazer from 1985 with Rifat Ozbek lacy bloomers and a corset- shaped hat by Jones. Her writing - even the press sheets she wrote for Prada and Missoni - contain a mélange of "roses, revers, relief, reversible - and other "fashion with an 'r'." In 7,000 editorial pages and with her warmth, wit and deep culture, Piaggi defines fashion with a piquant "p".

2006-04-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

Necklace Expressions F/W 2006

clockwise from top left...Bottega Veneta...Donna Karen...Vuitton...Dior

2006-04-06T10:41:00.000-07:00

Vogue Australia May 2006

2006-04-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

Vogue Italia April 2006

Kate Back with Calvin

2006-04-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

LONDON, England (UPI) -- British supermodel Kate Moss has signed a new 500,000 pound ($876,000) contract with Calvin Klein, it was reported Wednesday.

Moss, 32, has successfully rebuilt her career since photos were published last year in a British tabloid of her snorting a substance alleged to be cocaine, Sky News reported Wednesday.
Scotland Yard has been investigating her alleged drug use, but legal sources predicted there would not be enough evidence to charge Moss with anything.

Although she lost several contracts when the scandal broke, Moss has been working steadily since spending a month in an Arizona treatment center, Sky News noted.

The new contract with Calvin Klein boosts her estimated annual earnings to 9 million pounds (about $15.7 million), which is nearly twice the amount she was making before the scandal.

Cooking blog-turned-book wins Blooker Prize

2006-04-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

An amateur chef's diary of her attempt to cook all 524 recipes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking has won the first literary prize devoted to books based on blogs.

Julie Powell, a secretarial temp from Queens, N.Y., told the story with such charm and humour on her weblog, or blog, that it eventually became a book, Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.

On Monday, the book was chosen ahead of 89 others for the $2,000 US Blooker Prize, a new award for books based on blogs sponsored by Lulu, a U.S. digital publishing house.

"The community aspect of blogging and the interaction with others kept me honest and kept me writing," Powell said, according to Reuters.

Her blog was published in book form by Warner Book Group's Little, Brown imprint, and went on to sell more than 100,000 copies.

Judges hailed the book for making the difficult transition from blog to book. "Powell's heartfelt, funny, and occasionally obscene tell-all about her journey of self-discovery and cholesterol is by turns funny, shocking and delicious. Those who dismiss blogging as 'mere' confessional writing and complaining about one's day job fail to appreciate just how engrossing those genres can be when handled by a talented writer like Julie Powell," said Cory Doctorow, Canadian editor of the blog BoingBoing and chair of the judging panel.

"It does the thing that all great non-fiction needs to do - makes a subject interesting because of how it's covered, not because of the subject itself," Doctorow said. "I don't care about French food but I loved this book."

2006-04-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

Spring Table

2006-04-05T12:50:00.000-07:00

Demi does Tiles

Strange But True! MJ on BET this Thursday

2006-04-04T12:29:00.000-07:00

Marc Jacobs has another reason to be stateside this week. Besides overseeing the Louis Vuitton fall campaign, on Thursday the influential designer will make his debut on Black Entertainment Television during this week’s episode of Lil’ Kim: Countdown To Lockdown. The six-episode, half-hour series chronicles the petite rapper’s last two weeks of freedom before surrendering herself to federal authorities after admitting to providing false testimony surrounding a 2001 shooting.

In this week’s episode, which airs at 9:30 pm EST on BET, Kim (who Jacobs calls his muse)(huh?) is trailed as she prepares for Jacobs’ September 12 fashion show. Featuring exclusive behind-the-scenes moments between the rapper and her darling designer, the show also chronicles the ensuing chaos and traffic surrounding Kim’s arrival at the presentation, as well her raucous final performance at Jacobs’ after party. “I’m gonna miss y’all,” she said fondly from the stage.

Basic Stir Fried Noodles

2006-04-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

This dish is a great starting point if you are new to stir-frying. The variations are endless. It is also perfect as an accompaniment to almost any grilled meat, fish or chicken. Also a wonderful meal by itself.

300g (10oz) fresh egg noodles (I have also used boxed angel hair pasta or linguine)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
3 shallots, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove crushed
1/4 tsp or more red pepper flakes
1 tsp ginger, sliced
3 spring onions, sliced
250g (8oz) Chinese or Napa Cabbage, shredded
1 tbsp dry sherry or white wine
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
3 tbsp basil, chopped

1. Cook the fresh egg noodles in a large pot of boiling water for 3-4 minutes. If using boxed noodles follow directons on package. Drain, rinse in cold water and set aside.

2. Heat the oil in a large wok or frying pan over a high heat, then add the shallots, garlic, red pepper flakes, and ginger and stir-fry for 1 minute. Add the spring onions and cabbage and stir well using swift stirring and tossing movements, making sure all the vegetables are lightly covered in oil. After about 3 minutes, add the sherry or white wine and stir-fry for another minute.

3. Add the noodles, soy and oyster sauce and stir and toss over a high heat for 2-3 minutes, until the noodles are hot and evenly coated. Stir in the basil and season with more soy sauce if desired.

We are Almost at the Weekend........

2006-03-31T14:02:00.000-08:00

Deep Breath - inhale ... exhale.

One more time - inhale ... ... exhale.

Marie-Antoinette to Screen at Cannes in Competition

2006-03-30T17:22:00.000-08:00

PARIS (Hollywood Reporter) - With a month to go before the Cannes Film Festival lineup is unveiled, dozens of movies have yet to be seen by selectors, but some certainties have emerged about what will be screening on the Croisette in May. Already, a good quarter of the 20-plus competition titles are in place. After rumors that Sofia Coppola was leaning toward a September premiere in Venice, her French-shot period drama "Marie-Antoinette," starring Kirsten Dunst in the title role, is now a lock for a competition slot.

This means that come May there will be a clip of the movie, a press conference, and interviews on the Cannes Wesbite. Also, it could win the Palme D'Or or another prize.

2006-03-30T15:06:00.000-08:00

Minkoff @ Flickr

2006-03-30T15:03:00.000-08:00

Flair (Italy) April 2006

Bonnie Fuller: She's Just Like US!

2006-03-29T15:00:00.000-08:00

March 27, 2006 NY Times

Onetime Editor of Glamour Writes of Some Last Straws

Halfway through her new book, "The Joys of Much Too Much," Bonnie Fuller, the legendarily driven magazine editor, explains why celebrity weeklies are so popular.

"I think these stories humanize celebrities and make our readers feel so much better because they can see that celebrities aren't perfect," Ms. Fuller writes. "Not even they have a professional hair person and full-blown body makeup every day."

Ms. Fuller — the former editor of Cosmopolitan, Glamour and Us Weekly, and now editorial director of American Media, where she oversees magazines including the glossy Star weekly — uses her book, out next month, to give herself her own humanizing treatment.

In the magazine business, the most talked-about parts of the book are likely to be her description of being fired by Glamour, an event from which she says she feared she would never recover. The story has been told before, but not from her point of view.

Ms. Fuller provides no graphic scenes but admits repeatedly to errors of judgment like, while she was editing Glamour, entertaining an offer from Hearst to edit Harper's Bazaar ("blatant disloyalty is never the smart course of action.")

She also angered Catherine Zeta-Jones by running a picture of her on the cover of Glamour, which implied fresh coverage. But the picture was from a year-old photo shoot and the actress's publicist had refused a new interview.

Moreover, Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, was planning a cover with Ms. Zeta-Jones two months later and appeared angry that Ms. Fuller had stolen her thunder.

Ms. Fuller writes that Ms. Zeta-Jones was unhappy because she had not been able to control her coverage.

In her new job, Ms. Fuller does not face these debates.

"Three years later, the concept of only running a cover of a celebrity who fully cooperates is truly quaint," she said. "Neither Star nor Us Weekly nor any of the other celebrity newsweeklies makes it a practice." In other bits of autobiography tucked into what is basically a how-to manual for barreling through life, Ms. Fuller says she grew up "a geeky, Canadian Jewish girl from a dysfunctional family."

Along the way, she was treated badly by the cool set and suffered from minimal fashion sense, even as she relentlessly pursued a career in fashion journalism — propelled, she said, by her insecurities.

At Cosmopolitan and Glamour, she did not take maternity leaves, setting a whole new standard for pregnant editors. "I'm not embarrassed to say I was reading proofs in the delivery room," she writes.

If her experience at Glamour has not permanently shut Ms. Fuller out of ever working at Condé Nast again, perhaps a dig in the book at Ms. Wintour will.

Ms. Wintour, she writes, "supposedly once said that a woman should carry only a small clutch bag because a shoulder strap ruins the line of the clothes."

Ms. Fuller ignored the small-bag dictum. "I'd call my on-the-way-to-work look more Ellis Island than Fifth Avenue," she wrote. "I have more important ways to spend my time in the morning than agonizing over my choice of tote."

2006-03-29T14:56:00.000-08:00

I received The Daily (finally) this week in the mail!

2006-03-29T14:54:00.000-08:00

French Elle

Tagliatelle with Chicken

2006-03-28T13:11:00.000-08:00

So Simple & So Good!

Serves 2
200g (6½oz) tagliatelle or thick flat pasta (I like to use fresh fetuccine)
1 tbsp olive oil
130g (4½oz) pancetta or chopped bacon
2 skinless chicken breasts, cut into thin slices
Zest of 1 lemon
1x142ml (4½fl oz) pot single cream (US cooks use Half & Half)
3tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
Parmesano Reggiano, freshly grated, to serve

1. Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water, according to the instructions on the packet, until it is al dente.

2. While the pasta is cooking, heat the oil in a large frying pan and cook the pancetta for 1 minute. Add the chicken and sauté for 3-4 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked and slightly coloured. Stir in the lemon zest and then pour in the cream. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 2 minutes. Season well with salt (I say easy on the salt if you are using bacon. You can always add more later) and freshly ground black pepper. Keep warm.

3. Drain the pasta, return it to the saucepan and pour the chicken and sauce over it. Sprinkle with parsley and serve immediately with plenty of freshly grated Parmesan

2006-03-28T10:23:00.000-08:00

Vogue Japan May 2006

2006-03-28T10:19:00.000-08:00

Harper's Bazaar Australia April 2006
Cate Blanchett

Hamish Bowles to Edit "Vogue Living"

2006-03-28T09:30:00.000-08:00

WWD: AT HOME WITH HAMISH.
Vogue Living is a go for November, with Vogue’s European editor at large, Hamish Bowles, at the helm. A spokesman for the magazine confirmed a 13th issue will be published this year, devoted to home, culture and style, and will ship to most Vogue subscribers and to newsstands.

The special issue was given approval in the past two weeks, after a months-long internal debate at Condé Nast about whether the company should take on any more new projects this year. In August, speaking about the development of the Condé Nast business magazine, chief executive officer Charles Townsend said definitively: “This takes us through 2007….Between [the launches of] Cookie and Men’s Vogue and this business publication, I would say our plate is rather full.”

Since then, Vogue editor in chief and the ever-extending brand’s editorial director, Anna Wintour, and Vogue group publisher Tom Florio seem to have beguiled executives and gotten the go-ahead — with the strong, albeit very early, numbers on Men’s Vogue solidifying their case. Condé Nast isn’t calling this an official launch, but the pattern is the same as Men’s Vogue, and Wintour’s editorial letter in Vogue this month teases that she hopes to launch Vogue Living “in coming years.”

Bowles has been the inside favorite to edit a Vogue Living offshoot — appropriately, Hamish means “homey or cozy” in Yiddish. But his busy travel schedule and infrequent trips to the Vogue offices had insiders wondering if he would be willing to spend more time in New York to work on the project. Vogue fashion news and features director Sally Singer’s name evidently also came up, though Singer is said to be too integral to the mother ship for Wintour to give her up to a potential launch.

While the U.S. version of Vogue Living — which already exists in Australia, Brazil and Italy — will undoubtedly be brimming with slick, seductive images of the glitterati at home, photos of Wintour’s country house on Long Island in the March issue of World of Interiors surprised media watchers accustomed to viewing her as the reigning arbiter of chic. Said one editor: “It was so chintzy and English. It looked like one big overstuffed pillow. It actually made me like her more because I thought, ‘Maybe her style isn’t so rarefied.’”

2006-03-27T15:03:00.000-08:00

W Jewelry Spring 2006

2006-03-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

Vogue Spain April 2006

2006-03-24T17:34:00.000-08:00

Paris Vogue April 2006

2006-03-24T13:07:00.000-08:00

Cup Couture
High Fashion Sleeves for Your Coffee Cup
Viv says, "Its like fashion week everyday for your coffee!"

2006-03-24T12:55:00.000-08:00

Minkoff @ Flickr

2006-03-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

Vogue Russia April 2006

Paris Vogue April 2006 Sofia / Marie Antoinette

2006-03-23T15:55:00.001-08:00

2006-03-23T15:55:00.000-08:00

2006-03-23T15:52:00.001-08:00

2006-03-23T15:52:00.000-08:00

2006-03-23T15:51:00.001-08:00

2006-03-23T15:51:00.000-08:00

Harper's Bazaar US April 2006 Kate Moss

2006-03-22T16:17:00.000-08:00

One of My Favorite Recipes From Nigella Lawson

2006-03-22T09:29:00.000-08:00

SOBA NOODLES WITH SESAME SEEDS

Nigella says: I love the Japanese way of eating cold noodles. I just lift a bowl to my face, fork furiously and slurp. I love eating these as they are, in huge quantities and - preferably - alone. Because they’re served cold, you can profitably keep leftovers for midnight fridge-raiding later. Boxed into foil containers, they are the perfect, if unconventional, food to take along for a picnic.

Ingredients:
75g sesame seeds
salt
250g soba noodles
2 teaspoons rice vinegar
5 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons honey
2 teaspoons sesame oil
5 spring onions

Instructions:
Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan over a high heat until they look golden brown, and tip them into a bowl.

Bring a large pan of water to the boil and add some salt. Put in the soba noodles and cook them for about 6 minutes (or according to packet instructions) until they are tender but not mushy. Have a bowl of iced water waiting to plunge them into after draining.

In the bowl you are going to serve them in, mix the vinegar, soy sauce, honey and oil. Then finely slice the spring onions and put them into the bowl with the cooled, drained noodles and mix together thoroughly before adding the sesame seeds and tossing again.

Leave the sesame seed noodles for about half an hour to let the flavours develop, although this is not absolutely necessary or sometimes even possible.

Serves 4 as part of a meal; or 2 when eaten, gratifyingly, as they are.

2006-03-21T13:39:00.000-08:00

Harper's Bazaar US April 2006
Sharon Stone

2006-03-20T13:38:00.000-08:00

Kate Addict!

2006-03-17T13:37:00.000-08:00

Dita von Teese

2006-03-17T13:24:00.000-08:00

Kate Spade at Cranes
Some of it I Love, but I'm not spending $300+ for personalized stationery, you know?

2006-03-17T10:40:00.000-08:00

Here's Another Collage I Like by Minkoff @ Flicker

Interview with Project Runway's Santino Rice

2006-03-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

From the Village Voice

Were you happy with who made it to the final three? That was my ultimate goal, to be on the show, and I knew I was going to make it. Upon showing up with my first garment, the garment I had to make at home, I looked at it, questioned it, was unsure of whether or not I was going to be able to qualify with it. I thought I was going to show up and everyone would have these amazing articles, and it wasn't like that.

That part you don't see is my humbleness. It comes across like I'm God's gift to fashion, and that's totally not . . . the best artists, talents, writers have [insecurities]. People I've worked with who have this blind confidence, it's usually just like they're drinking their own Kool-Aid.

Did you think there was some manipulation of your character, and did that bother you? I suspect there was a tendency to air every negative comment you said about other contestants, and leave out insults made by others. Everybody else was saying stuff as well. That's the part of the show where you're supposed to give your opinion on things. Whereas in real life, I don't really give my opinions like that very freely. And you come across looking like you're jealous or just an asshole. The thing was, I had the most cutting comments and some of the best sound bites, so it made sense to make me the villain, the man you love to hate.

What do you wish they had shown? I don't mind being the butt of my own jokes, and you don't see my sense of humor 'til maybe the seventh or eighth episode, when the Tim Gunn impressions start coming out. So people don't understand that sometimes my remarks are very tongue and cheek.

What did you think of Chloe's and Daniel's collections? Oh god. I know I did a great job, I know a lot of people think I should have won. At this point, I don't want to say anything bad about any of the designers. What really matters is what a designer does after this opportunity.

I thought Kara Janx's collection [during New York's Fashion Week] was better than anything she had on the show. Yeah, I do too. The hardest part of doing the collection was not designing, but playing by the rules and budgeting the $8,000, and keeping track of every single receipt. I would have done like chinchilla coats, some things that were definitely more than $8,000 worth of material.

I don't think I'm showing my Achilles' heel by saying that, because most great designers are really horrible with money.

So Kara wasn't held to an $8,000 limit? I've read that she said she was, but the bottom line is, when she turned in her receipts, did anyone really care to count them? I'm not taking anything away from her, I'm just saying that being in that situation, she had a freedom to her collection that Chloe, Daniel, and myself didn't.

Of course, the big critique at the end was Nina Garcia wondering if the judges had beaten you into submission—into showing what was regarded as safer than what you had been giving them before. I thought that was such bullshit. I felt that the judges still had some animosity toward me regardless of what they were saying to me, as far as like "Oh, I belong in fashion." Oh, why thank you—now I'm a real fashion designer 'cause you just validated my existence.

There are still a lot of things in those pieces that you can tell are mine. My combinations of fabrics—the vintage lace with the satin-back crepe, the trims I used, the layering of the georgette over the top of the chiffon. But sometimes—what's the expression, pearls before swine?—maybe I should have just hot-glued trim over everything.

I can look at Chloe's and Daniel's collections and see a lot of fit problems with garments, but I've watched my collection over and over and over and over again now, and I'm looking and am like, you know what? They just had to say something to me that was negative, and that's what they went for.

What I presented was more of a logical progression from trying to get my point across on the show and maybe sometimes shooting past the mark a little bit. I always felt like doing too much was better than doing not enough. So I think it is the logical progression for a designer who was doing things like that, and then finally getting time to edit himself and do some things that are more subtle. Sunburst pleating in the wire hem is not easy, working with mousseline is not easy. Combining leather with silk in the same garment is not easy.

So you felt like the judges were out for you? Definitely. I have an awesome bullshit detector. There were times when I didn't know why I was overlooked, why I didn't get an A, why I didn't win the spelling bee. Whatever.

I called them on the fact that I know my clothes fit. This is another thing that came into play, because they asked me had I seen my clothes on a model before coming to New York. No. One, you had to keep it completely secret. It was part of the contract.

So you couldn't even put them on a model? No, I felt like that would be cheating. And this is the part that gets left out. We see 87 models in Michael Kors's studio during the casting, and all the models I pick consequently are the girls working most in New York during Fashion Week. So none of them show up for me.

You think it was because in the beginning, you argued with the judges a lot? Totally. And Michael Kors later said, "Oh, you just think you're smarter than everybody else, and you think that if you just adding shit onto your garments . . . " There's no doubt that I know fabric, that I know color. I have a vision, I think from a lot of different angles, and I look at what I'm doing from a lot of different perspectives. I don't think any other designer on the show did that, ever.

Bottom line is, I respect judges. But at the same time, who are you to tell me anything? This show is about designers who can think up an idea, make the pattern, cut and sew the fabric, style the look. If you can't do that, than I don't think you should be judging that competition.

So you felt that what Michael Kors said had a lot more credence than what Nina Garcia said? Yes, and still, at that—he doesn't make patterns. I wouldn't even want to guess the last time he sat behind a sewing machine. That's not to say he's any less of a designer in the real world, because he's got an amazing brand and I admire what he's doing.

Do you keep in contact with any of the other contestants? Andraé. And I actually like Zulema. I think she's burnt out from the experience, and I hope she finds a way to come to terms with it. She knows what she wants, she's super talented, but she got caught up in some of the ridiculousness.

Was there any type of secret romance or relationship on set? We never see any of that on Project Runway. In the contract you're not supposed to have any sexual relations with anyone on the show, so there was no sex. That is why it's a pretty amazing tension in the room.

Sexual tension? I never went that long in my life. You just radiate this crazy power. You and Andraé seemed so close . . . He's got a boyfriend, and that's the last thing on my mind, as much as I joke about it.

What was up with Guadalupe during the reunion? What was she on? She had about 10 martinis within 15 minutes.

What's up between you and Jay from last season? Do you consider yourself a much better designer? And much funnier. On every level, just more. And that'll come across really nice, I'm sure. Hahaha.

Are there any particular designers you admire for the path they've taken or for their particular aesthetic? I'd say the usual suspects: Adrian, Oscar de la Renta, Valentino, Alexander McQueen. I look at Valentino and de la Renta, and it's so amazingly beautiful; it's always on point.

Who would you love to dress? I keep putting it out there that I want to dress Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Like, simultaneously.

In WWD, Anna Wintour was quoted as saying, "We were offered Project Runway first, and we turned it down. Vogue is not in the business of making entertainment out of the struggles of new designers." What do you think of that statement? Wow. Wow. That's great. I love Anna Wintour.

I don't know what other designers are going to take from this experience, but I know that with the talent I have, I made the right decision taking this route. Not only do I want people to subscribe to my particular design aesthetic, I also want people to subscribe to my personality, my point of view on everything from politics to religion to how spicy your Thai food should be.
But isn't there the fear of being another throwaway reality star? Even before I did this show, people in L.A. knew me. If you want to look amazing, wear Santino. If you want to have a successful, effective show, then work with Santino.

I could decide to participate in every reality show from now 'til the end of time, and you could never, ever take away anything from my brain and talent. It's there forever.

DISCUSS! Is Phoebe Chanel's New Heir Apparent?

2006-03-16T14:14:00.000-08:00

From FashionWeekDaily

Thursday, March 16, 2006(NEW YORK)
Did you hear the one about Phoebe Philo and Chanel? Sources close to the French luxury goods house say that the ex-Chloé designer has been secretly added to the payroll at Chanel, the line coincidentally helmed by a former Chloé designer—Karl Lagerfeld. The buzz surfacing in Paris is that Philo—what with her charming and feminine demeanor—is said to be morphing into a “muse” to the house, with some going so far as to use the term “heir apparent.” A Chanel spokeswoman in Paris said she had heard the rumor as well—from Lagerfeld, himself, in fact. “He was laughing about it,” the publicist said, “so maybe Phoebe wants to be here, but she’s not here at all.” Philo, who is thought to still be under an undefined non-compete clause with Chloé, was not available for comment.

I'm posting this............

2006-03-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

Just because I can!
Hi PSH!

Madonna's Kids Have to Pick Up Their Rooms...or No More $500 Facials

2006-03-16T12:15:00.000-08:00

From Jossip

Until the Brangelina baby is unveiled, Madonna's daughter Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon is the most famous kid in the world. At nine years old, the girl has already developed a sense of style and attitude. Not to mention expensive tastes.

This wee fashion plate, like mom, eschews prissy frocks in favor of pushing the limits of fashion, favors clothes from boutique Bunny London, facials at London's Eve Lom, manicures from Daniel Galvin's salon and posh department store makeup.

Facials? At nine? Aren't most third grade girls getting their braces off and signing up for softball? Well, at least mom lays down some ground rules for her kid.

"My daughter has a problem picking up in her room," Madonna told Ladies' Home Journal. "So if you leave your clothes on the floor, they're going to be gone when you come home. She has to earn all of her clothes back by being tidy."

Did you hear that Lola? Don't leave your mini Prada heels and Stella McCartney jean jackets on the floor, or you'll have to wear your mom's leotards. At least until you learn to put those manicured hands to good use.

2006-03-15T11:41:00.000-08:00

Port to Port [Press]
Check out Mav's inspiring blog (if you haven't already)!

2006-03-15T11:38:00.000-08:00

Vogue Mexico March 2006

Hello My Muse! This One's for You!

2006-03-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

Found on Flickr

Sharon Stone Desperately Seeking PSH!

2006-03-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

SHARON STONE is the latest celebrity lusting after Best Actor Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman. Basic Instinct star Sharon, who turned 48 last week, has joined the queue of ladies eager to catch Philip’s eye, confessing she finds the actor sexy because he is so talented. She says: "Philip Seymour Hoffman is my most kissable dude. If I could make out with anybody, it would be him." Meanwhile, Sharon admits she's constantly on the look out for a younger man to keep her interested in romance. She added: "When men are five or seven years older than I am I find myself thinking: 'Oh he's ancient. He'll be asleep before dinner.'"

2006-03-14T13:41:00.000-08:00

UK Vogue April 2006
Rachel Weisz

2006-03-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

Vogue Australia April 2006
Sienna Miller

2006-03-13T13:04:00.000-08:00

Gretchen Mol as "The Notorious Bettie Page"
Pictures by Jeff Koons from Sunday's NY Times Magazine

From Runway to Reality & Back? A Moment with Daniel V

2006-03-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

Thursday, March 09, 2006
from Fashion Week Daily

(NEW YORK) Last night’s Tresemmé party for Project Runway was like a boozy weekend marathon of the addictive show; everyone from Tim Gunn to Grace the Model milled about the Tribeca Grand with champagne glasses in hand. Jay McCarroll ran through a stairwell shouting, “I’m getting decrowned! I’m getting de-crowned!” and Kara Janx shared a toast with Project Runway’s hairstylist Nathaniel Hawkins—you know, the one who helped the models into those Barbie wigs for the notorious design-a-doll challenge.

In the middle of it all was Daniel Vosovic, the 24-year old FIT grad whom many picked to win. The sharp-talking, sharply cheekboned designer ended up losing the Project Runway title to winner Chloe Dao, but judging from the swarms of beauty editors taking his photo last night—including W’s Bryn Kenny, Teen Vogue’s Holly Siegal, and Good Housekeeping’s Holly Crawford—he’s sure to be collaborating with Target on a secondary line in a matter of months.

In the meantime, he answered some questions for The Daily…

So it’s finally over. Are you okay? Okay? I’m ecstatic right now! It’s finally over, for the good or the bad, this entire thing is over. I feel like it’s been a year in the making, because auditions were this time last year and it’s been a very long, very busy process. It’s nice to end all of it with all these people watching the show together, and coming out to support me. That whole back row is my friends.

Santino feels like he was made to appear a little over the top. Do you? No, but sometimes you didn’t see the way I reacted to certain situations. I was sad when Andre left, but someone has to leave, and when it gets to the point when you’re not trimming fat anymore, and it comes down to raw talent, you have to cut someone.

You’re getting swarmed at this party. Does that happen every day? Yeah, I can’t even ride the subway or get coffee without people asking me if I won. Hopefully now that it’s over, people will stop asking me every day, being like, “hey, you’re on Project Runway!”

You really want people to stop coming up to you? Well… yeah, I don’t know!

2006-03-09T11:32:00.000-08:00

PSH & Resse are having the Best Week Ever!

Soooooo Boring & Annoying!

2006-03-09T11:30:00.000-08:00

April 2006 Vanity Fair US
Teri Hatcher

2006-03-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

Vogue Italia March 2006
Amanada Moore