On the A-list
For years, people struggled to pronounce her name. But no more. L.A.'s Monique Lhuillier (loo-lee-ay) has become a force not only on the runway but the red carpet too.
Her collection, presented Tuesday, was her most confident yet and her most refined. Inspired by the jewels of the maharajah, evening wear came in spicy shades of plum, olive, mustard, magenta and brown, embellished with semiprecious stones. A paisley halter gown was anchored with a harness of chunky jewels, while a black lace cocktail gown with a feather-flecked skirt featured tulle shoulder ties.
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She is the fashion model of the moment.
Punxsutawney Phil may have predicted six more weeks of winter, but the eye-popping spring bouquet that surfaced Saturday night at the Screen Actors Guild Awards suggested that the celebrities, at least, weren't paying attention. The evening's nominees were pretty in pale yellow (winner Glenn Close in Giorgio Armani), crystallized blue (Kate Winslet in Badgley Mischka), and bright scarlet (Virginia Madsen in Pamella Roland). Rosario Dawson and Kyra Sedgwick, meanwhile, donned peachy pink and lavender hues, respectively.
As a global celebrity, Jennifer Lopez has made an art of sending mixed signals to fend off a prying public and the glossy press. Is she a demanding diva or a neighborhood girl from the block? Is she or is she not married? How badly does she want a baby?
Believe it or not, the chicest thing to wear this fall will be a cable-knit sweater and a pair of glen plaid trousers. It's going to be chic because nobody else will have it. Everybody will be turned out in Marc Jacobs cocoon skirts, Behnaz Sarafpour Bedouin slacks, Narciso Rodriguez ravishing pink town coats, and you, poor dear, will be the Only One.
Virginians who wear their pants so low their underwear shows may want to think about investing in a stronger belt.
Volume is emerging as the buzzword for fall fashion as top designers — Marc Jacobs and Oscar de la Renta, among them — play with proportion.
Last year's fall collections were full of tweeds. Now designers are tearing down the curtains, making use of decorators' fabrics with a fervor that would do Scarlett O'Hara or Maria von Trapp proud.
A little contempt for luxury is not such a bad thing. How people dress in an age of superabundance and superficiality, how they spend their money, how they are influenced by wealth, how they attempt to distance themselves from people whose style is not theirs but whose desire for the same human bric-a-brac makes them no less precious to luxury companies: this is a subject that should be of intimate interest to a fashion designer.
What makes hair look expensive? We asked stylist John Barrett, whose exclusive, eponymous salon is located in Bergdorf Goodman, one of the chicest (and priciest) department stores in the world. Here, four tress traits he says scream "money, money, money" -- plus, how you can score them for a lot less.
To complement the abundance of ladylike clothing on the runway, makeup artists at the Marni and Carolina Herrera shows applied liberal doses of pink cream cheek color. Tip: To make cream ultra-blendable, warm it up by rubbing it between your fingertips before dotting it onto your cheekbones. Blend color downward. Try: Clarins Multi-Blush in Tender Raspberry.
Saturday evening on my way to a fashion show in Chelsea I passed a small clump of photographers waiting on the sidewalk for a V.I.P. to exit her white stretch limousine. Celebrities don't seem to enjoy going places alone, and apparently there is no thought of arriving in a taxi, so there was a brief wait while members of her retinue climbed out and patted down their jeans and sulkily stared at the photographers as if to make it clear who had the all-access pass to the free drinks. Meanwhile the traffic was beginning to back up, and someone near Ninth Avenue was laying on his horn. Finally the celebrity emerged - her face didn't mean anything to me - and the photographers were about to go to work when one of them said to a lady-in-waiting:
