What Happened To Ashley Greene's Neck?
Latest- Teen Vogue‘s March cover features a shot of Twilight‘s Ashley Greene that makes her neck look about twice as long as usual. Weird angle? Odd hair placement? Overzealous Photoshop? Perfect storm of the above? Whatever, it’s uncanny. [Styleite]
- Christopher Kane is taking home £200,000 and a business mentorship for winning the 2011 British Vogue/British Fashion Council Fashion Fund Award, which supports emerging designers. [Vogue UK]
- Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott shot Julianne Moore for her new Talbots campaign. That’s the same duo who photographed Moore’s reclining-nude-with-parakeets-and-lion-cubs Bulgari ad, which was banned in Venice; this ad, being fully clothed and animal-free, is unlikely to provoke such a response. Will it boost Talbots‘ sales? That remains to be seen. The retailer has been struggling, like most chains that aim to sell professional clothing to middle-class women, to reinvent itself as something more exciting. (See also: Talbots and Linda Evangelista, Ann Taylor and Cameron Russell/Heidi Klum/Milla Jovovich/Katie Holmes.) [People]
- After Lindsay Lohan was accused of shoplifting a $2,500 necklace, police obtained a search warrant for her home. A “friend” of Lohan’s turned the necklace in to authorities before the warrant could be executed. [Radaronline]
- Singer Adele is happy Anna Wintour saved her from wearing hoodies. “Anna Wintour was lovely. Nothing like I’d feared before I met her. I was expecting Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. Anna was wonderfully articulate and really friendly. She turned me into a lady, and she introduced me to Barbara Tfank who made my Grammys dress, and who has continued to make me pieces for videos and shows…I felt a bit awkward at first, when I had an ‘Anna Wintour makeover.’ I couldn’t walk in the shoes so I ended up wandering around the Grammys barefoot. But after a while, the more Barbara and I kept working together, I started to enjoy fashion. Once I’d discovered what I like and what suits me, I’ve kept that look up to an extent.” [ContactMusic]
- Diane Kruger feels confident that she has mastered the art of dressing herself. Except when it’s awards season. And except when she has a movie to promote. [ContactMusic]
- Naomi Campbell, a vastly wealthy supermodel, apparently feels she has something meaningful in common with the thousands of mostly impoverished Liberian and Sierra Leonean civilians who were killed by former president Charles Taylor and his militias. “I was afraid for my own life and I was afraid for the life of my family,” says Campbell, of her reaction to being asked to testify about her receipt of some blood diamonds from Taylor‘s men in South Africa in 1994. (Prosecutors in Taylor’s war crimes trial at the Hague were keen to tie Taylor to the illicit diamond trade in order to demonstrate how he was able to fund his reign of terror.) “If you hear someone has killed thousands of people — of course I was afraid! One more person is not going to make a difference. People forgot that I was a witness and thought I was a defendant.” To be clear, she was a witness. A witness who refused to co-operate with prosecutors, had to be subpoenaed in order to appear, and complained to the court while on the stand that testifying was a significant drain on her precious free time. [Vogue UK]
- W editor Stefano Tonchi is said to be marrying his longtime partner, David Maupin, this weekend in Massachusetts. Diana Vreeland‘s grandson will be their witness. [P6]
- Speaking of W, Kim Kardashian said on whatever show is her latest that she was so disappointed when she saw her issue of W come out; Kardashian claimed to be surprised that the nude shots showed “full-on nipple.” And she vowed — again — never to pose nude for a magazine. [HuffPo]
- W responded, via a spokesperson: “In keeping in line with the theme of W Magazine’s November Art Issue, Kim Kardashian’s cover was conceived as an artistic collaboration with well-known artist Barbara Kruger, and was a meditation on the influence that reality TV has on contemporary culture. The inside portfolio documented the career and power of Kim Kardashian as a work of art, using the language of artists like Jeff Koons (see Rabbit) and Gilbert & George (see The Singing Sculpture).” [The Cut]
- Andrea Linett, the former creative director of Lucky and now the creative director of eBay, has a charming anecdote about that time she discovered Chloë Sevigny: “I was the stylist for the Jane Pratt Show [Sassy editor-in-chief Jane Pratt’s talk show]. So we were shooting a commercial for the TV show and I saw Chloe at a newsstand and I said to the producers, ‘We have to put that girl in the commercial,'” says Linett. “And they said, ‘Oh no. She’s weird.’ And I said, ‘No you don’t get it; she’s amazing.’ So I went up to her and I asked her and she said, ‘Well, I’m actually cutting school. I live in Connecticut.‘ So she was playing hooky. So we put her in the commercial.” Sevigny ended up modeling and interning for Sassy. [Vogue UK]
- This Thursday, online members-only discounter Gilt will host a sale of Nicole Richie‘s lines, House of Harlow 1960 and Winter Kate. Except that in this “sale,” everything is full price. [WWD]
- Net-A-Porter‘s nascent men’s wear site Mr. Porter apparently had the audacity to employ a copywriter named Tom Ford. When Tom Ford-the-copywriter sent out an email about Mr. Porter to editors, and signed his name at the bottom, Tom Ford-the-designer had his people issue a statement to clarify that he, Tom Ford-the-designer, had no involvement in the site. The nerve of some people, with their names. [WWD]
- J. Crew, which wants to go private in a leveraged buy-out per the terms of a deal it’s already reached with an investment bank it works with regularly, was sued by its shareholders, who argued that the company had not sought enough competing offers and that the share price offered for the buy-out was therefore too low. Although a settlement was reached, and the period in which J. Crew was to seek competing offers was extended, now the settlement has fallen apart: Shareholders say that J. Crew has “undermined the spirit” of the settlement by making moves — like scheduling a vote on the existing offer — that seem to indicate an unwillingness to entertain competing overtures. The shareholders are now proceeding with their lawsuit in court. J. Crew says it honored the settlement and is disappointed the shareholders are now backing out. [DealBook]
- Richard Press‘s documentary about Bill Cunningham premiered this week with a screening hosted by Calvin Klein — but Cunningham himself didn’t attend, because he “hates the limelight.” Press says the 81-year-old photographer has no plans to see the film. [NYDN]
- Model Daisy Lowe, who counts as “curvy” in that hopeless industry, tells ASOS magazine: “My dream is to see a lot more female shapes in ad campaigns when I look through magazines…my friend was working with Crystal Renn and said she thinks she’s only got a 38-inch hip. Karl Lagerfeld said he was going to embrace her womanly shape and then he just put her face on the ad campaign. Girls are starting to have tits in pictures, but I think it still needs to be about the curve… Real women have hips and an arse, yet loads of models in shows seem to have neither.” [Refinery29]
- Band of Outsiders has opened a full-time showroom in New York City — Chinatown, to be precise. The building was formerly a fortune cookie factory. [WWD]
- Farrah Fawcett‘s red swimsuit, along with her copies of scripts from the Charlie’s Angels first season, a Fawcett jigsaw puzzle, a 1976 copy of TV Guide with Fawcett on the cover, an original 1977 Farrah Fawcett doll and a “Farrah’s Glamour Center” hairstyling toy, will now reside at the Smithsonian. Which apparently has no more meaningful national cultural artifacts to collect and preserve. [CNN]
- This Friday, Oprah will feature interviews with Stephanie Seymour, Cheryl Tiegs, Beverly Johnson, and Christie Brinkley. It’s like an Oprah-iffic one-show riposte to British GQ‘s idea that Naomi Campbell is, as its new cover claims, “The Last Supermodel.” [Oprah]
- Lauren Hutton is the new face of jewelry brand Alexis Bittar. [WWD]
- Aéropostale, Abercrombie & Fitch, and American Eagle Outfitters have announced that, after they report numbers for this January, they will each cease telling investors about their respective sales performances on a monthly basis. No more monthly same-store sales or overall sales numbers will be disclosed. Sales information will instead be reported on a quarterly basis. This definitely signals that the teen market is still tough. All of these retailers have been hit hard by the recession — Abercrombie weathered nearly 18 months of successive monthly year-on-year declines in same-store sales. Having bad sales numbers is nothing new, but simply deciding not to disclose that information publicly certainly is a novel gesture at a solution. [WWD]
- American Apparel, as per the terms of its latest in a long line of progressively tighter (and higher-interest) refinancing agreements with its main lender, now has to face monthly stress tests — if its EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxation, Depreciation and Amortization, otherwise known as “how much money we’re making right now” or “profits”) doesn’t hit certain minimum levels by certain monthly deadlines, the long-feared doomsday scenario will be triggered, wherein all of American Apparel‘s stonking debt (which now sits at $125 million, and rising) comes due immediately and the company goes bust. American Apparel didn’t meet the first minimum EBITDA test by the first scheduled deadline, but its main lender agreed to waive the provision temporarily. [LABJ]
- Fellow troubled company Gap — which has long struggled against sluggish sales — has fired its North American president, Marka Hansen. Replacing Hansen is Art Peck, who formerly ran the company’s outlet division. Gap has also changed advertising agencies. [WWD]
- Fashion blind item! “Which boldface-name contributing fashion editor turned up at a luxury showroom in Paris wearing an all-white, fur-trimmed coat with an electric blue fox stole and over-the-knee stiletto boots-but wouldn’t check her coat because, well, she wasn’t wearing anything underneath?” [Racked]
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