Gisele Bundchen: The Early Years 1996 - 2007 and a Victoria’s Secret, Career-Changing Angel Contract
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Deva Cassel Is Sun-Kissed in Future Dior Beauty Riviera Summer 2025 Memories
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Anne of Carversville has long-prized elegant packaging as part of the beauty experience. Dior Beauty Riviera summer 2025 delivers for the first time ever, the iconic Toile de Jouy pattern on limited-edition makeup cases and powders.
Surely this packaging belongs in a scene from Deva Cassel’s new Netflix series ‘The Leopard’. Cassel plays the role of Angelica Sedara, amid the 1860s fall of the Sicilian aristocracy, where she enjoys a high-society romance with Prince Tancredi Falconeri, played by actor Saul Nanni.
The summer 2025 Dioriviera release combines beauty’s latest modern technology against the romantic, heart-grabbing emotions of Riviera summers from Cannes to Portofino. They remain an indescribable part of Anne’s life experiences.
Read MoreGustav Klimt Painting of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona Forces Reflection on Human Zoos
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Gustav Klimt Painting of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona and ‘Human Zoos’
A potentially lost forever, early artwork by renowned Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, missing since the 1930s, is now being exhibited after its recent recovery. The painting portrays Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona, a leader of the Ga people from what is now known as Ghana in West Africa. Created in 1897, the portrait shows the prince in profile set against an abstract floral backdrop. Measuring just over 2 feet in height, the compact artwork is being showcased by the Viennese gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher (W&K) at the TEFAF Maastricht art fair in the Netherlands, with an asking price of €15 million (approximately $16.3 million).
The Rise of Ethnographic Showcases or ‘Human Zoos’
According to W&K, the painting was created by the artist amid the 1897 Vienna Völkerschau. These Völkerschau exhibitions were ethnographic showcases — also called human zoos — from the colonial era. These widely-attended exhibitions across Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries were often businesses created for financial profit.
Read MoreSKIMS' Wedding Shop with Engaged Couple Abby Champion and Patrick Schwarzenegger
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Lovebirds top model Abby Champion and ‘White Lotus’ star Patrick Schwarzenegger continue to keep the details and date of their own upcoming nuptials secret. So Kim Kardashian stepped in to channel all the pent-up, wedding vibes between the couple for the March 20 launch of SKIMS’ [IG] The Wedding Shop limited edition pieces for him and her.
Photographer Carin Backoff [IG] captures the couple in a collection that ranges from lace intimates and romantic corsets to shapewear, pajamas and loungewear.
This may be the first time the groom held a white flower bouquet over his groin in an ad campaign. The shot is a cheeky nod to Schwarzenegger’s full-frontal ‘White Lotus’ scene.
Read MorePucci Taps Bibi Breslin for Spring 2025 Marmo Collection Campaign in Nod to Old Hollywood
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In Pucci’s latest images from the Marmo Spring 2025 campaign, model Bibi Breslin gone blonde seems to channel Marilyn Monroe and 1960s Palm Springs life in images by Drew Vickers [IG].
Pucci’s Gram writes: “Hollywood’s golden age meets the Italian coast” about Bibi’s images, styled by Jacob K. / Makeup by Lucy Bridge; hair by Eugene Soulemain
And the Pucci website writes: “The new Marmo Collection by Pucci, curated by [Artistic Director] Camille Miceli, showcases draped volumes, Roman influences, and a glamorous nod to the 1920s.”
The 1920s?
Read MoreWhen LOEWE’s Jonathan Anderson Was Inspired by The Glasgow School
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AOC is reviewing the totality of Anderson’s work for LOEWE, including work we’ve not shared before. These fashion images capturing the 2018 Loewe x Charles Rennie Mackintosh capsule collection are a perfect example of Anderson’s enormous respect for Arts & Crafts movements worldwide.
The handsome Felix Sueur joined with models Fran Summers and Giselle Norman in the Loewe x Charles Rennie Mackintosh capsule collection lookbook lensed by fashion photographer Craig McDean with styling by Benjamin Bruno. /Hair by Anthony Turner; makeup by Lynsey Alexander
Read MoreJonathan Anderson Departs LOEWE | Where He's Headed Is Hardly a Secret
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Designer Jonathan Anderson Resigns As Loewe’s Creative Director After 11 Years
The news was confirmed Monday, March 17 following months of speculation about the evolving chess game supporting creative talent at LVMH. The question is whether all players will be in place in a day or two, or the completion wait goes on.
After spending hours revisiting Jonathan Anderson’s body of work, taking the reins at Dior would be absolute perfection for him. Both Anderson are Chiuri are humanists, with a profound attachment to craft and human artistry. Both designers embrace the entire international community at large and are devoted to honoring history in fresh, new ways.
To seal the deal for AOC, watching the LOEWE Pre-Spring/Summer 2025 Campaign video, Lilith’s name appears as 1800 BC in the upper left hand corner of the art studio segment. That love note to feminists and Jewish women nails it for Jonathan Anderson at Anne of Carversiville.
Read MorePharrell Williams Carries the Olympic Torch Onwards to UNESCO for Louis Vuitton Men
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Pharrell Williams Carries the Olympic Torch Onwards to UNESCO for Louis Vuitton Men
The Louis Vuitton Men Spring 2025 campaign, lensed by Stef Mitchell with Gabriel Moses [IG] as photographer and director, The visual effects continue the major themes Louis Vuitton Men creative director Pharrell Williams introduced at his fashion show held in Paris at UNESCO House.
This season Vuitton Men teamed up with Air Afrique in Paris, a consultancy inspired by those glorious years when all things seemed possible, and a multicultural youth quake took hold around the world.
After his recent role representing Louis Vuitton and his adopted country of France at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Williams was feeling the love of his own humanrace [Pharrell’s skincare brand] family.
Read MoreLVMH Orchestrates 3 Next Act Chairs for Bertrand, Arnault, Angeloglou March 2025
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LVMH Orchestrates 3 Next Act Chairs for Bertrand, Arnault, Angeloglou March 2025
LVMH has taken major steps to fortify management of its largest brands Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior with promotions from its own rich stable of executive talent.
Damien Bertrand, currently CEO of Loro Piana, will become deputy CEO of Louis Vuitton.
Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou, who joined Vuitton as strategic missions director for fashion and leather goods and was later named executive vice president, will become deputy CEO of Christian Dior Couture.
Frédéric Arnault, currently CEO of LVMH Watches, which comprises Tag Heuer, Hublot and Zenith, will become CEO of Loro Piana.
Read MoreLa Beauté Louis Vuitton Launches in Fall 2025, Dame Pat McGrath Creative Director
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Louis Vuitton is launching La Beauté Louis Vuitton with Dame Pat McGrath
The makeup collection will initially launch with 55 lipsticks, 10 lip balms and eight eye palettes. "Working backstage for over 20 years at Louis Vuitton fashion shows, I am thrilled to now play such a key role in the launch of La Beauté Louis Vuitton, which is the result of extraordinary craftmanship, creativity and innovation," says McGrath.
McGrath will continue to oversee her own make-up brand, Pat McGrath Labs, which she launched in 2015 with great success. The LVMH structure for La Beauté Louis Vuitton mirrors the one in place with Guerlain’s Violette Serrat.
Read More'Checking Out' at Ritz Hotel Paris by Tim Walker Prompts New Art of Living Hotel Stories
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In 2012, Grace Coddington styled Josephine Skriver, Kate Moss, Mirte Maas, Patricia van der Vliet and Sigrid Agren in Tim Walker’s phantasmagoria of feminine beauty and luxury hotel romanticism in ‘Checking Out’ for Vogue US. The hotel is the Ritz Paris and it prompted a move of the fashion story into AOC Living, with the intention of writing in-depth about the history of the famous hotel and its founders César and Marie-Louise Ritz.
Read MoreAOC Taps Debra Shaw in Dior Cruise 2025 for a History Lesson on Pre-Christian Scottish Women
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AOC Taps Debra Shaw in Dior Cruise 2025 for a History Lesson on Pre-Christian Scottish Women
Maria Grazia Chiuri staged her Dior Cruise 2025 show in the gardens of Drummond Castle in Scotland, with bagpipes making the occasion. The winter Luxe issue of Grazia UK [IG] features top model Debra Shaw wearing key pieces from the Dior Cruise 2025 collection, lensed by Silvana Trevale [IG] at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, Scotland.
Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri Always Finds the Unique Makers for Her Collections
In fashion we concentrate so much on shape Grazia said, but textiles are a big part of our job—what you can do with them, and the changes you can make through them.” So, Chiuri went to the traditional—the tartan and cashmeres, the tweeds and the Argyles—and deftly filtered them into a collection which variously drew on the geopolitics of fabrics.
Chiuri’s collection and brief history lesson took AOC on a breakthrough journey into the history of women in Scotland and beyond. Anne never intended to land in a deep-dive into the Middle Ages. In fact, that’s exactly where our Gleneagles Defender landed.
Read MoreThe Takashi Murakami x MLB Tokyo Series Launching by Fanatics x Complex Shop
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Japanese art star Takashi Murakami wants us to know he has more than one love besides Zendaya’s latest drop fronting his Louis Vuitton collaboration. With his new Major League Baseball collection, the artist hopes to build on what he sees as the “historical friendship between Japan and the United States.”
The Takashi Murakami x MLB Tokyo Series collection launches March 7, 2025 in advance of the series between the Cubs and Dodgers that opens the MLB baseball season at the Tokyo Dome on March 18-19.
Read MoreExactly Why is Gucci Poised for a Rebound? Industry Minds Are Wondering
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Exactly Why is Gucci Poised for a Rebound? Industry Minds Are Wondering
Kering’s Gucci sales for the three months ending Dec. 31 decreased 24%. Of course Kering chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault assures financial industry professionals that Gucci is poised for a rebound.
AOC has a one-word response: Why?
Bernstein’s global luxury goods analyst Luca Solca believes he knows how to fix the problem, declaring recently that Gucci:
“needs a new, heavyweight creative director, and it needs it now. The task is to add an original and compelling fashion twist on the cleansed Gucci image Sabato De Sarno has contributed to create: more elegant, more qualitative, but dull.
A heavyweight designer [say Hedi Slimane — the most likely candidate in our view — or John Galliano or Maria Grazia Chiuri, for example] could restart the buzz around the brand, and help it to regain center stage.”
Read MoreDua Lipa Packs Up On the Go Life Essentials in New CHANEL 25 Bag
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Singer-songwriter Dua Lipa is the face of the new CHANEL 25 handbag.
In the film directed by Gordon von Steiner, Lipa arrives at a studio in New York City for a Chanel fashion photo shoot. Posing with the 25 bag, a much-needed, hold-everything accessory for people on the go, Dua Lipa sings along to the ‘80s hit “She Drives Me Crazy” by the Fine Young Cannibals.
Read MoreL'Oreal Group Invests in Jacquemus Retail Expansion and Future Beauty Business
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L'Oreal Group Invests in Jacquemus Retail Expansion and Future Beauty Business
In spring 2024, the growing cult brand Jacquemus opened stores in Dubai, Capri, and Saint-Tropez, followed by New York and London last fall.
Jacquemus annual revenue estimates had climbed to $250 million, largely self-funded from the brand’s business operations.
Sharing the Jacquemus Holiday 2024 campaign, AOC reported that the brand had maxed out its growth opportunities until it obtained a minority investor.
On January 28, Jacquemus announced that it has tapped Celine North America president Sarah Benady as its next chief executive officer. There was no doubt that an announcement was coming soon in this perfectly-orchestrated business PR blitz based on business fundamentals and not marketing word salads.
The announcement came today, February 7, that L’Oréal Group has made a minority investment in Jacquemus to fund the house’s ongoing retail growth and expansion into the beauty sector.
Read MoreGucci Is Bleeding to Death & Sabato de Sarno Is Not the Doctor She Needed
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Gucci Is Bleeding to Death & Sabato de Sarno Is Not the Doctor She Needed
Gucci creative director Sabato de Sarno is leaving Gucci after two years. Gucci’s Feb. 25 runway show will be designed by its design studio, the brand said Thursday, Feb.6.
Gucci’s Problems Are Bigger than de Sarno’s Tepid Designs
AOC does not believe that Gucci’s revenue plunge of 26% in the third quarter of 2024, a scary reflection of the brand’s current status, was solely the result of de Sarno’s tepid approach to design.
We note that his ‘marching orders’ came from Kering head and Gucci’s billionaire owner François-Henri Pinault.
You cannot cut the heart out of Alessandro Michele’s Gucci success and expect those same customers to now buy a quiet Gucci, with marketing campaigns that prompted AOC to write that the models look like they’re making a case for lobotomies for women.
Read MoreLouis Vuitton Taps Skateboarder Tyshawn Jones As Friend of the House
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Louis Vuitton Taps Skateboarder Tyshawn Jones As Friend of the House
Luxury house Louis Vuitton doesn’t need to use three banned in America initials i-e-d when reinforcing the 21st century DNA of the world’s largest luxury brand.
There’s no luxury house that AOC watches more closely than Louis Vuitton in understanding their ‘take’ on where we’re heading culturally. I should clarify that it’s Louis Vuitton Men — more than women’s — that clarifies the brand’s vision in the public sphere.
AOC didn’t understand just how tight former Christian Dior Men’s creative director Kim Jones was with Virgil Abloh, when Jones was at the helm of Louis Vuitton Men’s from 2011-2018 and passed the baton to Abloh as his mentor.
With Pharrell Williams succeeding Abloh [RIP] — we’re looking at a continuous cultural vision for LV that’s about 15 years old across three creative directors who formed their own modern-day rat pack.
Read MoreKim Jones and Virgil Abloh: As Jones Exits Dior Men, We Discover Him as Mentor to Abloh
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As Jones Exits Dior Men, We Discover Him as Mentor to Abloh
The clues were few that British designer Kim Jones was about to leave Christian Dior Mens, especially after delivering one of the most ‘stupendous’ shows of his career in his Fall 2025 presentation in Paris last on Friday last week.
Praise for Jones has been lavish from his peers, with widespread consensus that Kim Jones’ seven-years tenure at Dior Mens “accelerated the convergence of men’s fashion, art, and celebrity to warp speed.”
Kim Jones and Virgil Abloh
In writing this post, AOC was not aware of the very close relationship of Kim Jones and Virgil Abloh. We share a major taste of the duo together.
The future for Kim Jones will include his work with Charleston Trust, where the designer became a vice president in fall 2024.
Read MoreDior Beauty 'Visionary' Willow Smith on 21st Century Lip Glow and 'Big Feelings'
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Dior Beauty 'Visionary' Willow Smith on 21st Century Lip Glow and 'Big Feelings'
Dior Beauty [IG] ambassador Willow Smith [IG] joins the January 2025 campaign of cult-favorite Dior Addict Lip Glow. The new campaign is shot by Dan Beleiu [IG] and filmed by Valentin Herfray.
When Dior Beauty named Willow as an ambassador in March 2024, they described her as:
“one of the most visionary and daring young women of her generation”.
