One week countdown on for AUT's Rookie Fashion Show

AUT University’s fashion studio is alive with activity as the 24 students selected for the Rookie show frantically tweak their collections, one week out from the show.

The show, on November 8, will be unlike any other.

It will present a brave new vision for the future of New Zealand fashion according to AUT’s Head of the Fashion Department, Andreas Mikellis.

"This year’s show is a marker for a new philosophy for the fashion department that promotes far more experimental responses to the idea of what fashion design is," he says.

"Our students are going above and beyond this year and we are at the beginning of the next big change in fashion. The work the students are producing this year is provocative and world-class with a particular focus on menswear for quite a few of them."

It is not just the collections audiences can look forward to either; the 2012 show will clearly reflect this shift as well.

Models will be pounding along an extraordinary 99.5m runway with a backdrop of a ‘wall of sound’.

While the fashion and the show are the focus, Mikellis also says the students this year have embraced the department’s new vision and are setting themselves up well for the international stage.

"Many of the students now see their career paths from a broader, international perspective. We have growing numbers of graduates working for design companies overseas and others taking a very entrepreneurial approach by setting up design businesses in New Zealand but with a focus on an export market."

Students have been working on their final collections as part of the Bachelor of Design in Fashion course, with the announcement of who would show at Rookie made on October 19.

The AUT Rookie show is on November 8 at Shed 15 (Lower Deck), 90 Wellesley St, Auckland’s CBD. Doors open at 6.30pm and the show will start at 7.30pm.

Sao Paulo kicks off winter Fashion Week

Sao Paulo Fashion Week (SPFW), the top such event in Latin America, kicked off Monday to showcase joyful and colorful designs of its 2013 winter collection.

Unlike in previous years when it was held in the cavernous Biennal pavilion of the city's Ibirapuera Park, the show featuring 20 Brazilian designers is being held at a new venue: the Villa Lobos Park.

"Brazilian fashion continues to show a fresher outlook, a lighter way of seeing things and this has something to do with our DNA," SPFW's creative director Paulo Borges, told a press conference.

"It has something to do with colors, transparency, lightness and joy. What is the DNA of Brazilians? There is much talk of happiness and I strongly believe in this. It is a trend," he added.

The Osklen label will get the show rolling with a presentation hosted by a leading art gallery in this huge metropolitan area of 20 million people, the financial hub of booming Brazil, the world's sixth largest economy.

Ronaldo Fraga, Tufi Duek, Ellus, Joao Pimenta, Colcci, Alexandre Herchcovitch, Forum and Reinaldo Louren�o will then take center stage with presentations at the Villa Lobos Park venue.

Organizers have also altered the show's dates to adjust it to the international calendar and give designers more time to roll out their collections.

Thus, the SPFW's winter collection will from now on take place in October-November instead of January and the summer collection in March-April instead of June.

Borges explained that the aim was to extend the interval between the launch of collections and delivery to retailers in a bid to "professionalize" the industry.

"The Brazilian fashion industry is young. The Brazilian economy is young and only recently found a way of establishing a world presence," he said, noting that 95 percent of the country's fashion output was for domestic consumption.

According to TexBrasil, the Brazilian Fashion Industry Export Program, this Latin American giant is the fifth-largest textile and fourth-biggest apparel producer in the world.

Models present creations by Teca por Helo Rocha during the 2013 Winter collections of the Sao Paulo Fashion Week in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Sao Paulo Fashion Week (SPFW), the top such event in Latin America, kicked off Monday to showcase joyful and colorful designs of its 2013 winter collection.

A model presents a creation by FH por Fause Haten during the 2013 Winter collections of the Sao Paulo Fashion Week in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Fashion throwdown: Lakers Steve Nash and Dwight Howard

NBA players across the league have been steadily ramping up their off-court fashion quotient ever since Commissioner David Stern revised the player dress code in 2005. Now the two highest-profile additions to the Los Angeles Lakers, Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, are bringing their distinct senses of style to Staples Center this season. Here's a brief comparison:

Steve Nash

Stats: 38 years old, 6 feet, 3 inches tall, 178 pounds

Dresses like: The harried hedge fund manager fresh off the squash court: somewhat disheveled in bold pinstripes, no tie, hair slicked back — or not.

Style signature: Whether it's wind-swept, sweat-soaked or gelled into a cresting wave, Nash is known for his bountiful and mostly mussed mane.

Laker first look: Turned up at his introductory press conference in a notch-lapel chalk-stripe suit, burgundy-colored pocket square, white dress shirt — and no necktie.

Foray into fashion: The Steve Nash Collection, a line of suits, silk ties, pocket squares and cufflinks in collaboration with Vancouver- based custom-clothing e-tailer Indochino (in which he's also an investor) launched in October 2011.

Footwear endorsement: Chinese sports brand Luyou.

Fashion fail: Thanks to a consistently inconsistent coif — which over the years has been mullet-like, center-parted, buzzed close to the head and currently appears to be inspired by the Bob's Big Boy mascot — Nash's look seems to be constantly in transition, which makes his shape-shifting 'do his fashion don't.

Local shopping options: Sunset Plaza, Traffic at the Beverly Center, desktop computer.

Dwight Howard

Stats: 26 years old, 6 feet, 11 inches tall, 265 pounds

Dresses like: Collegiate Clark Kent with a layered look and an attention to details: tie bars with his neckties or a pop of color in a pocket square. Frequently seen sporting Gucci horse-bit loafers.

Style signature: A deep bench of eye-catching eyewear, including nouveau-retro rims, nerd-chic tortoiseshells and Adidas sunnies.

Laker first look: At his introductory press conference he wore a black and gray color-blocked V-neck sweater, white dress shirt, black and gray striped necktie, gray five-pocket jeans, and he accessorized with stylishly studious-looking spectacles.

Foray into fashion: Made his runway debut during New York Fashion Week in September 2011, cruising the catwalk for Marithé + François Girbaud clad in a V-neck T-shirt and dark denim and carrying a globe under his arm.

Footwear endorsement: Adidas — a new version of his $110 adiPower Howard 3 sneakers with Laker purple accents recently hit retail.

Fashion fail: An unflagging appetite for embellished True Religion, from the white jeans with outsized contrast stitching he wore on "Ellen" to the dark denim with studded leather pocket trim he was seen wearing on the red carpet during the last NBA All-Star weekend.

Local shopping options: Rodeo Drive, South Coast Plaza, the True Religion outlet in Cabazon.

Mirror, Mirror: Fashion politics: What they wear could sway whom we elect

Creating jobs is the most important talking point for the candidates vying to be president, but style is affecting the campaign in ways it has never done before.

Of course, a focus on image in elections is nothing new. Even before a sweating Richard M. Nixon faced the handsome, cool John F. Kennedy in the first televised presidential debate in 1960, image mattered to the public.

Still, election 2012 has reached a fevered fashion pitch. From the moment Republican candidate Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, took the stage at the Republican National Convention in August, we've been evaluating the Romneys and the Obamas like Kanye West and Kim Kardashian on the red carpet.

Couple our growing obsession with the wardrobes of the well-heeled and the ubiquity of social media, and every time the big political players take the stage, you get a bunch of amateur fashion critiques and high-tech memes. What once was supplied only by traditional news outlets is now the purview of every Jane with a Twitter account.

"Social media has democratized how we make and send out images," explained James Peterson, director of Africana studies at Lehigh University. "People can take a picture of Ann Romney, or Barack Obama, or even Big Bird and manipulate it. . . . those quick impressions become lasting."

Just check out the Tumblr blog that resulted from Romney's "binders full of women" comment last week (bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com). Now, Obama's we-have-fewer-horses-and-bayonets quip from Monday's debate is making its rounds among folks good with Photoshop.

Many argue it is unfortunate that Americans seem to be more preoccupied with image than with foreign policy. Even the candidates - who say they care about substance over style - were practicing rehearsed zingers before the debates. That's more about appearances than budgets.

In an election season that has proven candidates have little control over how, and how often, images are distributed, it's no wonder they need to constantly monitor their image.

Ask Paul Ryan. He unfortunately agreed to pose in a baseball cap while curling dumbbells for Time magazine last year. The photos were released hours before the vice presidential debate and re-posted ad nauseam. Even when he's wearing a suit, I still see him dressed for the gym.

The presidential candidates have been more careful: While campaigning, Romney has turned to jeans and a plaid shirt, a look that says he's down with the people. Obama has little choice but to look presidential at all times. His most casual outfit is a suit, sans jacket and tie, sleeves rolled up.

Romney wore almost-black suits in all of his debate appearances. Obama wore a navy blue suit during the first debate, but switched to a darker charcoal - a move that signaled his understanding that the public wanted more of an alpha male.

"By the second debate, he proved he was back in the game," explained Richard Bates, chief creative officer of the Brand Union, a New York-based brand analysis group.

"But it's the candidates' wives' choices that really give us a peek into what the men are thinking," explained Joannie C. Danielides, president of Danielides Communications, a public relations agency, and press secretary for former New York first lady Donna Hanover.

After all, you can draw more conclusions about the cut of a fuchsia dress than about the candidates' basic uniform - white shirt, dark suit, flag pin.

"The women's vote became more and more crucial as election season has progressed," said Susan Mackey-Kallis, associate professor of politics, media, and culture at Villanova University. "The wives are really key in courting the women's vote, and the wives show a stark contrast to the candidates' different visions."

Michelle Obama's edgier, sleeker looks by a younger group of designers, including the recycled Thom Browne dress she wore Monday night, send a subliminal message that she, and therefore her husband, embrace new and innovative ideas. When designers are quick to tweet her fashion choices, it shows they embrace her - and possibly him. It can't hurt to be liked by a hip industry that many women follow and connect with.

And the first lady made political fashion headlines during the Democratic National Convention when designer Tracy Reese was prompted to reproduce the special-for-Obama, nearly $500 dress and have it on shelves this fall. It's one thing when a designer sells out of a dress after Beyoncé wears it. It's another when demand inspires the mass production a one-of-a-kind dress made for a politician's wife.

And then there's the craze set off by Obama's gray nails. She made mainstream the color that was once solely for the über-fashion conscious.

During this election season, Ann Romney has been hailed for wearing Alfred Fiandaca's saturated pastels and unique patterns on simple silhouettes. However, it's her recent penchant for Oscar de la Renta that sends the most interesting message - she thinks she's fit for the White House. Yet the de la Renta camp has been quiet about taking credit for dressing her - a loud signal that the fashion industry likely doesn't embrace her husband.

After all, Mitt Romney is opposed to gay marriage. It's hard to picture someone like Jason Wu getting excited about designing Ann Romney's inaugural gown when her husband could prevent Wu from marrying his partner.

"This is really a very close election," said Villanova's Mackey-Kallis. "The candidates' images are factors that can really change the outcome of an election."

And if fashion can sway a vote, maybe we should stop treating it like a passing fancy.

Fashion Goes Video Crazy: Olivia Palermo, Karen Elson, Lena Dunham And More Lip Sync

The fashion world has gone mad for videos, Justin Wu has shot a video for Vogue Paris of models lip synching to Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Do You Want To?’ at fashion month. Yep he was filming ‘Boys and Girls of Fashion Week’ for the whole month, as he took his fashcam to London, New York, Bejing, Paris and Milan.
Models leap in Time Square, sing in front of the Houses of Parliament and Olivia Palermo is centre stage lip synching in a silver beaded dress. She does well at mouthing “Do ya, do ya wanna” in the Franz fash-over. We reckon someone has been practising with a hairbrush...

The catwalk stars include Ming Xi, River Viiperi, Kate King, Fei Fei Sun, Shu Pei, Sui He, Martha Streck, Adam Senn, RJ King, and Francisco Lachowski. The boys doing backflips in white tank tops are our faves.

But Justin Wu isn’t the only one making models lip sync. Tavi Gevinson, Lena Dunham, Karen Elson, Leith Clark, Alexa Chung and other fashion darlings produced avideo where they lip sync to Lesley Gore’s ‘You Don’t Own Me.’ We told ya, fashion kids are totally into lip syncing these days.
This pro-Obama video has a deeper message than pretty boys jumping around Milan in tank tops, as it is about women’s rights in the lead up to the American election, and they hold signs including “My body is not a battleground,” and“get your rosaries off my ovaries.” Gore says in the video: “I recorded You Don’t Own Me in 1964. It’s hard for me to believe but we’re still fighting for the same things we were then.”

And that's not it.... there is ANOTHER fashion video making the rounds, as Saturday Night Live mocked Brad Pitt’s advert for Chanel No.5. Taran Killam played Brad, with an identical scruffy beard and long locks. He mumbled: “And then dreams wake up and smile at reality ... I'm sorry, is there really no script? I've been talking to myself for, like, two hours straight and I'm starting to sound insane. Is it just me or do I look super homeless?"

Hepburn Mastered Film Comedy, Drama, Fashion: Rainer File

For my money, Katharine Hepburn was America’s finest actress. But America’s finest clothes horse?

David Wayne, from left, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Eve March as Kip Lurie, Amanda Bonner, Adam Bonner, and Grace in a publicity photo by Clarence Sinclair Bull for "Adam's Rib." The MGM film, released November 18, 1949, is directed by George Cukor and written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin. Photographer: Clarence Sinclair Bull/Kent State University Museum via Bloomberg
'The African Queen'

Katharine Hepburn (1907-2004) on a bicycle, between scenes of the classic American movie "The African Queen"" by John Huston in England in 1952. Source: AFP/Getty Images via Bloomberg
Enlarge image 'The Lion In Winter'

Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole in "The Lion In Winter." Hepburn received four Oscars for Best Actress in the span of a sixty-year career. Source: Getty Images via Bloomberg

With her preference for slacks, Hepburn cultivated a stylishly androgynous look that made her an icon to many, if an irritant to some.

By the way, note that I am not using the word “pants” here in deference to her immortal line in “Pat and Mike” (1952), the best of her nine movies with Spencer Tracy: “They’re not pants, they’re slacks. Watch your language.”

It’s Hepburn’s performances, of course, and not her costumes, that are her legacy. In her 66-year career, she appeared in 44 films and eight television movies, as well as some 33 plays. The stinker quotient is awfully low for such an extended run.

Not that there weren’t more than a few of those. She was ineffably miscast as a Chinese patriot in the Pearl Buck adaptation “Dragon Seed” (1944). With her Yankee verve and Bryn Mawr intonations, who is less Mandarin than Hepburn?
Mountain Girl

And even though Kenneth Tynan once referred to her as “the Garbo of the Great Outdoors,” that’s because he probably never saw her as the uneducated Ozark mountain girl Trigger Hicks in “Spitfire” (1934).

In her 1991 autobiography “Me: Stories of My Life,” which is so stylistically staccato that it makes Mickey Spillane seem like late Henry James, Hepburn had this to say: “Was a Southern sort of mountain spirit. Shame on you, Kathy.”

But of the glories, there is almost no end. In her very first movie, “A Bill of Divorcement” (1932), opposite John Barrymore, she already was sui generis -- imperially elegant, angular and self-possessed. A year later, as the star-struck actress in “Morning Glory,” she won the first of her four Oscars.

Her performances as Jo in “Little Women” (1933) and as the small-town social climber in “Alice Adams” (1935) are so strikingly vivid that it’s as if she was putting us right inside her head.
Madcap Heiress

It’s difficult to believe that, for a time in the late 1930s exhibitors labeled Hepburn “box office poison.” (She was in good company, along with Garbo and Dietrich). It’s equally difficult to comprehend that perhaps her greatest comedy, “Bringing Up Baby” (1938), where she plays a madcap heiress opposite Cary Grant’s hornswoggled paleontologist, was a commercial flop.

None of this sank Hepburn, any more than the devastating reviews of her Broadway performance in “The Lake” back in 1933, which prompted Dorothy Parker’s immortal quip that Hepburn “runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”

Less well-known is George S. Kaufman’s jab, after hearing that Hepburn had sheets put up in the wings to avoid a draft: “She’s afraid she might catch acting.” (Hepburn, it should be noted, agreed with Parker and Kaufman).
Tracy Lord

She engineered her own triumphant comeback in Philip Barry’s “The Philadelphia Story,” first on Broadway in 1939 and then as a George Cukor film in 1940, co-starring Grant and Jimmy Stewart. She had bought the film rights (reportedly bankrolled by boyfriend Howard Hughes) before the play opened, which allowed her to call the shots in Hollywood. Hepburn said of her role as Philadelphia blueblood Tracy Lord: “I gave her life and she gave me back my career.”

Hepburn’s best comedies also include “Adam’s Rib” (1949), where she and Tracy parry as married lawyers on opposing ends of a court battle, and “The African Queen” (1951), where her spinster Rosie, in a performance inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt’s smile-in-the-face-of-adversity fortitude, settles in with Humphrey Bogart’s gin-soaked river rat.

Films like these set her firmly in the pantheon of Hollywood’s most accomplished comediennes. What is virtually unprecedented is how she could be equally great in tragedy.

As drug-addicted Mary Tyrone in Sidney Lumet’s film of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (1962) she gives her finest performance. In her final scene, dragging around her wedding dress while in a doped-up haze, she evokes abject awe and terror.
Spencer Tracy

In order to care for the dying Tracy, Hepburn did not work again in the movies until 1967, in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” (Tracy died 17 days after filming his last scene.)

In the remaining decades, she played indomitable types: Eleanor of Aquitane in “The Lion in Winter” (1968), Hecuba, Queen of Troy in “The Trojan Women” (1971), Coco Chanel on Broadway in the panned but popular musical “Coco” (1969-1970) and, at 74, Yankee matriarch Ethel Thayer opposite Henry Fonda in “On Golden Pond” (1981).

In her own life, as both actress and modern American female archetype, Hepburn was as indomitable as any of the women she played.

Stylicity Brings Runway Fashion to the Streets of Toronto and Expands to Online Retailers

Heading into this season''s World MasterCard Fashion Week in Toronto, the event''s exclusive Stylicity program continues to celebrate the best that Toronto has to offer in fashion, beauty and style through its growing network of more than 150 local business partners. The program has also expanded its retail partnerships to include 11 major online brands this season.

"Stylicity continues to grow locally, and beginning this season we have expanded our partnership with online brands to give all Canadians an opportunity to experience exclusive retail offers during World MasterCard Fashion Week," said Lilian Tomovich, Vice-President, Marketing, MasterCard Canada. "Through these partnerships we are enabling local retailers to be part of a world-renowned fashion event and connect their brands and unique offerings with MasterCard cardholders locally, and across Canada, online.

As the official retail program for World MasterCard Fashion Week, Stylicity consists of a network of local retailers, spas and restaurants in Toronto presenting unique offers and experiences. Through the program, consumers can explore local and national merchants by leveraging exclusive offers when they pay with their MasterCard. The Stylicity program and special offers run from October 19 - November 4.

"We were delighted to be named one of the city''s most fashionable destinations during World MasterCard Fashion Week again this season," said Melissa McKenzie, Owner and Operator of Toronto''s Doll Bar Inc. "We''ve received a tremendous amount of support from the neighbourhood since being a partner and feel we have really built some lasting relationships. We''re looking forward to the upcoming season."

Since launching in Fall 2011, Stylicity has grown 100% to include partnerships with more than 150 local Toronto retailers, restaurants and online national brands. The Stylicity program provides an opportunity for partner retailers to showcase their brands and products to local and Canadian consumers with the support of MasterCard''s national marketing channels, and drive in-store and online traffic.