Edited by Lester Brathwaite
This year marks the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic, but even one hundred years later there’s still an air of mystery, intrigue and scandale wrapped around it. Beginning this week, 180 pieces of Titanic memorabilia will go up for auction, among them a kimono that purportedly belonged to Lady Duff Gordon, known professionally as the fashion designer Lucile.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about Paris Fashion Week that brings out the crazy in everyone. Lest you forget it was around this time last year that John Galliano went swimming in a pool of anti-Semitic haterade, thus plunging the fashion world into a year-long speculative mission regarding his successor, Christophe Decarnin had his breakdown and falling out with Balmain and Kanye West dropped the biggest bomb of his career – and I’m not talking about 808s & Heartbreak. Not to mention a few months ago during the spring 2012 season that whole fashion calendar war was ignited. This PFW promises to be, if not equally scandalous, at least worth the clutching of your collective Chanel pearls. Here are the top scandals burning down the City of Lights.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
This delicious little story is like something out of Gatsby — if The Great Gatsby was kind of trashy and a bit of a douchbag. We’ve got a bevy of supermodels, a Greek billionaire heir, a Roitfeld, an entitled prince of a sovereign city-state, $500 bottles of vodka, and a chivalrous “man of the people” trapped in the middle of it all.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
In honor of President’s Day and on theme with our February month of love/sex/relationships, we dug through the sordid and seedy history of America’s Executive Branch and pulled together a list of the greatest presidential sex scandals of all time. And while Barack knows better than to cross Michelle — three words: White House fire — these former commanders-in-chief had no problem putting the O in Oval Office.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
“I would rather weep in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle.” You can accuse Patrizia Reggiani of many things — murder being chief among them — but at least she’s consistent. After serving half of a 26 year sentence at Milan’s San Vittore prison for arranging the murder of her husband, Gucci heir Maurizio Gucci in 1995, Reggiani recently refused parole because, in her own brilliant and completely serious words, “it would mean getting a job and I have never worked a day in my life.” Fall back, Imelda Marcos, I think I may have found a new idol.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
This month, former “model” — at 5’0″ her modeling credentials are a bit suspect – Omaima Aree Nelson was denied parole for killing, dismembering and allegedly eating her husband, William E. Nelson some 20 years ago. Okay, her status as a model is officially rescinded — murder and dismemberment is one thing, but shoving anything down her throat that wasn’t illegally prescribed is just crossing the line.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
In this, the final installment of Quel Scandale!‘s “Fashion Fascists” series (see also: Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and Daphne Guinness), we explore the wartime activities of Louis Vuitton and its role in aiding the Vichy regime, also know as the French puppet government that openly collaborated with the German occupying forces. The details of Vuitton’s involvement came out seven years ago with the publication of Louis Vuitton: A French Saga, which LVMH pretty much tried to ignore. But unlike a crying child, a secret Nazi past isn’t something you can lock in a closet until it passes out from exhaustion.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
Daphne Guinness can clearly do no wrong. Everything she wears and says — “I’ll eat when I’m dead” comes to mind — is perfection. Her family, on the other hand, made a lot of missteps — presumably in a tranny heel. Take for instance her Nazi-loving grandparents, at whose wedding Adolf Hitler was the guest of honor. Seriously.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was one of the most iconic women of the 20th century whose influence on fashion is incomparable and undeniable. And she was also purportedly a Nazi agent and kind of a — how can I say this lightly? — whore.
Edited by Lester Brathwaite
After Hugo Boss recently apologized for its namesake founder’s Nazi past, we’ve realized that designers were heiling Hitler left and right all up and through the 20th century. So in light of this — and of the coming Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana (mazel!) — we’re highlighting the biggest fascists in fashion history as part of our ongoing Quel Scandale! feature. First up, Christian Dior got down and Nazi decades before John Galliano drunkenly slurred his way right out of a job.
