Category Archives: Fashion

Stella McCartney got pay rise while fashion firm took furlough cash

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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.

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The person who got me through 2021: Larry David helped me embrace life as a bald man

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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.

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How Shein beat Amazon at its own game – and reinvented fast fashion

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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.

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‘Worst fashion wage theft’: workers go hungry as Indian suppliers to top UK brands refuse to pay minimum wage

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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.

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‘It is a celebration of my body!’ Meet the people who had their first tattoo after 60

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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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Supermodel Karen Elson on fashion’s toxic truth: ‘I survived harassment, body shaming and bullying – and I’m one of the lucky ones’

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She has been at the top of the industry for decades. Now she’s speaking out about the dark reality of life behind the scenes

When Karen Elson was a young hopeful trying to make it in Paris, a model scout took her to a nightclub. After long days on the Métro trekking to castings that came to nothing, and evenings alone in a run-down apartment, she was excited to be out having fun. The music was good and the scout, to whom her agent had introduced her, kept the drinks coming. She started to feel tipsy. A friend of the scout’s arrived, and the pair started massaging her shoulders, making sexual suggestions. “I was 16 and I’d never kissed a boy,” she recalls. “It was my first experience of sexual – well, sexual anything, and this was sexual harassment. They both had their hands on me.”

She told them she wanted to go home, and left to find a taxi, but they followed her into it, kissing her neck on the back seat. When they reached her street, she jumped out, slammed the taxi door and ran inside. The next day she told another model what had happened, and the scout found out. “His reaction was to corner me in the model agency and say: ‘I’ll fucking get you kicked out of Paris if you ever fucking say anything ever again.’”

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Sunday with Claudia Schiffer: ‘Wine, cheese and a game of cards is my winter favourite’

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The model and actor cooks apple pancakes or else pasta bolognese, stares at the clouds, walks the dogs, enjoys a calm family day

What does Sunday feel like? Calmness. I wake up naturally, no alarm. Monday to Friday, I’m up at 7am to make breakfast and do the school run. We live in the English countryside: rolling hills, fields, farmland. I love being surrounded by nature. Even when it’s raining I just watch the clouds.

Do you cook? We normally have a long brunch with local produce – I like making my mother’s apple pancakes. That and pasta bolognese are about the only things I can cook. Drinking is seasonal: summer is perfect for a rosé; red wine, cheese and a game of cards is my absolute favourite winter afternoon.

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Virgil Abloh: Off-White designer dies at 41

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The fashion maverick, also creative head at Louis Vuitton, had been suffering from an aggressive form of cancer for two years

Fashion designer Virgil Abloh has died after suffering from cancer, it has been announced.

The 41-year-old, who was the creative director for Louis Vuitton and Off-White, had cardiac angiosarcoma, a rare, aggressive form of the disease, according to an announcement on his official Instagram page.

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Searches for Gucci label soar after release of murder film starring Lady Gaga

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Designer brand reaps the benefit of Ridley Scott’s movie telling the story of the killing of firm’s ex-boss

When is murder good for business? When it is made into a Hollywood movie, for one – and when that film stars Lady Gaga. House of Gucci, the Ridley Scott feature released last week to mixed reviews, has sent interest in the Gucci brand soaring.

Searches for Gucci clothing were up 73% week on week, according to e-commerce aggregator Lovethesales.com on Friday, with a leap of 257% for bags and 75% for sliders. The figures suggest that the luxury brand stands only to gain from Hollywood’s telling of the story ofthe glamorous Patrizia Reggiani, who hired a hitman in 1995 to kill her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, the former head of the fashion label.

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The stars with Down’s syndrome lighting up our screens: ‘People are talking about us instead of hiding us away’

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From Line of Duty to Mare of Easttown, a new generation of performers are breaking through. Meet the actors, models and presenters leading a revolution in representation

In the middle of last winter’s lockdown, while still adjusting to the news of their newborn son’s Down’s syndrome diagnosis, Matt and Charlotte Court spotted a casting ad from BBC Drama. It called for a baby to star in a Call the Midwife episode depicting the surprising yet joyful arrival of a child with Down’s syndrome in 60s London, when institutionalisation remained horribly common. The resulting shoot would prove a deeply cathartic experience for the young family. “Before that point, I had shut off certain doors for baby Nate in my mind through a lack of knowledge,” Matt remembers. “To then have that opportunity opened my eyes. If he can act one day, which is bloody difficult, then he’s got a fighting chance. He was reborn for us on that TV programme.”

It’s a fitting metaphor for the larger shift in Down’s syndrome visibility over the past few years. While Call the Midwife has featured a number of disability-focused plotlines in its nearly decade-long run – actor Daniel Laurie, who has Down’s syndrome, is a series regular – the history of the condition’s representation on screen is one largely defined by absence.

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‘I’m happy to lose £10m by quitting Facebook,’ says Lush boss

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Losing 10m followers on sites such as Instagram is a price worth paying for co-founder of ethical beauty empire

Quitting social media is hard to do, even when it doesn’t cost you anything. So when Lush’s chief executive, Mark Constantine, shut its thousands of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok accounts on Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, he knew dropping off millions of customers’ screens would damage his business.

Its Facebook and Instagram accounts alone had 10.6 million followers and the void will result in an estimated £10m hit to sales but Constantine, one of the business’s co-founders, said it had “no choice” after whistleblowers called attention to the negative impact social media sites such as Instagram are having on teenagers’ mental health.

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‘Brands have been getting away with murder’: Stella McCartney and leading fashion figures on the fallout of Cop26

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After Glasgow, there is a clamour for fashion companies to increase their commitment to sustainability and supply chain transparency – and for legislation to hold them to their promises

At the Cop26 conference, high-profile British brands including Stella McCartney, Burberry and Mulberry presented their visions for an ethical, sustainable industry. Now, there is an increasing demand for all fashion companies to make legally binding commitments to address the impact their supply chains have on the environment. While hundreds of companies – including Gucci-owner Kering, H&M and Inditex, which owns Zara – have signed up to the UN’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, which sets science-based targets in line with the Paris agreement, there is no obligation to take part, nor a legal mandate to hold brands to account.

Leading industry figures say that if fashion brands are to have any chance of having a meaningful impact on the climate crisis, legislation is needed.

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Naomi Campbell’s fashion charity investigated over finances

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Regulator examines potential mismanagement at Fashion for Relief and payments to trustee

The fashion charity established by the supermodel Naomi Campbell has come under formal investigation from the charities watchdog over misconduct concerns relating to its management and finances.

Campbell created Fashion for Relief in 2005 to raise funds for children living in poverty and adversity around the world, and says it has raised millions over the years for good causes through its annual charity fashion show.

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Lulu Guinness: ‘I am basically a recluse who likes people’

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Designer Lulu Guinness moved to a gothic folly in the sticks in lockdown to restart her life. Now she talks about her brother’s tragic death, and how she has learned to live with her own depression

I’ve had 30 years of trying to do lots of things at once. Now I want to stand and stare a bit more,” says Lulu Guinness from the splendid isolation of her gothic folly in deepest Gloucestershire. “Lockdown also taught me how much you can get done from your phone.” It was during the pandemic that Guinness, 61, with two grown-up daughters, swapped her London terrace for life in the countryside. She recently put the house she bought with her ex-husband Valentine Guinness, from the Irish brewing dynasty, on the market. “At first I saw this place as a getaway. But I’ve moved on.”

Guinness, best known for her glossy lip-shaped clutch and vintage-infused handbags, has found the move transformative. Lulu’s Folly, a hexagonal, three-up-three-down perched on the rim of a sheep-dotted valley, is where she now lives and works.

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No school, no hair cut: one girl’s journey through one of the world’s longest Covid lockdowns

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Antonella Bordon’s hair was her family’s pride and joy. But as the pandemic kept her out of school for 18 months, the 12-year-old Argentinian vowed to lop it all off as soon as she could return to class

When she finally cut her hair, Antonella Bordon had trouble sleeping. At the age of 12, her first haircut meant more to her than a simple change of style.

For most of her childhood, Bordon’s silky hair ran all the way down her back to her calves, such a deep brown it looked like a black mane. Her mother and sister would comb it every day, rubbing the locks with rosemary oil, and helping her style it in a way to keep her cool during the hot Argentinian summer.

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Gaga, Gucci and prison ferrets: how true crime conquered the world

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Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci stars Lady Gaga in a tale of fashion and murder. But is true crime – once the soul of cinema, from thrillers and horrors to westerns – now outgrowing the big screen?

What took you so long, House of Gucci? This story was destined to become a movie from the moment the bullet left fashion heir Maurizio Gucci dead outside his Milan office in March 1995 – shot, a witness said, by a hitman with a “beautiful, clean hand”. The film by Ridley Scott now finally arrives dripping with star power, and Lady Gaga as Gucci’s ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani. But the story alone was enough: a glittering tickbox of money, revenge and a villainess kept company in jail by an illicit pet ferret called Bambi.

True crime gold. So why, now that the film is actually here, does the Gucci case feel a strange fit for a movie after all? Put it down to timing. The film’s development began in entertainment prehistory: 2006. Back then, a lavish movie was still the grand prize for any news story, and true crime – that trashbag genre – would simply be glad of the association. Now though, film and true crime have the air of an estranged couple. Had Maurizio Gucci been gunned down on Via Palestro last week, Netflix would already have the rights and the podcast would be on Spotify.

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This is Pleasing: Harry Styles sets out to ‘dispel the myth of a binary existence’

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The musician’s newly launched beauty brand is an extension of his trailblazing look

With Lady Gaga, Pharell Williams, and Selena Gomez all in on the act, the marker of success in 2021 is not a star on Hollywood Boulevard, it’s the launch of a beauty line. Trust Harry Styles to blow the rest out of the water.

Yesterday, the boyband star turned cultural and style juggernaut announced the launch of Pleasing – described as a “life brand”. Styles’s first business venture includes a range of nail polishes, an illuminating primer serum, and a dual-purpose eye and lip oil.

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Tom Ford: ‘I paid $90,000 for my own dress. The clothes we make are not meant to be thrown away’

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From fashion with va-va-voom to veganism – ahead of the release of his new book, America’s starriest designer takes a moment to reflect

Tom Ford answers my phone call in precisely the way I’d hoped he would: with a voice as smooth as butter and the grace of Cary Grant.

We are in touch to discuss his latest project, a coffee-table book charting the past 15 years of his career – or “post-Gucci”, as those familiar with luxury fashion prefer to describe the era that has followed Ford’s departure from the Italian super brand.

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The noughties are back – but do they warrant a revival? | Jess Cartner-Morley

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I don’t plan my outfits around my bedazzling belly button ring, but there are nice bits of noughties fashion we can cherry pick

Britney and Bennifer. Cristiano Ronaldo at Manchester United. A new series of Sex and the City. Trucker caps and dresses with peekaboo cutouts. Wait, is it 2021, or 2003?

The noughties are back. Don’t blame me: this isn’t just a fashion thing – it is celebrity culture, TV and even football. Also, do not confuse “the noughties are back” with “the noughties are cool again”, because the two are quite different. When something is ripe for pop culture nostalgia, that means it is ancient history.

Being old enough to remember the actual noughties does not make you any kind of oracle on the noughties revival, because our memories are not the point here. The generation leading this particular revival are reliving memories of their own – childhood ones of their mums picking them up from school in Juicy Couture tracksuits, or of the formative night they came downstairs in their jimjams and saw Christina Aguilera in chaps on late night MTV. “I was there” doesn’t make you hip, it just makes you old.

Were the noughties actually any good, though? Do they warrant a revival? The gold-script name necklaces were solid, to be fair. But if there is glory in cargo pants and Ugg boots, it is as holy relics of the last days of a life that wasn’t ruled by phones and social media. The noughties are the bridge between the pre-internet era, and the life we live now.

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‘Oh my god, we can’t do this!’ Inside Levi’s sexy, hit-making ads of the 90s

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The musicians and execs share the pitches, punch-ups and phone calls behind the adverts that took Stiltskin, Babylon Zoo and Mr Oizo to No 1 – and flipped music and advertising’s relationship on its head

Amid black and white Ansel Adams-style cinematography, two Amish sisters spy on a topless man bathing in a Yosemite river. Suddenly, a peaceful choral soundtrack gave gives way to bone-shaking guitar: Inside, the debut single by Scottish grunge band Stiltskin.

Thus began one of the strangest cultural wrinkles of the 1990s: when Levi’s became a jeans company that could also score UK chart hits. Inside was built around an addictive riff that still sounds fresh, and the advert, entitled Creek, shot it to the top of the UK charts. Over the next few years, the likes of Babylon Zoo, Smoke City, Mr Oizo and Norman Cook’s pre-Fatboy Slim project Freak Power would also score major success off the back of a placement in Levi’s witty, often sexually provocative adverts.

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