Marc Jacobs and Porn Star?
From today’s PageSix:
Marc Jacobs kicked off Fashion Week with a documentary on the behind-the-scenes life of a designer - although many viewers would have likely been more interested in the secret tryst he’s been having with a porn star.
Jacobs has been quietly seeing adult film actor Erik Rhodes and whisking him away to secret locations, sources told Page Six. The new fling is likely the reason things have cooled again between Jacobs and former male escort Jason Preston, whom he’s dated on and off since 2005.
Sources said Jacobs’ affair with Rhodes - who describes himself as “Addictive. Wild. Open” on his ManNet.com profile - began last year when the designer invited Rhodes to join him and Preston for a three-way. Jacobs allegedly continued the fling with Rhodes one on one after that.
“Jason thought he and Marc were exclusive again,” said our insider. “But Marc is sleeping with this porn star behind his back, and sneaking him to Paris for hot sex.”
Rhodes seems an unlikely partner for the flamboyant fashionista, who counts Winona Ryder and Ashley Olsen as close friends. The guy-on-guy actor proudly wrote on his profile that he is “full-blown gay” and starred in adult movies such as “Flesh,” “Flex,” and “Beefcake.”
When we saw Preston Thursday night at the Cinema Society bash sponsored by W magazine for the documentary “Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton,” he was keeping his distance from the designer.
The two were on opposite ends of the room, and a fellow party guest noted the duo seemed to be avoiding each other.
Jacobs has done a couple of stints in rehab for drug abuse, and Preston made waves when he had Jacobs’ full name tattooed on his forearm. The boytoy told HX magazine last year they were “engaged.”
Despite the hot designer’s extracurricular activities, we hear Preston still plans to attend tomorrow’s Jacobs show with Aly Hilfiger as his date.
Asked about Rhodes, Jacobs told Page Six through a spokesperson, “He’s a really nice guy and we are just friends.”
Source: NY Post: PageSix
Appel & Frank Babes & Babies Event in San Francisco
Appel & Frank is hosting another shopping event in San Francisco. This one is called Babes & Babies: Hot moms-to-be and hip grandmas can shop from 50 talented designers offering unique and adorable clothing, accessories and more for their trendy tots!
Admission is 2 for $8 at www.appelandfrank.com or $5 at the door, and includes a fabulous goodie bag.
WHEN: Sunday, Feburary 10th from 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
WHERE: JCC of San Francisco, Kanbar Hall - 3200 California Street @ Presidio (parking available for cars and strollers)
Don’t miss the event that 7×7 magazine voted as “Best Mom-and-Tot Shopping!”
The first 250 guests will receive GOODIE BAGS filled with fabulous products and offers from:
Attune
BabyBanz
Baby Boot Camp
Bay Area Homebirth Collective
Circle of Friends
CityMommy
CozmoDeck
It’s Yoga Kids
Mommy Track’d LLC
MomSpit
Nest Maternity
New Skool
Nicer
Peekadoole Kidsclub
TruKid
Tutu School
*A portion of the door proceeds will be donated to EcoMom Alliance.
Appel & Frank Launches in San Diego
For all of you Southern California gals: after four years of hosting highly anticipated and successful shopping events in San Francisco, Appel & Frank is launching in San Diego!
Appel & Frank brings together hip and trendy fashionistas with talented, emerging designers for upscale trunk shows filled with style and fashion.
The premier San Diego shopping event: Spring to Style
Sunday, March 9, 2008 from noon to 4 p.m.
at the ABBEY (2825 Fifth Ave. @ Olive, near Balboa Park)
Rachel Zoe TV: Hollywood’s Infamous Stylist to star in Bravo Reality TV Show
The inevitable has finally arrived: Rachel Zoe is getting her own reality show.
The 36-year-old stylist to the stars has confirmed to Fashion Week Daily that she has signed a deal with Bravo to shoot a weekly one-hour show that will air either in early summer around June or in September during New York’s Fashion Week. “It’s not about exposing my clients or being invasive into their personal lives–unless they want to participate,” Zoe said of the A-list celebrities she works with, which include Demi Moore, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Garner, and Liv Tyler. She added that it took her about a year of contemplation to agree to do the project. “It’s about a comfort level,” she said, admitting, “I [initially] didn’t want to do a book, either; it took me two years to say yes to that.”
According to Zoe, the show, which is yet to be titled, starts shooting in the New Year for eight weeks. Zoe, who recently put her Hollywood Hills home on the market for close to $3 million, will be in New York for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, where she will profile designers and “cover” the week’s worth of shows and parties. But she’s quick to emphasize that she’s not doing the show to necessarily illustrate the glamorous life those who don’t know her assume she leads. “It’s dangerous for me to put myself at the forefront,” she concedes, “but with the TV project I want to educate people who are also asking me fashion questions. I want people to understand what I do and more about the fashion business.”
Zoe, who’s no stranger to reality TV, having played herself on The Simple Life and Bravo’s own Project Runway (the latter of which is co-produced by Harvey Weinstein, who recently acquired Halston and tapped Zoe to serve on his relaunch advisory board), added that she’s also in the initial stages of creating a large-scale charity project benefiting ovarian cancer. “I have so much respect for Angelina Jolie,” she said. “I want to help. It’s time.”
MERLE GINSBERG
Christian Louboutin’s Tiny Custom-Designed Shoes
From today’s PageSix:
When your dad is Tom Cruise and mom is Katie Holmes, you’re guaranteed the finest footwear, even if you’re still younger than 2 years old. Christian Louboutin has custom-designed a pair of shoes for tiny Suri Cruise, OK! magazine reports. The company had made a mold of the tot’s feet and hand-crafted a pair of bespoke shoes for her. “She’ll be the youngest client,” said a source.
Appel & Frank: ‘Stockings & Stilettos’ Shopping Event
Save the Date: Appel & Frank’s next shopping event will be held on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The shopping event will take place at The Regency Center, Sutter Room at 1270 Sutter Street @ Van Ness Ave. The first 300 guests to purchase tickets online are guaranteed a gift bag!
“Stockings & Stilettos”
Shop for all of your holiday gifts from over 70 talented designers. Indulge in complimentary cocktails and beauty treatments while finding fabulous and unique items for everyone on your list … including yourself!
Admission is 2 for $15 online and $10 each at the door, and includes a goodie bag.
*A portion of the door proceeds will benefit Friends of the Urban Forest.
Kate Moss Tumbles Down Harper’s Bazaar’s Best Dressed Women in Britain 2007 List
Kate Moss got a triple slap in the face from Harper’s Bazaar fashion magazine, whose best dressed women in Britain 2007 list comes out Thursday.
Not only did the supermodel slide down the glossy monthly style bible’s rankings, but she was also beaten by two models linked to her ex-boyfriends and a starlet dubbed “the new Kate Moss”.
This year, Moss — who topped the 2004 list, came second in 2005 and third in 2006 — plunged to 10th.
She was deemed less fashionable than rocker Pete Doherty’s on-off lover, Romanian model Irina Lazareanu (ninth), and Belgian model Anouck Lepere (eighth) who is fiancee of Jefferson Hack, who himself is the father of Moss’s daughter.
Russian model Natalia Vodianova was ranked the best dressed woman of 2007, followed by British actress Thandie Newton and British model Agyness Deyn — who has been nicknamed “the new Kate Moss” by the British press.
Outside the top 10, Jemima Khan, ex-wife of Pakistani cricketer-turned- politician Imran Khan was ranked 12th; US singer Madonna came 15th and singer Bob Geldof’s daughter Peaches was 17th.
British actresses Sienna Miller (18th), Keira Knightley (21st), Rachel Weisz (22nd), Kate Winslet (23rd) and Emma Watson (24th) came further down the list.
The full list appears in the December issue of Harper’s Bazaar.
Harper’s Bazaar best dressed women of 2007:
- Natalia Vodianova (model)
- Thandie Newton (actress)
- Agyness Deyn (model)
- Helen Mirren (actress)
- Lily Allen (singer)
- Emily Blunt (actress)
- J. K. Rowling (authoress)
- Anouck Lepere (model)
- Irina Lazareanu (model)
- Kate Moss (model)
Lagerfeld Confidential: Karl Lagerfeld Remains a Mystery
The following is an article about the new documentary on Karl Lagerfeld, called Lagerfeld Confidential:
PARIS (AP) — A mantelpiece is strewn with a dozen iPods and hundreds of chunky silver rings. Drawers are full of starched shirt collars. Piles of books stretch skyward like teetering towers of Pisa.
This close-up look at Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld’s lavish life is shown in “Lagerfeld Confidential” — a new French movie condensing two years of the ponytailed designer’s frenetic activity into a riveting hour and a half.
But despite the movie’s focus on the fashion world’s most enigmatic icon, Lagerfeld remains shrouded in mystery.
Like a shadow, the camera trails Lagerfeld — who also designs for Italian luxury brand Fendi and his own eponymous label — as he churns out hurried sketches, takes a victory lap on the catwalk to thundering applause, jets to Monaco and New York and shoots hunky male models clad only in strategically placed fur.
While present in nearly every shot, Lagerfeld remains distant, aloof and ultimately unknowable behind his signature dark shades.
“I don’t want to be a reality in people’s lives,” Lagerfeld tells the camera in one scene. “I want to be a ghost.”
The movie — which opens in France next week and is set for U.S. release later this month — is the product of a two-year collaboration between Lagerfeld and Rodolphe Marconi, a dashing young French director who shot more than 300 hours of footage of Lagerfeld at work and play.
Marconi said it was Lagerfeld’s hard public image that drew him to the designer.
“I was sure there was a real human behind” the facade, Marconi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “I wanted to show it.”
In some scenes, Marconi just about pulls it off.
We see Lagerfeld do things that regular people do, such as chow down on his version of a TV dinner: a chef-prepared meal served in his hotel room. In another scene, the 69-year-old designer beams with childlike glee as he tries on a gold lame baseball jacket at a Christian Dior boutique.
But mostly he is impenetrable, shooting off pointed, witty remarks in his rapid-fire French to his ever-present, adoring entourage.
“Ohh! Ahh,” coo the members of his inner circle in one scene, as Lagerfeld shows off his photos of a male model.
Marconi, a 31-year-old actor-turned-director, often comes off as yet another Lagerfeld lackey. He rushes to open the car door for Lagerfeld, guffaws loudly at his jokes and nearly drips obsequiousness toward the designer.
In their one-on-one interviews, Marconi tiptoes around the hard questions, asking Lagerfeld about his childhood and sexuality with a trepidation so palpable that on one occasion an exasperated Lagerfeld scolds him for it.
“You either see (what you want to ask) more clearly or we’ll go on to another subject,” he says abruptly.
Asked about his love life, Lagerfeld skirts the question and instead criticizes domestic partnership laws in France. He keeps personal revelations to a minimum, referring obliquely to a “tragedy” — Lagerfeld had a widely known relationship with a French aristocrat who died of AIDS in 1989 — but going no further.
“Lagerfeld Confidential” pounds home his motto — carpe diem — with about as much subtlety as a sledgehammer. Again and again, Lagerfeld proclaims he has no ties to the past and lives only for the present moment.
“If it was really better before, then we should all just kill ourselves right away,” he says with characteristic dryness.
Marconi said when he approached Lagerfeld with his movie proposal, the designer’s assistant told him “more than 100 people” had already asked permission to make such a film.
Marconi said he was not sure why Lagerfeld chose him: “Perhaps because I didn’t go into it with an agenda.”
Lagerfeld gained a reputation by reviving a flagging Chanel after taking over in 1982, and in 2004 designed a collection for Swedish fast-fashion retailer H&M that made his work available to customers with smaller purses. In a sign of his celebrity status, Lagerfeld released a CD of his favorite songs and a weight-loss guide filled with the secrets that allowed him to shed 80 pounds.
Lagerfeld said Marconi’s film “ended up annoying me.”
“Let’s say that Rodolphe Marconi was able to observe and capture what I wanted to play for him,” he was quoted as saying in French Vogue. “It’s not that I lie, it’s that I don’t owe the truth to anyone. After all, I’m not facing a judge, but a director.”
Asked whether he thought he had gotten to know Lagerfeld, Marconi said, “I have the feeling I know him now … though in truth, you never really know anyone.”
Fetish Shoes: Christian Louboutin Teams Up with David Lynch
This is just HOT! I’ve always been a fan of David Lynch and find his movies, etc. to be often astoundingly beautiful. As for Christian Louboutin, I’ve liked his shoes, but never been head-over-heels for them — until now. The pairing of these two makes me want to run out and buy a pair of these fetish shoes (along with a few photographs, of course), even if I couldn’t actually wear them out. They’re simply gorgeous!
The following is an interview with Louboutin:
With their red soles and vertiginous heels, there’s already something a little subversive about Christian Louboutin’s shoes. But in Fetish, his photo collaboration with David Lynch—a man who knows a little something about kinkiness himself—Louboutin took the black leather gloves off. These shoes and boots are definitely not made for walking. The show opened at the Galerie du Passage in Paris yesterday; we caught up with the designer after the launch party.
How did the collaboration come about?
David had a big exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in March and he asked me to do some shoes for it. Out of that, I thought of asking him to do some photographs for me—he’s my favorite director. I said, “I’m thinking of designing fetish shoes for you,” and he didn’t let me finish my sentence. He said yes right away.
Why were you interested in fetish shoes?
I’ve always heard about shoe fetishists, both men and women. It became a sort of exercise, one that allows me to do things I can’t do in my regular line. Making these shoes is closer to my primary joy, my drawing, because they’re devoted to static pleasure; there’s no motion, they’re for the bed. Real-life shoes are less like your imagination.
What was working with David like?
It was a full process with two people. David has a huge will to please a person; he’s really dedicated. I stayed the whole two days—I’m even in some of the pictures.
Did he have any requirements? Any requests?
He said, “No bones.” He didn’t want the girls to be too skinny, so we chose two models from the Crazy Horse. And he asked for sunglasses that would look like the black bar over girls’ faces in pornography from the twenties and thirties, so we built the glasses in my atelier.
Will you work together again?
Yes, when we both decide the project is right.
Are the shoes for sale?
At first, they weren’t going to be. But there were so many people who wanted to buy a photograph and the shoes in it. So, there are five prints of each photo, and five pairs of corresponding shoes available.
—Nicole Phelps
Photo: Denko Ivanisevic
Posted by Style File
Source: style.com
Best Fashion Design and Apparel Design Schools and Programs 2008
US News & World Report has announced its list of the best fashion design and apparel design programs for 2008:
* Academy of Art University
* Ashland University
* Baylor University
* Brenau University
* California College of the Arts
* Centenary College
* College of St. Catherine
* College of Visual Arts
* College of the Atlantic
* Columbia College
* Columbus College of Art and Design
* Dominican University
* Drexel University
* Fashion Institute of Technology
* Framingham State College
* Iowa State University
* Kent State University
* Lindenwood University
* Marist College
* Maryland Institute College of Art
* Marymount University
* Massachusetts College of Art
* Meredith College
* Michigan State University
* Montclair State University
* Moore College of Art and Design
* Mount Mary College
* New School
* Otis College of Art and Design
* Parsons School of Design
* Philadelphia University
* Pratt Institute
* Purdue University–West Lafayette
* Rhode Island School of Design
* Savannah College of Art and Design
* School of the Art Institute of Chicago
* Stephens College
* Texas Christian University
* Texas Tech University
* Texas Woman’s University
* University of Delaware
* University of North Texas
* University of the Incarnate Word
* Ursuline College
* Virginia Commonwealth University
* Washington University in St. Louis
* Woodbury University
In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting profiles of these schools to provide those budding fashion designers among us with more information.
WWD Fashion Career Expo: New York Fashion Week’s Premier Hiring Event
NEW YORK, Sept. 4 /PRNewswire/ — With Fashion Week around the corner, the city is buzzing with the sights and sounds of the style world, giving fashion professionals ambitions of advancing their own career in the industry. Thanks to the WWD Fashion Career Expo, these aspiring job seekers will have the chance to meet with decision-makers of some of fashion’s biggest names.
Now in its second year, WWD Fashion Career Expo offers unparalleled access to jobs in fashion, retail and beauty. More than 50 companies will be on site conducting face-to-face interviews including Tiffany & Co., Catherine Malandrino, Carole Hochman Design Group, POLO Ralph Lauren, Movado, Paul Stuart, BCBG Max Azria Group, L’Occitane, Saks Fifth Avenue, among others. Recruiters are looking for qualified retail planners, buyers, merchandisers, sales associates, store managers, apparel, footwear and accessories designers, graphic designers, visual merchandisers, textile/fabric specialists, patternmakers and more.
WWD Fashion Career Expo
Friday, September 7, 2007
10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
The Metropolitan Pavilion
125 West 18th Street, Manhattan
Only $10 Admission
*Attendees must have a college degree and two years of industry work experience.
For more information on the event, please go to http://www.FashionCareerExpo.com
As an added bonus, WWD Fashion Career Expo will feature career seminars beginning at 12:30 p.m. Representatives from companies like Liz Claiborne and Guess? will discuss how to advance one’s career in fashion and reveal current opportunities.
“The WWD Fashion Career Expo event connects top companies with experienced professionals in an ultra time-effective format,” explains Bradford Rand, president & CEO of Expo International, producer of WWD Fashion Career Expo. “The highest level of experienced talent will congregate for Fashion Week, so this is the ideal time for employers to meet, interview and hire for nationwide positions. Qualified candidates can seize the opportunity to have a months worth of interviews all in one day, cutting down their job search time drastically.
“Over 50 marquee companies will be recruiting experienced industry talent at the WWD Fashion Career Expo in NY,” according to Drew Dix, executive sales director for Women’s Wear Daily Classified and fashioncareers.com. “Providing this immediate level of access to so many qualified job candidates is proving to be a major benefit for the fashion industry. Attracting good talent is the cornerstone of success.”
Tom Foley, CEO of The Gromwell Group said his company was very enthused about sponsoring this hiring event, especially during Fashion Week. He added that the expo will address a lot of Gromwell’s clients’ local and national staffing needs.
Companies interested in recruiting at WWD Fashion Career Expo may call Nicole Boyer at (212) 655-4505 ext. 226
About Expo International (the event’s producer)
Expo International, headquartered in New York City, was founded in 1992 by Bradford Rand, a seasoned entrepreneur who has produced nearly 500 events. The firm also is a leader in promoting equal opportunity employment through its annual Diversity Expo job fairs, and helps federal agencies and defense contractors find security-cleared professionals at its TECHEXPO Top Secret events. Fashion Career Expo, launched in 2003, has consistently connected fashion industry leaders with the finest talent at its events. Expo International also produces customized hiring events for such leading companies as Tiffany & Co., AT&T Government Solutions, and Northrop Grumman. For more information, go to http://www.FashionCareerExpo.com.
About WWD (the event’s promotional media partner)
Women’s Wear Daily is the most authoritative publication in the industry and the first read of top-level decision makers and talented professionals in the fashion, retail and beauty community. Women’s Wear Daily provides access to career opportunities through the daily paper, the WWD Fashion Career Expo hiring events and fashioncareers.com, the online career center of WWD, DNR and FN.
About Gromwell (the event’s presenting sponsor)
The Gromwell Group is recognized as the leading provider of talent and career opportunities to creative professionals within the fashion, beauty and advertising industries. With twenty-five years of experience, Gromwell has deep roots and an extensive rolodex that has made the company successful in the placement of top talent for freelance and fulltime opportunities. The Gromwell Group provides strategy and guidance to solve your creative needs and achieve your goals. The Gromwell Group represents the most talented and accomplished independent creative individuals available, matching talent to project, and facilitating creative
collaborations. The Gromwell Group ensures that client projects stays on schedule, on budget and on target. Plain and simple. Gromwell. We make you
look good.
SOURCE Expo International
A Century of the Bra: Vogue Invented the Term ‘Brassière’
The following is an article from The Independent:
The bra was invented by an engineer of German extraction called Onto Titzling in 1912. He was living in a New York boarding house, and one of his neighbours, a voluptuous opera singer called Swanhilda Olafson, complained that she needed a garment to hoist her vast bosom aloft every evening – so Titzling obliged, using some cotton, elastic and metal struts. Unfortunately, he failed to patent the device and, in the early 1930s, a Frenchman named Philippe de Brassière began making a suspiciously similar object. Titzling took him to court, but the unscrupulous Frenchman won the day. And that’s why the garment all the ladies are wearing is called a brassiere, not a titzling.
Bette Midler sang about this court case in the film Beaches, so obviously it’s true, isn’t it? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a total fabrication, based on a spoof 1971 history by Wallace Reyburn, and is just one of a thousand tales and myths that punctuate the history of the small double-dome of cloth that encases the female chest.
The bra is a thing of wondrous variety. It has been called the Hemispheres of Paradise and, less flatteringly, the Over-the-Shoulder Boulder Holder. Its function has been, paradoxically, both modest concealment and brazen revelation. It has been praised as a revolutionary garment that freed women from constriction, and has been (allegedly) burnt in public as an emblem of oppression.
It’s available in a riot of forms, including lacy, push-up, sporty, plunge-line, strapless, pointy, Cross Your Heart, conical, and Wonder. It’s a billion-pound industry in the UK, and a $15bn mega-industry in America. No other garment has so closely shadowed the history of the status of women. No other garment has had the power to reduce intelligent, rational men to drooling boys and awestruck slaves.
Exactly a hundred years ago, in 1907, the word “brassiere” was used in Vogue for the first time. But its evolution goes back three millennia. Historians have found that, while Roman women sometimes wore a band of cloth over their breasts, to restrict their growth or conceal them, the Greeks favoured a less uptight approach. Some enterprising designer realised that such a belt worn under the breasts might accentuate them, to pleasing effect. (In the hierarchy of ideas that have made the world a better place, this is up there with light bulbs and indoor plumbing.)
The brazen Minoans were streets ahead of the Greeks, however: women in Crete wore material that both supported and revealed their bare breasts, in emulation of the snake goddess – 3,000 years before the invention of glamour modelling.
While the French Revolution freed women from the corset (it was outlawed because of its fatal association with the aristocracy), elsewhere its rule continued. The big change came in the early 20th century, as women played more sport, and the corset divided into the girdle and the “bust bodice” , like a really scary bikini.
Early feminist organisations, such as the National Dress Reform Association in America, had warned against the health risks of corset-wearing and called for “emancipation garments”. By 1900, several proto-bra experiments had been conducted. Henry Lesher of Brooklyn offered ladies a rigid metallic structure, like a dustbin, to hold their bits in place. Clara P Clark’s “improved corset” came up with shoulder straps in 1874. Olivia P Flynt’s “bust supporter” offered to hold each breast in a “fabric pocket” supported by wide straps.
In 1885, Charles Moorhouse romanced lady customers with his “inflatable breast-enlarging garment”, with its rubber straps and cups. And in 1889, Herminie Cadolle invented the “soutien-gorge” (the name meant “throat-support”) as part of a two-piece undergarment, patented her idea and showed it off at the Great Exhibition. It was 1905 before she thought of selling the upper section separately.
The word “brassiere” was once a military term meaning “arm protector” (le bras being French for arm), and, by extension, ” breastplate”. It was first used in the sense we understand it during the 1890s. Manufacturers used it in 1904, but it took a mention in the pages of Vogue in 1907 to make it a milestone in fashion history. It first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1911. In that year, Britain’s new king, George V, visited France with his queen, Mary. Because of her small stature beside the king, she was known to hilarious Parisians as ” La Soutien-George”.
Credit for the first brassiere usually goes to Mary Phelps Jacob, a 19-year-old girl-about-Manhattan who, in 1910, bought a sheer evening gown for a party. The whalebone corset that was supposed to define her figure actually poked out of the plunging fabric. What was a girl to do? She and her maid dug two silk hankies out of a drawer, sewed them on to a length of pink ribbon, added some string and tucked her breasts in place. Girlfriends asked if she would make a similar device for them. Then somebody paid her a dollar to do so, and she took the hint.
The “backless brassiere” was patented on 3 November, 1914. Ms Phelps Jacob (who later married Harry Crosby, founder of the Black Sun Press, which published works by D H Lawrence, Joyce, Hemingway and Pound) didn’t do well out of her invention. Disappointed by sales, she flogged the patent to the Warner Bros Corset Company for a measly $1,500. It was later valued at $15m.
The First World War saw more and more women abandoning corsets, as they found themselves, for the first time, in uniform and factory garb. The bra began to take off – not that the fashions of the time gave it much to work with. The flat-chested “flapper” look required breasts to be flattened and bound rather than lifted and defined.
The next bra revolution was the Maidenform breakthrough in 1922. In a New York shop called Enid Frocks, a seamstress, Ida Rosenthal, spotted that women with the same chest size didn’t necessarily look right in the same bra, because the breasts were different shapes; and so cup size was born. In accentuating and lifting the bosom, rather than trying to flatten it, they bade farewell to the flapper, and paved the way for the future glamourpuss.
In the next two decades, a combination of Hollywood starriness, ever-bolder advertising, and the lure of department stores saw a colossal boom in women’s products; and the bra was, so to speak, at the forefront. Maidenform was joined by Gossard, Triumph, Spirella and Teilfit, manufacturers who fought tooth and nail to invent refinements: better fabrics, patterns, straps, cups, fibres, padded sections. As the technology became more abstruse, the garment’s name was simplified, in the 1930s, to “bra” .
The Second World War helped, with the Forces’ insistence that low-rank military women should wear bras and girdles “for protection” – especially the ludicrously conical “Torpedo” or “Bullet” bras. Step, or rather wiggle, forward the Sweater Girl, whose tight jumper was meant to show off the artificial jut of her breasts, like twin artillery shells.
The Fifties saw the pointy bra give way to a more shapely, maternal look (probably helped by the huge post-war baby boom), and the market rose exponentially, with ever-greater choices of bra, new styles, paddings, even functions: the zip-up nursing bra was born, and the 24-hour “Sweet Dreams” model.
The Sixties saw the biggest upset in the history of the garment, when Germaine Greer declared, “Bras are a ludicrous invention”, and her sister feminists insisted that they reduced women to sex objects. The key moment was the 1968 demonstration by 400 women against the Miss America beauty show at Atlantic City Convention Hall. Somebody put a “Freedom Trash Can” on the ground and encouraged protesters to throw into it girdles, nylons, bras, curlers, high-heeled shoes and other emblems of enslavement. When the can was full, someone suggested setting fire to it, but no one could obtain a permit, and the plan was, rather weedily, dropped. But the idea of “bra-burning feminists” remained a potent image in the public mind – on a level with students burning their draft cards in protest against the Vietnam War.
In the late 1960s, the head of the Canadian Lady Corset company died and his son, Larry Nadler, a Harvard-educated MBA, conducted some intense market research. Women, he discovered, didn’t hate their bras as symbols of oppression. Rather, they considered them a means to looking beautiful. Nadler targeted the bra market with something new: it would be seamless, sexy and flattering, and would appeal to teenage girls. His invention was called the “Dici (by Wonderbra)” – of the two names, the former was later ditched, and the latter went on to change the world.
In underwear history, the Wonderbra was the Great Liberator. Bras would no longer lurk unseen behind a lady’s blouse. They would no longer be ” unmentionable”, nor be a defence against prying male eyes. On the contrary, they’d be the main attraction. Rather than “lift and separate” (the Playtex tag line), the Wonderbra would yank the breasts together and shove them in your face. Rather than a purely functional garment, they would be seen as a means of attraction, marketed as a luxury item.
In 1974, its TV commercials took the unprecedented step of showing a woman’s torso wearing only a Wonderbra, with the tag line, “We care about the shape you’re in”. By 1980, sales in Canada alone hit $30m.
In 1991, Gossard took on the brand under licence and hit a wave of popular uplift. British women in the early Nineties became fixated by plunging lines and spilling cleavages. Vogue carried articles on the return of the padded bra, Vivienne Westwood brought out a range of outrageous corsetry, and Jean Paul Gaultier began his cheeky experiments with lingerie worn as outerwear – a trend that reached its apogee with the conical breastplate worn by Madonna on her Blond Ambition tour.
The Wonderbra, now owned by Sara Lee, the parent company behind Playtex, scored a bull’s-eye with its 1994 poster campaign showing the model Eva Herzigova gazing at her pushed-together breasts, and the words “Hello Boys”. In major conurbations across the UK, cars mounted the pavement or crashed into bollards as motorists tried – and failed – to drag their eyes away from Ms Herzigova’s perky frontage. The image was later voted No 10 in a “Poster of the Century” contest.
Rigby & Peller, corsetière to the Queen since 1960, opened its flagship store in London in 1994. It is prized by its well-heeled clients for its expert fitting service – it claims that 80 per cent of women who walk through its door are wearing the wrong size and fit of boulder-holder (and need constant refittings, every six months or so). The company has had a huge influence by insisting that a bra is far from a one-size-fits-all clothing item – that it’s something unique to the individual, like a second skin.
In the 2000s, the market has expanded (ahem) to bursting point. The arrival over here of Continental brands such as Lejaby and La Perla, and newer brands such as Under Cover and Elle Macpherson Intimates have established bras as a self-indulgently luxury purchase, while the Agent Provocateur and Myla houses have opened up a lucrative market in sexy products for women who like to remind themselves of the wanton seductress that lurks beneath their sensible business suits.
The top-of-the-range modern bra is a semi-visible item, heralded by a pretty, pastel-coloured shoulder strap that hints, a little saucily, at the colour of its wearer’s matching bra and pants down below. It’s a long way from the days when underwear was about concealment, flattening and the furtive “structuring” of female breasts. While sales of functional Marks & Spencer cotton bras are still high – and the world bestseller remains the sturdy Triumph Doreen, as worn by millions of ladies over 50 – many women are happy to spend £100 on a pure-silk number as a caressing indulgence.
It has to be silk, though – not cotton, or lace, or nylon or polyester. Strangely similar, in fact, to the twin silk handkerchiefs sewn together with some pink ribbon by Mary Phelps Jacob’s enterprising maid, a whole century ago.
Debut of Kate Moss’ New Clothing Line at Top Shop
Here is a new article from today’s LATimes on Kate Moss’ clothing line launch.
A lot like Kate Moss: The inspiration for the model’s much-awaited cheap-chic line clearly is her own closet.
By Melissa Magsaysay, Times Staff Writer
UNLIKE the closets of most style celebrities, Kate Moss’ coveted wardrobe is not about her turn on the red carpet or her image peering out from the cover of almost every fashion magazine. For Moss it’s those moments in between all the glamour that are indeed her most glamorous ones.
From paparazzi snaps of her early days in quirky baby blue Adidas shell toes with tube socks to her recent fling with beaded Versace mini-dresses and Manolos, she has fascinated both the fashion industry and the style obsessed. She’s been a muse to designers including Alexander McQueen and Christopher Bailey at Burberry, photographer Mario Testino and endless wannabes on both sides of the Atlantic.
Now, with enormous fanfare, Moss is releasing her own collection of clothing and accessories. With her kind of fashion clout, it could easily have been priced into the stratosphere, but instead Moss is collaborating with the British cheap-chic chain Top Shop. Once again, Moss is right in the moment. Cash or credit? Kate chose cash.
The collection ranges from $20 for a cotton racer-back tank to $278 for a one-shoulder pleated dress. It went on sale last Tuesday at Top Shop in London (where shoppers are limited to five Moss items each). It hits the U.S. on Wednesday. Barneys New York, Barneys Co-Ops and Barneys.com will carry a pared-down selection without the accessory line. The boutique Opening Ceremony in Los Angeles and New York will carry what co-owner Humberto Leon calls “a good selection of the line,” about 50 styles in all, plus bags, scarves and shoes. Leon says that his store is getting at least 20 calls daily from eager customers who want “any information on it they can.”
The full line will also be on sale starting Wednesday at http://www.topshop.com (assuming the Brits haven’t completely wiped out the stock by then).
Moss’ inspiration is clearly her own closet, and why not? Some of her most memorable (and notorious) moments are captured in the collection. There are skinny red jeans ($115), which are playfully reminiscent of the ones she wore in a huff, walking out of the hotel room she and Johnny Depp had just trashed. The denim hot pants ($102) are a lot like the ones she wore with lace-up suede moccasins while swigging beer from a plastic cup at the Glastonbury music festival in England with current beau Pete Doherty.
The collection channels her brilliant ability to do “high-low” with an injection of devil-may-care attitude. It’s equal parts ingenue, vintage queen and lead groupie, shown best in striped sailor front hot pants, a black mini-dress with rectangular cutouts above the chest, and a midriff-baring lace-up vest. If you’re not into showing so much skin, there are more conservative pieces such as striped gray trousers, a sweet ’40s-inspired floral dress and a replica of a canary yellow one-shoulder vintage dress Moss wore to a recent magazine party, this time done in a crisp white Swiss dot.
The accessories range from clutches to boots to sandals — all with her stamp of style. Red lace-up gladiator sandals and knee-high moccasin boots have a ’70s flair, and a gold sequined scarf certainly channels your inner wild child.
Or at least the fantasy of having your own life of jet-set days and debauched nights. And maybe that’s what everyone’s really lining up for: the hope that by wearing “her” clothes, we might gain the confidence to dance on a table or shrug off the paparazzi just like Kate does, with grace and, of course, style.
melissa.magsaysay + AT + latimes.com
Calling for a Healthier Body Image in the Fashion Industry
There’s been much talk in the news lately about concerns over models being severely underweight and the measures being taken to create a healthier image for the fashion industry. In September, the organizers of Madrid’s Fashion Week instituted a ban on models with a BMI of less than 18. Now Italy has followed suit, banning models under the age of 16 and calling for a more “full-bodied” presence on the runways and catwalks.
Without meaning to beat an already dead horse, these initiatives are definitely a positive sign of a new awareness on the part of the fashion industry. Seeing as Milan is the fashion capital of the world, the message calling for a more positive and healthier image of models and the fashion industry in general will hopefully set the gears going. In other words, such a stance being taken by Milan could affect fashion industry centers such as Paris and New York.
People like Vogue editor Anna Wintour (amazingly) and Diane von Furstenberg are taking a stance on the issue and calling for industry leaders to engage in dialogue to reshape the image presented by underweight models. It’s important that those in the fashion industry recognize the impact and influence that fashion has on body image, especially for women and girls.
I only hope that all of this brings about positive change and will eventually lead to the day when models actually resemble you and me, thereby helping to shed the negative influence leading people to think they are overweight when they are actually healthy and have a natural body shape.
More on Haute Couture
Haute Couture was invented there at the end of the 19th century and has felt most at home there ever since. Paris, whose influence in the world of fashion may even go as far back as the court of Louis XIV, still ranks as the capital of haute couture, with its crafts and its almost legendary fashion houses of international renown, its extravagances and its unique savoir faire. As the proving ground for design and research, Paris continues to inspire and attract talents from all over the world. Generation after generation, it breathes new life into haute couture, this luxurious and ephemeral art which, undoubtedly, must go on evolving if it is to survive.
For more than a century, couture has been emblematic of the triumph of costume and fashion. It represents the fusion of fashion—the modern entity that combines novelty and synergy with personal and social needs—and costume—the arts of dressmaking, tailoring, and crafts constituent to apparel and accessories. Founded in the crucible of modernism’s invention in the middle years of the nineteenth century in Paris, with the expanded patronage cultivated by the House of Worth, but still dependent upon the considerable support of Empress Eugénie, couture has long stood as the modern equilibrium between the garment as exquisite aggregate and the burgeoning notions of fashion as a system.
The persistence of the haute couture is as roundly questioned and doubted and debated as the survival of painting or the supposed death of Broadway. Some may have doubted that the couture would survive its founder, the entrepreneurial Charles Frederick Worth. In the early years of the twentieth century, Paul Poiret took couture into an admittedly dangerous path of change, responding to Orientalist and social sirens, but even more to the beckoning of commerce and the use of the couture as a generating engine for fashion and fragrance broadly disseminated. Ironically, the couture flourished in the postwar period, beginning with the immense popular appeal of Christian Dior’s “New Look” in 1947. This supposed fashion novelty was so successful in part because it knew acutely its history and reconvened the finest skills to the couture.
The couture house is customarily composed of two parts, one devoted to dressmaking (flou), the other devoted to tailoring (tailleur) of suits and coats. Skilled workers in each area practice the arts apposite to the area. Embellishments and accessories are added incrementally as applied decoration, often from sources outside the couture house. However, with regard to the unembellished garment, the modern couture house is a completely autonomous workroom of dedicated ateliers. In fact, surprisingly, in view of the elegant locations of most couture houses, the creation of the garments occurs in the maisons particulières of the house, thus under the daily surveillance of the designer as well as in intimate connection with the vendeuses. Depending upon the designer, the design process might begin either with sketches or with a muslin or toile, draped and cut. Fit, both in its tailored form and in its dressmaking variant, is inevitably part of the value of the couture. A designer or trusted fitter will conduct the client through a series of fittings to determine the minute adjustments of the garment to the individual’s size and sense of comfort.
The couture’s offering of distinction in design and technique remains a compelling force, one even more potent when much other quality has atrophied. It remains a discipline of ultimate imagination, unaccountable to cost, with the paradox of being the fashion most cognizant of its ideal clients. It is, as it began, a dream of quality in an era of industry and its succession. The haute couture persists in providing us with a paragon of the most beautiful clothing that can be envisioned and made in any time.
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