Chanel Bags Lover

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Lochlann Quinn, once the chairman of the Allied Irish Bank, has put a pricey piece of real estate up for sale: the Prada location at 16 Old Bond Street in London. The Independent reports  that the commercial real estate will be listed with property consultant Fineman Ross for around £30 million. The sale of the freehold of the building would also include the offices above the Prada store. The total rent is said to be more than £1 million a month. Old Bond Street, which in the Mayfair district of London, has been a fashionable shopping street since the 18th century. The southern part is known as Old Bond Street while the northern part is New Bond Street. Old Bond Street is home to a variety of luxury retailers including Tiffany & Co., Chanel, Gucci and De Beers.

Part one of an exclusive serialisation of Justine Picardie’s new biography of Coco Chanel.

First portrait of Gabrielle Chanel with one of her own hats published in the theatre magazine 'Comoedia Illustre', 1st October 1910.

‘Those on whom legends are built are their legends,‘ declared Coco Chanel to her friend Paul Morand, one of several writers to whom she tried, and failed, to tell the story of her life. ‘People’s lives are an enigma,’ she said to another friend, Claude Delay, not long before her death.

‘I don’t like the family,’ she also told Delay. ‘You’re born in it, not of it. I don’t know anything more terrifying than the family.’ And so she circled around and about it, telling and retelling the narrative of her youth, remaking history just as she remade the sleeves of a jacket, unfastening its seams and cutting its threads, and then sewing it back together again.

The official record shows that her mother, Eugénie, gave birth to Gabrielle on 19 August 1883 in the poorhouse in Saumur, a market town on the river Loire. Eugénie (known as Jeanne) was 20, Chanel’s father Henri-Albert (known as Albert) was 28, and listed as a marchland , or merchant, on Gabrielle’s birth certificate. They were not yet married but already had one daughter, Julia, born less than a year previously.

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Gucci!

A new business has emerged thanks to the fashion aspirations of Indians in small towns. Some online shopping sites are bringing national and global luxury brands within the reach of these people at throwaway prices.

A couple of years ago, 34-year-old Pankaj Maithil, a businessman and also a collector of designer perfumes from Indore, had to travel abroad or to Delhi to add volumes to his collection.

Today, the best fragrances from around the world are just a mouse click away from him. Thanks to the boom in online shopping sites.

Inder Goyal, a 42-year-old engineer from Jodhpur, loves to indulge in buying high-end labels like Versace and Armani and Gucci. And now, living in a Tier-2 city he fulfils his passion of following the global trends with the help of his laptop.

For Frainy Singh, former Mrs India and now settled in Chandigarh, online shopping is a blessing. Earlier, she had to make frequent shopping trips to bigger cities to maintain her glamorous lifestyle. Now she can do the same even without stepping out of her home.

All this has been made possible by a gamut of online fashion retail web sites that have been launched in India in the last couple of years.

Both Indian and international luxury brands can be bought at throwaway prices on these sites. Fashionandyou, 99labels, Brandmile, DesiCouture and Privatesales are some names that are getting popular among the fashion-conscious Indians.

These sites also offer good discounts for the customers. Davidoff Cool Water perfume priced at Rs 4,000 can be grabbed at Rs 1,800, a Calvin Klein dress priced at Rs 7,000 is available for Rs 3,000 and Polo Ralph Lauren T-Shirts with a regular price range of Rs 4,000-5,000 can be bought for less than Rs 2,000.

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Some call the dish a true delicacy of the American West. Others call it just gross.

However you care to refer to them, the festival that serves up bovine testicles was held this weekend just south of Santa Cruz.

The 2nd annual Testicle Festival happened at JJ Crosetti in Watsonville Saturday.

Testicle dishes are called Mountain Oysters, Cowboy Caviar, Swingin Sirloin or Calf Fries.

It’s long been a practice on cattle ranches for young male bovines to be castrated into steers, which after the initial loss, eventually makes them more docile and easier to handle. In order to make the private parts palatable, they are sometimes peeled and marinated.

The festival was an all-you-can-eat deal, but for the weak at heart, chicken, pasta, salad and garlic bread were also available for your $40 ticket.  Oh, and the band who signed on for the party? “No Respect” and that is no bull.

Rancher families will tell you they taste like chicken, but you’d have to partake to see if they are telling the truth.

Lori Preuitt was kind of tempted to head over the hill next weekend.