Monday, April 23, 2007

Miss earth 2006 in Bikini Fashion Vol 06



After its fun and frothy first day, London Fashion Week got down to serious business with shows from some of the big players.

Paul Smith's womenswear collection showed exactly why his name has made the crucial shift from being a mere label to a bone fide luxury brand.

Playing on his trademark theme of classic English garments re-interpreted with witty modern twists, models walked on a catwalk of real turf, complete with a genuine "keep off the grass" sign.

Cable-knit cardies shimmered with a silvery overlayer and a shell pink knife-pleat skirt, paired with a silver blazer, had the look of a bowling club outing on ecstasy.

A classic Margaret Thatcher pussycat bow shirtdress was rendered modern in a computer-enhanced floral print, in the new "sick" colour combinations that have been an early theme of the week. Shades of mauve, mixed with electric blue, chrome yellow, Kelly green and black, suddenly look like a much better idea than simple brights, or pastels.

Sir Paul mixed up his show even more, throwing in his signature multi-stripes and sometimes several different floral prints in one skirt and cardie combination. It worked, mostly.

Miss earth 2006 in Bikini Fashion Vol 05



Time was when Italo Zucchelli, the menswear design director for Calvin Klein, felt color was a part of his repertoire that should be used sparingly, if at all. But now that his world has expanded—this was his second season at the helm of this collection—so have his views on the spectrum. Still, Zucchelli hasn't quite shaken his former ways. His use of a brighter palette was edgy, even provocative; the tones slightly off, to make them fresh and interesting. When the green, for instance, was offered as a mossy suit or a grassy polo, it instantly looked like the color of the season. Likewise the butter-yellow trousers or the red tending toward maroon in another tonic suit.

Miss earth 2006 in Bikini Fashion Vol 04



The portrait, taken by photographer Corinne Day in 1990, was shot in London two years after Moss was discovered at a New York airport at age 14.

Another shot taken by Day in 1993 for Vogue magazine, which features a 19-year-old Moss, is expected to sell for £7000.

The Vogue shoot helped propel the grunge movement into the mainstream and launch the infamous "heroin chic" look in the 1990s.

Yuka Yamaji, head of photography for the auction house, called Moss "a cultural icon and arguably the most influential model of our day

Miss earth 2006 in Bikini Fashion Vol 03



A make-up professional's advice is to hang back, relearn the arts. A "disappearing face" needs more subtle shading and highlighting to re-draw its bone structure and strengthen its features. "Too much and you look like a clown. Not enough and you just look blugh and the wrong products and colours will just sit on your skin like house paint."

Get the face-making right however and there are few spectacles more intriguing than an old woman, well turned out, with a pretty face, lightly drawn.

Miss earth 2006 in Bikini Fashion Vol 02



Open the window to your soul with a lick of eyeliner, writes Janice Breen Burns.

WE rubbed Nugget boot polish onto our eyelids when we were 15, us girls; delicately, with the tip of a Johnson's cotton bud. We drew the fuzzy black line carefully along the lashes of the top lid, pressing into each follicle and then out and up with a little flick towards the ear; "Like Nefertiti but smudgier."

Miss earth 2006 in Bikini Fashion Vol 01