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3 Great Recipe Collections for October
Reading fashion magazines doesn't make you stupid - The Guardian
I’m 15 and I’ve recently started reading “proper” fashion magazines, such as Elle, which I really like. But the boys – and some girls – in my school tease me and say this proves I’m stupid, or that these magazines are brainwashing me to become anorexic. How can I get them to stop?
Olivia, London
Ahh, Olivia – welcome to the rest of your life. You are far more precocious than me in terms of taking an interest in fashion. At the risk of sounding like Old Father Time, when I was your age my focuses in life were the Cure and Neighbours (especially Bouncer’s dream, an episode that is not discussed enough any more, an oversight I truly believe it is my purpose in life to rectify). So, it wasn’t until I started working as a fashion writer for this paper when I was 22 that I realised it was seen as absolutely acceptable to mock people for being interested in clothes in a way no one does with people who are interested in, say, film or cars or football, despite all these areas of interest being very similar to fashion.
Let’s deal with the first and most popularly held accusation: that having an interest in fashion proves you are stupid. It amazes me, frankly, how many people there are in the world stupid enough to believe this. I left the fashion desk six years ago, and yet every non-fashion article I have written since – and I usually write about two non-fashion articles a week – is smacked with at least five comments below the line wailing, “Why should we listen to a FASHION WRITER about food/Judaism/movies/literally anything in the world?!?!?!?!?!” One can only pity these poor people, who clearly have minds so narrow that they are incapable of having an interest in more than one subject and are similarly incapable of imagining that other people can accomplish this astonishing feat.
At times like this, I remember one of the great forgotten classics of our time: Troop Beverly Hills, starring the marvellous Shelley Long as Phyllis Nefler, whose husband leaves her because she likes fashion. “You had so much energy, you were so creative, I couldn’t wait to see what you’d do with it. And, see, now I know what you did with it. You went shopping!” her tedious husband bellows at the beginning of the film.
But, as the movie proves, while Phyllis’s stupid husband can only be a stupid oaf, Phyllis is capable of accomplishing miracles (well, leading a troop of Girl Scouts, anyway) while simultaneously being a dab hand at accessorising and knowing how to buy diamonds. When I am queen of the world, this movie will be on every school curriculum, because it teaches two invaluable lessons:
1. Just because a woman likes to look amazing doesn’t mean she has no other interests;
2. Shelley Long is a goddess.
Being interested in fashion is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I don’t think one should be ashamed of taking an interest in anything. Being interested in something does not mean liking everything about that subject, nor does it mean one is utterly uninterested in everything else. Why, since I’ve been writing this column, I have thought about fashion, the career of Steve Guttenberg, the books of Melissa Bank and whether I should buy a Halloween costume for my dog – all in the space of 10 minutes, without breaking even a bead of sweat. And you know what? Most other humans can, too.
When people (usually men, but, as you say, not exclusively) mock you for being interested in fashion, this just proves that you are so infallible that they have nothing to criticise you for other than the fact you like fashion, which, as we’ve already discussed, is no bad thing.
Many men, in my experience, get a bit nervy when they see a woman taking an interest in something that has absolutely nothing to do with them – for all of fashion’s faults, one thing in its favour is that it is utterly uninterested in the opinion of heterosexual males – and their instinctive response is to mock it. Don’t let this make you feel bad about yourself, Olivia, or like you have to apologise for yourself. Simply smile pityingly at these poor creatures, tell them that your feeble ladybrain is unable to cope with the cerebral demands of football magazines and then walk away, dignity intact.
As for whether reading fashion magazines causes eating disorders, well, this is a slightly different issue. Whereas those who are telling you that fashion magazines make you stupid are saying this in a mocking, even bullying way, those who raise the eating disorder issue are usually trying to look out for your wellbeing, however hamfistedly. But, as you know, Olivia, the truth is that eating disorders are a lot more complicated than that. My God, if only eating disorders were caused by fashion magazines – we could cure them all today. Hooray! Cupcakes for everyone!
So, when someone says this to you, calmly tell them that you appreciate their concern but that they are belittling a serious disease, and that if they are so interested in eating disorders they should educate themselves with books such as Getting Better Bite By Bite by the brilliant Dr Janet Treasure and Life-Size by Jenefer Shute. While they focus on these, you can focus on learning what kind of ankle boots are in this season. You might also take an interest in other things, too. Because that’s how smart you are.
- Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com .
via fashion - Google News http://ift.tt/1oVYKOd
Diane von Furstenberg Shares Her Most Inspirational Quotes About Fashion ... - E! Online
In addition to being one of the world's most successful female fashion designers, Diane Von Furstenberg is also a role model for women everywhere and aims to empower them with both her actions and her words.
The House of DVF star has done and seen so much—she's been married, divorced, then remarried later in life, she's a mother and a grandmother, and she's been involved in the fashion industry since the mid '70s. She's had highs and she's had lows, but most important of all, she's grown and learned from everything that she's ever done in her life.
Diane also likes to share her wisdom and positive thoughts with others, and some of the most important things that she values are confidence, comfort, compassion towards other people, as well as a sense of self-importance.
VIDEO: Watch the first full episode of House of DVF before it airs!
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Diane shared one of her secrets to happiness and success: "My best friend is me, and I take good care of me." She's independent, beautiful, and a strong woman who always looks out for herself and encourages other women to do the same for themselves.
We've compiled some of Diane's most inspirational quotes about everything from life and confidence to fashion and success.
Click on the pics below to see more of Diane's most inspirational quotes!
Tune-in to the series premiere of House of DVF this Sunday, Nov. 2 at 10/9c on E!
PHOTOS: See DVF's most inspirational quotes
via fashion - Google News http://ift.tt/1pUV36j
Meet Yang Li, a designer putting China on fashion's biggest stage - Washington Post
PARIS — Designer Yang Li was standing outside his rather sterile showroom on a narrow stone street amid the elegant architecture of the fashion world’s capital, taking a break from the droning task of looking at clothes, selling clothes and talking about clothes to have a cigarette. Li’s shoulder-length black hair, parted down the center, hangs across his back. He wears several small silver hoops in his ears and his black shirt is buttoned to his neck. And he is still. Calm. Tranquil.
The demeanor he presents on a sunny afternoon at the beginning of fall when the fashion world is spinning at a frenetic speed is that of someone unwilling to be rushed or overwhelmed. No matter that every aspect of his chosen industry exudes impatience above all else. Even his voice is a soothing alto, with an accent that is an amalgam of East and West. His inflections are the sum of his experiences — born in China; lived in Perth, Australia; studied in London. Works in Paris.
Who is this guy? Mention his name and most consumers respond: Yang who? Well, he is a comer. He is a fashion designer just beginning his career. His modest company is self-financed; each retailer he wins over registers like a home run. He is a young man with an alluring point of view, unwavering focus and a back story that reflects the ever-rising influence of China in the luxury trade.
China is the world’s leading consumer of luxury goods — its landscape rapidly filling with designer boutiques and primed for growth. But it does not give nearly as much as it gets. Few of China’s designers have moved beyond their local market. Li is part of a new generation of Chinese designers determined to play internationally. And he is aiming at the highest level.
He has the audacity to work in fashion’s rarefied air, where a pair of trousers can cost $1,000. He is boldly creative — collaborating with performance artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who is out to eradicate, merge, blur gender through body modification. Li incorporated P-Orridge’s poetry into his spring 2015 collection: “So destroy the expected.” Li has done just that. And in return, he is finding success.
Li’s sensibility and his methodology are drafted from his peripatetic life. (“If I was still in China,” Li says, he would be creating “knockoffs, traditional clothes.”) Each time he moved, he had to start over. And in those moments of lonely silence, “with no friends,” he explored, listened and studied. But Li doesn’t romanticize feeling like an outsider. He prefers the edifying aspects of community.
“It’s not about staying an outsider,” he says. “When the environment accepts you, you learn.” And so, his clothes are informed by Western tailoring, Australian skater culture, punk subversiveness and dreamy romance. But his work ethic, his belief in the impossible, he attributes to his time in China. It gave him patience, he says, and the ability to see the long view — mostly because there was no other choice.
Li, 26, established his eponymous collection in 2011, mounting his first runway show in Paris last year. He moved from start-up to a fully realized brand in what seemed like a blink of the eye; his label includes men’s and women’s attire as well as shoes. But it is the women’s clothes that are, for the moment, the center of attention. He put them on the runway at the Jeu de Paume — a contemporary art museum and one of this city’s statelier locations for a fashion show.
After all, he has not come to disrupt the system or bend it to his will, but rather to excel within it. His clothes bridge a divide between polished and rough, cold perfection and the humanity of imperfection. Li believes every seam and every embellishment “is a study of human behavior,” with all of its flaws and failures.
Li, a frustrated musician, uses the difference between a recorded song and a live performance as an analogy. “When you listen to a CD, everything is perfect,” he says. “Then you go see the band live. It’s hot, sweaty; a guy’s bumping into you. [The singer] is maybe a bit off-pitch. The imperfection draws you to the experience.”
“If something is so perfect,” Li says, ‘it becomes almost emotionless.”
Li’s clothes don’t reference nostalgia, pay homage to a lost bit of history or attempt to reinvent another era. They are decidedly of the here and now, reflecting a world that still uses tailoring as a mark of formality, motorcycle jackets as a statement of rebelliousness and fluidity as a defining characteristic of femininity.
“We bought his first collection,” says Dominic Marcheschi, co-owner of the influential Chicago boutique Blake. “At first, it was almost uniform-like. But it evolved away from that. . . . Today, it does have a feminine edge to it. But it’s not about pretty clothes. So much is about pretty dresses and girly dresses. This is tailored.” These clothes are tough.
Li was born in Beijing in 1987, and for the first 10 years of his life, he lived beyond the reach of popular culture, modern communications and the global community. He was isolated by China’s Cultural Revolution, laws and politics. It would be 10 years before he would know his mother.
“She gave birth and left after three months. She had the opportunity to get out and be a translator,” Li says. “During the ’80s in China, it was not easy to get out.” So, she seized the moment and moved to Perth, Australia.
His father’s side of the family, Li says, was Communist. His dad was a ping-pong player and worked in China’s government. “I was in Beijing for the formative years,” Li says. “You start to build a work ethic; you start to build patience.” The time without his mother “gave me an earlier maturity. What I take from that period is: Nothing of value comes without being earned.”
In 1997, Li joined his mother in Perth, where he experienced a new kind of isolation defined by language and culture. “Australia was all about nature and the extreme action sports,” Li says. He connected with a group of skaters and became enthralled with standing out as an individual while remaining part of a community.
“You have your group or crew. You all want to belong, but be different,” Li says. “There are all these little nuances. [Based on] the type of jeans you wear, I can tell the kind of tricks you do.
“That’s how I got into clothing: I’d think, if I have this kind of jean, it changed the way I walked,” he says. “It’s how I discovered the power of dress.”
In 2007, Li moved to London and enrolled in the undergraduate fashion program at Central Saint Martins, which counts designers such as Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and John Galliano among its alumni. He left school early to work for Raf Simons, whose forging of street culture with high style Li admired. Soon after, Li set out on his own. “When I started, I was 23,” Li says. The “naivete of youth creates a sense of braveness.”
Over time, Li has become an internationalist. Ask him where he calls home and it takes a few minutes before he settles on London. He has leapt forward to where China’s fashion industry is heading.
“The last few years is the fastest-growing period,” says Angelica Cheung, editor of Vogue China. “When I launched Vogue 10 years ago, we wanted to run a regular column devoted to Chinese designers. It was hard to find designers good enough to be presented alongside international brands. Now, there are too many.”
Many of those designers — who number in the dozens — have studied abroad, as well as in China. They have offices in Paris or London. They’re connected to social media, fluent in English and adept at self-promotion.
Even with a recent slowdown in sales of high-priced attire and accessories, China remains a market where fashion is voraciously consumed and unabashedly fetishized as totems of success.
Increasingly, it’s Chinese celebrities, such as Li Bingbing, Fan Bingbing and Shu Qi, who create turbulence at fashion week with all the media and handlers following in their wake. As American guests sit wondering who’s who, photographers jockey to capture these impeccably groomed young women.
The country is shaking off negative connotations that the “Made in China” label is synonymous with poor quality as pricey brands such as Prada, Michael Kors and Coach have set up production there. And the Council of Fashion Designers of America established an exchange program that has sent New York-based designers to China and brought Chinese designers — Uma Wang and Masha Ma — to New York.
“In the early years, people just wanted to wear the obvious labels and logos. . . . That generation of consumers has moved on,” Cheung says. “Now, they have a lot of clothes in their wardrobe. . . . They say, ‘Yes, I can buy a Louis Vuitton bag, but I can wear a Chinese designer’s clothing just because I like it.’ It all comes with confidence and experience.”
Chinese designers’ global reach is just beginning, Cheung says. The scale remains small.
But Yang Li’s collection, which is available in the Washington area at Relish in Georgetown, stands out. “He’s very serious about what he does,” Blake’s Marcheschi says. “I think he might make it to another level.”
As a kid, if someone had asked Li about fashion, he’d have said it was an industry of evening gowns. He briefly studied law to please his parents. He dabbled in music. “I don’t have a talent for music. I tried to play music before. I don’t have the balls to stand up in front of people and perform,” Li says. “The light doesn’t fall well enough on my face to act.”
Fashion became his creative outlet — the runway his stage. Fashion wooed him, and he was smitten.
“For 10 minutes, every six months, I get to say or do things I couldn’t in reality,” Li says. “I get to write a love letter.”
via fashion - Google News http://ift.tt/1oVYJty
Hub of Africa's Bumpy Fashion Week - EthioSports
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – On Thursday October 23, 2014, the third Hub of Africa Fashion Week (HAFW) opened up at the Galani Coffee House, a chic warehouse turned coffee shop near Gerji Mebrat Hail in Addis Abeba. The fashion show, which showcases various designers in one venue, is a three-day event that includes “two nights of fashion and one night of pure industry” said Linda Murithi, one half of HAFW’s founders.
Featured works of Yohannes sisters (photo: Addis Fortune)
Although the HAFW 2014 show took place, this week’s edition did not quite live up to the expectations raised by the success of previous events. Originally intended to showcase 14 African designers, this year’s show only included seven headliners: Kahindo Mateene (DRC), Abugida (Ethiopia), Katungulu Mwendwa (Kenya) Kepha Maina (Kenya), Mataano (Somalia), Rooi (Nigeria), Yohannes sisters (Ethiopia) and Ruald Rheeder (South Africa). The designers, although established in their respective countries, are less present globally, and use HAFW to break into the global market. The 2014 edition of HAFW, which was expected to help designers show international fashion journalists and buyers that African designers are capable of competing with their European counterparts, unfortunately came up a little short, mostly due to a lack of organization.
The HAFW fashion show launched in 2010, with six designers presenting during the initial show. According to sources, the intent this year was to showcase the work of 14 African design talents, but several were unable to show their creations because of disagreements between models and organizers, as well as due to other undisclosed problems. The shows on Thursday and Friday both started fashionably late. On the plus side, this allowed organizers some room to patch up apparent organizational issues, as two shows out of seven had to be cancelled on Thursday and six out of nine on Friday.
Read more at: Addis Fortune
via fashion - Google News http://ift.tt/1pUV4an
Reading fashion magazines doesn't make you stupid - The Guardian
I’m 15 and I’ve recently started reading “proper” fashion magazines, such as Elle, which I really like. But the boys – and some girls – in my school tease me and say this proves I’m stupid, or that these magazines are brainwashing me to become anorexic. How can I get them to stop?
Olivia, London
Ahh, Olivia – welcome to the rest of your life. You are far more precocious than me in terms of taking an interest in fashion. At the risk of sounding like Old Father Time, when I was your age my focuses in life were the Cure and Neighbours (especially Bouncer’s dream, an episode that is not discussed enough any more, an oversight I truly believe it is my purpose in life to rectify). So, it wasn’t until I started working as a fashion writer for this paper when I was 22 that I realised it was seen as absolutely acceptable to mock people for being interested in clothes in a way no one does with people who are interested in, say, film or cars or football, despite all these areas of interest being very similar to fashion.
Let’s deal with the first and most popularly held accusation: that having an interest in fashion proves you are stupid. It amazes me, frankly, how many people there are in the world stupid enough to believe this. I left the fashion desk six years ago, and yet every non-fashion article I have written since – and I usually write about two non-fashion articles a week – is smacked with at least five comments below the line wailing, “Why should we listen to a FASHION WRITER about food/Judaism/movies/literally anything in the world?!?!?!?!?!” One can only pity these poor people, who clearly have minds so narrow that they are incapable of having an interest in more than one subject and are similarly incapable of imagining that other people can accomplish this astonishing feat.
At times like this, I remember one of the great forgotten classics of our time: Troop Beverly Hills, starring the marvellous Shelley Long as Phyllis Nefler, whose husband leaves her because she likes fashion. “You had so much energy, you were so creative, I couldn’t wait to see what you’d do with it. And, see, now I know what you did with it. You went shopping!” her tedious husband bellows at the beginning of the film.
But, as the movie proves, while Phyllis’s stupid husband can only be a stupid oaf, Phyllis is capable of accomplishing miracles (well, leading a troop of Girl Scouts, anyway) while simultaneously being a dab hand at accessorising and knowing how to buy diamonds. When I am queen of the world, this movie will be on every school curriculum, because it teaches two invaluable lessons:
1. Just because a woman likes to look amazing doesn’t mean she has no other interests;
2. Shelley Long is a goddess.
Being interested in fashion is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I don’t think one should be ashamed of taking an interest in anything. Being interested in something does not mean liking everything about that subject, nor does it mean one is utterly uninterested in everything else. Why, since I’ve been writing this column, I have thought about fashion, the career of Steve Guttenberg, the books of Melissa Bank and whether I should buy a Halloween costume for my dog – all in the space of 10 minutes, without breaking even a bead of sweat. And you know what? Most other humans can, too.
When people (usually men, but, as you say, not exclusively) mock you for being interested in fashion, this just proves that you are so infallible that they have nothing to criticise you for other than the fact you like fashion, which, as we’ve already discussed, is no bad thing.
Many men, in my experience, get a bit nervy when they see a woman taking an interest in something that has absolutely nothing to do with them – for all of fashion’s faults, one thing in its favour is that it is utterly uninterested in the opinion of heterosexual males – and their instinctive response is to mock it. Don’t let this make you feel bad about yourself, Olivia, or like you have to apologise for yourself. Simply smile pityingly at these poor creatures, tell them that your feeble ladybrain is unable to cope with the cerebral demands of football magazines and then walk away, dignity intact.
As for whether reading fashion magazines causes eating disorders, well, this is a slightly different issue. Whereas those who are telling you that fashion magazines make you stupid are saying this in a mocking, even bullying way, those who raise the eating disorder issue are usually trying to look out for your wellbeing, however hamfistedly. But, as you know, Olivia, the truth is that eating disorders are a lot more complicated than that. My God, if only eating disorders were caused by fashion magazines – we could cure them all today. Hooray! Cupcakes for everyone!
So, when someone says this to you, calmly tell them that you appreciate their concern but that they are belittling a serious disease, and that if they are so interested in eating disorders they should educate themselves with books such as Getting Better Bite By Bite by the brilliant Dr Janet Treasure and Life-Size by Jenefer Shute. While they focus on these, you can focus on learning what kind of ankle boots are in this season. You might also take an interest in other things, too. Because that’s how smart you are.
- Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com .
via fashion - Google News http://ift.tt/1DX2Zw6
Diane von Furstenberg Shares Her Most Inspirational Quotes About Fashion ... - E! Online
In addition to being one of the world's most successful female fashion designers, Diane Von Furstenberg is also a role model for women everywhere and aims to empower them with both her actions and her words.
The House of DVF star has done and seen so much—she's been married, divorced, then remarried later in life, she's a mother and a grandmother, and she's been involved in the fashion industry since the mid '70s. She's had highs and she's had lows, but most important of all, she's grown and learned from everything that she's ever done in her life.
Diane also likes to share her wisdom and positive thoughts with others, and some of the most important things that she values are confidence, comfort, compassion towards other people, as well as a sense of self-importance.
VIDEO: Watch the first full episode of House of DVF before it airs!
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Diane shared one of her secrets to happiness and success: "My best friend is me, and I take good care of me." She's independent, beautiful, and a strong woman who always looks out for herself and encourages other women to do the same for themselves.
We've compiled some of Diane's most inspirational quotes about everything from life and confidence to fashion and success.
Click on the pics below to see more of Diane's most inspirational quotes!
Tune-in to the series premiere of House of DVF this Sunday, Nov. 2 at 10/9c on E!
PHOTOS: See DVF's most inspirational quotes
via fashion - Google News http://ift.tt/1oVTABM
Meet Yang Li, a designer putting China on fashion's biggest stage - Washington Post
PARIS — Designer Yang Li was standing outside his rather sterile showroom on a narrow stone street amid the elegant architecture of the fashion world’s capital, taking a break from the droning task of looking at clothes, selling clothes and talking about clothes to have a cigarette. Li’s shoulder-length black hair, parted down the center, hangs across his back. He wears several small silver hoops in his ears and his black shirt is buttoned to his neck. And he is still. Calm. Tranquil.
The demeanor he presents on a sunny afternoon at the beginning of fall when the fashion world is spinning at a frenetic speed is that of someone unwilling to be rushed or overwhelmed. No matter that every aspect of his chosen industry exudes impatience above all else. Even his voice is a soothing alto, with an accent that is an amalgam of East and West. His inflections are the sum of his experiences — born in China; lived in Perth, Australia; studied in London. Works in Paris.
Who is this guy? Mention his name and most consumers respond: Yang who? Well, he is a comer. He is a fashion designer just beginning his career. His modest company is self-financed; each retailer he wins over registers like a home run. He is a young man with an alluring point of view, unwavering focus and a back story that reflects the ever-rising influence of China in the luxury trade.
China is the world’s leading consumer of luxury goods — its landscape rapidly filling with designer boutiques and primed for growth. But it does not give nearly as much as it gets. Few of China’s designers have moved beyond their local market. Li is part of a new generation of Chinese designers determined to play internationally. And he is aiming at the highest level.
He has the audacity to work in fashion’s rarefied air, where a pair of trousers can cost $1,000. He is boldly creative — collaborating with performance artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who is out to eradicate, merge, blur gender through body modification. Li incorporated P-Orridge’s poetry into his spring 2015 collection: “So destroy the expected.” Li has done just that. And in return, he is finding success.
Li’s sensibility and his methodology are drafted from his peripatetic life. (“If I was still in China,” Li says, he would be creating “knockoffs, traditional clothes.”) Each time he moved, he had to start over. And in those moments of lonely silence, “with no friends,” he explored, listened and studied. But Li doesn’t romanticize feeling like an outsider. He prefers the edifying aspects of community.
“It’s not about staying an outsider,” he says. “When the environment accepts you, you learn.” And so, his clothes are informed by Western tailoring, Australian skater culture, punk subversiveness and dreamy romance. But his work ethic, his belief in the impossible, he attributes to his time in China. It gave him patience, he says, and the ability to see the long view — mostly because there was no other choice.
Li, 26, established his eponymous collection in 2011, mounting his first runway show in Paris last year. He moved from start-up to a fully realized brand in what seemed like a blink of the eye; his label includes men’s and women’s attire as well as shoes. But it is the women’s clothes that are, for the moment, the center of attention. He put them on the runway at the Jeu de Paume — a contemporary art museum and one of this city’s statelier locations for a fashion show.
After all, he has not come to disrupt the system or bend it to his will, but rather to excel within it. His clothes bridge a divide between polished and rough, cold perfection and the humanity of imperfection. Li believes every seam and every embellishment “is a study of human behavior,” with all of its flaws and failures.
Li, a frustrated musician, uses the difference between a recorded song and a live performance as an analogy. “When you listen to a CD, everything is perfect,” he says. “Then you go see the band live. It’s hot, sweaty; a guy’s bumping into you. [The singer] is maybe a bit off-pitch. The imperfection draws you to the experience.”
“If something is so perfect,” Li says, ‘it becomes almost emotionless.”
Li’s clothes don’t reference nostalgia, pay homage to a lost bit of history or attempt to reinvent another era. They are decidedly of the here and now, reflecting a world that still uses tailoring as a mark of formality, motorcycle jackets as a statement of rebelliousness and fluidity as a defining characteristic of femininity.
“We bought his first collection,” says Dominic Marcheschi, co-owner of the influential Chicago boutique Blake. “At first, it was almost uniform-like. But it evolved away from that. . . . Today, it does have a feminine edge to it. But it’s not about pretty clothes. So much is about pretty dresses and girly dresses. This is tailored.” These clothes are tough.
Li was born in Beijing in 1987, and for the first 10 years of his life, he lived beyond the reach of popular culture, modern communications and the global community. He was isolated by China’s Cultural Revolution, laws and politics. It would be 10 years before he would know his mother.
“She gave birth and left after three months. She had the opportunity to get out and be a translator,” Li says. “During the ’80s in China, it was not easy to get out.” So, she seized the moment and moved to Perth, Australia.
His father’s side of the family, Li says, was Communist. His dad was a ping-pong player and worked in China’s government. “I was in Beijing for the formative years,” Li says. “You start to build a work ethic; you start to build patience.” The time without his mother “gave me an earlier maturity. What I take from that period is: Nothing of value comes without being earned.”
In 1997, Li joined his mother in Perth, where he experienced a new kind of isolation defined by language and culture. “Australia was all about nature and the extreme action sports,” Li says. He connected with a group of skaters and became enthralled with standing out as an individual while remaining part of a community.
“You have your group or crew. You all want to belong, but be different,” Li says. “There are all these little nuances. [Based on] the type of jeans you wear, I can tell the kind of tricks you do.
“That’s how I got into clothing: I’d think, if I have this kind of jean, it changed the way I walked,” he says. “It’s how I discovered the power of dress.”
In 2007, Li moved to London and enrolled in the undergraduate fashion program at Central Saint Martins, which counts designers such as Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and John Galliano among its alumni. He left school early to work for Raf Simons, whose forging of street culture with high style Li admired. Soon after, Li set out on his own. “When I started, I was 23,” Li says. The “naivete of youth creates a sense of braveness.”
Over time, Li has become an internationalist. Ask him where he calls home and it takes a few minutes before he settles on London. He has leapt forward to where China’s fashion industry is heading.
“The last few years is the fastest-growing period,” says Angelica Cheung, editor of Vogue China. “When I launched Vogue 10 years ago, we wanted to run a regular column devoted to Chinese designers. It was hard to find designers good enough to be presented alongside international brands. Now, there are too many.”
Many of those designers — who number in the dozens — have studied abroad, as well as in China. They have offices in Paris or London. They’re connected to social media, fluent in English and adept at self-promotion.
Even with a recent slowdown in sales of high-priced attire and accessories, China remains a market where fashion is voraciously consumed and unabashedly fetishized as totems of success.
Increasingly, it’s Chinese celebrities, such as Li Bingbing, Fan Bingbing and Shu Qi, who create turbulence at fashion week with all the media and handlers following in their wake. As American guests sit wondering who’s who, photographers jockey to capture these impeccably groomed young women.
The country is shaking off negative connotations that the “Made in China” label is synonymous with poor quality as pricey brands such as Prada, Michael Kors and Coach have set up production there. And the Council of Fashion Designers of America established an exchange program that has sent New York-based designers to China and brought Chinese designers — Uma Wang and Masha Ma — to New York.
“In the early years, people just wanted to wear the obvious labels and logos. . . . That generation of consumers has moved on,” Cheung says. “Now, they have a lot of clothes in their wardrobe. . . . They say, ‘Yes, I can buy a Louis Vuitton bag, but I can wear a Chinese designer’s clothing just because I like it.’ It all comes with confidence and experience.”
Chinese designers’ global reach is just beginning, Cheung says. The scale remains small.
But Yang Li’s collection, which is available in the Washington area at Relish in Georgetown, stands out. “He’s very serious about what he does,” Blake’s Marcheschi says. “I think he might make it to another level.”
As a kid, if someone had asked Li about fashion, he’d have said it was an industry of evening gowns. He briefly studied law to please his parents. He dabbled in music. “I don’t have a talent for music. I tried to play music before. I don’t have the balls to stand up in front of people and perform,” Li says. “The light doesn’t fall well enough on my face to act.”
Fashion became his creative outlet — the runway his stage. Fashion wooed him, and he was smitten.
“For 10 minutes, every six months, I get to say or do things I couldn’t in reality,” Li says. “I get to write a love letter.”
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Hub of Africa's Bumpy Fashion Week - EthioSports
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – On Thursday October 23, 2014, the third Hub of Africa Fashion Week (HAFW) opened up at the Galani Coffee House, a chic warehouse turned coffee shop near Gerji Mebrat Hail in Addis Abeba. The fashion show, which showcases various designers in one venue, is a three-day event that includes “two nights of fashion and one night of pure industry” said Linda Murithi, one half of HAFW’s founders.
Featured works of Yohannes sisters (photo: Addis Fortune)
Although the HAFW 2014 show took place, this week’s edition did not quite live up to the expectations raised by the success of previous events. Originally intended to showcase 14 African designers, this year’s show only included seven headliners: Kahindo Mateene (DRC), Abugida (Ethiopia), Katungulu Mwendwa (Kenya) Kepha Maina (Kenya), Mataano (Somalia), Rooi (Nigeria), Yohannes sisters (Ethiopia) and Ruald Rheeder (South Africa). The designers, although established in their respective countries, are less present globally, and use HAFW to break into the global market. The 2014 edition of HAFW, which was expected to help designers show international fashion journalists and buyers that African designers are capable of competing with their European counterparts, unfortunately came up a little short, mostly due to a lack of organization.
The HAFW fashion show launched in 2010, with six designers presenting during the initial show. According to sources, the intent this year was to showcase the work of 14 African design talents, but several were unable to show their creations because of disagreements between models and organizers, as well as due to other undisclosed problems. The shows on Thursday and Friday both started fashionably late. On the plus side, this allowed organizers some room to patch up apparent organizational issues, as two shows out of seven had to be cancelled on Thursday and six out of nine on Friday.
Read more at: Addis Fortune
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Reading fashion magazines doesn't make you stupid - The Guardian
I’m 15 and I’ve recently started reading “proper” fashion magazines, such as Elle, which I really like. But the boys – and some girls – in my school tease me and say this proves I’m stupid, or that these magazines are brainwashing me to become anorexic. How can I get them to stop?
Olivia, London
Ahh, Olivia – welcome to the rest of your life. You are far more precocious than me in terms of taking an interest in fashion. At the risk of sounding like Old Father Time, when I was your age my focuses in life were the Cure and Neighbours (especially Bouncer’s dream, an episode that is not discussed enough any more, an oversight I truly believe it is my purpose in life to rectify). So, it wasn’t until I started working as a fashion writer for this paper when I was 22 that I realised it was seen as absolutely acceptable to mock people for being interested in clothes in a way no one does with people who are interested in, say, film or cars or football, despite all these areas of interest being very similar to fashion.
Let’s deal with the first and most popularly held accusation: that having an interest in fashion proves you are stupid. It amazes me, frankly, how many people there are in the world stupid enough to believe this. I left the fashion desk six years ago, and yet every non-fashion article I have written since – and I usually write about two non-fashion articles a week – is smacked with at least five comments below the line wailing, “Why should we listen to a FASHION WRITER about food/Judaism/movies/literally anything in the world?!?!?!?!?!” One can only pity these poor people, who clearly have minds so narrow that they are incapable of having an interest in more than one subject and are similarly incapable of imagining that other people can accomplish this astonishing feat.
At times like this, I remember one of the great forgotten classics of our time: Troop Beverly Hills, starring the marvellous Shelley Long as Phyllis Nefler, whose husband leaves her because she likes fashion. “You had so much energy, you were so creative, I couldn’t wait to see what you’d do with it. And, see, now I know what you did with it. You went shopping!” her tedious husband bellows at the beginning of the film.
But, as the movie proves, while Phyllis’s stupid husband can only be a stupid oaf, Phyllis is capable of accomplishing miracles (well, leading a troop of Girl Scouts, anyway) while simultaneously being a dab hand at accessorising and knowing how to buy diamonds. When I am queen of the world, this movie will be on every school curriculum, because it teaches two invaluable lessons:
1. Just because a woman likes to look amazing doesn’t mean she has no other interests;
2. Shelley Long is a goddess.
Being interested in fashion is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I don’t think one should be ashamed of taking an interest in anything. Being interested in something does not mean liking everything about that subject, nor does it mean one is utterly uninterested in everything else. Why, since I’ve been writing this column, I have thought about fashion, the career of Steve Guttenberg, the books of Melissa Bank and whether I should buy a Halloween costume for my dog – all in the space of 10 minutes, without breaking even a bead of sweat. And you know what? Most other humans can, too.
When people (usually men, but, as you say, not exclusively) mock you for being interested in fashion, this just proves that you are so infallible that they have nothing to criticise you for other than the fact you like fashion, which, as we’ve already discussed, is no bad thing.
Many men, in my experience, get a bit nervy when they see a woman taking an interest in something that has absolutely nothing to do with them – for all of fashion’s faults, one thing in its favour is that it is utterly uninterested in the opinion of heterosexual males – and their instinctive response is to mock it. Don’t let this make you feel bad about yourself, Olivia, or like you have to apologise for yourself. Simply smile pityingly at these poor creatures, tell them that your feeble ladybrain is unable to cope with the cerebral demands of football magazines and then walk away, dignity intact.
As for whether reading fashion magazines causes eating disorders, well, this is a slightly different issue. Whereas those who are telling you that fashion magazines make you stupid are saying this in a mocking, even bullying way, those who raise the eating disorder issue are usually trying to look out for your wellbeing, however hamfistedly. But, as you know, Olivia, the truth is that eating disorders are a lot more complicated than that. My God, if only eating disorders were caused by fashion magazines – we could cure them all today. Hooray! Cupcakes for everyone!
So, when someone says this to you, calmly tell them that you appreciate their concern but that they are belittling a serious disease, and that if they are so interested in eating disorders they should educate themselves with books such as Getting Better Bite By Bite by the brilliant Dr Janet Treasure and Life-Size by Jenefer Shute. While they focus on these, you can focus on learning what kind of ankle boots are in this season. You might also take an interest in other things, too. Because that’s how smart you are.
- Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com .
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Diane von Furstenberg Shares Her Most Inspirational Quotes About Fashion ... - E! Online
In addition to being one of the world's most successful female fashion designers, Diane Von Furstenberg is also a role model for women everywhere and aims to empower them with both her actions and her words.
The House of DVF star has done and seen so much—she's been married, divorced, then remarried later in life, she's a mother and a grandmother, and she's been involved in the fashion industry since the mid '70s. She's had highs and she's had lows, but most important of all, she's grown and learned from everything that she's ever done in her life.
Diane also likes to share her wisdom and positive thoughts with others, and some of the most important things that she values are confidence, comfort, compassion towards other people, as well as a sense of self-importance.
VIDEO: Watch the first full episode of House of DVF before it airs!
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Diane shared one of her secrets to happiness and success: "My best friend is me, and I take good care of me." She's independent, beautiful, and a strong woman who always looks out for herself and encourages other women to do the same for themselves.
We've compiled some of Diane's most inspirational quotes about everything from life and confidence to fashion and success.
Click on the pics below to see more of Diane's most inspirational quotes!
Tune-in to the series premiere of House of DVF this Sunday, Nov. 2 at 10/9c on E!
PHOTOS: See DVF's most inspirational quotes
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Meet Yang Li, a designer putting China on fashion's biggest stage - Washington Post
PARIS — Designer Yang Li was standing outside his rather sterile showroom on a narrow stone street amid the elegant architecture of the fashion world’s capital, taking a break from the droning task of looking at clothes, selling clothes and talking about clothes to have a cigarette. Li’s shoulder-length black hair, parted down the center, hangs across his back. He wears several small silver hoops in his ears and his black shirt is buttoned to his neck. And he is still. Calm. Tranquil.
The demeanor he presents on a sunny afternoon at the beginning of fall when the fashion world is spinning at a frenetic speed is that of someone unwilling to be rushed or overwhelmed. No matter that every aspect of his chosen industry exudes impatience above all else. Even his voice is a soothing alto, with an accent that is an amalgam of East and West. His inflections are the sum of his experiences — born in China; lived in Perth, Australia; studied in London. Works in Paris.
Who is this guy? Mention his name and most consumers respond: Yang who? Well, he is a comer. He is a fashion designer just beginning his career. His modest company is self-financed; each retailer he wins over registers like a home run. He is a young man with an alluring point of view, unwavering focus and a back story that reflects the ever-rising influence of China in the luxury trade.
China is the world’s leading consumer of luxury goods — its landscape rapidly filling with designer boutiques and primed for growth. But it does not give nearly as much as it gets. Few of China’s designers have moved beyond their local market. Li is part of a new generation of Chinese designers determined to play internationally. And he is aiming at the highest level.
He has the audacity to work in fashion’s rarefied air, where a pair of trousers can cost $1,000. He is boldly creative — collaborating with performance artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who is out to eradicate, merge, blur gender through body modification. Li incorporated P-Orridge’s poetry into his spring 2015 collection: “So destroy the expected.” Li has done just that. And in return, he is finding success.
Li’s sensibility and his methodology are drafted from his peripatetic life. (“If I was still in China,” Li says, he would be creating “knockoffs, traditional clothes.”) Each time he moved, he had to start over. And in those moments of lonely silence, “with no friends,” he explored, listened and studied. But Li doesn’t romanticize feeling like an outsider. He prefers the edifying aspects of community.
“It’s not about staying an outsider,” he says. “When the environment accepts you, you learn.” And so, his clothes are informed by Western tailoring, Australian skater culture, punk subversiveness and dreamy romance. But his work ethic, his belief in the impossible, he attributes to his time in China. It gave him patience, he says, and the ability to see the long view — mostly because there was no other choice.
Li, 26, established his eponymous collection in 2011, mounting his first runway show in Paris last year. He moved from start-up to a fully realized brand in what seemed like a blink of the eye; his label includes men’s and women’s attire as well as shoes. But it is the women’s clothes that are, for the moment, the center of attention. He put them on the runway at the Jeu de Paume — a contemporary art museum and one of this city’s statelier locations for a fashion show.
After all, he has not come to disrupt the system or bend it to his will, but rather to excel within it. His clothes bridge a divide between polished and rough, cold perfection and the humanity of imperfection. Li believes every seam and every embellishment “is a study of human behavior,” with all of its flaws and failures.
Li, a frustrated musician, uses the difference between a recorded song and a live performance as an analogy. “When you listen to a CD, everything is perfect,” he says. “Then you go see the band live. It’s hot, sweaty; a guy’s bumping into you. [The singer] is maybe a bit off-pitch. The imperfection draws you to the experience.”
“If something is so perfect,” Li says, ‘it becomes almost emotionless.”
Li’s clothes don’t reference nostalgia, pay homage to a lost bit of history or attempt to reinvent another era. They are decidedly of the here and now, reflecting a world that still uses tailoring as a mark of formality, motorcycle jackets as a statement of rebelliousness and fluidity as a defining characteristic of femininity.
“We bought his first collection,” says Dominic Marcheschi, co-owner of the influential Chicago boutique Blake. “At first, it was almost uniform-like. But it evolved away from that. . . . Today, it does have a feminine edge to it. But it’s not about pretty clothes. So much is about pretty dresses and girly dresses. This is tailored.” These clothes are tough.
Li was born in Beijing in 1987, and for the first 10 years of his life, he lived beyond the reach of popular culture, modern communications and the global community. He was isolated by China’s Cultural Revolution, laws and politics. It would be 10 years before he would know his mother.
“She gave birth and left after three months. She had the opportunity to get out and be a translator,” Li says. “During the ’80s in China, it was not easy to get out.” So, she seized the moment and moved to Perth, Australia.
His father’s side of the family, Li says, was Communist. His dad was a ping-pong player and worked in China’s government. “I was in Beijing for the formative years,” Li says. “You start to build a work ethic; you start to build patience.” The time without his mother “gave me an earlier maturity. What I take from that period is: Nothing of value comes without being earned.”
In 1997, Li joined his mother in Perth, where he experienced a new kind of isolation defined by language and culture. “Australia was all about nature and the extreme action sports,” Li says. He connected with a group of skaters and became enthralled with standing out as an individual while remaining part of a community.
“You have your group or crew. You all want to belong, but be different,” Li says. “There are all these little nuances. [Based on] the type of jeans you wear, I can tell the kind of tricks you do.
“That’s how I got into clothing: I’d think, if I have this kind of jean, it changed the way I walked,” he says. “It’s how I discovered the power of dress.”
In 2007, Li moved to London and enrolled in the undergraduate fashion program at Central Saint Martins, which counts designers such as Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and John Galliano among its alumni. He left school early to work for Raf Simons, whose forging of street culture with high style Li admired. Soon after, Li set out on his own. “When I started, I was 23,” Li says. The “naivete of youth creates a sense of braveness.”
Over time, Li has become an internationalist. Ask him where he calls home and it takes a few minutes before he settles on London. He has leapt forward to where China’s fashion industry is heading.
“The last few years is the fastest-growing period,” says Angelica Cheung, editor of Vogue China. “When I launched Vogue 10 years ago, we wanted to run a regular column devoted to Chinese designers. It was hard to find designers good enough to be presented alongside international brands. Now, there are too many.”
Many of those designers — who number in the dozens — have studied abroad, as well as in China. They have offices in Paris or London. They’re connected to social media, fluent in English and adept at self-promotion.
Even with a recent slowdown in sales of high-priced attire and accessories, China remains a market where fashion is voraciously consumed and unabashedly fetishized as totems of success.
Increasingly, it’s Chinese celebrities, such as Li Bingbing, Fan Bingbing and Shu Qi, who create turbulence at fashion week with all the media and handlers following in their wake. As American guests sit wondering who’s who, photographers jockey to capture these impeccably groomed young women.
The country is shaking off negative connotations that the “Made in China” label is synonymous with poor quality as pricey brands such as Prada, Michael Kors and Coach have set up production there. And the Council of Fashion Designers of America established an exchange program that has sent New York-based designers to China and brought Chinese designers — Uma Wang and Masha Ma — to New York.
“In the early years, people just wanted to wear the obvious labels and logos. . . . That generation of consumers has moved on,” Cheung says. “Now, they have a lot of clothes in their wardrobe. . . . They say, ‘Yes, I can buy a Louis Vuitton bag, but I can wear a Chinese designer’s clothing just because I like it.’ It all comes with confidence and experience.”
Chinese designers’ global reach is just beginning, Cheung says. The scale remains small.
But Yang Li’s collection, which is available in the Washington area at Relish in Georgetown, stands out. “He’s very serious about what he does,” Blake’s Marcheschi says. “I think he might make it to another level.”
As a kid, if someone had asked Li about fashion, he’d have said it was an industry of evening gowns. He briefly studied law to please his parents. He dabbled in music. “I don’t have a talent for music. I tried to play music before. I don’t have the balls to stand up in front of people and perform,” Li says. “The light doesn’t fall well enough on my face to act.”
Fashion became his creative outlet — the runway his stage. Fashion wooed him, and he was smitten.
“For 10 minutes, every six months, I get to say or do things I couldn’t in reality,” Li says. “I get to write a love letter.”
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Hub of Africa's Bumpy Fashion Week - EthioSports
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – On Thursday October 23, 2014, the third Hub of Africa Fashion Week (HAFW) opened up at the Galani Coffee House, a chic warehouse turned coffee shop near Gerji Mebrat Hail in Addis Abeba. The fashion show, which showcases various designers in one venue, is a three-day event that includes “two nights of fashion and one night of pure industry” said Linda Murithi, one half of HAFW’s founders.
Featured works of Yohannes sisters (photo: Addis Fortune)
Although the HAFW 2014 show took place, this week’s edition did not quite live up to the expectations raised by the success of previous events. Originally intended to showcase 14 African designers, this year’s show only included seven headliners: Kahindo Mateene (DRC), Abugida (Ethiopia), Katungulu Mwendwa (Kenya) Kepha Maina (Kenya), Mataano (Somalia), Rooi (Nigeria), Yohannes sisters (Ethiopia) and Ruald Rheeder (South Africa). The designers, although established in their respective countries, are less present globally, and use HAFW to break into the global market. The 2014 edition of HAFW, which was expected to help designers show international fashion journalists and buyers that African designers are capable of competing with their European counterparts, unfortunately came up a little short, mostly due to a lack of organization.
The HAFW fashion show launched in 2010, with six designers presenting during the initial show. According to sources, the intent this year was to showcase the work of 14 African design talents, but several were unable to show their creations because of disagreements between models and organizers, as well as due to other undisclosed problems. The shows on Thursday and Friday both started fashionably late. On the plus side, this allowed organizers some room to patch up apparent organizational issues, as two shows out of seven had to be cancelled on Thursday and six out of nine on Friday.
Read more at: Addis Fortune
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Reading fashion magazines doesn't make you stupid - The Guardian
I’m 15 and I’ve recently started reading “proper” fashion magazines, such as Elle, which I really like. But the boys – and some girls – in my school tease me and say this proves I’m stupid, or that these magazines are brainwashing me to become anorexic. How can I get them to stop?
Olivia, London
Ahh, Olivia – welcome to the rest of your life. You are far more precocious than me in terms of taking an interest in fashion. At the risk of sounding like Old Father Time, when I was your age my focuses in life were the Cure and Neighbours (especially Bouncer’s dream, an episode that is not discussed enough any more, an oversight I truly believe it is my purpose in life to rectify). So, it wasn’t until I started working as a fashion writer for this paper when I was 22 that I realised it was seen as absolutely acceptable to mock people for being interested in clothes in a way no one does with people who are interested in, say, film or cars or football, despite all these areas of interest being very similar to fashion.
Let’s deal with the first and most popularly held accusation: that having an interest in fashion proves you are stupid. It amazes me, frankly, how many people there are in the world stupid enough to believe this. I left the fashion desk six years ago, and yet every non-fashion article I have written since – and I usually write about two non-fashion articles a week – is smacked with at least five comments below the line wailing, “Why should we listen to a FASHION WRITER about food/Judaism/movies/literally anything in the world?!?!?!?!?!” One can only pity these poor people, who clearly have minds so narrow that they are incapable of having an interest in more than one subject and are similarly incapable of imagining that other people can accomplish this astonishing feat.
At times like this, I remember one of the great forgotten classics of our time: Troop Beverly Hills, starring the marvellous Shelley Long as Phyllis Nefler, whose husband leaves her because she likes fashion. “You had so much energy, you were so creative, I couldn’t wait to see what you’d do with it. And, see, now I know what you did with it. You went shopping!” her tedious husband bellows at the beginning of the film.
But, as the movie proves, while Phyllis’s stupid husband can only be a stupid oaf, Phyllis is capable of accomplishing miracles (well, leading a troop of Girl Scouts, anyway) while simultaneously being a dab hand at accessorising and knowing how to buy diamonds. When I am queen of the world, this movie will be on every school curriculum, because it teaches two invaluable lessons:
1. Just because a woman likes to look amazing doesn’t mean she has no other interests;
2. Shelley Long is a goddess.
Being interested in fashion is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I don’t think one should be ashamed of taking an interest in anything. Being interested in something does not mean liking everything about that subject, nor does it mean one is utterly uninterested in everything else. Why, since I’ve been writing this column, I have thought about fashion, the career of Steve Guttenberg, the books of Melissa Bank and whether I should buy a Halloween costume for my dog – all in the space of 10 minutes, without breaking even a bead of sweat. And you know what? Most other humans can, too.
When people (usually men, but, as you say, not exclusively) mock you for being interested in fashion, this just proves that you are so infallible that they have nothing to criticise you for other than the fact you like fashion, which, as we’ve already discussed, is no bad thing.
Many men, in my experience, get a bit nervy when they see a woman taking an interest in something that has absolutely nothing to do with them – for all of fashion’s faults, one thing in its favour is that it is utterly uninterested in the opinion of heterosexual males – and their instinctive response is to mock it. Don’t let this make you feel bad about yourself, Olivia, or like you have to apologise for yourself. Simply smile pityingly at these poor creatures, tell them that your feeble ladybrain is unable to cope with the cerebral demands of football magazines and then walk away, dignity intact.
As for whether reading fashion magazines causes eating disorders, well, this is a slightly different issue. Whereas those who are telling you that fashion magazines make you stupid are saying this in a mocking, even bullying way, those who raise the eating disorder issue are usually trying to look out for your wellbeing, however hamfistedly. But, as you know, Olivia, the truth is that eating disorders are a lot more complicated than that. My God, if only eating disorders were caused by fashion magazines – we could cure them all today. Hooray! Cupcakes for everyone!
So, when someone says this to you, calmly tell them that you appreciate their concern but that they are belittling a serious disease, and that if they are so interested in eating disorders they should educate themselves with books such as Getting Better Bite By Bite by the brilliant Dr Janet Treasure and Life-Size by Jenefer Shute. While they focus on these, you can focus on learning what kind of ankle boots are in this season. You might also take an interest in other things, too. Because that’s how smart you are.
- Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com .
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Diane von Furstenberg Shares Her Most Inspirational Quotes About Fashion ... - E! Online
In addition to being one of the world's most successful female fashion designers, Diane Von Furstenberg is also a role model for women everywhere and aims to empower them with both her actions and her words.
The House of DVF star has done and seen so much—she's been married, divorced, then remarried later in life, she's a mother and a grandmother, and she's been involved in the fashion industry since the mid '70s. She's had highs and she's had lows, but most important of all, she's grown and learned from everything that she's ever done in her life.
Diane also likes to share her wisdom and positive thoughts with others, and some of the most important things that she values are confidence, comfort, compassion towards other people, as well as a sense of self-importance.
VIDEO: Watch the first full episode of House of DVF before it airs!
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Diane shared one of her secrets to happiness and success: "My best friend is me, and I take good care of me." She's independent, beautiful, and a strong woman who always looks out for herself and encourages other women to do the same for themselves.
We've compiled some of Diane's most inspirational quotes about everything from life and confidence to fashion and success.
Click on the pics below to see more of Diane's most inspirational quotes!
Tune-in to the series premiere of House of DVF this Sunday, Nov. 2 at 10/9c on E!
PHOTOS: See DVF's most inspirational quotes
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Meet Yang Li, a designer putting China on fashion's biggest stage - Washington Post
PARIS — Designer Yang Li was standing outside his rather sterile showroom on a narrow stone street amid the elegant architecture of the fashion world’s capital, taking a break from the droning task of looking at clothes, selling clothes and talking about clothes to have a cigarette. Li’s shoulder-length black hair, parted down the center, hangs across his back. He wears several small silver hoops in his ears and his black shirt is buttoned to his neck. And he is still. Calm. Tranquil.
The demeanor he presents on a sunny afternoon at the beginning of fall when the fashion world is spinning at a frenetic speed is that of someone unwilling to be rushed or overwhelmed. No matter that every aspect of his chosen industry exudes impatience above all else. Even his voice is a soothing alto, with an accent that is an amalgam of East and West. His inflections are the sum of his experiences — born in China; lived in Perth, Australia; studied in London. Works in Paris.
Who is this guy? Mention his name and most consumers respond: Yang who? Well, he is a comer. He is a fashion designer just beginning his career. His modest company is self-financed; each retailer he wins over registers like a home run. He is a young man with an alluring point of view, unwavering focus and a back story that reflects the ever-rising influence of China in the luxury trade.
China is the world’s leading consumer of luxury goods — its landscape rapidly filling with designer boutiques and primed for growth. But it does not give nearly as much as it gets. Few of China’s designers have moved beyond their local market. Li is part of a new generation of Chinese designers determined to play internationally. And he is aiming at the highest level.
He has the audacity to work in fashion’s rarefied air, where a pair of trousers can cost $1,000. He is boldly creative — collaborating with performance artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who is out to eradicate, merge, blur gender through body modification. Li incorporated P-Orridge’s poetry into his spring 2015 collection: “So destroy the expected.” Li has done just that. And in return, he is finding success.
Li’s sensibility and his methodology are drafted from his peripatetic life. (“If I was still in China,” Li says, he would be creating “knockoffs, traditional clothes.”) Each time he moved, he had to start over. And in those moments of lonely silence, “with no friends,” he explored, listened and studied. But Li doesn’t romanticize feeling like an outsider. He prefers the edifying aspects of community.
“It’s not about staying an outsider,” he says. “When the environment accepts you, you learn.” And so, his clothes are informed by Western tailoring, Australian skater culture, punk subversiveness and dreamy romance. But his work ethic, his belief in the impossible, he attributes to his time in China. It gave him patience, he says, and the ability to see the long view — mostly because there was no other choice.
Li, 26, established his eponymous collection in 2011, mounting his first runway show in Paris last year. He moved from start-up to a fully realized brand in what seemed like a blink of the eye; his label includes men’s and women’s attire as well as shoes. But it is the women’s clothes that are, for the moment, the center of attention. He put them on the runway at the Jeu de Paume — a contemporary art museum and one of this city’s statelier locations for a fashion show.
After all, he has not come to disrupt the system or bend it to his will, but rather to excel within it. His clothes bridge a divide between polished and rough, cold perfection and the humanity of imperfection. Li believes every seam and every embellishment “is a study of human behavior,” with all of its flaws and failures.
Li, a frustrated musician, uses the difference between a recorded song and a live performance as an analogy. “When you listen to a CD, everything is perfect,” he says. “Then you go see the band live. It’s hot, sweaty; a guy’s bumping into you. [The singer] is maybe a bit off-pitch. The imperfection draws you to the experience.”
“If something is so perfect,” Li says, ‘it becomes almost emotionless.”
Li’s clothes don’t reference nostalgia, pay homage to a lost bit of history or attempt to reinvent another era. They are decidedly of the here and now, reflecting a world that still uses tailoring as a mark of formality, motorcycle jackets as a statement of rebelliousness and fluidity as a defining characteristic of femininity.
“We bought his first collection,” says Dominic Marcheschi, co-owner of the influential Chicago boutique Blake. “At first, it was almost uniform-like. But it evolved away from that. . . . Today, it does have a feminine edge to it. But it’s not about pretty clothes. So much is about pretty dresses and girly dresses. This is tailored.” These clothes are tough.
Li was born in Beijing in 1987, and for the first 10 years of his life, he lived beyond the reach of popular culture, modern communications and the global community. He was isolated by China’s Cultural Revolution, laws and politics. It would be 10 years before he would know his mother.
“She gave birth and left after three months. She had the opportunity to get out and be a translator,” Li says. “During the ’80s in China, it was not easy to get out.” So, she seized the moment and moved to Perth, Australia.
His father’s side of the family, Li says, was Communist. His dad was a ping-pong player and worked in China’s government. “I was in Beijing for the formative years,” Li says. “You start to build a work ethic; you start to build patience.” The time without his mother “gave me an earlier maturity. What I take from that period is: Nothing of value comes without being earned.”
In 1997, Li joined his mother in Perth, where he experienced a new kind of isolation defined by language and culture. “Australia was all about nature and the extreme action sports,” Li says. He connected with a group of skaters and became enthralled with standing out as an individual while remaining part of a community.
“You have your group or crew. You all want to belong, but be different,” Li says. “There are all these little nuances. [Based on] the type of jeans you wear, I can tell the kind of tricks you do.
“That’s how I got into clothing: I’d think, if I have this kind of jean, it changed the way I walked,” he says. “It’s how I discovered the power of dress.”
In 2007, Li moved to London and enrolled in the undergraduate fashion program at Central Saint Martins, which counts designers such as Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and John Galliano among its alumni. He left school early to work for Raf Simons, whose forging of street culture with high style Li admired. Soon after, Li set out on his own. “When I started, I was 23,” Li says. The “naivete of youth creates a sense of braveness.”
Over time, Li has become an internationalist. Ask him where he calls home and it takes a few minutes before he settles on London. He has leapt forward to where China’s fashion industry is heading.
“The last few years is the fastest-growing period,” says Angelica Cheung, editor of Vogue China. “When I launched Vogue 10 years ago, we wanted to run a regular column devoted to Chinese designers. It was hard to find designers good enough to be presented alongside international brands. Now, there are too many.”
Many of those designers — who number in the dozens — have studied abroad, as well as in China. They have offices in Paris or London. They’re connected to social media, fluent in English and adept at self-promotion.
Even with a recent slowdown in sales of high-priced attire and accessories, China remains a market where fashion is voraciously consumed and unabashedly fetishized as totems of success.
Increasingly, it’s Chinese celebrities, such as Li Bingbing, Fan Bingbing and Shu Qi, who create turbulence at fashion week with all the media and handlers following in their wake. As American guests sit wondering who’s who, photographers jockey to capture these impeccably groomed young women.
The country is shaking off negative connotations that the “Made in China” label is synonymous with poor quality as pricey brands such as Prada, Michael Kors and Coach have set up production there. And the Council of Fashion Designers of America established an exchange program that has sent New York-based designers to China and brought Chinese designers — Uma Wang and Masha Ma — to New York.
“In the early years, people just wanted to wear the obvious labels and logos. . . . That generation of consumers has moved on,” Cheung says. “Now, they have a lot of clothes in their wardrobe. . . . They say, ‘Yes, I can buy a Louis Vuitton bag, but I can wear a Chinese designer’s clothing just because I like it.’ It all comes with confidence and experience.”
Chinese designers’ global reach is just beginning, Cheung says. The scale remains small.
But Yang Li’s collection, which is available in the Washington area at Relish in Georgetown, stands out. “He’s very serious about what he does,” Blake’s Marcheschi says. “I think he might make it to another level.”
As a kid, if someone had asked Li about fashion, he’d have said it was an industry of evening gowns. He briefly studied law to please his parents. He dabbled in music. “I don’t have a talent for music. I tried to play music before. I don’t have the balls to stand up in front of people and perform,” Li says. “The light doesn’t fall well enough on my face to act.”
Fashion became his creative outlet — the runway his stage. Fashion wooed him, and he was smitten.
“For 10 minutes, every six months, I get to say or do things I couldn’t in reality,” Li says. “I get to write a love letter.”
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