Edited by Lester Brathwaite
Baz Luhrmann‘s The Great Gatsby promises to be a major fashion event — Luhrmann and his Daisy Buchanan, Carey Mulligan are already involved with next year’s Costume Institute Gala — complete with a 20s fashion revival, an inevitable Vogue cover and an awards season full of red carpet gowns. And Tiffany & Co. just added another layer of blinged out glamour.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
In the latest issue of The Gentlewoman, Carine Roitfeld discusses her favorite fashion shoots in her long and prolific career of bursting taboos and crotch seems.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
- Stella Tennant gets severely cinched at the waist for the cover of Vogue Italia’s September issue, shot by Steven Meisel. [Image Amplified]
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
Olivier Theyskens is one of the most singular designers in fashion today. His clothes are brooding, dramatic, poetic and above all beautiful, much like the designer himself. Shortly after dropping out of Belgium’s La Cambre Art Academy, one of his gowns ended up on Madonna‘s mannish back at the 1998 Oscars, thus propelling him to stardom. Documenting Theyskens road from precocious art star to his four seasons at Rochas and finally his brilliant but short-lived tenure at Nina Ricci was photographer Julien Claessens, whose haunting photos add another dimension to Theyskens sartorial creations and form the backbone for The Other Side of the Picture (Assouline, 2010).
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
Finally, the dolls of my dreams have bitch-slapped their way onto store shelves; Lauren Conrad is apparently classier than Snooki (yeah, right); and Elle Fanning is clearly outshining older sister Dakota thanks to the Mulleavy sisters.
Edited by Rebecca Alexander
Crystal Renn, one of the most famous “plus-size” models (and one of Mark Fast’s catwalkers), talks about her post-show experience, Gemma Ward ‘s weight and whether size acceptance in the fashion industry is just a fad. Read the interview here.
Edited by Kirby Marzec
Call me oblivious, but I had absolutely no clue that Gemma Ward was the girl in John Mayer’s music video for his 2006 hit “Daughters!” And I thought that I knew that doll face anywhere!
Edited by Rebecca Alexander
Gemma Ward’s agent has announced that Gemma has no plans to return to her modeling career.
Edited by Hillary Frazier
She’s up pretty early for a morning off. Can’t say I’m a fan of 7am Starbucks runs, but I’m glad to know Gemma Ward likes good music.
LINK LOVE: Gemma Ward’s Twitter
Edited by admin
We might always relate models like Helena Christensen, Angelina Jolie, Naomi Campbell to the definition of “beauty”, tall, skinny, long hair and angelic conditions.
You can definitely find pretty girls anywhere in town, from Bondi Beach to small alleys of Paris, but only a few in the world resemble real beauty, which is often as its best removed from glamour and adornment.
Beauty is more than just one type and that it comes in different shapes and sizes as well. “Many might find pretty is the same as beauty” quoted by Alexandra Shulman, Editor of British Vogue who recently wrote in ‘Beauty British Now”, “but actually their enemies, as the blandness and acceptability of pretty cancels out the greatness of beauty.”.
Emma Pei
Most people will define Chinese top-model Du Juan’s round face, creamy flawless skin, and gorgeous bone structure as the “real” beauty of China, less would look at rising star Emma Pei’s alien-like quality and immediately comes to mind that she is strikingly beautiful.
What majority thinks is beautiful is always the right answer, which is wrong! Embracing individuality is the real beauty as people like Kate Moss have challenged and created a whole new beauty aesthetic. She was the very few in the early 1990’s who were different, oppose to Linda, Christy and Naomi who had the bodies and polished stance.
Kate defined a new type of beauty that is recognized and accepted now in this generation. She defines beauty, as beauty demands a kind of originality that makes you pause and admire. Beauty is not being perfect, as the strange and peculiar quality makes beauties what they are.
Since then, there have been models who have epitomised a moment, like Lily Cole who almost didn’t make the list, as bookers find her over dolly. Models and people like her depict a more fragile, bizarre, unusual specimen of beauty, the technical term – ‘Alien Beauty’.
Sudanese goddess Alek Wek immediately broke the Western beauty standards and blew the fashion industry away, as she dominates the runway from Galliano to Calvin Klein. Polley Fey is an icon in defining Alien Beauty, as she conquers the fashion stage without sacrificing a bit of her individuality. In the 90’s Fey was one of the biggest models in the fetish scene, as she appears frequently on Torture Garden fliers.
Sasha Vs Gemma
The fashion industry have mistaken model Sasha Pivovarova as Australian gem Gemma Ward. Sasha started off in the industry with just negative feedback, no one liked her. She is more than just a Gemma-clone; the fact that the crowd sees them alike is so ironic.
I have found indie model/music agency label very interesting to interview, as they only represent 20 models and a couple fellow musicians oppose to larger agencies who casts more commercial girls who could earn the cash for the company. As I interviewed their Model Manager, Lance Labreche, we both discuss about how the fashion industry have adapt the notion of ‘beauty’ in the last years. As he comments that “The standards of beauty tend to swing back-and-forth like a pendulum along a certain amount of seemingly already agreed upon parameters”.
Part of Lance’s job as a model manager is to balance what consumer wants and how to introduce new forms of beauty that as he says “can increase a particular demographics size and scope for the fashion entertainment and scope we service”.
Away from the fashion industry and yet, in general women and even men still gage themselves against an image of impossible perfection. Nothing is really going to change unless people accept that “flaws make you beautiful”, and that there is more than one type of beauty in the world.
Not being blonde and blue eyed, five foot tall, slender with perfect silky skin would not put you in the category of being ugly. ‘Ugly’ is a terminology used for those who don’t accept diversity. Some people might be more beautiful than others, but no one is truly ugly. Brutality, cruelness and war is real ugly.
Our eyes have always blindfolded our hearts, as we always look at the physical beauty but not necessarily see the beauty quality of a person through their personality or accept another kind of beauty.
True beauty should be more widely recognized by those shallow people out there who just go for looks, former top model Cheryl Tiegs also recognises that “true beauty really does have to do with an inner light that does shine”. Even though looks might play an important part of where you stand in the community, without a positive and genuine personality, a person will not go far.
Even though I may not be a fan of Cate Blanchett , I admire her message ‘you don’t need plastic surgery even though you are 39 years old that starts to gain wrinkles’. Cate does not intend to alter her natural beauty, as she felt that “one could not run away from the passing of time, which leaves its marks inevitably, even if one’s skin or one’s mind”.
No offence but Mrs. Playboy a.k.a. Pamela Anderson used to be beautiful and had striking features before she had plastic surgery. Her cheeks are bulbous, her lips are insanely puffy and her skin waxen and shiny. We should not blame her actions, as this world can be quite crucial to you. But people should consider and try to be who they are. They should not change because of other people, even though if someone told you that you look disgusting, if you find yourself beautiful, that’s the most important.
Not long time ago, I was the kid who read fairytales. Most of the books describe heroes who were handsome and heroines who were beautiful. Since then, I believed that one of the qualifications to be a great person is to be “beautiful”. Time to time, as a teenager, I will look at the mirror, comparing myself to the models from Fashion TV and say “why am I so fat?” or “why am I ugly and they aren’t?”
Labreche reckons that “Ugliness tends to come from the same thought process as beauty”, as I question him if he feels ugly or not and when? He responds with a big yes, “I would have to say, yes, there are times when I feel ugly. I would even go a step further and admit that there are times when ugliness becomes an active choice or impulse”.
At 17 and half years old, writing this article right now, I am fully confident to tell everyone that I have realized outer beauty was not so important to make someone good. Though I somehow understand why people could be so materialistic and depthless. Shouldn’t we accept who we are as an individual, isn’t our natural “beauty” enough to fulfill ourselves?
If others can be confident, why can’t you. The beauty looked at with the eyes doesn’t last forever. Or should I say, you should now try to accept the new generation of beauty.
Nine Daughters and a Stereo are created by Eva Gödel the Art Director of the model agency, and Kira Bunse prominent freelance fashion photographer who runs the company together. Agency named after a David Bowie/Iggy Pop song lyric and originally conceived as a thesis project, now becomes one of the most interesting and successful agency based in Germany. They’re casting methods are different than other fellow competitors, they don’t walk around shopping malls and find the next “it” girl, but they target to a niche of poor, young and pale youngster, mainly guys who dwell the streets of Germany.
From my own observations and from the response of Bunse and Gödel, we discovered that Europe in particular embraces diversity. Diversity of humans, got more open, both of them said that “There is a bigger variety of looks and styles and personality got more important”. Girls don’t find macho jocks in high school that attractive anymore; ever since Adam Brody introduced Nerd Chic and made girls go crazy about their nerdy boyfriends.
Gödel have made a really simple yet powerful statement that “Beauty is relative. It is a subjective experience – Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Time changed and passed and like Europe and other parts of the world we should embrace who we are and openness guarantees a long term beauty.
