Gisele Bundchen shows us what’s what on French Vogue
What better way to launch your health initiative than with a photograph of Gisele Bundchen’s butt cheeks? If that’s not body inspiration, I don’t know what is . . .
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How old is too old to breastfeed?
If you haven’t seen this Time magazine cover (above), where have you been? (This version via Fashion Copious.) It shows Jamie Lynn Grumet (26), breastfeeding her three-year-old son, and it has been causing shockwaves all over the internet (and, possibly, in the real world, although I’m unsure where the internet ends and real life begins any more).
Suzanne Jackson of SoSueMe.ie, for example, described it on Twitter as “wrong”, while Fiona McCann of Storyful said: “It’s the headline that’s offensive.” West Limerick 102′s Patricia Murphy said: “I think it sends a great message. I can’t understand why people would be offended. Each to their own?”
I personally am tired of women being told what to do with their bodies, whether that is to or not to breastfeed. Surely it’s up to the individual, and not society at large – and moral judgments, such as whether or not it is “wrong”, have no place here. What do you think?
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Vogue makes commitment to health in beauty
I suppose you’ve heard about the announcement – that Vogue (all 19 editions of it) has pledged not to use underage, that is, girls under 16, models, nor to use models they believe to have an eating disorder, in an attempt to address the links between fashion and eating disorders.
The Guardian has the full news story here. Though I acknowledge that this is, by and large, a positive step, once again I can’t help but question this “ownership” of women’s bodies . . . but that is a broader question and perhaps not one that can be answered in the context of fashion magazines. I would like to know how they judge which models “appear” to have an eating disorder. Abbey Lee Kershaw, for example? Or what about Sasha Pivovarova? Or even their beloved Karlie Kloss?
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Better Fashion – today’s column
Did you catch it? If not, click through the grab, above, to read my take on sustainable fashion, vintage dressing, Toms and to see five better fashion choices!
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(A belated) what’s hot and not – a guest post by Aoife Valentine
Hot
Brown Sugar Better Fashion Week
Dublin may not host nearly enough fashion events, but the Brown Sugar Better Fashion Week is shaping up to be quite a good one. Organised by Re-dress, a ‘Better Fashion initiative’, the week places quite an emphasis on sustainability and ethics within the fashion industry, with a wide range of speakers and events squeezed into the line-up. Should you find yourself with a fashion shaped hole in your life next week, this certainly looks like an interesting way to fill it. [Editor's note: And the winner of my competition is in! #12 Jenny, you're it! Email winging its way to you shortly.]
Designer Collaborations
There is the occasional announcement of a collaboration between designers which leaves you wondering who ever decided it would make any sense at all. However, the recent unveiling of the collections of Kenzo x Vans and Lulu Guinness for Uniqlo has us quite excited. The patterned Vans are gorgeous, and Lulu Guiness’ iconic handbag designs make for quirky tshirts; both the products of collaborations done good.
While the celebrity offspring hanging out in the ‘Not’ section of this list should perhaps be distanced considerably from their apparent sartorial interests, in the vast majority of cases, dressing small children is often not an arduous task. With adorable summer clothes everywhere you look, stopping yourself picking up everything is likely to be more of a problem than finding the perfect outfit, especially for people so likely to have holes in the knees and grassstains on their elbows before the day is out. Why bother with a Dior babygrow when you can have roughly a million cute outfits instead?
Not
Turns out, being a five-year-old child isn’t an impediment to designing your own clothing range when you are the niece of Gisele Bundchen. Taking her first steps down a catwalk last year, she’s no stranger to the industry. Look, no five year old cares about how ethically clothes are made, nor do they care how clashing prints and colours work. They care about playing outside, eating coma-inducing amounts of sugar, and not going to bed early. Leave her be!
Tallafornia Merchandise
TV3, which is currently recruiting the cast for the second season of Tallafornia, is following the same path the makers of Jersey and Geordie Shore, and has planned on taking advantage of some, eh, apparent gap in the market for Tallafornia branded sunglasses and perfume. There is no one who needs to smell like eau de Nikita and co, unless you enjoy smelling cheap and more than a little like desperation.
Maryna Linchuk in Vogue Russia
Maryna Linchuk is next month’s cover-star for Vogue Russia and star of the attached spread, entitled How I Met Your Mother. Featuring clothes from the spring collections of Burberry, Victoria Beckham, Azzedine Alaia, Fendi, Nina Ricci, and Tom Ford that will make you wish you had somewhere to wear them and the money to buy them, it makes up a stunning editorial, save for the hair. In every image she’s wearing a very long, very high ponytail, which is incredibly distracting and manages to take over every photo. So unnecessary.
I must, by the way, clear Aoife of any tardiness; the delay in posting this post is because the past couple of weeks have kind of got on top of me and, as a result, I’ve been pushing all not-entirely-necessary tasks to the back of my mind. I think it’s called stress; I have, over the past week, referred to it as a “major meltdown” a “minor meltdown” and a “slight breakdown”, although, might I add, without medical diagnosis. Slowly crawling back to real life by my fingertips – I’m accepting the fact that we all have days (weeks? months?) like these, and I just need to, cliché or no, keep calm and carry on. [Encouraged to share this with you all due to a moment I "overheard" on Twitter; someone said that they'd overheard a man in the chipper telling the girl behind the counter that he'd been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. The tweeter in question - hands up if it's you - seemed pleased by the normalising of such a revelation. So here I am, normalising mine.]
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Giveaway and news – Brown Sugar Better Fashion Week
I’ve been conspicuously silent on the subject of Brown Sugar Better Fashion Week, which is now just around the corner (and already in swing, in a way, due to the Better Fashion Shop on Castle Market), due to my being incredibly busy. But here I am, talking about it, and giving away two VIP tickets to the week’s events, courtesy of the lovely Brown Sugar Better Fashion Week folks.Brown Sugar Better Fashion Week, which aims to highlight and promote better (read: more ethical, sustainable, more conscientious) fashion in Ireland, comprises a series of talks and events going on all week, with speakers including but not limited to:
Dr Kate Fletcher – Author of Sustainable Fashion & Textiles: Design Journeys, Dr. Fletcher is one of the founders of the concept of ‘Slow fashion’. Additional projects include; 5 Ways, Lifetimes, and was the curator of the exhibition, ‘Fashion for Sustainability’ at The Garanti Gallery in Istanbul in 2008. Kate is also a member of the expert panel advising the Danish Fashion Council’s sustainability initiative ‘NICE’, The Soil Association’s Textile Standards Committee, and the editorial board for the Journal Fashion Practice.
FASHION FEARLESS; A RE-DRESS Salon in association with Pop Up Productions (of Trailblazers and Iceland: Ireland project) will open with a ‘behind the scenes’ themed talk on the inner workings of the fashion industry.
‘DEADLY FASHION’ A discussion on the implication of the fashion industry on human rights in association with Amnesty, Trocaire, and the Clean Clothes Campaign Ireland chaired by the Sunday Buisness Post’s Lisa Brady.
The SMART LAB UCD Dr Lisbeth Goodman chairs a panel discussion on FUTURE TEXTILES with Clarity’s Dr Shirley Coyle, bio-sensor artist Camille Baker, researcher in sustainable garment care Emma D Rigby and Smartlab’s Tara Mooney.
Emma Gleeson presenting her Masters Paper from London College of Fashion on ‘Disposable Fashion’
and
Brown Sugar Better Fashion Week will also include the screening of Bill Cunningham New York, by Richard Press, a cinematic profile of the noted veteran New York City fashion photographer and the screening of Bitter Seeds by Micha Peled, which explores the controversy of biotechnology, from a village in India that uses genetically modified cotton seeds to US government agencies that promote them and is the third part of a trilogy about globalisation.
To win a pair of tickets, leave a comment below! Be sure to use the email address you check regularly. Winners will be announced at midnight on Friday, April 20th.
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Terry Richardson shoots H&M’s Conscious collection
You can’t swing a cat these days without bumping into Terry Richardson – now the man with the devillish plan has turned his hand to H&M‘s Conscious collection, starring Constance Jablonski, Edita Villeviciute, Toni Garrn and Karmen Pedarru. See the rest of the shots here.
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Are all fashion magazines inherently snobby?
Or is it just The Gloss?
“There’s a general expectation,” coos Katy McGuinness in yesterterday’s copy of The Gloss, “that ethnic food should be cheap and 777 will not appeal to the coterie that baulks at paying more than a tenner for a curry, the diners whose need is for stomach-lining rather than palate-awakening. The prices here are on a par with other restaurants that care about the quality and provenance of the ingredients they use, that take pride in getting it right, regardless of their nominal geographic box.”
So, some assumptions:
1. Those who “baulk” at paying more than a tenner for a curry are obviously just after a bit of soakage;
2. Those who are interested in “palate-awakening” rather than soakage have the money to pay for 777;
3. Any restaurant that is cheaper than 777 doesn’t care about the “quality and provenance of the ingredients”, nor about “getting it right”
Is this the snobbiest paragraph that ever met paper, or am I losing it?
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Cate Blanchett unphotoshopped on The Economist
Well, this post does exactly what it says on the tin – it’s the magazine cover we’ve all been waiting for, and doesn’t Cate (age 42) look stunning? Naturally, unphotoshoppedly, stunning. More of this, please.
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Pepe launches Tru Blu eco collection
Have you heard the news that Target is banning sandblasting from its denim ranges, because it’s associated with lung cancer in factory workers? (About time, for stonewashing truly is a crime against fashion …) The US megastore has decided that people’s health is slightly more important than our questionable taste in denim finishes.
Pepe Jeans, meanwhile, has developed its most sustainable jeans washing process – subtracting the use of chemicals and reducing the number of wash cycles it takes to achieve a certain “wash” on the jeans themselves, in an effort to reduce water consumption across the brand’s manufacturing process. Pepe has invested in various modern technologies, including the use of ozone gas treatments and three-dimensional lasers which can create a great depth of indigo contrast on jeans.
The Tru-Blu range will be available from May 2012, with six styles in six different washes, from a dark finish to a bleached look, all achieved without the use of chemicals.
It’s a great step forward for denim technologies and for fashion in general – it’s worth applauding when a fashion brand decides to look at its manufacturing process holistically; though I’d be the first to say that fashion matters, I’d also be the first to admit that, anything we do, it’s worth minimising our footprint – like our carpets, the earth will be here after us. But unlike our carpets, it matters what state we leave it in.
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