The supermodel is pictured on the front cover of British Vogue’s March issue with her daughter
Naomi Campbell has described becoming a mother at the age of 50 as “the best thing I’ve ever done”.
In a photoshoot for the March issue cover of British Vogue, the supermodel will appear photographed with her daughter. Campbell has never revealed her daughter’s name, but she confirmed to the magazine that she was not adopted.
Continue reading...Shahi Exports, which makes clothes for the UK high street, has agreed to pay staff minimum wage and arrears
India’s largest garment company has paid out an estimated £3m in unpaid wages to tens of thousands of workers, after two years of refusing to pay the legal minimum wage.
Last month Shahi Exports, which supplies dozens of international brands, agreed to pay nine months of back pay to about 80,000 workers, with further payments expected in the coming months that will increase the total paid back to workers to £7m.
Continue reading...They were invented so surfers and swimmers could get undressed without flashing. So why are Dryrobes – half-towel, half-jacket – taking over our high streets?
During the spring lockdown in 2020, Christopher Sloman was walking down a street in Hove when he saw what looked like a green dinosaur looming towards him. The 48-year-old charity shop worker was baffled by the figure in the distance – until he realised it was a woman whose coat was so oversized that her hands (one carrying a phone, the other a coffee) “looked really small,” Sloman says. “I thought: My God, what on earth is that?”
“That” turned out to be a Dryrobe – the £160 ankle-length, waterproof robe designed as an outdoor changing robe for surfers in 2010 which has become the go-to piece of kit for any half-serious outdoor swimmer.
Continue reading...From Prohibition-busting cocktail parties to all-night raves, illegal gatherings have been at the centre of modern culture for decades. So why do they still have the power to shock?
For more than a month now, the press has been full of stories of “illegal” parties in Downing Street. The government, we are told, has almost ground to a halt because of the scandal.
Given the coverage, one might easily get the impression that the law-breaking bash is a recent invention, something that could only happen in lockdown, driven by privilege and an unhealthy sense of entitlement. Yet the modern party began life as a crime just over a century ago, when the Volstead Act banned the production and sale of alcohol in the US. As the New York Times explained in 1920:
You cannot carry a hip flask.
You cannot give away or receive a bottle of liquor as a gift.
You cannot take liquor to hotels or restaurants and drink it in the public dining rooms.
You cannot buy or sell formulas or recipes for homemade liquors.
You cannot …
“Oh,” said the Bright Young People. “Oh, oh, oh.”
“It’s just exactly like being inside a cocktail shaker,” said Miles Malpractice.
Continue reading...Mugler’s daring collections came to define 1980s power dressing, while he later dressed Beyoncé and Lady Gaga
French designer Manfred Thierry Mugler, known for the powerful-shouldered, cinch-waisted silhouettes that reigned over fashion in the 1980s, died on Sunday at the age of 73 of “natural causes”, according to his agent.
A former ballet dancer, Mugler’s bold collections – presented at highly stylised, themed runway shows – were at the forefront of the structured, decadent style that came to be known as “power dressing”.
Continue reading...French luxury brand says Mason Rothschild’s furry MetaBirkins digital tokens ‘rip off’ its trademark
French luxury group Hermès has started legal proceedings against an American artist over virtual versions inspired by its famous Birkin bags.
Mason Rothschild creates digital art that he sells as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which can be traded online but ownership cannot be forged.
Continue reading...Hollywood heavyweights including Kyle MacLachlan bring coronavirus-hit week to a close
Prada called on Hollywood heavyweights Jeff Goldblum and Kyle MacLachlan to bookend its catwalk on Sunday afternoon, bringing a close to a quiet menswear fashion week that saw multiple brands cancel their shows in light of increasing Covid cases across Europe.
The appearance of the actors at the Fondazione Prada punctuated the second physical catwalk show from founder Miuccia Prada and her co-creative director Raf Simons since the latter came onboard in early 2020, marking an unprecedented union of two of the fashion industry’s most influential and famed designers.
Continue reading...Stylish entrepreneur turned his family’s textile factory in north-west Italy into a global fashion brand
Pioneering Italian fashion designer Nino Cerruti has died at the age of 91, a source in the fashion industry confirmed to AFP on Saturday.
Cerruti was one of the leading figures in men’s ready-to-wear fashion in the 20th century, with a style that was at once elegant and relaxed. His Cerruti 1881 brand became renowned and in his heyday he dressed many a Hollywood star.
Continue reading...February issue cover shot is an important statement of anti-tokenism, says magazine’s editor
British Vogue has hailed a new era that spotlights African fashion. The magazine’s February issue features nine dark-skinned models of African heritage on its cover, including Adut Akech.
Seemingly referencing Peter Lindbergh’s “Supers” Vogue cover from 1990, which introduced the world to the idea of the supermodel, the shot is a challenge to the traditionally white fashion industry, which has, since the murder of George Floyd, been under pressure to change and become more inclusive and diverse.
Continue reading...Sotheby’s to sell designs and artwork of François Catroux, decorator to the stars, and his wife, Betty, muse to Yves Saint Laurent
In 1970s Paris, Betty Catroux and her husband, François, were the glittering couple at the heart of French high society and what used to be known as the international jet set.
She was the androgynous model and darling of the French designer Yves Saint Laurent, he the self-taught interior decorator who transformed the mansions, grand apartments and chateaux of the super-rich or royal, among them the Rothschilds, Diane von Furstenberg and, later, Roman Abramovich.
Continue reading...Inspired by Kourtney Kardashian and Megan Fox, searches for ‘gothcore’ grow as people look to express darker emotions
It’s been 20 years since pallid faces, dark eyes and black clothes haunted UK secondary schools and shopping centres. While some might argue that they never left, merely retreating into the shadows, the consensus for 2022 is that goth style is returning to mainstream culture with a vengeance.
There are some differences this time. The modern goth is more likely to take inspiration from ultra-glam “hot goth girlfriends” such as Kourtney Kardashian and Megan Fox and the fashion world darlings Rick Owens and Yohji Yamamoto than the Marilyn Manson-loving self-proclaimed outsiders of the early 2000s.
Continue reading...Hang on, wait there a minute, I want to show you something,” says Gabriela Hearst, hopping up from her chair in her airy Manhattan office and reaching for something on the shelves in the background of her Zoom frame. “These are my journals from when I was 16 or 17 – let me check the date, um 1993, yes I was 17 and look!” She flattens a page full of colourful teenage drawings and holds it up to the camera: “I designed a whole freaking shoe collection!”
That these journals remain within reaching distance of the fashion designer’s desk in her Chelsea studio is testament to the fact that despite the success she has achieved, Hearst never forgets where she came from. As creative director of her award-winning brand, founded in 2015, and a year into the same prestigious role at the fashion house Chloé, it would be an understatement to say that Hearst is hot property in the fashion world right now.
Continue reading...The singer-songwriter on Balenciaga’s visions, the mountains of North Carolina, and the haunting power of Eve’s Bayou
Singer-songwriter Moses Sumney, 29, grew up between Ghana and California and studied creative writing and poetry at UCLA. His piercing falsetto and genre-defying music have brought him critical acclaim, starting with his self-recorded 2014 EP Mid-City Island, followed in 2017 by his debut album, Aromanticism, and the 2020 double album Græ. Sumney has collaborated with musicians including Bon Iver and James Blake and toured with Solange and Sufjan Stevens. His latest project is Blackalachia, a self-directed concert film created in association with WePresent, shot over two days in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, where he lives.
Continue reading...Five Paris museums to display fashion designer’s creations with artwork that inspired them
Simultaneous exhibitions to mark the 60th anniversary of Yves Saint Laurent’s first collection are to be held by six leading Paris museums in an unprecedented tribute from the art world to the late French fashion designer.
The events at museums, among them the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, will reveal how the celebrated couturier was inspired by some of the 20th century’s greatest artists including Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian.
Continue reading...Mirabella was editor of the magazine from 1971 to 1988 and was a non-nonsense champion of practical fashion
Grace Mirabella, the editor of American Vogue throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, has died aged 92.
Mirabella was a non-nonsense champion of practical fashion. She succeed the more whimsical and bohemian Diana Vreeland as editor in 1971 and remained in the role until 1988.
Continue reading...The designer’s salary rose to £2.7m last year while her company claimed almost £850k in government support
Stella McCartney took a near £2.7m salary from her fashion company last year, up more than £220,000 on the year before, while the business claimed almost £850,000 in support from the government’s furlough scheme.
The designer’s pay went up despite a 26% fall in sales to £28.4m in the year to 31 December 2020, as sales in the UK more than halved, while the company recorded a pre-tax loss of £31.4m, according to accounts for Stella McCartney Limited filed at Companies House. The group made a £33.4m pretax loss the year before.
Continue reading...I have finally admitted that my hair has gone for ever, and taken great comfort from the reigning king of baldness
This year will go down in history as the year I went bald. Well, actually, 2018 went down as the year I went bald. But still, 2021 will go down as the year that I stopped fastidiously brushing three long wisps of cobweb over my scalp in the berserk belief that it somehow made me look less bald. I am bald now. Hello.
Obviously, being bald is rubbish. A bad roll of the genetic dice means I am now conclusively unattractive in the eyes of most of the world. Of course I am – I’m 85% forehead now. I can never go out and commit a crime, because a witness would only have to draw a face on their thumb and show it to the Photofit guy and I’d be in handcuffs by teatime.
Continue reading...By connecting China’s garment factories with western gen-Z customers, Shein ushered in a new era of ‘ultra-fast’ shopping
Last year, Julia King, a 20-year-old art student and influencer from Texas, noticed that a particular kind of sweater vest was taking over the internet. Celebrities including Bella Hadid had been photographed wearing shrunken, argyle-patterned styles, channelling classic 1990s movies like Clueless during a wave of millennium-era nostalgia. Soon, King found the perfect example in a secondhand shop: a child-sized pink-and-red knitted vest that fit tightly and cropped on an adult. Using herself as a model, King paired it with jeans and a Dior bag, snapped a picture, and listed it for $22 on Depop, an eBay-like resellers’ app favoured by gen Z.
The vest sold instantly, and she quickly forgot about it. But a month or so later, King received a message from one of her Instagram followers. They alerted her to the fact that an obscure, now defunct Chinese shopping site called Preguy was using her photo to sell its own cheap reproduction of the thrift-store vest. “Seeing the pictures of me up on some random fast-fashion website I’d never heard of before made me really upset,” King said.
Continue reading...Shortfall of 16p a day leaves children living on just rice as suppliers to Nike, Zara and H&M in Karnataka underpay by estimated £41m
Garment workers making clothes for international brands in Karnataka, a major clothing production hub in India, say their children are going hungry as factories refuse to pay the legal minimum wage in what is claimed to be the biggest wage theft to ever hit the fashion industry.
More than 400,000 garment workers in Karnataka have not been paid the state’s legal minimum wage since April 2020, according to an international labour rights organisation that monitors working conditions in factories.
Continue reading...Whether it is to commemorate a lost loved one, bask in their independence or mark a new stage of life, many people now get inked when they are older. Six tell their stories
For many older people, tattoos came with baggage. Now, social mores have changed and for those in their 60s, 70s and 80s: “The stigma associated with prisoners’ tattoos, or sailors or misfits getting them, has disappeared,” says Louise Krystahl, a tattoo artist. That may be why she now gets a lot of clients over the age of 60, who feel ready for their first tattoo at her studio, Inkscape, in Bexhill-on-Sea. She once tattooed a ladybird on the wrist of a woman in her 80s.
“For older people, it’s usually a sentimental reason, not just that they fancy a butterfly,” says Krystahl. “Some of them have a new lease of life, or want to tick it off their bucket list.” The pandemic, she says, may have spurred on others: “I think people are doing stuff they have thought about for a long time and it has given them the impetus.”
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