FASHION Magazine

While Rome houses the headquarters of iconic Italian labels Gucci and Fendi, the ancient city is also home to uneven, hard to navigate cobblestone roads that many Italian women teeter and totter down daily in their sky-high heels. If you live in Rome or are planning on visiting and don’t want to ditch your stilettos, there’s no need to start shopping for flats. According to Italy magazine, Mayor Gianni Alemanno plans to smooth many of the city’s sidewalks and streets with new even cobblestones and repave high traffic areas to make them easier for women in heels. The first road to get a makeover is the iconic Via del Corso and construction will begin by the end of this year.

For the past few months, we’ve been following reports that Britain’s Revenue and Customs is planning a raid on the fashion design houses that benefit from the use of unpaid interns. Yesterday, all 102 companies that participated in last London Fashion Week were issued a warning: starting in 2012, no fashion house, regardless of its size, is allowed to enlist the help of unpaid interns. Each company must either pay their interns at least the minimum wage of £6.08 an hour or find a way to do without.

For some companies, the switch is a fast and easy one—Stella McCartney has already changed its policy, and starting in January will offer paid positions only. This will be more of a challenge for newcomers and smaller designers, whose budgets don’t include being able to pay their extra help. “Most people who are starting out in the industry just don’t have the funds,” explains SIBLING’s Cozette McCreery to Elle UK. “It’s just done with love, and that’s it. When the main designers aren’t getting paid—if you can’t find money to pay yourself—it’s really difficult to find money to pay others.”

Love Carey Mulligan? Well, you can certainly see the rising star everywhere. In the exact same photograph. The cover shot, which first graced Vogue’s October 2010 issue, has now made its way onto the latest issues of Fresh Elle and German Glamour. Holy triple vision! While there a few slight (read: photoshopped) differences in the covers, its quite obviously the same image. And the same Chanel couture, mind you.

Photo sharing between magazines happens fairly often, when the image’s rights belong to the photographer rather than the magazine, or sometimes when shared between international issues of the same title. The image’s past though, should always be fully disclosed which leads us to wonder how this snafu happened in the first place? Did the magazines not realize where the image had originally been featured? Did they know, and choose to overlook it instead? We expect some damage control in the very near future.

Last week, we discussed the possible reasons why Vogue Italia took down a photo of Karlie Kloss’ editorial from their December 2011 issue. The photo in question, which displayed the model’s thin figure and protruding hipbone, looks a bit unreal and considering the editorial deemed her “the new body,” negative reactions soon followed.

We all know modeling has always been somewhat of a controversial issue. Retailers are often criticized for their depiction of the female body—just yesterday Jezebel recently reported that fast-fashion empire H&M digitally produces the models’ bodies on their website and sticks on a real person’s head in post production. There’s also the whole “do models really eat?” issue, which recently made headlines when Victoria’s Secret Angel Adriana Lima revealed her diet prior to the big VS fashion show.  A new documentary About Face, premiering at Sundance next month, is also making headlines for its gritty portrayal of how supermodels like Christie Brinkley, Jerry Hall, Cheryl Tiegs and Christy Turlington were treated during the peak of their careers in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Fur coat not enough? You can now own a piece of Michael Kors in ways other than clothing, (or for that matter, accessories, or fragrances, or jewellery, or shoes…) It was announced Friday that the label is going public, and planning to sell up to 48 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange. Now it’s being reported that the company’s value is around $3.62 billion, giving the designer a cool $111 million as part of an initial public offering.

While Kors will begin a road show, starting at the Pierre Hotel in New York this week to try to win over potential investors, his business partners Silas Chou and Lawrence Stroll are apparently interested in Vera Wang’s bridal empire and plan to wine and dine Wang’s husband Arthur Becker into coming on board. Wang has many successful license partnerships with American retailers including Kohls and David’s Bridal, but her main collection only makes up a small part of her profits and Chou and Stroll are looking to invest in its growth.

If Wang wants to make some serious dough, the designer and her husband should look no further. Chou and Stroll’s part in transforming Kors’ company after it went bankrupt in the nineties is proof these guys are the ones you want on your team if you’re a designer who wants to dominate the fashion world.

Yesterday, a photo from December 2011 Vogue Italia cover shoot featuring Karlie Kloss’s toned buttocks was all over the internet, as well as 15 more, detailing all the assets of her incredible bod. It seemed that perfection was not all that there was to be seen, as vogue.it mysteriously removed this image from the slideshow on their website early today. There was no reason given for removing the one photo—but comments pouring in on Facebook and other sites have been negative reactions to the super-skinny body on display. The position of Kloss’ hips and the shot’s lighting— most obviously, her unhealthily protruding hipbone—look a bit unreal, and the potentially generous use of Photoshop on her hips and legs create the look of a seemingly misshapen body. Perhaps that was reason enough for Vogue to take it down.

Looks like Harper Seven Beckham has gone from fashion accessory to full-fledged fashionista. The baby has been seen on the arm of her mom in Little Marc Jacobs dresses and Chloé tights, and though we’re assuming that she’s not yet old enough to make her own sartorial choices, she certainly knows how to attract the style snaps.

Her doting dad talked recently about her expansive wardrobe, gushing that “she has so many cute little dresses” to wear, and that he as well as his wife have been spoiling her with adorable designer duds. “I didn’t realize how excited I would get over buying hair bows,” he admitted—and while David Beckham isn’t exactly our taste, we can hear the collective sighs of women across the world.

As if spending Christmas with your in-laws for the first time isn’t stressful enough (especially when your mother-in-law is the Queen!) Kate Middleton is expected to have multiple wardrobe changes throughout the day-long festivities at Sandringham Estate. It’s being reported that the Duchess will need an outfit for each event that will take place during the day, including a casual outfit for breakfast, a “smart” outfit with matching hat for church service, a dress for lunch, a cocktail dress for evening drinks, and a formal look for dinner. If you include afternoon tea, that brings the outfit total up to six.

Also, it’s incorrect etiquette for a princess to repeat outfits on the holiday, something that Kate has been criticized for by fashion critics. Apparently Kate is on top of her game (and loyal to designers) and has already ordered two Alexander McQueen dresses, so we’re not too worried for her.  We’re crossing our fingers that pictures surface of all her festive looks.

Since her death in July, Amy Winehouse has been remembered not only for her music but also for her vintage-inspired style. The singer’s influence was seen in magazines and even on the Chanel runway where Karl Lagerfeld styled his models’ hair in Winehouse’s signature messy beehive. After receiving Winehouse’s parents’ blessing, Fred Perry has posthumously released Winehouse’s collaboration with the brand. Today the red and white dress she wore on the cover of her Back to Black album was auctioned off in London for $67, 500. Other items in the auction included a dress designed by Cristobal Balenciaga for Elizabeth Taylor—which actually sold for less than Winehouse’s dress!—as well as replicas of Princess Diana’s Emanuel wedding dress and Clive Shilton shoes which sold for just over Winehouse’s bid.

November has not been Marc Jacobs’ month. After the Spring 2012 samples from his own line in London and now Louis Vuitton merchandise stolen in Paris, it’s being reported that he is not going to replace John Galliano at Dior after all those rumours. Earlier this month it was speculated that talks between Jacobs and Dior had come to a halt because of Jacobs and business partner Robert Duffy’s unreasonable demands. Now, a source close to the situation, who has remained anonymous, has confirmed with Fashionista that negotiations had stopped by mid-November due to money issues and due to Jacobs’ wanting to transfer his team and aesthetic over to Dior.

By Bianca Teixeira

The boiling point of holiday marathon shopping in the US is Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving (today!) when prices have been slashed and slashed again. The likes of Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and many, many others have items on sale for as much as 90 per cent off, and those promotions started as early as last night. In an effort to keep sales in the country, Canadian retailers have dropped their prices today as well, but we’ve been mostly spared the insanity that ensued south of the border—there are reports of a Los Angeles woman pepper-spraying 20 people around her (including children!) to make sure she got to her desired items first. Elsewhere in L.A. a man was shot and robbed on the way to his car leaving Wal-Mart with his purchases. Fire departments are saying that shoppers everywhere are being injured from “rapid crowd movement.” So far no one has been killed (unlike the Target trampling victim of 2008), but there was a close case at this Wal-mart, where a riot ensued over a $2 waffle iron.