FASHION Magazine

The claws have come out in the battle of Hedi Slimane vs. Cathy Horyn. After making his guestlist, and checking it twice, Slimane chose to exclude The New York Times critic from his debut collection for Saint Laurent. WWD was quick to point out the fact that Cathy Horyn was missing from the show, and Horyn, who is known for being a bit of a loud mouth—she recently called Oscar De La Renta a hotdog—did not keep quiet about her exclusion from the show.

Horyn wrote her New York Times review based off the photos and cleared the air about her lack of attendance by saying, “I was not invited. Despite positive reviews of his early YSL and Dior collections, as well as a profile, Mr. Slimane objected bitterly to a review I wrote in 2004 — not about him but Raf Simons. Essentially I wrote that without Mr. Simons’s template of slim tailoring and street casting, there would not have been a Hedi Slimane — just as there would never have been a Raf Simons without Helmut Lang. Fashion develops a bit like a genetic line.”

It was 25 pounds that tipped the scales and lead Lady Gaga to launch a “Body Revolution.” While performing in Amsterdam last week a set of less than flattering photos (that appeared to be extremely photoshopped) emerged from the concert. Within hours sensationalized headlines like ‘The fat Lady Gaga sings’ and ‘Porker Face’ started making the rounds, questioning Lady Gaga’s supposed weight gain. Given the singer’s longstanding—and very public—fight against bullying, it would be hard for Mother Monster to take these mean girl comments from the media lying down.

Which is probably why yesterday Lady Gaga launched The Body Revolution on her site LittleMonsters.com.

Just as Prince Harry’s nude photo ordeal is simmering down, the Royal Family is faced with yet another scandal. The victim this time around? None other than the cherubic Kate Middleton.

French tabloid magazine, Closer published a series of photos today of the Duchess of Cambridge and husband, Prince William while on a mini-vacation at a private chateau in the south of France. The various shots depict Kate Middleton sunbathing topless on a balcony, evidently shot with a long-focus lens. “Harry started the fashion: these days the Windsors take their clothes off,” the magazine remarked alongside the published images.

According to the BBC, Prince William and Kate are furious. A statement released by The St. James Palace earlier today described the invasion of privacy as “grotesque” and “totally unjustifiable” and within hours, it was announced that the Royal Family had filed a lawsuit, alleging violation of privacy.

“Their Royal Highnesses have been hugely saddened to learn that a French publication and a photographer have invaded their privacy in such a grotesque and totally unjustifiable manner. The incident is reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and all the more upsetting to The Duke and Duchess for being so.”

The royal couple is currently on a tour of Southeast Asia scheduled to come to an end this weekend. With a legal suit already in the works, we hope the duo’s visit resumes without incident.

Miuccia Prada isn’t exactly known for being all that press-friendly, and a rare interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica may shed some light on why the legendary designer hasn’t warmed to the media in the same way chatterboxes Karl Lagerfeld and Roberto Cavalli have.

In a translation by WWD, Prada’s feature in La Repubblica details all her concerns about the flagging Italian fashion industry. More than any other nation, Italy has the most family-owned luxury fashion houses: Prada, Gucci, Missoni and Fendi are just a few brands that still have an active voice from the founding designers’ families. But with more and more Italian fashion houses looking to sell (Valentino sold to Qatar’s royal family for over $850 million) or to expand by going public with IPOs, Prada is worried Italian fashion may become “second league.”

“[…] If our brands cross our borders, the credit, glamour, fame and decision making is in the hands of others, and we are abandoned, downgraded,” she cautioned.

Prada doesn’t fault the designers themselves; after all, she shows Miu Miu in Paris because of the city’s “attraction that is called glamour,” and Raf Simons’ move from Jil Sander (which shows in Milan) to Parisian fashion house Dior will mean “his value will further be emphasized.”

According to Prada, the real culprits are the Italian media and left-leaning intellectuals. Journalists’ treatment of their nation’s fashion industry as “frivolous” instead of a relevant industry contributes to the view that Italy is seen as a place with “less resources, culture, protagonists, ideas, vitality and money,” meaning that like Simons, “fashion goes elsewhere, looking for the best.”

When Katie Holmes first announced her divorce, we were all shocked by the move: up until a month ago, she seemed every part the dutiful wife, playing a supporting role to Tom Cruise’s megawatt presence. What we didn’t realize at the time was just how much Holmes would shatter that old image in the weeks to come.

Since that announcement, Elle’s oddly prophetic and impossibly well-timed feature on Holmes went viral across the web, Holmes’ legal team managed to pull off what must be one of the fastest settlements in celebrity divorce history (two weeks…two weeks!), Holmes snagged sole custody of Suri, taped an appearance on Project Runway and managed to make a series of almost daily public appearances around her home in New York City, looking impeccably put-together and serene each time (in other words, not acting or looking like someone who was going through a painful divorce).

What’s particularly admirable about these appearances though is the discrete marketing tactic implicit in them: with hoards of paparazzo clamoring for a picture outside her door every day post-scandal, Holmes very wisely chose to almost exclusively don none other than Holmes & Yang, her own line with former Cruise stylist Jeanna Yang, for her jaunts about town. As the New York Times puts it, the paparazzo shots have become “a stealth ad campaign,” one that’s been put into motion right before the brand’s first-ever showing at New York Fashion Week come September.

“The way she’s getting photographed today, she’s in a position to get more exposure than ever before,” Robert Burke, a former Bergdorf Goodman executive and fashion consultant, told the New York Times. “She’s not waiting for fashion editors and stylists to come and pull her clothes.”

Whether it’s a strategy or not, it’s worked: Holmes & Yang sales have skyrocketed at retailers like Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys. Whatever your feelings about the former Mrs. Cruise are now, you have to give it to her: she’s not the brainwashed sidekick we once thought she was.

Considering the fact that toe surgery has apparently become a “thing” (cosmetic surgery to slim down obese toes, for those of you not in the know), we’re apt to believe the girls behind SPARK Movement when they say that the pressure has never been stronger when it comes to conforming to beauty ideals.

These teenage activists are pointing a finger at teen-girl targeted magazines like Seventeen and Teen Vogue, saying their continued airbrushing and underrepresentation of “real” models is contributing to unattainable, unrealistic beauty ideals. They called on the magazines to completely cut out Photoshop (even down to airbrushing out pimples or brightening up a smile) and to focus on putting real girls in their publications.

“[These magazines] bombard young women with images that have been distorted and digitally altered . . . these photoshopped images are extremely dangerous to girls like us who read them, because they keep telling us: you are not skinny enough, pretty enough or perfect enough. Well, neither are the girls in the pictures!” the SPARK girls write on their home site.

Last week, SPARK member Julia Bluhm managed to pull together over 85,000 signatures for a petition to Seventeen, and the magazine actually responded. They published a “Body Peace Treaty” in their print edition, stating that they “never have, never will” alter the shape of models’ faces or bodies (which isn’t promising any change, really), and that they will make efforts to be more transparent with what goes into their editing process.

Following their co-SPARK member’s success, Carina Cruz and Emma Stydahar tried their hand at Teen Vogue yesterday, staging a guerilla red carpet runway show in front of the Conde Nast buildings and scoring an interview with Editor-in-Chief Amy Astley. Despite having racked up about 35,000 signatures for their Teen Vogue–specific petition, the girls told New York Daily News they were disappointed with their rushed conversation with Astley.

Though Cruz and Stydahar evidently did not get the response they were looking for, Teen Vogue’s publicist Erin Kaplan issued a statement saying the magazine is already careful to not retouch models’ body shapes in their pages.

While we doubt magazines can honestly promise a full rehaul of their image editing processes, considering how entrenched they are in years-long practices, we do commend the girls for trying to encourage their peers to seek real beauty. What do you think: should glossies continue to offer aspirational if unrealistic images of beauty, or should they start featuring girls that teens can more easily relate to?

Leave it to Valerie Steele, the first person to ever tout a fashion studies PhD, to tackle an industry-related question that’s rarely been explored before: why is it exactly that modern fashion history has had so many iconic gay designers?

Steele, a bona fide fashion expert who has pioneered fashion-related academia, said she wants to celebrate gay designers in an upcoming exhibit at The Museum at FIT, where she sits as director and chief curator. Along with these designers’ deserved nod of recognition, she wants to explore the ways in which their sexuality has helped develop the industry into what it is today.

It’s true: even when compared to other creative fields, many if not most of fashion’s influential leaders are gay, including (but obviously not limited to) Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.

Despite the fact that generally speaking, this density of gay designers is common knowledge, Steele points out that no one has ever really delved further into the question of why so many gay people seem to flourish in the industry.

“[…] Nobody’s ever really thought consciously to put the gayness back into fashion history and say, ‘Why are there so many gay people in fashion?’ and ‘Is there a gay aesthetic?’ and ‘What have been the influences of having so many gay people in fashion?'” Steele told Fashionologie.

It’s an interesting and potentially groundbreaking point: given fashion’s runway-to-streets trickle down effect, is it even possible that the fashion industry’s early embracing of homosexuality has helped encourage similar acceptance outside of the industry’s confines? And Steele’s question of aesthetics makes us look at some famed designs in a completely different light: for example, could a straight man have ever created Le Smoking, or was Saint Laurent able to create such a game-changing design thanks in part to his sexuality?

Though we doubt these questions could ever be answered in full, given Steele’s past thought-provoking exhibits, it will definitely be interesting and insightful to see how she navigates her way through these questions.

One of fashion’s most revered yet reclusive players has finally announced a return to the retail world after more than two decades of absence: Azzedine Alaïa, whose last store shuttered in New York City in 1992, will be settling into a new home at Rue de Marignan, right off of Avenue Montaigne (otherwise known as French luxury mecca).

Also known as the “King of Cling,” Alaïa’s heyday in the ‘80s had him dressing everyone from Grace Jones to Stephanie Seymour in his figure-flattering, body-con designs. Even Cher (not that Cher—the Clueless Cher) knew the gravity of Alaïa – remember the scene when she tells the armed robber who screams at her to get on the ground “Oh, no. You don’t understand, this is an Alaïa”?

After the death of his sister though, the Tunisian-born designer retreated from the industry for most of the ‘90s, only catering to a small group of clientele and presenting his collections (on his own time, of course) in his apartment/atelier/headquarters in the heart of the Marais district. In other words, Alaïa had the fashion world come to him: he didn’t advertise, he didn’t get online and he didn’t get sucked into what he called a “stressful” system. He didn’t even bother kissing up to Anna Wintour, even daring to say “who will remember Anna Wintour in the history of fashion?” Unsurprisingly, she didn’t take well to that — the two have been engaged in a longstanding feud for years that’s seen Alaïa completely ousted from the pages of Vogue.

Even without Wintour’s backing, the past decade has been a period of revival for Alaïa’s eponymous brand, especially after partnering up with luxury goods group Richemont in 2007. For instance, last year Barneys doubled their Alaïa space, the designer showed his Fall 2011 couture collection to rave reviews (also marking his first time at Fashion Week in eight years) and as any Sofia Coppola fangirl knows, he designed her stunning lavender wedding dress.

The question now is, given the designer’s well-known skepticism of the business side of fashion, will he be able to make a return to the retail world without sacrificing his independence?

Whatever your opinion of Katie Holmes might be, you have to give it to her: she doesn’t waste time moping after a breakup. While most of us would have maybe made it to our fourth Ben & Jerry’s bucket and gotten halfway through season six of Sex and the City (“The Post-it Always Sticks Twice!”), since announcing her impending divorce last week the soon-to-be-former Mrs. Tom Cruise has already taped an episode for Project Runway, landed herself on the cover of Elle and finalized plans for the debut of her Holmes & Yang line (with stylist partner Jeanne Yang) at New York Fashion Week this September.

In fact, it seems like now more than ever, Holmes is really kicking her fashion career into high gear. It kind of has us wondering: was this all a strategic move on Holmes’ part? After having played the role of demure, loyal wife to the charismatic Tom Cruise for five years, could it be that Holmes had plans to break out on her own all along?

If her upcoming August feature with Elle is anything to go off, she may have been planning the divorce shocker for a while. The New York Post managed to cull a couple quotes from the feature, including this particularly telling reflection:

“I definitely feel much more comfortable in my own skin,” Holmes apparently said. “I feel sexier. I think in my 20s, it’s like you’re trying too hard to figure everything out . . . I’m starting to come into my own. It’s like a new phase.”

A new phase that will evidently leave everyone’s favourite couch jumper in the dust. Holmes also hinted that Cruise’s star power may have been more of a hindrance rather than a help for her own career, saying, if anything “you work a little bit harder when you’re in such visible circumstances.”

Strategic timing or not, the fashion crowd is notoriously tough to please, so the real fashion test for the soon-to-be-singleton will be at NYFW this September. Until then, we can all keep ourselves entertained with round-the-clock TomKat updates (our personal favourite rumour so far: that Holmes had to audition to be Cruise’s wife).

The Russian fashion elite (also known as the “Russian Fashion Pack”) are having a moment right now, one that may have culminated yesterday in street-style-star-turned-designer Ulyana Sergeenko’s debut couture collection.

Rolling out right in between Chanel and Armani Privé’s shows, the couture collector’s first-ever collection was an ode to her country’s folklore and heritage, complete with babushkas, hand-carved wooden shoes and fur-lined military coats. Grace Coddington and Carine Roitfeld sat front row, which if anything, is a testament to Sergeenko and the rest of the Russian Fashion Pack’s appeal right now.

“America has Jackie O, and the world has Audrey Hepburn, but Russia never had a fashion icon of the moment,” Anya Ziourova, the fashion director of the Russian version of Tatler, told the New York Times in a feature titled “The Czarinas Are Back.” “Maybe that is what is happening: the modern Russian icons are being born.”

If street style blogs are any indication of style, then the Russian fash-pack has it in spades. Something about their individually distinct aesthetics and sartorial risk-taking has caught heavy-hitting and influential photographers’ eyes, turning them into fashion stars overnight.

Take designer Vika Gazinskaya, for example: the Russian gamine quickly gained visibility online, thanks to heavily circulated photographs of her by Garance Doré, Scott Schuman and Tommy Ton across the blogosphere. In a strategic move, she wore her own designs to the fashion show circuit, and thanks to the blogosphere pics, the move worked out: her pieces are now carried at Colette in Paris and Fivestory in New York.

There’s also Miroslava (or Mira) Duma, the daughter of a Russian senator and the former editor of Russia’s Harper’s Bazaar, who has become as known (if not more so) for her quirky, colourful style as her popular fashion website Buro 24/7.

And then, of course, there’s Sergeenko, arguably the leader of the pack: like her couture collection on Tuesday, the former model’s signatures are full, ‘50s-esque skirts paired with tight wool sweaters, dramatic Russian touches like babushkas and stunning makeup that hearkens back to another time.

The leading ladies of the Russian Fashion Pack may have some deep pockets (Sergeenko’s husband is an insurance billionaire), but their inimitable style and work is what’s really distinguishing them among their peers.

Perhaps the most shocking part about American Apparel’s latest ad campaign is that it’s really not shocking at all, at least not for the reasons AA has become known: instead of high-rise thongs or bared breasts, a “senior” model serenely poses in AA garb, her silver hair flanking her shoulders. Though it wouldn’t be AA if there weren’t at least one gratuitous crotch shot, Jacky (whose last name or exact age hasn’t been released yet) still manages to keep it classy.

“There was something so compelling about Jacky’s look and energy when we first spotted her in a New York restaurant this winter, we introduced ourselves and pulled up a chair. During a long discussion that touched on everything from career choices and nutrition to insights on relationships, age and beauty, we asked if she would consider being photographed by us. We were thrilled when she agreed,” AA posted on their Facebook page, which also has an entire album devoted to the senior beauty’s campaign.

We have to admit that American Apparel’s latest campaigns have grabbed our attention for all the right reasons, which is a welcome departure from some of their tackier fare in earlier years. Take their last campaign, for example, which featured transgendered model Isis King of America’s Next Top Model fame sporting the label’s “Pride” tees and tanks. Instead of a 16-year-old waif who only a tiny fraction of the population can relate to, AA seems to be expanding their market and their demographic, making the brand more inclusive.

Though we’re normally wont to question the sometimes-shady brand’s motives, we’re all for timeless beauty and style, and this campaign and King’s are definitely a step in the right direction for making advertised fashion and beauty more relatable. What do you think about AA’s latest campaign: are they making positive strides in their latest batch of ads, or is this simply a ploy to change the public’s opinion about them?

Designer duo Dolce & Gabbana has just confirmed reports that they’ll be showing their first-ever couture collection in a hush-hush presentation on July 9. Continuing their ode to Sicily (you might remember their Sicilian street casting for their latest menswear collection), the designers will be unveiling the collection in their home base instead of in Paris, where all other couture collections are shown.

Press is completely banned from the presentation with the exception of three news outlets, and instead of the fashion house’s usual high profile, celeb-packed front row, the couture presentation will be clients-only (in other words: big spenders).

The designers are said to have been mulling over a couture collection for a while, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise considering the well-received one-off pieces they’ve created for celebrities like Scarlett Johansson this past year. However, the designers said they are only using the pared-down presentation as a potential lead-in to couture, as opposed to diving into the couture world head-on.

After folding their less-expensive line D&G last year with their signature RTW line, it seems like the Italian pair have their sights set on a brand repositioning, turning their focus to the high-luxury side of the market instead of the lower end. It might be a wise move considering current consumers’ insatiable appetite for luxury goods.

Though income earners in the lower bracket were pinching pennies post-2008, those towards the top seemed drawn to luxury goods more than ever, helping conglomerate LVMH pull in profits far exceeding their forecasts last year. In fact, Dolce & Gabbana aren’t the only designers who seem to recognize the value in the luxury market either: Versace returned to the couture world after an eight-year hiatus last season.

Though we won’t hold our breath for any images of the collection thanks to the secrecy surrounding the Sicilian debut, we expect the Italian duo will pull off high-luxury with aplomb.