All Fashion Lady

The Spring/Summer 2016 fashion collections are currently in store, just in time for a wardrobe update. What’s noticeable is a lot of easy movement, from the long dresses and slinky sleepwear, and attention to detail as seen from textures and patterns.


It’s also the season to lose your pants, with jackets turning into dresses. Here’s a look at some of the key trends.


Flowy maxi dresses is the ultimate in chic for spring. Wear it long and loose or cinched for shape in a look that takes you seamlessly from day to night.


Salvatore Ferragamo’s off shoulder maxi gives the dress a playful flair while Tory Burch pops with a bright yellow crocheted kaftan that drapes comfortably over the body.


Layering clothes may not be something new but what is trending right now are the colours and textures used for layering. With spring’s lighter fabrics, the look remains cool and comfortable for the weather.


At Chanel, a midi length dress is layered over a pink taffeta wide legged trousers and worn with a signature tweed jacket. Marni takes on colours and textures with three layers of tops starting with a grey one to green and finally brown.


Ruffles by Dries Van Noten.

Pleats by Michael Kors.

Maxi dress by Ferragamo.

Balenciaga


Pleats and ruffles return to the runway and in a big way ranging from head-to-toe looks or as clever detailing. Dries Van Noten goes sheer with ruffles giving it a nonchalant chic and grungy vibe instead.


Michael Kors turned it up a notch by adding eyelets at the end of each pleat, giving it an added depth. Lingerie and pajama style looks have been entering into dailywear recently. It has even earned the nickname “sleepcorp” combining the words sleepwear and corporate. While it may not always be considered suitable attire for work, if you know how to style it, it can be pulled off.


The silky satin finish of negligee is seen throughout Balenciaga’s collection. Sexy and slinky with bows, lace and ruffles, this look may only be appropriate for cocktail parties unless you throw on a severe or structured jacket for day.


Clavin Klein stays safe with its matching separates that combines “midnight milk run” with a cool nonchalance. Men’s style clothing has invaded womenswear the last couple of seasons in terms of the pantsuit. For spring, the look has evolved with the suit jacket being a focal point.


Fendi’s blue fitted cutout suit jacket with leather weaving has a cool and chic vibe. Acne turns the suit jacket into a dress, another look seen in several collections.


Acne

Calvin Klein

Fendi

Taylor Swift’s tumultuous love life often made her music take a backseat, but that happened only until she learned to bank on it. In a new video posted online, she details the romance that inspired her hit song “Out of the Woods,” which is widely believed to be about Harry Styles.

The two dated for only a few months, but their celebrity status turned the relationship into tabloid fodder from the instant they went public. The song in question was written shortly after the split, so while Taylor never named Harry as her source of inspiration, the Internet has long decided that she could only be singing about him on it.

“The number one feeling I felt in the whole relationship was anxiety”

Because she knows that people will speculate even more if she talks about the inspiration behind some of her songs, Taylor doesn’t do it that often. When she does, though, she makes sure it has been worth the wait, like it happened with this acoustic rendering of “Out of the Woods” that she performed at the Grammy Museum.

Introducing the song, she says that the doomed relationship that inspired it was one where her number one feeling was of anxiety.

“Because it felt very fragile, it felt very tentative,” she says. “And it always felt like, ‘Okay, what's the next road block? What's the next thing that's gonna deter this? How long do we have before this turns into just an awful mess and we break up? Is it a month? Is it three days?’”

Still, she adds, the romance was a beautiful thing precisely because it was so fragile. She doesn’t regret it so she’s not trying to make the song into a diss track; it’s merely a representation of the feelings she felt during her time with that boy.

Take it with a grain of salt

Whenever she’s pressed into revealing who some of her songs are about, Taylor always refuses to do that: she’s not in the habit of making music as a way of getting even, but as an artist, she will draw for inspiration on real life.

At the same time, she encourages more rumors with statements like the one in the video below, which leave no room for doubt that the song was written about a real boy who really broke her heart.

In the end, it’s all business for Taylor. Drama generates headlines and media attention translates into bigger sales. Even when she’s protesting against it, she’s still feeding it, because it serves her interests.

When there’s no drama to be had, artists are known to create it just to get press. In other words, all statements like the one Taylor makes about “Out of the Woods” should be taken with a grain of salt.

Angelina Julie and Brad Pitt first worked together on the action thriller “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” on whose set they also became romantically involved. Until this year, they refused to do another movie together out of fear that their tabloid persona would overshadow it, but that’s about to change with “By the Sea.”

“By the Sea” is the story of a married couple dealing with loss, on the verge of coming apart. It will be out on November 13 in the hope of qualifying for the awards season, and was - strangely enough - shot during what should have been Angelina and Brad’s honeymoon.

“I trust her with my life”

In addition to starring Hollywood’s most powerful couple as a couple, “By the Sea” also got plenty of media attention for being directed by Angelina, off a script she wrote. This is Angelina’s passion project, and Brad is only along for the ride, helping her tell her story, he says in a new interview for V Magazine.

You can see some gorgeous portraits of Brad channeling Robert Redford, from the V Mag spread, in the gallery below.

“It’s surprising how much I enjoy the direction of my wife,” Brad explains. “She’s decisive, incredibly intuitive, knife-sharp, and might I say, sexy at her post. I trust her with my life. The plan was to make something together, with complete autonomy. […] We, by our own admission, were overdue. If I’m going to work, I want to work with my wife.”

He admits that shooting a drama about a failed marriage isn’t the ideal way to spend a honeymoon, but he chooses to look at the silver lining: marriage is about working together towards a common goal, and that’s exactly what they did when they shot this movie.

He also says that he didn’t want to let Angelina down by not being able to bring her words to life in front of the camera, and jokes that the role was a perfect fit for him: he plays a drunk because he has plenty of experience as one.

Early Oscar buzz

“By the Sea” won’t get a wide release as a major studio film would, which means that the media buzz around it will also be moderate. This is a movie made for the awards season, so all promotion will serve the purpose of bringing it to the attention of the critics, not the wide audience.

You can see a first trailer embedded below.

Even though it’s still early, the film is already getting some Oscar buzz, in the sense that people are saying this might be Jolie’s shot at a Best Director nomination in the upcoming Oscar race. Then again, people said the same about her “Unbroken” last year, and nothing came out of all that talk.

That didn’t take long: hours after she filed for divorce from Olivier Martinez, and he filed his own petition looking to annul hers, Halle Berry filed once more, this time using their real names. She’s also started trashing her future ex in the press.

People Magazine, a publication that’s always been camp Berry, offers an inside look at what promises to be a very bitter divorce battle, perhaps even more bitter than the custody war Halle waged against her other ex, model Gabriel Aubry.

Martinez was violent, easily intimidated

The narrative that’s starting to shape up is that, though married for only 2 years, Halle became convinced early on in the marriage that they weren’t a good fit. The blame is all Martinez’s, because he couldn’t handle with a woman who was stronger, more powerful and more influential than he was.

Making matters even worse is the fact that he was also unpredictable and violent, and had a temper that he could simply not control.

“Oliver comes from a world where he was easily intimidated by her ability to work and that she was the breadwinner. He was emasculated by her beauty and her power, and his temper could erupt. He was never physically abusive towards her,” a source tells the publication. “He was very possessive in a very kind of caveman way but was never abusive to her or the family… He had an explosive temper in a way that was profoundly frightening. You never knew when he would explode.”

The same insider adds that Martinez has “definite anger management issues,” as shown during his many altercations with the paparazzi or that time he beat Aubry to a bloody pulp during a custody exchange that, at the time, didn’t even concern him.

Olivier Martinez is afraid

While Berry controls the story through the media, celebrity pundits believe that Martinez is gearing up for the fight that he knows will come.

He and the Oscar-winner have an iron-clad prenup, so there’s no chance he will get a share of her money in the divorce. They also have a son together, Maceo, and if the previous custody fight (for Nahla, the daughter Berry has with Aubry) is any indication, Halle will want to limit his time with the child as much as possible.

One way to do that is by discrediting him in the press by leaking stories like the one above, about his temper and his violent tendencies, to show that he’s not a fit parent.

Berry has played this game before with Aubry and it cost him many jobs and money. Rumor has it that Martinez is afraid the same will happen to him.

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard will be featured on one of the final four episodes of Overhaulin’ on Velocity, and teasers released so far promise quite an exciting show. After all, it’s not every day that you get to see an A-lister help pull off a hilarious prank of his wife.

The episode will focus on Amber’s classic Mustang, which has fallen into disrepair and has even been stolen a couple of times. Depp and his father-in-law join forces to prank Amber before she gets it refurbished, tricking her into thinking the police officers she called to investigate the car’s disappearance are more focused on selfies than on actually solving the case.

The video below shows Amber growing increasingly frustrated with the cops, flipping them and refusing to believe that they would ask for selfies when they’re in an official capacity.

It also shows the moment she finds out the whole thing had been a prank, put together by her husband and her father.

Too Fab has another video from the episode at the link, with Amber’s reaction when she gets back the car in mint condition. Her reaction isn’t the kind you’d expect from a celebrity of her caliber, as she actually breaks down in tears of joy when she sees the beauty in front of her.

“I bought it as kind of a drivable piece of junk,” she says at one point. “The car cost me every dime I had.” Which would explain her emotional reaction to the upgrade: that Mustang is more than a car to her.

Having worked with literally hundreds of men and women over the past fourteen years, there's a few sartorial errors that I see again and again. Although seemingly small things, these mistakes can mean that even with the best of intentions, you will sadly fall short on the style front. I've narrowed it down to five key fashion fails and how to avoid them here:

Wearing a look that's over.

Fashion is a fickle beast, and to be honest much of what we're about at Signature Style transcends it. But it is a very real fact that trends only last a period of time before moving on. Sometimes we see men and women who are a bit stuck with a trend that's now finished. A current example? Tunics and leggings for women and striped shirts or double breasted jackets for men. How do you know if your look is done? Check out a few trendier stores and see what the staff are wearing. Flick through a fashion mag or do a quick google. Even better, get in touch with a stylist and have them help.

Indian industry may have been slow to respond to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's slogan, Make in India, Make for the World, but there's one company registered in Silicon Valley, California that has been following the maxim to the T. EastEssence has been making Islamic clothing in India and selling to the world for the last seven years.

Ironically, EastEssence, which is a manufacturer and online retailer of Islamic clothing - abayas, jilbabs, burqas, thobes, dishdashas, hijabs etc - was founded by a Hindu from Kashmir. With customers in 68 countries across the globe and sales of $40 million (nearly Rs.255 crore) last year, EastEssence claims to be the 'Largest Islamic Clothing Company Online'. All its merchandise is made in India, in a factory in Noida bordering New Delhi, and another Meerut, where all the hand-embroidery is done.

For Sunil Kilam, the company's 38-year-old founder, the decision to "make in India" made hard commercial sense - the low wages of labour in India, compared to the US, allows him to offer his buyers great value for money. Prices on EastEssence are all in the range of $20-50, and do not exceed $110 even for the fancy designs. In India, where EastEssence launched this Ramzaan season its own store on Snapdeal, prices are capped at Rs.5,000.

One emotion that I don’t get to experience as much as I’d like to is smugness. This is especially true when it comes to clothes. Feeling smug about your outfit can only be achieved by very particular means. You have to wear something devastatingly perfect at the right time and the right place, find a bargain of staggering proportion or buy something ethical that makes more people feel good about life than just you.

This third option is easier now that green fashion brands have realised that people will buy ethical clothes as long as they don’t look like ethical clothes. Lots of labels have sprung up that consider ethics and aesthetics together. For some, the ethical element is in itself organic. British designer Christopher Raeburn, for example, uses recycled military fabrics and decommissioned parachutes to make clothes because he wants to rather than because he feels morally obliged to. This change and lightening in attitude is really apparent in the new eco clothes.

And it’s easier to go ethical shopping, too. Some great boutiques have appeared which do all the sorting of nice from naff and the worrying about bona fides for you. All you have to do is loll on the sofa browsing their websites and buy.

THE quintessential Aussie ritual of a relaxed Sunday flop-and-drop is echoed in the shake-off-the-sand world of the Tuckeys and the unvarnished feel of the Mark Tuckey furniture line.

Based in Sydney’s northern beaches, the idyll of sparkling emerald coves and beaches where even the billionaires wear shorts and thongs, design duo Louella and Mark share their curvilinear coastal pad with daughters Chilli, seven, and Indigo, nine.

The spatial dynamic of their light, airy home is in tune with the organic rawness of cotton, leather, timber and linen.

“It’s funny how everything has gone back to the ’70s here, with cut-off, ripped jeans and long hair,” laughs Mark, whose larrikin twinkle and shaggy blond locks are poster-boy perfect for the sun’n’surf lifestyle his brand incarnates.

“I spend a lot of the time at the hairdresser to look like this – not.”


After growing up on ‘the beaches’, living in Europe, then spending 20 years in Melbourne (10 of them with Louella), he felt the urge to return.