Chanel Bags Lover

RETAILERS are thrilled, reporters are raving and designers are breathing a sigh of relief.

“Hey, Milan is back on track again,” said Dan Katen of Dsquared2 after it took him more than half an hour in traffic to get to a benefit event last Monday, the closing day of the womenswear fashion week for spring/summer 2011.

After several grouchy seasons, when, feeling the effect of the economic crisis, designers seemed devoid of ideas and the fashion pack lost its love of Milan – “too dull and too expensive” went the refrain – the good vibes have returned.

Everybody liked the new schedule – top-billed shows spread out over six days – and the new venues – fancy downtown “palazzi” rather than the sterile fair grounds.

Skimpy two-piece with matching bag and footwear from Giorgio Armani.

Figures released by the Italian Fashion Chamber at the end of the week showed that Milan Fashion Week is alive and well. Fifteen thousand buyers from 40 countries attended the event, which included 178 collections, 78 shows and more than 100 presentations. The many fashionistas walking about town with big name shopping bags confirmed the upward move.

“Fashion is renewal, and it was time for us to renew ourselves,” said Beppe Modenese, founder of the Milan fashion event more than 30 years ago. Above all else, the upbeat mood was reflected in the ultra-colourful, cheerful styles, which drew inspiration from the fashion heydays of the 1970s.
Read more…

lanvin

Thanks to the collaborations between high-end designers and mass-market retailers, college students can wear the latest trends, hot off the runway, without emptying the piggy bank.

Target is one of the most popular budget friendly bargain retailers that has worked with the likes of Thakoon, Anna Sui, Alexander McQueen, and Liberty of London, just to name a few. These collections are typically released months away from each other, all highly anticipated by shoppers looking for unique yet affordable clothing.

For instance, Examiner.com has reported that shoppers can look forward to something new very soon; Target will unveil their latest collaboration with the British handbag label, Mulberry on Oct. 10.
Read more…

Pope Benedict XVI sported his trademark red loafers - and no, they aren't by Prada.

Unsurprisingly Benedict XVI opted to wear his favourite red leather loafers yesterday. And no, as the Vatican has tirelessly insisted over the past few years, they aren’t by Prada but by Adriano Stefanelli, a little-known Italian cobbler. They also clearly serve as a sartorial comfort blanket: when playing to an uncertain crowd, it’s often best to stick to a wardrobe you can count on.

Read more…

Paris Haute Couture Week: Chanel

Most people who follow fashion know the Chanel signatures very well: black, ivory, bouclé, suits, camellias, black, ivory. Rinse, repeat. Karl Lagerfeld’s Spring 2010 haute couture collection of graphic white and silver was a significant departure from the Chanel aesthetic that we have all come to expect, and his Chanel Fall/Winter 2010 Haute Couture collection is yet another giant step into new territory.

The most startling things about this collection were the surprising choices in color and proportion. Normally Chanel’s color palette is very predictable, but these clothes were rendered in the very un-Chanel shades of maroon, gold, navy and brown. Proportion was primarily at play in the collection’s suits and coats – abbreviated jackets were paired with below-the-knee flared skirts, coats were often boxy and straight or puffed to comical proportions. As always with Chanel couture, the real fireworks started after the show’s halfway point, where somewhat odd suits and jackets gave way to beading and embroidery so intricate and masterful that an in-person viewing would surely be required in order to appreciate the skill of the work in full. In the end, this collection should be counted as a bold achievement on the part of Lagerfeld and his team even if the suits and coats looked to hold it back at times.

After a third round of revisions, a city ordinance that would ban plastic bags now allows some.

In giving the nod to amendments to an ordinance that will ban single-use plastic bags at store checkouts, the City Commission apparently moved Tuesday to appease both the paper and plastic industry.

The commission approved the ordinance last January, to take effect this coming January.

The commission held the first of two required public hearings on the amendments and also gave the first of two required approvals. The amendments will be part of the ordinance after a second reading and vote slated for Sept. 21.

Residents spoke both in favor and against the proposal.

“This is so stupid,” Tere Flores said of the measure, telling the commission that it should be working on bringing industry, “instead of worrying about stupid bags.”

Rose Timmer with Healthy Communities of Brownsville told the commission that the ban on plastic bags “is a good idea for Brownsville.”

“Plastic bags is not the way to go,” she said.

The ordinance goes into effect Jan. 1, 2011, and while banning the lightweight, single-use plastic bags, the amendments now specify that besides bags made of cloth or other durable material, reusable plastic bags would be allowed, but they must have a minimum of four millimeters in thickness.

Reusable paper bags also would be allowed but with a minimum of 65 pounds in basis weight. Both the reusable plastic and paper bags must have handles.

Furthermore, “the bag must be able to withstand a minimum number of 200 reuses,” the amendments noted.

Regular paper bags can still be used by convenience stores, restaurants for food carryout, pharmacies, veterinarians, and liquor stores.

Lightweight, one-time-use plastic bags would be allowed to prevent contamination from cooked, chilled or frozen food.

Dry-cleaning businesses would be able to continue using the plastic bags for laundered garments.

The amendments also provide that if a customer requests the use of single-use plastic bags and doesn’t have, buy or request a reusable bag, the establishment will charge the customer an “environmental fee” of $1, with 95 percent going to the city for recycling efforts and five percent to the establishment as an administrative fee.

Duro Bag Manufacturing Co., which opened its plant at the Port of Brownsville in 1969 and employs some 150 people, feared that the proposed amendments, as initially worded, would also ban paper bags, but Assistant City Attorney Allison Bastian indicated that the current revision was satisfactory to that firm.

And there could be more revisions.

“It’s not perfect, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t go back and tweak it,” Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr. said of the ordinance.