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		<title>WILD AT HEART</title>
		<link>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/10/06/wild-at-heart/</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 06 Oct 2007 07:05:23 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[WILD AT HEART The fact that you’re drinking is making me very, very happy,” Reese Witherspoon says, eyeing the glass of white wine on the table. “I think it’s great to drink in the middle of the day. I would &#8230; <a href="http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/10/06/wild-at-heart/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xarafashion.wordpress.com&amp;blog=1665146&amp;post=18&amp;subd=xarafashion&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h1>WILD AT HEART</h1>
<p><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/skylafashion/BlogPics/photo#5118115867121606290"><img src="http://lh5.google.com/skylafashion/RwczQ6MS3pI/AAAAAAAAAPE/oOx7JXww9yk/s400/090920071255246227.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>The fact that you’re drinking is making me very, <em>very</em> happy,” Reese Witherspoon says, eyeing the glass of white wine on the table. “I think it’s great to drink in the middle of the day. I would join you, but I gotta drive to pick up the kids. <em>You’re</em> taking taxis everywhere. You could get drunk!” This cracks her up. “You could go from appointment to appointment highly, highly smashed!”<br />
You can bet Witherspoon is the best time going—when she isn’t the designated driver. “I am. I’m fun. I can be <em>really</em> fun. I can tell we’d have a lot of fun if the tape was off.” The former cheerleader, debutante, Harpeth Hall girls’ school graduate, and Avon’s newly appointed “global ambassador” laughs like, <em>Ohmygod, you have no idea.</em></p>
<p><a href="ElleVideoPopup('http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid372302730/bclid416330779/bctid1172739674')">View the video interview of Reese Witherspoon</a></p>
<p>In her white Seaton baby-doll dress, white sweater, and gold T-strap sandals, Witherspoon, 31, sits aglow in the sunlight streaming through the floor-length windows of the L.A. Getty Center’s hilltop restaurant. She has a heart-shaped face with a spray of freckles so faint they can’t be seen unless you’re near enough to smell the scent of shampoo in her creamy blond hair. When she gets excited, her blue eyes fire up and her eyebrows dance. The sparkly smile with its teensy underbite erupts into all kinds of laughter, underscoring emotions obvious and otherwise. “Why do Southern women make bad prostitutes?” she asks, answering: “’Cuz we have to write so many thank-you notes!” This sends her into stitches. It’s her mother’s favorite joke. “And so true!”<br />
Mention of the tabloids elicits an ironic chuckle. “Everybody is hung out to dry now,” Witherspoon says. “It’s one thing if you’re up for it and you want it, and you go out without your panties on. But if you’re wearing your panties—gosh darn it, leave me alone!” Chuckle. Chuckle. Tight smile.<br />
Sometimes she can’t help but laugh, like when she’s discussing moments that were defining for her children. “‘Mommy, where did the frog go?’ ‘The frog went to frog</p>
<p>heaven, where there are a lot of flies and people don’t forget to feed the frog the right-size crickets, and Mommy’s not responsible for it.’” Guilty giggle. “Apparently, the crickets were too big. Now we’re thinking about a turtle.”<br />
She howls when talking about her favorite films: “Oh my god, <em>Joe Versus the Volcano</em>? Dan Hedaya: ‘I know he can <em>get</em> the job, but can he <em>do</em> the job?’ So funny. And <em>About Schmidt</em>? I know every frame of that movie. The relationship he has with his daughter and how he really, really wants to help with the wedding reminds me so much of my dad. That he doesn’t know how exactly to be part of it, but he wants to.”<br />
Then there’s the laugh that makes you want to cry. The one evoked by a memory of a defining moment of her own, which occurred a month after her marriage to actor Ryan Phillippe ended. “Right around Christmastime I was sitting in a parking lot,” Witherspoon begins. “And I felt like I just couldn’t get out of the car. It was like, <em>I can’t get out of the car.</em>” She laughs sadly, pressing her ringless hands to her cheeks. “And I thought, Okay, half of the parking lot has dealt with this. More than half of the parking lot has dealt with this. Okay, let’s make it a little bigger. Half of this <em>city</em> has dealt with this. Okay, let’s make it a little bigger—half of this <em>country</em>, until I finally got out of the car. It was like, <em>It’s okay. It’s okay</em>.<br />
“There’s this moment in <em>Walk the Line</em> where June Carter says, ‘I was never very aware of how much I was seen.’ I was very aware of how much I was seen. It was this moment of self-discovery and loss of identity and who was stepping out of the car—you know? Who is that person?” Witherspoon knits her brow, concerned: “Should I not be this honest?<br />
CHECK OUT THE OCTOBER ISSUE OF ELLE, ON NEWSSTANDS NOW, TO SEE HOW HONEST WITHERSPOON GETS IN THE FULL ARTICLE.</p>
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		<title>GUCCI&#8217;S SILVER SCREEN MOMENT</title>
		<link>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/guccis-silver-screen-moment/</link>
		<comments>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/guccis-silver-screen-moment/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:35:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>xarafashion</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fashion & Style]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[spring/summer 2008 show in Milan got off to suitably impressive start yesterday as the house screened the world-premiere of its first ever television ad, which promotes its new fragrance, Gucci by Gucci. Hollywood director David Lynch &#8211; famed for his &#8230; <a href="http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/guccis-silver-screen-moment/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xarafashion.wordpress.com&amp;blog=1665146&amp;post=17&amp;subd=xarafashion&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/skylafashion/BlogPics/photo#5115123133909753474"><img src="http://lh6.google.com/skylafashion/RvyRY6MS3oI/AAAAAAAAAOk/EGO0n7q0wWw/s800/RZimmerman_GucciFrg07_b.jpg" /></a><br />
spring/summer 2008 show in Milan got off to suitably impressive start yesterday as the house screened the world-premiere of its first ever television ad, which promotes its new fragrance, Gucci by Gucci. Hollywood director David Lynch &#8211; famed for his surrealist take on narrative thanks to films such as <em>Mulholland Drive</em> and <em>Blue Velvet</em> &#8211; shot the film on location at the Musee National des Arts D&#8217;Afrique et D&#8217;Oceanie in Paris. It stars top models Raquel Zimmerman, Natasha Poly and Freja Beha Erichsen, dressed in stunning Gucci gowns, to a soundtrack of Blondie&#8217;s iconic hit <em>Heart of Glass</em>. &#8220;I wanted our first television advertising campaign to have that whimsical touch from a visionary film director such as David Lynch,&#8221; says creative director Frida Giannini, who took a hands-on role in all aspects of development of the new fragrance &#8211; her first for the house. &#8220;I wanted him to capture the total essence of Gucci &#8211; and I&#8217;m thrilled with the result.&#8221; The ad will run in Europe from late October, as will an accompanying print campaign. (September 27 2007, AM)</p>
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		<title>LONDON FASHION WEEK &#8211; DAY SEVEN</title>
		<link>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/london-fashion-week-day-seven/</link>
		<comments>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/london-fashion-week-day-seven/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 22 Sep 2007 04:27:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>xarafashion</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fashion & Style]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[YESTERDAY&#8217;S most impressive front row? The supermodel-heavy Fashion Fringe &#8211; which boasted a pretty impressive judging panel, too, including Tom Ford, Natalie Massenet and Colin McDowell. Design duo Aminaka Wilmont took home the prestigious trophy awarded to them by last &#8230; <a href="http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/london-fashion-week-day-seven/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xarafashion.wordpress.com&amp;blog=1665146&amp;post=16&amp;subd=xarafashion&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/skylafashion/BlogPics/photo#5112889634951716450"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/skylafashion/RvSiCKMS3mI/AAAAAAAAANk/PYr_QWl514s/s400/EMcPherson_CSchiffer07Rx_B.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>YESTERDAY&#8217;S most impressive front row? The supermodel-heavy Fashion Fringe &#8211; which boasted a pretty impressive judging panel, too, including Tom Ford, Natalie Massenet and Colin McDowell. Design duo Aminaka Wilmont took home the prestigious trophy awarded to them by last year&#8217;s winner Gavin Douglas, for their futuristic collection of cocoon-like, hooded dresses. Nicole Kidman, meanwhile, made a surprise appearance at the Antoni &amp; Alison show, modelling the new collection in a ten-minute video to mark the label&#8217;s twenty-year anniversary. With a new design team installed at Biba, the label&#8217;s spring/summer collection was a purposeful departure from previous seasons, drawing inspiration from traditional world dress: French tailoring, African prints and a loose, Far Eastern silhouette. Allegra Hicks showed a traditionally nature-inspired, beachwear-heavy collection, while Stella McCartney pulled out all the stops for her first on-schedule offering of Adidas by Stella McCartney during London Fashion Week. Fashionistas trooping into the West London sports centre venue expecting a show were surprised to find a grass-carpeted fun park, replete with a putting green, crazy golf courses and hot dog stand. Models in the collection mingled with the guests, who included Paul McCartney, Debbie Harry, Julie Verhoeven and Stella herself. Across town, Sadie Frost and Jemima French partied into the night with The Mighty Boosh star Noel Fielding to celebrate the launch of their new London store, while fashion&#8217;s big hitters (and a huge crowd of paying public), turned out to see Naomi Campbell, Jessica Stam, Katharine Jenkins and Boy George hit the catwalk for Campbell&#8217;s suitably star-studded Fashion For Relief event, which was &#8211; pardon the pun &#8211; quite the show-stopper. (September 21 2007, AM)</p>
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		<title>Paul Smith: Hockney for Gals</title>
		<link>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/paul-smith-hockney-for-gals/</link>
		<comments>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/paul-smith-hockney-for-gals/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Sep 2007 09:18:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>xarafashion</dc:creator>
		
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		<description><![CDATA[London &#8211; David Hockney&#8216;s loving sister Margaret would have enjoyed Tuesday&#8217;s Paul Smith women&#8217;s wear show in London, whose sense and cute commerciality mimicked her brother. This July in Paris, the inspiration for Sir Paul&#8217;s very fine men&#8217;s collection was &#8230; <a href="http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/paul-smith-hockney-for-gals/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xarafashion.wordpress.com&amp;blog=1665146&amp;post=15&amp;subd=xarafashion&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>London &#8211; <span style="background:none transparent scroll repeat 0 0;cursor:hand;border-bottom:#0066cc 1px dashed;">David Hockney</span>&#8216;s loving sister Margaret would have enjoyed Tuesday&#8217;s Paul Smith women&#8217;s wear show in <span style="background:none transparent scroll repeat 0 0;cursor:hand;border-bottom:#0066cc 1px dashed;">London</span>, whose sense and cute commerciality mimicked her brother.</p>
<p>This July in Paris, the inspiration for Sir Paul&#8217;s very fine men&#8217;s collection was the <span style="cursor:hand;border-bottom:#0066cc 1px dashed;">Yorkshire</span> painter, whose love of cheerful stripes, Pop Art ties and youthful round spectacles dominated the runway.</p>
<p>Today in London, the same ideas ran both through the women&#8217;s collection and down the splendid catwalk of the superb faded expanse of the Great Horticultural Halls. Bottle-top glasses in <span style="cursor:hand;border-bottom:#0066cc 1px dashed;">swimming pool blue</span> hues; satin piped cricket blazers and rugby sweater columns all had that sunny Californian view of <span style="cursor:hand;border-bottom:#0066cc 1px dashed;">Britain</span>.</p>
<p>His best looks were cable sweaters with Indie album blazers, parachute silk parkas and tops with appliqué flowers. It was a collection of polish and poise and eminently wearable for both first date and lazy weekend.</p>
<p>Plus, the architectural tour that is any good season took a great tangent today in the Art Deco 1929 cantilevered Lawrence Hall, where Smith turned the enormous back-drop into the an artists loft, smartly reworking one of <span style="cursor:hand;border-bottom:#0066cc 1px dashed;">Europe</span>&#8216;s greatest concrete spaces.</p>
<p>Paul&#8217;s shows are generally the most professionally staged in London; yet somehow today&#8217;s show felt, ahem, tired; a designer going through the paces, a talent lacking a viscerally punchy theme, i.e. a slick 30 minutes with no soul.</p>
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		<title>The Stupidity of Sally Field’s No Wars If Moms Ruled the World Claim</title>
		<link>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/19/the-stupidity-of-sally-field%e2%80%99s-no-wars-if-moms-ruled-the-world-claim/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:30:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>xarafashion</dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Sure, it was just an acceptance speech at some silly awards ceremony. However, when Hollywoodans say ridiculous things on television that media applaud along with the Hollywoodans in attendance, someone&#8217;s got to point out the inanity. As such, when Sally &#8230; <a href="http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/19/the-stupidity-of-sally-field%e2%80%99s-no-wars-if-moms-ruled-the-world-claim/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xarafashion.wordpress.com&amp;blog=1665146&amp;post=14&amp;subd=xarafashion&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Sure, it was just an acceptance speech at some silly awards ceremony. However, when Hollywoodans say ridiculous things on television that media applaud along with the Hollywoodans in attendance, someone&#8217;s got to point out the inanity. As such, when Sally Field said at Sunday&#8217;s Emmy awards ceremony as reported by the MRC&#8217;s Tim Graham, &#8220;And, let&#8217;s face it, if the mothers ruled the war, there would be no (expletive) wars in the first place,&#8221; I can&#8217;t sit idly by without contesting such nonsense. After all, it appears Field has never heard of some famous female leaders who brought their nation&#8217;s to war: Indira Gandhi, a mother who not only supported Bangladesh militarily in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, but also started India&#8217;s nuclear program presiding over that country&#8217;s first nuclear test. Israel&#8217;s Golda Meir, a mother who, as Prime Minister, successfully defeated Syria in 1973&#8242;s Yom Kippur War. Great Britain&#8217;s Margaret Thatcher, a mother who was nicknamed &#8220;The Iron Lady&#8221; in 1976 by the Soviet defense ministry&#8217;s newspaper for her famous statement: The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns. Once becoming Prime Minister, Thatcher became President Reagan&#8217;s most important ally in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and oversaw the 1983 war in the Falklands. More recently, there were a number of Congressional mothers who voted in favor of the October 2002 resolution to invade Iraq, certainly including Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). Finally, let us not forget the female terrorists around the world who are participating in acts of barbarism against innocent civilians while themselves having children. For instance, Meryl Yourish posted the following in the comments section at Hot Air this morning: So, is [Field] counting the mothers like this one, who blew herself up and took four Israelis with her? Or these? You know what? People who think that all the world&#8217;s problems would be solved if women ruled the world are full of crap. And I say this as a woman and a feminist. I couldn&#8217;t have said it any better. As an aside, please see Kevin McCullough&#8217;s &#8220;Yes, Sally Field, There Really Are Evil Mothers Too&#8221; for more on the Flying Nun&#8217;s stupidity.</p>
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		<title>Fox Cuts Off Anti-War Speech &#8211; Sally Fields At Emmy&#8217;s</title>
		<link>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/19/fox-cuts-off-anti-war-speech-sally-fields-at-emmys/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:23:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>xarafashion</dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Actress Sally Fields took the opportunity to express her feelings for war when she accepted her Emmy award Sunday, but Fox wasn’t pleased with speech. A flustered Fields, 60, was cut off by the network right after she spoke of &#8230; <a href="http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/19/fox-cuts-off-anti-war-speech-sally-fields-at-emmys/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xarafashion.wordpress.com&amp;blog=1665146&amp;post=13&amp;subd=xarafashion&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/skylafashion/BlogPics/photo#5111765306934183394"><img src="http://lh5.google.com/skylafashion/RvCjdp76ReI/AAAAAAAAANE/0qDSs1q0zTs/s400/Sally%20fields.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>Actress Sally Fields took the opportunity to express her feelings for war when she accepted her Emmy award Sunday, but Fox wasn’t pleased with speech. A flustered Fields, 60, was cut off by the network right after she spoke of mothers whose sons go to war saying, “I am proud to be one of those women, and let’s face it, if mothers ruled there would be no&#8230;” What Fox cut out was, “god-damned wars in the first place.” Using air time when millions of viewers are watching can be a risky thing to do, but Fields clearly felt passionate enough to let her thoughts take the stage. Why did Fox choose to sensor the worlds of the Brothers and Sisters star? In a statement released from Fox, the company said, “Some language during the live broadcast may have been considered inappropriate by some viewers. As a result, Fox’s broadcast standards executives determined it appropriate to drop sound and picture during those portions of the show.”</p>
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		<title>Fashion shows should screen for anorexia</title>
		<link>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/15/fashion-shows-should-screen-for-anorexia/</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 15 Sep 2007 04:00:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>xarafashion</dc:creator>
		
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		<description><![CDATA[LONDON &#8211; A report by the British Fashion Council, organizers of London Fashion Week, has stopped short of recommending a ban on ultra-thin models. But the report, published Friday, says fashion models should be 16 years of age or older &#8230; <a href="http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/15/fashion-shows-should-screen-for-anorexia/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xarafashion.wordpress.com&amp;blog=1665146&amp;post=12&amp;subd=xarafashion&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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<p>LONDON &#8211; A report by the British Fashion Council, organizers of London Fashion Week, has stopped short of recommending a ban on ultra-thin models. </p>
<p>But the report, published Friday, says fashion models should be 16 years of age or older and should be screened for eating disorders.</p>
<p>Catwalk shows featuring designer clothes hanging off the shoulders of lanky girls face increasing pressure to act after models died from suspected eating disorders.</p>
<p>Ultra-thin models were banned from fashion week runways in Madrid, Spain, and Milan, Italy, last year. Organizers in Paris, London and elsewhere have come under pressure to do the same.</p>
<p>The British report, written by a panel composed of fashion designers, models and an eating disorder specialist, asked agencies to certify that their models had been examined for eating disorders by an accredited list of medical experts.</p>
<p>Up to 40 percent of models may have eating disorders, compared with an estimated 3 percent of the overall population, the report said.</p>
<p>The report said most of those interviewed by the panel said &#8220;weigh-ins&#8221; before catwalk appearances would be impossible to enforce.</p>
<p>Eating disorder charity BEAT welcomed the recommendation but warned that certification could be difficult.</p>
<p>&#8220;Identifying whether someone has an eating disorder can be quite a lengthy process,&#8221; BEAT Chief Executive Susan Ringwood said. &#8220;It can take a number of investigations and interviews. It&#8217;s a psychiatric condition.&#8221;</p>
<p>Blood tests and physical examinations can identify symptoms of malnutrition, but diagnosing an eating disorder requires interviewing a patient, she said.</p>
<p>The British Fashion Council hopes to combat eating disorders through medical tests, mentoring programs and workshops.</p>
<p>Other recommendations backed by the report include criminal background checks on agents and photographers working with young models, random drug testing backstage, more funding for research into eating disorders and the creation of a model health watchdog.</p>
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		<title>New York Fashion Show update Designers in a Time of Many Dresses, Some Terrific</title>
		<link>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/new-york-fashion-show-update-designers-in-a-time-of-many-dresses-some-terrific/</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:28:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>xarafashion</dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Rained on, delayed, exhausted: the New York collections ended yesterday with Donna Karan and Isabel Toledo of Anne Klein each taking on that most feminine of summer staples: the dress. Ms. Karan’s show recalled a million movies of women airing &#8230; <a href="http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/new-york-fashion-show-update-designers-in-a-time-of-many-dresses-some-terrific/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xarafashion.wordpress.com&amp;blog=1665146&amp;post=10&amp;subd=xarafashion&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/skylafashion/BlogPics/photo#5109602063440270994"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/skylafashion/Ruj0AT711pI/AAAAAAAAALk/JWrQmVbpymM/s800/13fashion-600.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>Rained on, delayed, exhausted: the New York collections ended yesterday with <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/donna_karan/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Donna Karan."><font color="#004276">Donna Karan</font></a> and Isabel Toledo of Anne Klein each taking on that most feminine of summer staples: the dress.</p>
<p>Ms. Karan’s show recalled a million movies of women airing themselves on their stoops on a hot summer night, usually within sight of a man in an undershirt. Classy halter and shirtdresses in waxed poplin and linen gauze came in khaki and cocoa, often with a wide belt. The waist was the focus of the collection, with full skirts and taut white cotton body-shirts.</p>
<p>Flattering, the dresses should appeal to a lot of women; wrapped styles in taupe silk jersey looked sexy. Ms. Toledo’s tunics and sundresses, by contrast, will probably find fewer customers. They were complex in color and pattern, surprising in their design, and for that reason more interesting.</p>
<p>As simple as her shapes are, Ms. Toledo invests them with something special: a swingy cotton dress with Aztec striped panels, a conservative black sleeveless dress with a white underskirt; a short-sleeve shirtwaist in a silvery crystal tone. She keeps moving the marker around, producing more thoughts. There were some terrific dresses in white crinkled silk that were hand-painted in bright drizzle patterns, almost with a beach-souvenir quality. They were unlike anything else on the runways.</p>
<p>Into the divide comes L’Wren Scott, with her close-fitting, confident clothes. Ms. Scott took her boyfriend, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/mick_jagger/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Mick Jagger"><font color="#004276">Mick Jagger</font></a>, to her intimate showing, at the Gagosian Gallery, and Mr. Jagger sat with the editors at a long lunch table, which was kind of sweet. She makes a fresh case for wardrobe building, adding a soft black cape to a pantsuit with a nipped-waist jacket and full trousers, a long water-repellent black silk raincoat (with a lace fedora by Stephen Jones), and a hand-embroidered black sequined pantsuit.</p>
<p>Ms. Scott’s message is narrow but distinctive and clear. She started her line with glamorously simple dresses. Her best additions are in deep teal jersey with a ruched panel down the back and fanny, and in blue silk brocade with a boat neck and a loose tie falling across a half-bare back.</p>
<p>It’s hard to really find fault with Francisco Costa’s <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/calvin_klein/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Calvin Klein."><font color="#004276">Calvin Klein</font></a> collection, on Tuesday. The long slim dresses and pantsuits in white stretch cotton were very Calvin Klein, a job well done. And it’s a collection that will gain more meaning with time, as the spring shows shift to Europe and people will recall, if not wish for, a breezy shirt dress in pale gray silk or one of Mr. Costa’s long stretch silk T-shirts in egg-wash shades of green or blue.</p>
<p>The colors helped convey the coolness of the lines, particularly in the spare evening halters worn with high-waist silk trousers and a strapless dress of pale jade organza.</p>
<p>Yet if there was fault to be found it was in the faultlessness of some of the day looks, a sense that Mr. Costa was quite consciously aiming for a visual statement and, in the process, didn’t see or refused to see that the hemlines of the dresses might have been better shorter. If you’re noticing something like a hemline, that’s a problem.</p>
<p>Another thing: all of the models in the show were white, with hair at a uniform length. You can’t tell women to be individuals in their style and then not show a range of individual faces, hairstyles and ethnic backgrounds.</p>
<p>It seems out of touch.</p>
<p>Willa Cather was one of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/bill_blass/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Bill Blass"><font color="#004276">Bill Blass</font></a>’s favorite writers, but he had the good sense not to base a collection on one of her books. It’s not that the Great Plains or a frontier style of dress is sacred, but unless you’re prepared to understand the nuances, you’re really not offering much more than a version of the old Sears, Roebuck catalog.</p>
<p>That was Zac Posen’s problem the other night. He was out of his hood, straining with black “Shaker” coats and flat-collar shirts and skirt hems with a “wheat” fringe. Tall Hana Soukupova, in a dress with a ruffled train, looked as if she were pulling a plow.</p>
<p>Just about everything in this collection was off, from the heaviness of the layers to the pointless details. And after seeing <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/marc_jacobs/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Marc Jacobs."><font color="#004276">Marc Jacobs</font></a>’s whittled-down evening dresses, Mr. Posen’s prairie frou-frou looked old hat. He ought to figure out how to innovate rather than badly commemorate.</p>
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		<title>Top 10 Simple Style Rules</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:32:19 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Intimidated by fashion? Don&#8217;t be! We&#8217;ll help you navigate fashion with a few easy-to-remember style rules. 1. Update in Small Doses Not sure wide jeans are for you? Try jeans with a bit of flare instead. Head-to-trendy looks ridiculous. 2. &#8230; <a href="http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/top-10-simple-style-rules/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xarafashion.wordpress.com&amp;blog=1665146&amp;post=7&amp;subd=xarafashion&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/skylafashion/BlogPics/photo#5108830343379815986"><img src="http://lh4.google.com/skylafashion/RuY2ISrkDjI/AAAAAAAAALE/aQ4uGZtRgLc/s800/f1.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>Intimidated by fashion? Don&#8217;t be! We&#8217;ll help you navigate fashion with a few easy-to-remember style rules.</p>
<p>1. Update in Small Doses Not sure wide jeans are for you? Try jeans with a bit of flare instead. Head-to-trendy looks ridiculous.</p>
<p>2. If You Think You&#8217;re Too Old, You Probably Are When your gut feeling tells you that a trend is too young for you (and you&#8217;re not Madonna, Cher or Demi), you&#8217;ll never really feel comfortable in it.</p>
<p>3. Dress Out of Your Age Group Go with how fashion makes you feel about yourself. If you feel great in a mini and you&#8217;re 55, then go for it. If you prefer pantsuits and you&#8217;re 22, then wear &#8216;em.</p>
<p> 4. Black Clothes Always Look More:</p>
<p>Expensive</p>
<p>Flattering</p>
<p> Sophisticated</p>
<p>5. Don&#8217;t Buy Junk to Save Money Cheapo, just-to-be-buying-something items are almost always a bad investment (unless you&#8217;re 18 with a great body). Remix existing clothes, alter your hair, makeup and accessories or borrow something from your best friend&#8217;s closet until the financial situation brightens.</p>
<p>6. Trends Have a Short Shelf Life Fashion fads are a blip on the fashion timeline. One season everyone is sporting black leggings under minidresses, the next they are wearing pants. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with dabbling in &#8216;It&#8217; bags or must-haves, but remember that they&#8217;ll only be hot for a short time. Hot or Not?</p>
<p>7. Leave Your Look for a While Ultra-conservative? Explore new looks &#8212; maybe a lacy shirt with peeks of skin &#8212; or prints (try leopard for a bit of wildness). Downtown diva? Try a girly knee-length skirt. Play, have fun, remember that style should work for you, not the other way around. You&#8217;ll probably go back to your look after experimenting, but with a new approach.</p>
<p>8. Don&#8217;t Sacrifice Professional Image for Fashion Strappy, see-through, extra-tight or downright sleazy styles won&#8217;t ever do your career any favors, regardless of your career path. Many fashion spreads will trumpet high slits, plunging necklines, sheer and a plethora of inappropriate looks in the name of &#8220;femininity.&#8221; But sexy doesn&#8217;t cut it for 9 to 5. Ever. What to Wear to Work</p>
<p>9. You Are About Much More Than Just Fashion Put much more thought into your reading repertoire, spiritual nourishment and personal relationships than your wardrobe. An inner peace and glow will never go out of style. Even designer Kenneth Cole says</p>
<h3>10. You&#8217;re the Boss! If you love it, look great in it and can afford it, buy it. Yes, it&#8217;s really that simple!</p>
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		<title>Romancing the Flat Pack: Ikea, Repurposed</title>
		<link>http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/romancing-the-flat-pack-ikea-repurposed/</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:13:27 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Life & Health]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Winnie Lam was thinking about food when she made her Chocolate Sundae Toppings footstool, fashioned from a few bags of cotton pompoms hot-glued to an Ikea stool. “It came from staring into a bowl of ice cream one day,” said &#8230; <a href="http://xarafashion.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/romancing-the-flat-pack-ikea-repurposed/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xarafashion.wordpress.com&amp;blog=1665146&amp;post=6&amp;subd=xarafashion&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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<p>Winnie Lam was thinking about food when she made her Chocolate Sundae Toppings footstool, fashioned from a few bags of cotton pompoms hot-glued to an Ikea stool. “It came from staring into a bowl of ice cream one day,” said Ms. Lam, 31, who lives in Mountain View, Calif., and is a product manager at Google. “I’m a chocolate lover, but I’d rather look at it than eat it.”</p>
<p>Alex Csiky, a 43-year-old guitar maker in Windsor, Ontario, was focused, as he always is, on blowing a raspberry at the guitar-making industry while at the same time making a great sound when he built his sleek blond electric guitar from an Ikea pine tabletop.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Christine Domanic, 28, an artist who was living at the time in Philadelphia, found the inspiration for her rolling bench in the sex ads in the back of city magazines. Her endearing Wiener Bench — a wooden bench festooned with fat pink crocheted tubes — was made from an old Ikea side table, the yarn from 60 used sweaters and the stuffing from a sofa left on her street on trash day.</p>
<p>Ms. Lam, Mr. Csiky and Ms. Domanic have never met but they are nonetheless related, connected by a global (and totally unofficial) collective known as the Ikea Hackers. Do-it-yourselfers and technogeeks, tinkerers, artists, crafters and product and furniture designers, the hackers are united only by their perspective, which looks upon an Ikea Billy bookcase or Lack table and sees not a finished object but raw material: a clean palette yearning to be embellished or repurposed. They make a subset of an expanding global D.I.Y. movement, itself a huge tent of philosophies and manifestoes including but not confined to anticonsumerism, antiglobalism, environmentalism and all-purpose iconoclasm.</p>
<p>“I think there is a movement around looking at all the products that are available — this global stream of <span class="italic"><em>stuff</em></span> — and realizing you can tinker with them and rebuild them,” said Michael F. Zbyszynski, 36, the assistant director of music composition and pedagogy at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies at the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the University of California."><font color="#004276">University of California</font></a>, Berkeley, whose own hack is a speaker array made from red plastic Ikea salad bowls, and who has made other musical objects from PVC plastic and coffee cans that “live in the zone of the hack,” he said.</p>
<p>“It’s all about not accepting what’s presented for sale as it is,” Mr. Zbyszynski said, “about not just doing a ‘paint by numbers’ of your life.”</p>
<p>The hackers have lately gained a salonnière in Mei Mei Yap, a 37-year-old Malaysian copywriter who lives in Kuala Lumpur and works for an advertising agency there. Ms. Yap, who calls herself Jules, for the Ikea chair she loves, and who has no affiliation with the mammoth Swedish furniture maker that makes it, is not, she said by phone from her apartment, particularly handy, but with her year-old blog, <a target="_" href="http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/"><font color="#004276">ikeahacker.blogspot.com</font></a>, she has created a forum for those who are very handy indeed. With a keen eye and an open heart, Ms. Yap has built an encyclopedia of hacks by trawling craft and design Web sites and by inviting personal submissions.</p>
<p>Ms. Yap said she lives with a family of rapidly reproducing guppies and lots of Ikea furniture, but hardly any hacks. “Well, there are maybe three,” she said, describing a tower of wall cabinets, a side table made into a mobile home office unit, and a bathroom cabinet she added doors to. “But they don’t even qualify for my site.”</p>
<p>She presents hacks that are kitschy-useful, like Sara Madole’s bright green rolling cat litter box (Ikea hackers seem to be overwhelmingly cat people), which Ms. Madole, a 27-year-old law school graduate who lives in Houston, said she built from two Ikea Snack boxes. Ms. Yap also collects hacks that are meta in both concept and design, like the Nata Vintage chair — made by Anatomic Factory, a design collective in Florence, Italy — a Duchampian object that marries a walking cane with an Ikea chair.</p>
<p>“Nata vintage” — meaning, roughly, born vintage — “stems from a reflection on the eternal return of the ‘old’ as a recurrent tendency of the market,” Marco Popolo, one of the object’s designers, explained by e-mail. “Therefore let us make a provocation: what better way to sell a vintage chair than to borrow a walking stick (stereotype of the old) to replace a leg of a classic, stereotyped Ikea chair?”</p>
<p>Mr. Popolo wrote that he has been following Ms. Yap’s blog, which he called a “very interesting big container rich with ingenious and original ideas,” since its inception, drawn to the fact that it’s about “stuff made by common people” — as opposed to designers — who are trying to customize their lives. “This is a very contemporary phenomenon,” he said.</p>
<p>More prosaically, Ms. Yap said: “I think Ikea just makes it easy to D.I.Y. because it already has a system in place of mixing and matching this frame with that cabinet and those knobs. Hacking just takes it a little further, repurposing it to fit your needs. And maybe the geek-nerd in us hackers feels a buzz having outsmarted the Ikea system by creating something of our own.”</p>
<p>Some of the most ingenious hacks are as simple as a $6.99 Ikea desk lamp reimagined as a wall sconce, or stainless steel shelving reworked as a coffee table. The word hack is filched, as Shoshana Berger, editor in chief of ReadyMade magazine put it, from computer parlance, as in, “hacking into the mainframe.”</p>
<p>“The idea is you’re getting in through the backdoor,” Ms. Berger said, “and reinventing what’s there.”</p>
<p>In the 1990s, when Ms. Berger was a “cool hunter” at Y&amp;R, the branding, marketing and advertising agency, “we used to call this ‘post-purchase product alteration, ’ ” she said, noting that Ikea hackers’ predecessors can be found in fashion, with the deconstruction movement fomented by the Belgians in the late ’80s, and in architecture.</p>
<p>“There is a long history of hacking industrial artifacts or found objects and turning them into high design,” she said, drawing a straight line from Buckminster Fuller to Lot-Ek, the Manhattan architectural firm that has played with cargo containers, industrial sinks and truck tanks. “But to my knowledge Ikea is the only company that is appealing to the do-it-yourselfer.”</p>
<p>Why Ikea, the 60-year-old megabrand whose perky Swedish style has homogenized living rooms from Europe to Malaysia (it now has 265 stores in 35 countries), should be so hackable has everything to do with its price point and, perhaps, its benign-seeming blondness.</p>
<p>There are hackers who have upended and truly subverted the happy Ikea message, like Guy Ben-Ner, an Israeli video artist who made a treehouse of Ikea furniture and an instructional video featuring a man who is a combination Robinson Crusoe, Jewish settler and Ikea salesman. The piece, which he showed at the 2005 Venice Biennial, was all about “the illusion of creating” that comes from the sort of D.I.Y. that regular Ikea shoppers practice, along with an attendant illusion of individuality. The Ikea-D.I.Y. promise is that “we shall all have, eventually, the same ‘private’ homes,” Mr. Ben-Ner said.</p>
<p>But most of the hackers Ms. Yap has collected aren’t perpetrating truly subversive acts. They are more focused on the pleasures of reinvention, and on modifying Ikea’s wares to suit their homes and personalities.</p>
<p>Mona Liss, director of public relations for Ikea in the United States, took her first look at Ms. Yap’s blog a few weeks ago, pointed there by this reporter. “I could spend all day looking at this,” she said, and then opined that what compels an Ikea hacker to hack, in addition to what she called Ikea’s clean palette, “is this invisible aura of Ikea, something in our DNA that is inviting and unspoken.”</p>
<p>“Being an Ikea worker,” she continued with animation, “I can tell you we’re a culture that’s asked to challenge conformity, to speak outside the box.”</p>
<p>Or outside the flat pack, as the company’s special packaging is called.</p>
<p>Ikea hacking reminded Ann Mack, 31, director of trend-spotting at JWT, the blue-chip advertising agency once known as J. Walter Thompson, of the way ad campaigns are spoofed on YouTube. “Customization is so huge for a demographic that’s skewing younger and younger,” she said. “They don’t want to be told by ‘the man’ what they should consume and how exactly they should consume it. That’s boring. They can make their own playlist. They can take a product and make it truly their own.”</p>
<p>In any case ReadyMade, Ms. Berger’s magazine, which she started in December 2001 and comes out every other month, was designed for hackers of all stripes. It’s a hybrid, part <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/martha_stewart/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Martha Stewart."><font color="#004276">Martha Stewart</font></a>, part Mrs. Beeton, for a reader who listens to the Silver Jews, reworks ads to display on YouTube and might turn rubbings of manhole covers into backlighted mandalas or repurpose an Ikea Billy shelf into a bed, following instructions that ran in the magazine in 2005 in an article called “Ikea Your Way.”</p>
<p>The magazine itself was a D.I.Y. project until last fall, when it was bought by the Meredith Corporation. Its success — it now has a circulation of 250,000 — has resulted in large part from the mind-set of a generation that came of age in the late 1980s and early ’90s with self-authoring tools, Ms. Berger said, “like editing their own movies and photos on their computers, blogging, creating their own Web sites.”</p>
<p>“They feel very capable and resourceful,” she said.</p>
<p>The rise of the computer culture, as resourceful as it is, means that “we are no longer a <span class="italic"><em>tactile</em></span> culture,” Ms. Berger continued, “so there is this yearning for things that are hands-on and handmade.”</p>
<p>ReadyMade is part of a universe of D.I.Y. media and forums where Ikea hacks appear and are then found by Ms. Yap, who links her blog to them. It’s a universe that includes Make magazine (more science than design-geeky, for the handmade-robot set) and Web sites like <a target="_" href="http://instructables.com/"><font color="#004276">instructables.com</font></a>, which was created by <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/massachusetts_institute_of_technology/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Massachusetts Institute of Technology"><font color="#004276">M.I.T.</font></a> Media Lab alumni as a forum for its users to share knowledge about how to make or do practically anything, including, as a glance at the home page the other day revealed, a quick banana nut bread and “hacking a toilet for free water.” Mr. Zbyszynski’s speaker array, with its goofy “Lost in Space” aesthetic, first appeared there.</p>
<p>The do-it-yourselfer’s agora is the two-year-old Etsy (<a target="_" href="http://etsy.com/"><font color="#004276">etsy.com</font></a>), run out of a 7,000-square-foot warehouse in Brooklyn by Robert Kalin, 27. He founded the site — an online community of 400,000 members, including crafters, designers and, inevitably, Ikea hackers — as an old-fashioned bazaar to sell handmade objects and promote “human-to-human contact,” as he described it. In July, Mr. Kalin said, Etsy sold its millionth item. “I don’t know if it’s anachronistic or ambitious,” he said, “but I just want to make everything I own.”</p>
<p>Mr. Kalin said that to him and his fellows at Etsy, Ikea is a natural resource. “We don’t look to a forest for wood,” he said. “We don’t want to use ‘new’ wood. We look at a Dumpster or an Ikea store as a place to go harvest ‘raw’ materials. It’s a very urban phenomenon: we have the resources we need and we have become expert at repurposing them, like taking these broken Ikea chairs and making them into a table.”</p>
<p>Mr. Kalin is big on “upcycling,” a process whose name was coined by William McDonough, an architect, and Michael Braungart, a chemist, in their 2002 book, “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.” They used the term to describe the process of taking something that’s essentially waste and moving it up the consumer-goods chain. “I love upcycling,” Mr. Kalin said. “I love this idea of bringing something from lower down and elevating it.”</p>
<p>Etsy held an upcycling contest last spring, inviting its users to make something of value out of materials that would otherwise end up on the trash heap. Christine Domanic’s Wiener Bench won first place. Last month, Ms. Domanic joined the Etsy staff as a marketplace coordinator, helping Mr. Kalin restructure the site. She has donated her bench to the Etsy lab.</p>
<p>“Anyone can come and see it,” she said. “It’s really comfortable and fun to scoot around the floor on.”</p>
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