Together with Linda, Christy, Claudia and Cindy they redefine the models business

and set the tone for the future ones.

Today anyone that’s put a face in a cover thinks that are self entitle for the super but

just this four girls and Kate Moss always will be ONES!!!!

I admire Naomi personality and that’s she lives her life without excuses.

She never excuse herself for be who she is.

Today with the brand people concept you see all this celebrities living a bland life.

Or you are wild cat or no news in the tabloids.

Naomi lives like a rock star……

Take some time to read Jacob Bernstein’s article where he try to analyse the actual stars burned out.

I think that fashion is a cruel, bizarre, rarified  and amazing place to be.

The same time that you are the face of the season they are looking for the next already.

It’s not easy and for a movie star the risks to be left behind is unbearable.

reminds me Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, unfortunately stars are not forever anymore…..

Viva Christiano Ronaldo abs!!!

The Daily Beast

Celebrities once dominated magazine covers and fashion ads.

Now.

 Angelina and Uma have been replaced by athletes, models, and dead people. Jacob Bernstein on why the stars burned out.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-18/celebrity-magazine-cover-backlash/

 According Martin Lindstrom, author of the acclaimed book Buyology (Truths and lies about why we buy) the decisions that you make whe buying were taken long time ago.
This explain in part why traditional brands as Coca Cola, Nike and so on are so dificult to be overtake.
http://www.martinlindstrom.com/index.php/cmsid__buyology_about

The problem now with fashion and food is that the offer overpower the demand.
You can eat bkft, lunch and dinner everyday in a different restaurant in Dubai and will not be able to visit all of them by the end of the year.
In the fashion world there are so many brands (luxury, highstreet, highend, avant garde…) that you will never be able to try all of them.

Let us know how you make your decide what to wear and eat.
What do you take in consideration: quality, investment, trends, money, design, shopaholic and on and on….

We are waiting for your opinion….

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/topic.php?uid=100611833319429&topic=1

Hearst, Vanderbilt, Bloomingdale, von Bismarck and so on dedicate great part of their lives building

america’s fashion catalog.

If you, by chance, are going to the big apple reserve some time to visit this exhibition.

unfortunately I can’t.

American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection

May 7–August 1, 2010
Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 4th Floor

Vogue new issue with Blake Lively on the cover shows that healthy and curve is the order of the day.

As everybody knows Anna Wintour is the sacerdote of the fashion industry and if she says that now we go for curve instead bones and  skin models you can bet  that everybody will follow.

But stop before start to attack the fridge because in fashion Less will always be More.

Expect a lot of disclosed bodies, beaches and pool spread all over the issue.

Summer is coming and one of Vogue’s roles is to point directions and help the retail selling.

Today the line between cause and effect completely  disappeared. I heard one time that who drives the fashion industry is the fabrics producers because the will dictate what the fashion designers will use to create the collections.

I don’t like this so posed covers and always think that the best pics is inside the magazine.

Next time put Hamish on the cover…. total luxe!!

I been out travelling  the last 3 months.

South America, Caribbean and Europe.

Nice to visit all this places again  and collect lots of information and new ideas.

But I have to recognize that I miss family and Dubai a lot!

I am back to my faithful readers not wearing my chefs jacket but in my glitter Louboutin’s  heels… always.

Ps: lost 10 Kg after this pic.

Baby-faced beauty Gemma Ward was the hottest model in the world. But now that she’s grown up and gained 30 pounds, fashion insiders say she’s “over.” Even though the industry claims it’s embracing larger women, her story proves it’s all a big fat lie.

On a bright day last November, an Amazonian beauty with long, strong-looking limbs and silky blonde hair hailed a cab in the East Village. Wearing navy shorts and a faux-leopard-skin coat, she looked like an unusually pretty, healthy NYU student, out for a day of combing through vintage shops. It was an unremarkable moment, except that the 22-year-old was Gemma Ward—one of the most photographed women on the planet.

This week, thousands of stylists will converge on Bryant Park for New York Fashion Week. The runways will host a parade of size-zero adolescents with measurements of 34-24-34, jutting collarbone, and razor-sharp cheekbones. But Ward, once the biggest name in the business, is expected to be absent.

Though Ward is still pictured on her agency IMG’s Web page, she hasn’t worked as a model for two years. Once her body began to fill out, in 2007, her flacks explained that she was on “hiatus.”

IMG declined to comment for this story, and would not confirm whether Ward was still officially under their representation or grant an interview with the model or with David Cunningham, the agent responsible for first signing her. When granted anonymity, however, an IMG insider was blunt to the point of nastiness about Ward’s future. “Her moment’s over,” said the IMG source. “She’s not coming back.”

While Ward’s fame—for a brief period—was spectacular, her story is emblematic of the hundreds of pretty teenagers who come to New York City each year in search of a modeling career. Although the industry has recently embraced plus-size models (more on that later), the pressure to slip into size-zero samples is stronger than ever. In 2007, top model Natalia Vodianova said that when she weighed 115 pounds at 5′ 9″ clients called her management to complain about her size. In 2008, model Coco Rocha said that when she weighed as little as 108 pounds at 5′ 10″, she was told, “You need to lose more weight,” and that she even took diuretics. “The look this year is anorexic,” Rocha recalled hearing. “We don’t want you to be anorexic, we just want you to look it,” they reasoned.

Ward was discovered eight years ago in Perth, at the age of 14. The gangly Australian was sitting in the audience for the taping of a reality show called Search for a Supermodel, clad in a muddy-gray barn jacket, when she was plucked by an agent from the crowd.

She initially said, “No, thank you,” but within a year Ward, a tomboy who was all elbows and angles, with giant, startling Bambi eyes, was well on her way to becoming the most sought-after runway model in the world, anointed the Next Big Thing by designer Miuccia Prada. Seemingly overnight, Ward, a schoolgirl from a suburban background—Dad was a doctor, Mom a nurse—went from sporting ratty jeans and surf tees to walking the runway in Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Jil Sander. At just 16, she became one of the youngest-ever cover models of American Vogue.

Over the next three years, Ward went on to land a staggering 20-plus Vogue covers and sparked a craze for pencil-thin girls who looked vaguely extraterrestrial, with improbably wide-set eyes and rosebud lips. One paper described Ward as “an archangel from Neptune.” Others dubbed her a “porcelain doll” or a “Siamese kitten.”

Says one photo agent who worked with Ward when she was 15 (and declined to be named for fear of repercussions from IMG, which reps the lion’s share of the A-list models in New York City), her youth was almost a shock. “She was a baby,” the source says of his first shoot with Ward. “A little girl, completely wide-eyed and lovely, and she had this entourage around her, handlers, all of these adults whose incomes depended on her looking a certain way.” Ward, he recalls, seemed vaguely stunned by all the attention. “Models that young don’t always understand what they’re getting into, what the future will be if their bodies change.”

For several years, however, Ward’s career continued to boom. In 2007, Forbes estimated that she had earned $3 million that year, and in June she paid $1.525 million for a three-bedroom co-op in the East Village. In New York City, she hung out with the hip Australian expat crowd at the Nolita eatery Ruby’s, sipped rosé at the Maritime Hotel and suffered from permanent jet lag.

The busy teenager, who flew back and forth across the Atlantic for major fashion editorials and lucrative ad campaigns for Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Dior, had no time to reflect. “I never really get a chance to sit back and think about it,” she once said.

But signs of uncertainty had surfaced in September 2006, when Ward spent time in Los Angeles, where she was prepping for a film appearance in the Liv Tyler thriller The Strangers. As a result, she missed Milan fashion week for the first time in years—a decision that proved damaging for her modeling career. At the Burberry show, fashionistas buzzed that “she had been dropped because she had put on weight,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Though Ward was missing in Milan, she had walked in at least a dozen shows that season in New York City and Paris, looking as thin as ever—her face ever so slightly fuller. She had perhaps gained just five pounds, but the media was beginning to take notice, making clients jittery.

A year later, in fall 2007, the speculation over her size had turned into a steady drone. Says one fashion editor who attended Paris fashion week in October of that year, “Gemma was only walking in a handful of shows—Lagerfeld Gallery, maybe Valentino. I initially thought, ‘She doesn’t have to do them, she’s making so much money in the big campaigns,’ until I saw her on the [Chanel] runway… I almost didn’t recognize her,” says the editor, who confesses she was aghast. Compared to the other ultraskinny models, Ward looked as if she had gained 10 to 15 pounds, “big, almost bloated.”

Clad in a denim bikini, Ward certainly looked softer. Where her legs had once been bony, there were noticeable curves. One headline snapped, “CHANEL SPRING ’08 EMBRACES THE BIG GIRL,” while another article noted Ward’s “not so itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny Chanel bikini.”

The photo agent who worked with Ward wasn’t surprised by the industry reaction. “Every six months you get a new crop of girls. For every one with staying power, like a Kate Moss, there are 20 who don’t make it past 18. You gain weight, and you knock yourself out of the running. It’s an image-driven industry that doesn’t take kindly to the girl who bucks the trend. Clients start saying, ‘She’s fat now, don’t book her!’ If you want to be cynical about it, looking that way was her job. She doesn’t want to do what it takes, she’s not going to get work. That’s just the way it is.”

By the end of 2007, speculation mounted that Ward was being edged out of the rarefied world of high fashion. But her personal life was reportedly heating up. In November, “Page Six” noted that the newly single 28-year-old heartthrob Heath Ledger had been pursuing Ward, who hailed from his hometown in Australia and swirled in the same boho downtown scene. Back at home in Perth for the Christmas holidays, Ward was spotted with Ledger and the local papers rushed to crown them Australia’s answer to Brangelina.

Less than three weeks later, in January 2008, Ledger was found dead of an accidental prescription drug overdose in his Soho apartment. At his funeral in Australia the following month, Ward mourned alongside his former fiancée, Michelle Williams, and Ledger’s closest family and friends.

In the aftermath of Ledger’s death, Ward retreated further from the fashion world. The supermodel put on a more noticeable amount of weight and gossips began to surmise that his death had been the trigger for her so-called “emotional eating.” That summer, she embarked on a trek through Nepal with a male friend, joining a ragtag group of travelers. Some of Ward’s fellow trekkers were apparently underwhelmed by her presence. Two of them, Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott, later blogged about how they were skeptical that she was even a model. “She appeared rather—um—sturdy,” they stated. “In other words, she was quite like the rest of us.”

Says Olga Liriano, a New York City casting director and model booker who has worked with iconic photographer Bruce Weber, the notion that Ward put on weight as a response to Heath’s death is fairly ridiculous. Ward’s new body most likely marked “her natural point. A woman’s metabolism changes in her twenties. Maybe trying to stay in a business where a size zero is the norm was too much for her, and not worth the sacrifice.” In the insulated fashion world, “we have a collective body dysmorphia, where we don’t even know what normal is anymore, where a size 6 or 8 is overweight for a model.” As such, explains Liriano, “there was no compassion” for Ward. “Sadly, the industry just moves on. That’s what fashion is about, always looking for the next thing. Who’s going to be the next big girl? Who’s the next Gemma Ward? There’s a moment, a few years, when a girl can have a great career. And then it’s on to the next one.”

Though Ward has rarely spoken out about her relationship with Heath Ledger, she said in that interview that he taught her to fight, a skill she will need as she contemplates a permanent move to the silver screen, also an image-obsessed realm where criticism of her looks will be inevitable, her talent notwithstanding. “He told me to always be a punk and ‘stand up for yourself,’ ” Ward said then.

Indeed, last November, in response to reports that she had retired from modeling, Ward stood up to fight, writing to an Australian paper to say, “I have not ‘quit modeling,’ and my fans back home can expect to see me back at work modeling and acting in the new year.”

Still, one industry insider thinks Ward made a lucky escape—and rather than return to the high-pressure world that chewed her up and spat her out, she should keep on running. “I say, congratulations,” the magazine source says. “She has other things she wants to do. She made major money…and she got out of it alive.” —with reporting by Hailey Eber

http://www.nypost.com/pagesixmag/issues/20100211/Gemma+Ward+Supermodel+Betrayed?page=1

Can a brand so young survive without the original designer????

 Alexander McQueen Samples Recalled, Speculation on Company’s Future Rises —This morning, Alexander McQueen’s director of communications sent out an urgent message requesting all samples be sent back “asap” because securing “all items and garments from current and past collections” is their “immediate priority.”  Gucci Group remains mum on the future of McQueen the company — save CEO Robert Polet’s emailed statement on the subject, which read: “What I can say is that there is a team at Alexander McQueen that has enormous talent and energy and passion that Lee was extremely proud of and I am too.” A number of articles are popping up, citing luxury consultants and analysts who find the designer and his brand too inextricably linked for the company to survive without him. Noted one: “I think PPR will use this as a pretext to walk away from the McQueen brand, which has never really made any money anyway. The label just hasn’t been around for long enough to be able to survive in the long term now that he is no longer there. A brand needs to have a history to live on in these circumstances and Alexander McQueen’s brand doesn’t have enough of a history. It’s comparatively recent and its roots are not deep enough.” [Heard on the Runway, Bloomberg, Times UK, AP]

 The McQ presentation that was to take place in New York today has been canceled. The Daily Mail is reporting that Alexander McQueen has committed suicide in his apartment in Green Park, central London. A source at McQueen’s office confirmed his death, saying: ‘It is a tragic loss. We are not making a comment at this time out of respect for the McQueen family.’ McQueen’s death comes days after his mother passed away.

http://www.fashionologie.com/

Vogue’s Newsstand Sales Fell 15 Percent in the Last Half of 2009

Some says that the www and the down turn is killing the publisher’s.

I think that what is killing them is the long time that they are taking to understand the new medias.

The fashion houses are giving the first steps to update the way they communicate with costumers and so mags need to go the same way.

Blogs and internet bring  all the news and content even before the mag comes out for sale.

Today to sell a mag you need more than a celebrity in the cover… you need content and be in line with  readers.

New days needs new solutions.

Who will survive??

News stand sales were down nearly across the board for fashion and lifestyle titles in the last half of 2009. Those that took hits include Vogue, with a 15.1 percent drop in single-copy sales; Allure with a 17.2 percent decline; Lucky with an 11.7 percent decline; and Marie Claire with a 14.6 percent decline. Faring better was Elle, sales of which only dropped 0.2 percent. Of course, the economy is mainly to blame for the declines. Many magazines are soothing themselves by holding on to the belief that, well, print is dead, and newsstand sales matter less in the face of many online revolutions, late to the party as theirs may be.

Yet some titles gained, like Harper’s Bazaar, with a 0.3 percent increase, and Vanity Fair, with an impressive 5 percent increase, buoyed by strong sales of the August issue with Heath Ledger on the cover. But the titles seeming to fare the best in the women’s fashion category are health-oriented magazines, including Health, with an 11.1 increase in newsstand sales, and Women’s Health, with a 3.3 percent increase. Just goes to show, no matter how crummy the economy and unemployment is, women will always find resources to pour into not being or getting fat.
Read more: Vogue’s Newsstand Sales Fell 15 Percent in the Last Half of 2009 — The Cut