Supermodel says her hand got ‘jammed’ in a machine at Brighton station for an hour and a half
With her famous nickname, you might think Twiggy is the perfect person to call on if your sweets get stuck in a vending machine.
But the supermodel has told how she once became stuck at Brighton railway station as she tried to retrieve a chocolate bar.
Continue reading...The model and actor wrote on Instagram ‘My heart is broken’ after house in Studio City apparently collapsed after a fire broke out
A Los Angeles home that appears to belong to the model and actor Cara Delevingne was destroyed in a fire Friday.
One firefighter was taken to a hospital in fair condition with unspecified injuries, and a housesitter who was inside at the time was treated for minor injuries, a Los Angeles fire department spokesperson, Nicholas Prange, said.
Continue reading...Thaw Nandar Aung, AKA Han Lay, feared being sent home after she was stopped at Thai border last week
A Myanmar fashion model who was denied entry to Thailand and feared arrest by the military government in Yangon if she was forced back home from exile has flown to Canada, which she says has granted her asylum.
Thaw Nandar Aung, also known as Han Lay, left on a flight from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport early on Wednesday, according to Archayon Kraithong, a deputy commissioner of Thailand’s Immigration Bureau. He said he was not authorised to reveal her destination.
Continue reading...My childhood, in Essex, was run-of-the-mill. My parents were grafters, starting businesses from home, and they were both very present in my life while also deeply committed to their jobs. It was instilled into me that nothing is earned unless you work for it.
How I avoided serious injury in my teens remains a mystery, given how stupid my friends and I were. We’d climb the steepest hills and descend on roller-skates passing busy junctions; as we got older, we drove cars too fast into hedges and fields. I had an appetite for risk until 27, when mortality became very real.
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...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.’”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...The supermodel says she may have been left unrecognisable after a fat-freezing procedure
Linda Evangelista was one of the original 1990s supermodels and, alongside Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell, dominated the catwalk and fashion magazine covers in the 80s and 90s. However, she says she is “permanently deformed” after a non-surgical cosmetic surgery gone wrong.
In a post on Instagram, Evangelista said after having a procedure known as “CoolSculpting” (which involves “freezing” fat on the body and is similar to body conturing) she developed complications which have resulted in a radical change in her appearance.
Continue reading...The industry’s first hijab-wearing model speaks about the ‘internal conflict’ that made her quit the catwalk
Halima Aden, the Muslim model who became a trailblazer for wearing her hijab on the catwalk and in photoshoots, has hit out at the fashion industry and its exploitation of young models.
Aden quit the industry in November 2020, citing compromised beliefs and feeling like a “minority within a minority”.
Continue reading...Advertising Standards Authority says ad that ran in Sunday Times magazine was irresponsible
A Max Mara advert has been banned for featuring a model with an “unhealthily thin” and “gaunt” appearance.
The Advertising Standards Authority, which received three complaints about the ad, said the model had been photographed from the side, drawing attention to the shape of her body and highlighting her very thin frame and the protrusion of her hip bone, which was visible through her dress.
Continue reading...75% of respondents to a survey conducted by Dating.com said that they preferred the body shape to a more toned one
The “dad-bod” is making a return, according to a new survey, signaling a forward step for body diversity.
Some 75% of respondents to a survey conducted by Dating.com said that they preferred the soft and round male body type to a more toned one.
Continue reading...Are Muslim women being asked to change too much of themselves in order to fit in?
“Modest fashion” has been a defining style for the past decade. The trend for oversize silhouettes and loose layers has united fashion fans, religious and secular, and has been in part an attempt by western brands to buy into the lucrative market of Muslim consumers. This shift has also seen the headscarf become increasingly acceptable, even covetable, in western fashion, with Nike, Uniqlo, Liberty, Tommy Hilfiger and Dolce & Gabbana among the brands selling scarves overtly tailored for use as hijabs in recent years.
Islamic dress, however, remains a lightning rod for controversy. Hijab bans are continually discussed in France while Switzerland is to hold a referendum on burqas this week, even as governments around the world encourage the use of face masks. China, too, has persecuted women for wearing the hijab.
Continue reading...The BBL is the fastest growing cosmetic surgery in the world, despite the mounting number of deaths resulting from the procedure. What is driving its astonishing rise?
The quest was simple: Melissa wanted the perfect bottom. In her mind, it resembled a plump, ripe peach, like the emoji. She was already halfway there. In 2018, she’d had a Brazilian butt lift, known as a BBL, a surgical procedure in which fat is removed from various parts of the body and then injected back into the buttocks. Melissa’s bottom was already rounder and fuller than before, and she was delighted by the effect, with how it made her feel and how it made her look. But it could be better. It could always be better.
On a recent afternoon, Melissa visited the British aesthetic surgeon Dr Lucy Glancey for a consultation. Glancey had performed Melissa’s first BBL at her clinic on the Essex-Suffolk borders, a suite of rooms boasting shining white cupboards, a full-length mirror and drawers stuffed with syringes. As she waited for Melissa to arrive, Glancey showed me a picture of Melissa on the beach in Dubai, wearing a palm-print bikini and posing in a kind of provocative crouch – arms, breasts, thighs and buttocks all arranged for optimum effect. “Look how good she looks,” said Glancey, admiring Melissa and her own work. “I said to her, I don’t see what else we can do.”
Continue reading...Already a fashion sensation, the 22-year-old joins IMG Models, the same agency as Gigi and Bella Hadid
Amanda Gorman, whose performance of her poem The Hill We Climb during Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration drew widespread praise, has signed to IMG Models, the same agency as Gigi and Bella Hadid.
The 22-year-old US national youth poet laureate, has already become a fashion sensation. The red satin Prada headband she wore during the inauguration ceremony led to the item selling out, while her yellow coat (also Prada) caused searches for “yellow coats” to increase 1,328% (according to fashion search engine Lyst) in the wake of her appearance.
Continue reading...More claims emerge on social media after British model says fashion designer groped him at party
The American fashion designer Alexander Wang has denied “grotesquely false” allegations of sexual assault as grassroots advocacy sites claim that there are a high number of victims.
A British model, Owen Mooney, this week publicly claimed that Wang had groped his crotch during a party at the nightclub Slake in New York in January 2017, following which a number of similar claims, mostly anonymous, emerged.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Another seven women come forward with allegations about the former Elite boss
Seven more women have come forward to accuse the former model agency boss Gérald Marie of sexual misconduct, adding to mounting allegations that have drawn parallels with the disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Last month a Guardian investigation revealed that nine women had made sexual misconduct allegations against Marie, who for three decades was one of the most powerful men in the fashion industry.
Continue reading...Facebook amends code after deletion of black users’ photos sparks outrage
As campaigning victories go, forcing Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire to admit a discriminatory flaw in its policy is no small feat.
But following a campaign launched in this paper, the Observer can exclusively reveal that Instagram and its parent company Facebook will be updating its policy on nudity in order to help end discrimination of plus-size black women on its platforms and ensure all body types are treated fairly.
Continue reading...Exclusive: supermodel speaks out after four more women accuse Gérald Marie of sexual misconduct
The supermodel Linda Evangelista has praised the “courage and strength” shown by a growing number of women accusing her ex-husband, the model agency boss Gérald Marie, of sexual misconduct and rape.
Speaking exclusively to the Guardian’s Weekend magazine, Evangelista said she believed the women’s accounts of their experiences with Marie, who for over three decades was among the most powerful figures in the fashion industry.
Continue reading...Model and activist signs six-figure contract to publish Transitional, ‘a manifesto for how I see society changing for the better, bringing us all closer’
The first book by Munroe Bergdorf, a manifesto on gender by the black transgender activist and model, has been bought for a six-figure sum after a bidding war between 11 publishers.
Bergdorf’s Transitional will be published by Bloomsbury in 2021. Exploring six different facets of human experience – adolescence, sexuality, gender, relationships, identity and race – the book will draw on Bergdorf’s own experiences, including growing up in a mixed-race family, going to an all-boys school and starting her transition at the age of 24. In it, she will argue that transition is an experience every person faces in every phase in life, “and that only by recognising this can we understand times of change”.
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