It’s a good thing the Victoria’s Secret fashion show will be on TV in a couple of days, because I’m not really sure how to describe it.
Something like, “At last night’s Victoria’s Secret show, naked women, but for $3 million bras and tweed bustles, walked down a triangular runway, around the Black Eyed Peas who performed with mimes and trapeze artists, in front of a diverse front row including Jay-Z, Carine Roitfeld, Michelle Trachtenberg, Dr. Dre, Patricia Field and Sir Richard Branson. The giant blow up dog that blew up out of the floor at the start of Pink section took our breath away and we left the Armory covered in glitter,” would be a good start.
It was sort of like fashion Disneyland; there were lasers and dancers, people were in the sky, wings were made out of balloons, Fergie was actually great and the whole production made a Chanel show look like it’s put together by a high school stage crew (a really talented one, sure).
If there’d been clothing, I’d say it was the most fun I’ve ever had at a fashion show.
She’s Back Y’all: Gemma Ward’s not going anywhere, thank god. She’s just taking a mini-break from modeling. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she got back into it without losing those twenty pounds? {Fashionologie}
Blurry Blogging: An even deeper look into the world of fashion blogging. Do you embrace the industry? Stay away from it? Can you be a part of it and still be a real-life blogger? {Blackbook}
One More Time: The age-old, never-ending debate about whether or not girls can be both into fashion and smart, or more importantly, taken seriously. {Telegraph}
Getting Technical: Nicholas Kirkwood and some other major players in the shoe industry teach us all about how they make heels more comfortable from materials to techniques. We love a mini-tutorial. {NY Times}
There’s already so much buzz surrounding the Victoria’s Secret fashion show’s return to New York that we kind of feel like we’re prepping for an entire fashion week.
This morning, the press trekked downtown to District (that building Amy Sacco’s done something with) to meet the ten finalists in the Angel competition. After three weeks of Victoria’s Secret boot camp, one will win a spot on the Armory’s runway come November 19th.
America picks the winner; there are, of course, cameras following the wannabe Angels everywhere and their boot camp webisodes will air on both CBS.com and VSAllAccess.com. Voting opens to the public on November 9th.
Now to the important part - the girls. They range in age from 18-year-old Katelyn from Boston who’s never modeled a day in her life and happily confesses to stuffing her bra to 25-year-old Tika from Albania via Detroit who’s been happily married for seven years.
If you (or some boy you know) has ever dreamed of having a Victoria’s Secret Angel whip you up a delicious hamburger, well then today is your day.
Right this very moment and until 2 pm, model Selita Ebanks is cooking for charity (and we presume the next season of Celebrity Apprentice as word is Cyndi Lauper and Sharon Osbourne are also there) at the Burger Heaven on 62nd and Lexington, here in NYC.
We do love Burger Heaven but we’ll be staying downtown on this wintry day. So if you’re in midtown and feel like taking a break, head on over and let us know what the scene is like. We imagine the people-watching will be fairly hilarious.
Think you have what it takes to be the next Alessandra, Miranda, or Doutzen? Well, Victoria’s Secret’s giving you a shot at proving it by holding a nationwide open casting for their next fashion show (airing in December.)
Starting October 3, castings will be taking place in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago. Panels of experts will narrow the choices down to 10 finalists and then the whole thing gets democrati and America gets to vote. But all ten finalists will be flown to New York for “Angel Boot Camp” which sounds rather ominous to me, but is apparently a series of challenges that sounds like a compressed season of ANTM. And we’ll all be able to follow along via weekly webisodes.
If you win, hopefully you won’t be the one stuck with the heavy metallic cape. For all the official rules, webisodes and whanot, go to VSAllAccess.com
As if New York Fashion Week wasn’t enough to worry about, a solid chunk of the fashion pack is in Vegas right now at the Capsule tradeshow.
The gossip is, of course, making its way back to New York at a rapid pace. So far we’ve learned that most designers are actually giving peeks of their SS10 collections - the ones set to debut on next week’s (ah!) runways. News of a few major collaborations is trickling in, too.
We also hear Victoria’s Secret is in the process of building a metal cape. That would be a ton of metal, melted down and shaped onto the back of some poor angel for their next runway show in New York this December.
The thought makes Heidi’s wings at left look positively comfortable.
But I’m only half way through my coffee and three hours deep into a move from Brooklyn into Manhattan and I could be wrong. So we’ll start with a yes.
Is she even allowed to model other lingerie? For a department store? Even if she’s best friends with Elle MacPherson and actually only wears her bras in real life because they’re a million times better than Victoria’s Secret? VS has pretty iron clad contracts for their girls. Want to walk Givenchy? Fine. Want to model in another catalog? Absolutely not.
And if it’s not her, way to go Bloomingdale’s for finding the only other human being in the world who looks like that.
Meanwhile this looks just like Cat McNeil, but it’s not, is it? The url even reads, “PseudoCat.” I might need another cup of coffee.
So this weekend Karl Lagerfeld took a “dig” at Heidi Klum, his second of the year.
In February he said, “Heidi is no runway model. She is simply too heavy and has too big a bust. And she always grins so stupidly. That is not avant-garde - that is commercial!” and now he claims not to know who she is, “I don’t know Heidi Klum. She was never known in France. Claudia Schiffer also doesn’t know who she is.”
First, you can’t break down someone’s body and then say you don’t know they exist. Second, which high fashion designer is more commercial than Karl Lagerfeld? Third, you don’t make money when Claudia Schiffer knows who you are, you make it when Middle America knows your name (though we don’t believe for a second that Schiffer’s never heard of Klum). Fourth, Lagerfeld makes gorgeous, brilliant clothes, but avant-garde at this stage? Non.
Most frustrating of all is the unfortunate truth that models don’t make major money walking Balenciaga or doing editorials for Purple, but from major beauty contracts, from Victoria’s Secret or J.Crew catalogs and eventually, from becoming a brand.
It’s kind of like how designers don’t make money by designing the most extreme avant-garde clothes, like say Gareth Pugh or Olivier Theyskens, but by hooking themselves up to a major brand, like say Fendi or Chanel and putting their name on overpriced teddy bears.
We usually learn about a new fan page on the book of faces by seeing it in our “suggestions” or noticing that a friend has become a “fan.” That’s not how Victoria’s Secret rolls at all.
They do big productions with angels and supermodels. Even if it is just to launch a Facebook page.
Instead, Alessandra and Doutzen will be at the store on Lex this Monday morning to make the announcement about the company’s official fan page.
The girls are also accepting VS’s Webby Award later that night at Cipriani.
In 2008, Christian Siriano won Project Runway Season 4. Since then, he’s showed a couple collections, gotten his designs on celebrities like Tori Spelling, designed a line of shoes for Payless, and last week, Saks announced that they picked up his entire Fall collection.
This week, Victoria’s Secret says the petite designer’s created a limited-edition line of Very Sexy makeup to appear alongside Heidi’s.
The line will consist of eye shadow, eyeliner, lip gloss, a bronzer/highlighter trio, and a brush and bag, with each item priced a few dollars more than VS’s regular line of makeup.
Incredibly, no hair products are in the works, but more pressing, would you buy makeup from Christian Siriano/Victoria’s Secret?
We think Arlenis deserves some kind of award. Maybe something like a Most Successful Model in the Least Amount of Time award?
Not even seven months have gone by since we first spotted her at the Banana Republic Fall 08 show approximately one week into her career, and she’s already been in Vogue and WWD, starred in the legendary Black Issue of Vogue Italia, landed a major beauty campaign, and now? Well, now, she’s an angel, having walked in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show extravaganza this past weekend.
Too bad there aren’t modeling Oscars, but at least she’s got the money.
Evidently, Victoria’s Secret angel wings can only take you so far.
Jessica Stam’s decided that being taller than most women isn’t enough anymore, and is studying for her pilot’s license. And all we keep thinking is, what is she going to wear? Dior Homme jeans and Christian Louboutins may not be the most suitable attire for the cockpit, though Amelia Earhart did famously keep up appearances (most notably by always powdering her nose before and after entering the cockpit), so why go against history?
We’re kind of loving this news - it’s just another in a string of models taking up interests that have nothing to do with clothes or cashing in on their face DNA (Sasha’s an artist, Daria sails, Lily knows a lot, etc), which is admirable and saves us from groaning that they’re busy designing for Mango or something.
On a side note, does this mean she’ll fly herself to the Couture, or to shoots? Imagine the savings in production costs!
If Victoria’s Secret knocked off an Elle MacPherson bra, even we probably wouldn’t realize, (until we tried it on, of course).
But if Victoria’s Secret knocks off Marc Jacobs’ Fall 07 runway booties, we notice. Especially when readers email us their own investigative work.
We’re not really sure who buys shoes from Victoria’s Secret in the first place, in fact we kind of forgot they’ve turned themselves into an entire brand empire hawking everything from lipsticks to teddy bears to teddies, but we’d never guess that the girls who do are looking for the perfect grunge ankle bootie to wear with their military socks and PVC leggings or knit tights and velvet coat like Tao Okamoto.
We’d also never guess they’d wait over a year to knock them off, after fashion’s taken a turn for the ladylike and even Marc’s getting ready to show Spring 09.
But we would guess they’d only cost $88 instead of almost $600
Today’s WWD may be a little funky so far, but there’s at least one story they made sure to get up there, and it’s pretty dire.
They’ve broken that there’s been a sweatshop operating out of Long Island City (which we’ve always heard was a nice, cute place with great views of the city) that’s been employing “over 100 mostly immigrant workers” with illegally low wages and overtime hours since 2005.
The workers have been manufacturing garments for a company that supplies clothes for Macy’s, Gap, Banana Republic, Express, Victoria’s Secret, Limited and Coldwater Creek.
Workers were being paid on a per-garment basis, completing each one in under a minute. They had even been coached on how to respond to suspicious investigations, in case that ever happened.
We’re not surprised that there are sweatshops, but more so that this was happening so close to home. But what’s the response from each of these companies going to be?
That rumor we spread about Mark Fast doing a line for Topshop? It's true. And it's in last week's Sunday Telegraph magazine which means it was true before we even said anything and we've had it in our lap since... Read More
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