March 2011
8 posts
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TV review: The Model Agency
How many more fly-on-the-wall TV shows will we have to go through before the industry realises that those behind-the-scene, and in no way truthful accounts, are more harmful to its reputation than cultivated mystery?
The Model Agency, a show on Channel 4 aiming “to reveal the realities of life in the world’s most glamorous industry”, has all the ingredients of a good fashion...
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Musical Tuesday: Tu t'laisses aller
Every single morning while dressing up, to fight any jeans/hoody temptation, I listen to Tu t’laisses aller (You’re letting yourself go), a 1960s Charles Aznavour song, part of Jean-Luc Godard’s Une Femme est une Femme soundtrack.
If you listen to the lyrics carefully, this is an incredibly violent and sexist song, which you can understand just looking at Anna...
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Brand communication: Jigsaw partners with Mad Men
To celebrate the launch of the Mad Men Season 4 DVD, womenswear high-street chain Jigsaw offers its customers the possibility to “Win the Mad Men lifestyle”. I’ve written about my love of Mad Men, and my issues with the commercial deals which have ensued, in this blog before.
The Mad Men style and the latest Jigsaw collection, all in full skirts and narrow waists, are well...
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Because we’re all broken —- every single one of us —- and yet we pretend that we’re not. We all live lives of imperfection and yet we cling to the fantasy that there’s a perfect life and that our leaders should embody it, but if we expect our leaders to live on some higher moral plane than the rest of us, well, we’re just asking to be deceived.
The...
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Book review: Françoise by Laure Adler
I owe Françoise Giroud much of my political awareness, not to mention my desire to write. Although she’d been a regular feature in the pages of ELLE, which she had founded with Hélène Lazareff, I only really fell in love with her age 14, when I stumbled across her defining equality between sexes as a time when “mediocre women will be nominated for important positions.”
Ten...
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When behind-the-scene tales break the magic
In the February issue of US Vogue, Mario Testino took the reader behind the scene of those royal engagement pictures.
When I had photographed Prince William’s mother, I brought along a CD of Dalida, a French singer, that we played on set all day to relax everyone. I decided to do the same for Catherine and William. The contrast of the contemporary informal music playing in the beautiful...
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The economy was desperate for the skills that they...
Beyond the heartbreak, the shock, the disbelief and the anger, what marked me most in the Galliano controversy was how often articles casually mentioned, almost as an after-thought, the importance of Jews in the fashion business.
In Outliers, The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell gives an historical explanation to the role Jews have been playing in fashion. His analysis focuses on how Jews in...
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Which fashion chess game would you rather play?
Credits: Agent Provocateur, We Heart It, Behance, Alice au Pays des Merveilles by Ann Demeulemeester,
Films: Harry Potter,The Lodger, Penelope, The Thomas Crown Affair
