People Are Talking

People Are Talking

BCBG Max Azria Fall 2012: Color Blocked and Furry with a Loose-Lipped Front Row

By Justine Harman Friday, Feb 10, 2012 / 9:33 AM

Photo: Getty

When attending a show like BCBG Max Azria, you can expect an onslaught of pseudo-celebs, advertising-friendly editors and of course, a whole lot of color blocking. Yesterday’s 10am show was no exception. And while the crush of photogs angled for a glimpse of front row showgoers including Giada de Laurentiis, Maria Menounos and Erin Wasson, the beauty of the show was in the delicious details:

1. Leandra “Man Repeller” Medine, who proudly rocked her engagement ring, compared front row “arm parties” with WWD‘s Rachel Strugatz. “Two extra phone chargers,” she told us of essentials for surviving a packed NYFW schedule, which mainly consists of shows “most relevant” to her site. “For example,” she further explained, “if Prabal conflicted with Herve Leger, I’d go to Prabal. On second thought, no matter what conflicts with Herve, I’ll probably have to go to the other show.” To be sure, there’s nothing man repelling about a skin tight sex kitteny Herve Leger bandage dress.

2. Erin Wasson, who was on hand to do some interviews backstage, knows one way to curb mid-show munchies: “I like Lunchables,” she told us while seatmate Cory Kennedy ribbed, “Snacks! Snacks! Snack attack!” Specifically, “The ham and cheese and crackers kind.”
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Burberry Spring Summer 2012 Womenswear Show - Front Row And Backstage
People Are Talking

Kanye West for Topshop?

Just about every time Topshop CEO Sir Philip Green is in the same room as a famous person, he or she is suddenly rumored to be getting a Topshop line. In just the past year, it’s happened with John Galliano, Gwyneth Paltrow, Florence Welch–none of whom actually went on to design anything. So we’re naturally a bit skeptical about this latest report that rapper-turned-designer Kanye West, who has been preparing for his next Paris Fashion Week outing in London, is in talks with Green to create a Topshop range of his own.

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Models

Rumor: Did Vogue Play Matchmaker for Karlie Kloss and Eddie Redmayne?

By Leah Chernikoff Thursday, Feb 2, 2012 / 1:00 PM

Photo: Mario Testino/VOGUE

Remember that gorgeous editorial in Vogue’s December issue featuring Karlie Kloss and Eddie Redmayne as “a couple of sinners on Ibiza—she, wearing printed resortwear generating plenty of heat; he, trying hard to keep his cool.” The spread, titled “Temptation Island” and lensed by Mario Testino, seems to have spawned a real life romance. Read more »

People Are Talking

Juicy Fashion Industry Blind Items: Hand-Jobs as Interviews, Firing Models Who Have Their Periods, and More

Glamour UK’s October issue has an expose called “The Truth about Fashion Week,” and it’s essentially one big, long, juicy blind item.

Here are our favorite tidbits from the whole piece. Let the guessing game begin!

Which designer’s favorite party accessory is a coke straw?

A top designer’s ‘party piece’ is Hoovering up grams of Colombia’s finest through one of his custom-designed, platinum ‘coke straws.’”

Which designer really gets a hand from his assistants?

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People Are Talking

Rumor Mill: Elle Fanning, Dakota Fanning and Sofia Coppola Are the Only Celebs Attending Marc Jacobs This Season

Only three celebrities will have the honor of gracing Marc Jacobs‘ exclusive front row this NYFW, we hear from two separate sources: Sofia Coppola, Elle Fanning and her sister Dakota.

For the past few seasons, Marc has been especially selective in deciding which celebrities, if any, receive invites to his runway shows. He told Style.com last February: “I’m not into the celebrity thing like we used to. That’s boring . . . We’re not going to have celebrities. We used to have all the celebrities and people there, and I think that at that moment in time, that’s what people loved. It generated so much press and at a certain point it was like, ‘Did anybody actually watch the show?’”

Of course, the presence of Leighton Meester, Vanessa Hudgens, Woopi Goldberg and Martha Stewart at last season’s show seemed like a departure from that, but only one or two celebrities attended the seasons preceding that one, up until Spring 2009, to which every celebrity you can think of–from Jay-Z to J.Lo to Wynona Ryder–showed up.

If this rumor is true, we like this season’s tightly-edited guest list.

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People Are Talking

Lady Gaga Talks a Lot of Smack about Cathy Horyn in her Latest V Column

Cathy Horyn, the New York Times style critic, is one of the fashion industry’s most respected (and, it must be said, feared) writers. Many have felt the lash of her sharp tongue, and her more negative reviews have resulted in a ban from more than one designer’s show, including Georgio Armani. Not everyone can take the heat, including Lady Gaga, who directed her third installment of “From The Desk Of Lady Gaga,” published on V Magazine’s website this morning, at Horyn’s acerbic pen in what she calls an address of “Extreme Critic Fundamentalism.”

Gaga addresses the “insult vs. insight” of fashion criticism. She asks, “Doesn’t the integrity of the critic become compromised when their writings are consistently plagued with negativity? When the public is no longer surprised or excited by the unpredictability of the writer, but rather has grown to expect the same cynicism from the same cynic?” It’s a fair question, especially in this hyper-scrutinized industry where millions publish their own blogs and lob criticism at designers’ work from a relatively inexperienced standpoint. So while Gaga’s question is certainly valid, taking aim at Horyn, a journalist with years of experience covering the fashion industry for one of the world’s best newspapers, is not.

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Parties

Solange Knowles Says She’d Love to Do a Collaboration With Opening Ceremony

Last night, Opening Ceremony threw a block party on Howard Street (where their flagship is located) to celebrate the stateside launch of Kim Jones’ collaboration with Bean Pole, a South Korean retailer. Thus, the party was sort of Korean-themed with a Korean taco truck and cocktails made with soju. To round out the block party vibe, Brooklyn MC Theophilus London performed to a fashionable crowd that included Shala Monroque, Jen Brill, Phil Oh, and Rachel Chandler. Even new Kenzo creative directors (and Opening Ceremony co-founders) Humberto Leon and Carol Lim made time to stop by.

The always stylish and multi-talented Solange Knowles was also there and joined London on stage for two songs after doing a three-hour DJ set. Even though she was probably pretty exhausted from all that, Solange, who is becoming a regular here on Fashionista, was nice enough to chat with us briefly after her awesome performance. Here’s what she had to say about dj’ing, stealing clothes from her sister and doing a clothing line.

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Fashion Shows

Azzedine Alaïa Rumored to Be Sofia Coppola’s Wedding Dress Designer and Other Buzz From His Inaugural Couture Show

Azzedine Alaïa hosted his first ever couture show (and first runway show in eight years) yesterday at his studio in Paris. At the time, the show was shrouded in Tom Ford-esque secrecy–only a select few were granted access and no photography was allowed. Of course, this morning, official photographs of the collection were released and the internets are buzzing with news and gossip from what is being called an “epic event.”

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People Are Talking

Paris Fall Couture Shows: Day 2

What better to spice up a couture day than a juicy Chanel rumor and advice on how to wear leather without looking like a hooker?

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People Are Talking

Love Is Blind. We Are Not. Bloggers, Put Your Cameras Away!

Which major label just hosted a big blogger event in Florence but asked attendees to sign docs agreeing not to photograph the label’s designer? Bloggers come with cameras surgically attached, just sayin’.

People Are Talking

Is Glenda Bailey Leaving Harper’s Bazaar?

There was a gossipy little item in this morning’s WWD suggesting Glenda Bailey is about to resign from Harper’s Bazaar. “Perhaps Harper’s Bazaar’s Glenda Bailey is on the way out?” writes reporter Zeke Turner. “She has a new counterpart on the business side, hard-charging Carol Smith, who can’t be happy with the magazine’s current numbers and will want to turn the magazine around right off the bat.”

We’ve heard similar rumors, but dismissed them as pure gossip. Turner does go on to cite an unnamed Bazaar source who reiterates that notion: “Glenda rumors come all the time, it’s just like the boy who cries wolf,” the source told WWD. “For the past two years, there have been Glenda rumors.”

We reached out to a Bazaar spokesperson for comment, and she said, “We don’t speculate on rumor, especially when it’s from unnamed sources.”

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People Are Talking

Love is Blind. We are Not. Not-So-Model Behavior!

Which supermodel freely announced that she only comes to the Cannes Film Festival “for free clothes and all you can drink champagne”?