Step one: stick your tongue out. Step two: touch a sleeve.
Clearly no one knows what they're doing. You'll have to take over.
You're a designer — you need to know these big fancy designer terms.
Decide one can never have too many camo things.
Thanks, Vanity Fair!
Ford’s alliance with two of the biggest pop stars of our time probably stems from more than simple mutual admiration. Could money be on the line?
Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z performing at the Grammys.
The Associated Press / AP
Tom Ford and Jay-Z have formed the latest alliance to elicit the breathless enthusiasm of fashion press, and it seemingly goes deeper than one making a suit for the other.
Jay-Z's latest album Magna Carta Holy Grail includes a song called "Tom Ford," with a chorus that goes, bluntly and uncreatively, "Tom Ford, Tom Ford, Tom Ford." The track is a cheer for Ford, a celebration of Jay-Z, and a rejection of commonplace internet technology. "Fuck hashtags and retweets," raps Jay-Z, who gave an advanced look at his album only to Samsung mobile users. Ford, who is not on Twitter and wouldn't even allow online press to attend his womenswear show until its fifth season debuted this February, would surely agree. These two — and their famous penchant for temporarily barricading their creative work — were made for each other.
Ford is enjoying an unusually great spate of press through two of music's leading male performers so far this year. He also partnered with Justin Timberlake on "Suit and Tie," creating clothes for Timberlake to wear in the single's video and accompanying artwork. He dressed the former boy bander for the Grammys and subsequent press ops. The alliance, announced in Women's Wear Daily in January, led the New York Times to recently call Timberlake "in certain ways a Ford creation, right down to the modified pompadour" — a straighter style, which Ford, unlike many Timberlake fans, prefers to his natural curls.
That makeover made possible by Ford was key to Timberlake's transformation into an upscale pop star, proffering music as classy as his new self. Jay-Z might not need to build his new album on a physical makeover, but his image revolves around living the high life, which is exactly what Ford sells. This mass marketing is seemingly at odds with the Tom Ford brand. Ford built his namesake label on the premise of unabashed luxury — $990 jeans, tuxes championed by celebrities that cost well into the thousands of dollars, and eventually, a surprise secret showing of his first namesake womenswear collection that banned press and boasted Beyoncé as a model.
"I'm holding everything back, controlling all the photography," Ford, who only allowed Terry Richardson and his team of six to shoot that collection, told WWD. Determined to stick it to the current system, he didn't allow the photos to go online until December. He openly shunned fashion reviews and celebrity endorsements. "The customer is bored with those clothes by the time they get to the store. They're overexposed, you're tired of them, they've lost their freshness," is how Ford justified his methods in that same WWD story. Well, what could be more overexposing than being the subject of an entire Jay-Z song? Or being apparently responsible for the much celebrated makeover of one of the most famous pop stars of our time? With these relationships, Ford's latest statement couldn't be less subtle: His brand is going to be the pop star of the luxury world — his creative work will be the most sought after, the most important, the most celebrated, the most anticipated.
Tom Ford tux.
When Ford debuted womenswear in 2010, he emphasized that the collection would be small. Tom Ford stores would sell the first collection exclusively. The second would go to his stores along with Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, and specialty retailers. As annoying and pompous as his secrecy was, it was necessary. These are not clothes many people in the world can afford, and they needed to be scarce enough to feel as precious as Ford and his ardent fans deemed them. Also quite significantly, his strategy placed him at the very opposite end of the spectrum of H&M, a collaboration with whom he's openly rejected. "What excites me is the very best," Ford said at a talk last year. "And that tends to cost money … I want to design for people who get excited about the same things I do." While many brands have launched lower-end, more affordable lines in recent years, Ford refused to follow suit.
But there's a reason so many high-end brands made that rush to the middle. Building a luxury brand is notoriously difficult. Many designers, even those as celebrated as Proenza Schouler and Thom Browne, can struggle with financing for years and years after attaining critical success. The nature of the work of a designer has changed with the rise of the internet too. They must broadcast next season's trends to the world on the internet, but that only enables fast-fashion brands to knock designers off before their wares even make it to stores. Now that everyone's designs are knocked off, designers have to sell much more than an of-the-moment look — above all, they have to sell a lifestyle, a look and feel of luxury you can't buy at Zara. Yet they also have to be mass enough for people to know your name and that it's worth something. By collaborating with fast-fashion chains, designers get the exposure a big name can offer while still being able to monetize their creativity, even if a watered-down version of it. It's not unlike the relationship musical artists have with big corporations, who sponsor the tours they need to make money in the face of the internet's assault on album sales. Most artists, like most designers, have come to terms with this. Just as Beyoncé isn't afraid of commercialism (hello, Pepsi commercial), neither is Ford, who has repeatedly stated commercial clothes are part of his design philosophy. His work may be precious, but he doesn't want his clothes to be so precious that they look like they belong in a museum (think Alexander McQueen).
There’s always a new way to kill time, guys.
It lets you mix and match runway tops, bottoms, and shoes and even the heads of runway models. It's perfect for the roughly TWO people on this earth who only dress in runway clothes. And it's great for everyone else who can only fantasizes about dressing exclusively in runway clothes.
Get it here.
If even L.A. is refusing to run it, you’d think it must be pretty bad.
According to Variety, "It was not immediately clear whether a city org formally rejected Lifetime’s efforts to erect billboards with the racy image, or whether the cabler ran into roadblocks with private sellers of outdoor advertising space."
Here's a behind-the-scenes shot from Heidi's Twitter feed. 1. How much do she and Tim Gunn totally hate each other after 12 seasons of this? And 2. Was the nudist colony photoshopped into the images after she and Tim were photographed? Or did the photo crew just not leave them to fester cold and naked on the floor while the shot was being set up?
Just some side butt and foreplay. NBD.
ARE YOU SO EXCITED? GET SO EXCITED!
Enjoy it, y'all, because for all we know it will only last a day. Let's say that when the duchess goes into labor, Kim gets hip to the grim reality that there is a famous baby out there more famous/important than her own, and to attempt to alter said grim reality, she does something CRAZY like tweet a photo of her wee one thereby funneling attention away from the royal baby and back to Baby NW. So bask in the Kardashians' diminished importance while you can. Like summer and cupcakes, it promises to be fleeting.
People will care about her and her birth and all the gory details surrounding it, sure, but HRH The Royal Baby will be the new star of the entire world. Kate will probably bounce back as quickly as her waistline is bound to but she'll be number two for at least an hour.
He didn't matter at the wedding and he still won't matter at the royal birth. And he won't become anymore important even if he does this dance outside the hospital right after the baby's born, grass skirt and all.
Via mashable.com
Recent updates to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's website include: information on the annual Garter service, the most interesting aspect of which seemed to be the hats; Kate cutting a ribbon in front of an incredibly boring cruise ship; and photos of Prince William petting cheetahs and feeding rhinos. JUST TRY TO STAY AWAKE OVER AT THAT SITE, is what I'm trying to say. Come the deliverance of the royal baby, that URL will be nothing but fascinating.
The magazine editors must be stopped!
Translation: the fanciest granny panties you ever saw.
Even Kerr's expression says, "Excuse me, can I get some real bottoms now?"
Sofia Vergara was also forced into a particularly high-waisted pair for Harper's Bazaar.
According to her expression, she knows something is amiss — you know, like that she's not wearing cover-worthy bottoms.
Just you wait and see.
Via Fame Fly Net
Net-a-porter shoppers in the Hamptons who need that Cavalli bathing suit instantly can pay extra for a service that will ship the items to them via Seaplane. Because nothing is more tasteless than regular mail. As if that belongs in the Hamptons.
LINK: The Rich Can Now Get Last-Minute Online Shopping Orders Delivered By Seaplane
Net-a-porter shoppers in the Hamptons who need that Cavalli bathing suit instantly can pay extra for a service that will ship the items to them via Seaplane. Because nothing is more tasteless than regular mail. As if that belongs in the Hamptons.
Details on everything from the bed William might get to sleep in to the food Kate might eat. It’s all so exciting and boring at the same time!
Kate Middleton is reportedly due to go into labor this Saturday, July 13. How convenient for everyone's schedules! We can all just plan to spend the weekend obsessively following every report about her and the baby's state (but not Prince William's because who cares about him? No one). Or you can just refer to this handy worksheet that ought to help you imagine the real-life happenings just perfectly so you can enjoy your weekend away from your computer/TV/information-delivering screen of choice as planned.
(Not the royal baby.)
Kate has been practicing prenatal yoga thanks to private instruction at the palace in which she resides. No word on if she performs said exercises on a mat encrusted with gold leaf, but hey, if YOU were a royal... She's allegedly going to have a natural birth, because if she can deal with the pain of wearing LK Bennett pumps every day and having absolutely no privacy or life of her own she can certainly deal with the pain of childbirth, no problem. But in case that doesn't work, it sounds like she's been googling hypnobirthing techniques, according to sources. Hypnobirthers believe the culture of pregnancy stresses moms out and makes the whole process unnecessarily painful. Hopefully Kate won't totally zone out though, because if she over-hypnotizes herself it's like not even being present. "The patient is putting herself into a trancelike state, so she's not very present in the room physically," is how one doctor describes hypnobirthing. If you had a personal chef on hand, wouldn't you want to be "very present" during your birth?
The images accompany a story by Plum Sykes about “a spartan Austrian spa for dramatic health makeovers.” Karlie perches on a rock by a lake in the buff except for some body mud, white heels and a gold leaf head covering.
LINK: Karlie Kloss Does Dramatic Reenactment Of Spa Visit For Vogue
The images accompany a story by Plum Sykes about "a spartan Austrian spa for dramatic health makeovers." Karlie perches on a rock by a lake in the buff except for some body mud, white heels and a gold leaf head covering.
See her shiny-faced and virtually makeup-free!
And she's doing it with dangerous shoes, robo-dresses, and camo loafer-wearing men to hold her up along the way.
Are YOU excited for the release of her forthcoming single and iPhone all "Artpop"? No? In that case don't worry because she's still dressing weird and that's always fun.
Via FameFly Net
Since her makeup is surprisingly understated, countless websites will inevitably go for click bait headlines like "SEE GAGA WITHOUT MAKEUP" and " SHOCKING: Gaga Hits L.A. With NO Makeup." (And if you were HuffPo and you were tweeting, you'd say something slightly more obnoxious like "Guess what Lady Gaga DIDN'T Wear when she stepped out in L.A." But you wouldn't have to click it thanks to @HuffPoSpoilers.)
But at BuzzFeed Fashion, we're classier than that. We won't mask the truth and act like 1. Gaga isn't wearing any makeup in these photos (she is, please) or that 2. These photos should be taken for anything other than what they are, which is...
Via FameFly Net
Via FameFly Net
Parsons might not have liked Boardman’s “Jackie Ho” collections, but they were perfect for Paper.
Courtesy of Mickey Boardman
BuzzFeed Fashion's "How I Made It in Fashion" series takes an in-depth look at the careers of fashion's most successful players. Ahead, Paper magazine's editorial director Mickey Boardman talks dropping out of school, celebrity horror stories, and more.
I remember being in the grocery store in Hanover Park, Illinois, seeing Vogue. I thought, What is a legitimate excuse for a 10-year-old boy to buy a Vogue? I also recall once when my mom was sick, I said, "Oh, I'm just going to get some magazines for mom because she's sick." I didn't plot to get involved in fashion. I kind of always just visualized a lifestyle that would involve lots of travel and interesting people.
I have a B.A. in Spanish. I lived in Madrid for a while but I decided I wanted to study fashion design, so I moved to New York and came to Parsons. Shortly after starting, I realized I was terrible at sewing — but I liked dressing people up. I did these collections like "the Supremes go to Shanghai," which was all black models in gold lamé; I did a "Jackie Ho" collection, which was like a hip-hop Jackie Onassis. And no one cared — two teachers ever in my time there thought I was fabulous, and the rest thought I was insane. There was some contest we all had to enter, and I did Las Vegas showgirls on swings, and they basically had no clothes on — they were wearing body stockings with glitter and headdresses... What was I thinking? I did three and a half years of a BFA in fashion design and then failed a class my senior year and didn't finish.
[While attending Parsons] I worked at Paper as an intern. They loved me, loved that I dressed like a freak and thought I was fabulous and — I was flourishing at the magazine. By the point I failed my first class, I had already written my first piece for the magazine.
The managing editor asked me to interview Vanessa Paradis. Kim Hastreiter, the co-founder of Paper, always said, "If you can talk, you can write." But I was too much of a wuss. I couldn't do it, and I still regret it. And a month later they needed someone to interview Rupert Everett. I met him at the pool at the Peninsula Hotel; he was in a mesh tank top and we talked about jockstraps and other dirty gay things. It was a teeny little quarter- or half-page newsy thing, and they paid me $35. I thought that was great!
The person who had hired me at Paper who was the office manager, Kim and David's assistant, the party photographer, all these things [at once] — she quit, so they asked me to answer the phones while they figured out what to do. I was the star intern, and I just felt at home. I was so happy that the [attributes] other places thought made me bad, [at Paper] they thought made me good. And the positive reinforcement made me work even harder. When I stopped answering the phones I was very sad, because there you're at the heart of everything — if you're a gossipy type like myself, it's [great]. And despite being a real sloppy mess, I ran a tight ship at the front desk. My desk was immaculate, and I would scrub it every night.
“That’s fucking awesome,” says Levine, pointing to a pair of (presumably fitted) pants.
The clothing line he designed in coordination with the retailer is imminent. This preview consists of Levine pointing to different jeans lying on a table and saying things like, "A little more faded looking or something," and "I might not be a fan of myself." Oh, him too? Here's to his line including at least a third of the neon that Nicki Minaj's Kmart line did.
Jorts are the world’s single greatest item of clothing. But recently, they’ve succumbed to a terrible plague.
They're comfortable, versatile, cheap, and easy to DIY from a pair of old jeans. Whoever you are, whatever your style is, you're guaranteed to find a pair of jorts that suits you.
Via ae.com
It’s not like this hasn’t happened before, but just humor her.
They revealed it's for an upcoming issue of V magazine, where Lady Gaga has served as oft-nonsensical columnist.
Via instagram.com
It's selfie central, to say the least.
The brunette beauty discusses her rise from Irish dance competitions in Canada to the pages of American Vogue — and beyond.
Coco Rocha
Ben Gabbe / Getty Images
BuzzFeed Fashion's "How I Made It in Fashion" series takes an in-depth look at the careers of the industry's most successful players. Ahead, model and The Face star Coco Rocha explains how she went from an Irish dance competition to international fashion stardom.
I was discovered at an Irish dance competition when I was 14. I was sitting with my friends and this older man came up to me and said, "Have you ever thought of modeling?" I actually thought he was one of the security guards or someone who worked at this dance competition, and he was going to tell me to remove my feet from the fancy tables. All of us thought it was some kind of joke — or that this man needed glasses.
If you think of a model, you probably think of a gorgeous, beautiful bombshell of a woman — not so much a lanky 14-year-old girl at an Irish dance competition. I was laughing hysterically, but secretly I was also kind of excited that someone thought I, of all people, could be a model. I told him to talk to my mom, who was also there at the competition. She was like, "No, no way are you having my daughter model."
But this guy didn't give up, and I kept seeing him at different dance competitions because his daughter danced as well. Finally my mom gave in. I don't know why — maybe she was intrigued by the idea too.
So he took me to get photos taken. I wore my [own] clothes — I had no style, and I had gotten my makeup done at the MAC counter. The photographer didn't want any wrinkles in the front of my shirt, so instead of Photoshopping them out, which he didn't want to do either, he would make me pull my top taut in front of me for every shot. It was just a big mess. If you saw the photos, you would have never said, "Yep, that's a model!"
Coco's first test shoot.
Courtesy of Coco Rocha
Despite all of that, I then went along to a modeling convention that agents from around the world were attending. Usually you'll get called back by one or two, but I got callbacks from all of them, which was kind of crazy.
I went to work with the agency Supreme in New York. At first they had about 75 girls. Then, all of a sudden, Supreme changed their agents and said they were removing [almost] all the girls. Only a few were invited to stay — in the end only two of us stayed. It was all part of a larger shift to a more androgynous look, where the agency wanted really skinny girls with edgy haircuts. Paul Rowland — the founder of Supreme and Women, who's no longer there — was trying to change the whole industry, which I think he did by signing all these really boyish girls. All the while, I was thinking, How exactly do I fit in this group?
When I was 15 I was sent to Asia, to [work in] Taipei and Singapore. I was sent there because I'm Canadian, and you need to have a certain amount of tear sheets and a few different covers to prove you're a model worthy of a visa in the U.S. I didn't have a lot of work under my belt at the time, so it made sense. In Taipei, I truly learned my "modeling 101."
Today I'm known for posing — I would definitely say that came from Taipei. At castings there, agents send you with a few girls in a car to go see a client. The client sits there at a table with about 10 people and says things like, "Our catalogue today is Hello Kitty" or "sexy" or "cutesy." And you depict what you think that means. You have a minute to give them all your poses, almost like a dance-off — but a pose-off. If you book the job you may get to do a catalogue of 75 photos. The new girls would always say, "What on earth am I doing?" And you're like, "It's normal. You'll get into it." I thought that's how modeling was, and I came back to New York and I'm doing all my poses and people were like, "What on earth are you doing?" They just couldn't understand the whole "dance" I was doing when I got in front of the camera.
Ring parties are the new arm parties. This is the best new trend ever.
Via loubis-and-champagne.tumblr.com
Hands-free iPhone carriage — in your bust!
As you can see, it's a bra top-like garment that functions as a fanny pack.
