Daily excerpts of new fashion, culture, lifestyle, activism and women's news posts 2007-2019.
Newlyweds Hailey and Justin Bieber are styled by Tonne Goodman in American Vogue’s March 2019 cover story. Photographer Annie Leibovitz captures the Biebers for an interview by Rob Haskell: Justin and Hailey Bieber Open Up About Their Passionate, Not-Always Easy but Absolutely All-In.
The Dark Side of Our Fashion Industry: Drug Abuse
By Thanush Poulsen
The fashion industry is notorious for the atmosphere of glamour, rush, and partying that surrounds it. Designers, models, and stylists appear to have the lives that a lot of people dream about: fulfilling, vibrant, and gleaming. All the shine, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it are thousands of work hours, overwhelming stress, and pressure that only increase as we go deeper into the field.
It’s not surprising that many people try coping with such enormous load through means that are no less extreme. Drug abuse, in particular, is incredibly common in the fashion industry. The use of illicit drugs and the misuse of prescription medicines are often regarded with no judgment whatsoever. At the same time, it’s easy to get blinded by the sparkling facade and miss the massive normalization of drug abuse in the industry. Many people prefer focusing on the sterile beauty that fashion represents, rather than on the ugly truth. Such lack of concern promotes denial of the condition and makes a person less likely to seek treatment.
Those who do realize they have a problem and want to get help don’t have it easy either. Living in the spotlight, constantly followed by fans and cameras that record your every move, is stressing, even for those who don’t abuse drugs. The news about addiction goes viral extremely quickly and can inflict an avalanche of public humiliation on a celebrity. It makes finding the right facility to get treatment twice as hard due to concerns for confidentiality. For this reason, it’s hard to overestimate the impact a single private rehab center (navigate here) can have on a person’s life.
Gigi Hadid Is Alluring Rio Beach Beauty Covering ELLE US March 2019, Lensed By Chris Colls
Supermodel Gigi Hadid appears in her first ever ELLE US cover triad, taking us to Rio de Janeiro in an issue that confronts the “allure of dangerous women”. Chris Colls captures the American all star posing in Cynthia Rowley pink, Balmain, Hermes, Valentino and more styled by Ilona Hamer.
In her interview ‘All Eyes on Gigi Hadid”, the supermodel responds to the ongoing attacks against the insta girls that she is a woman of privilege. In reality, these women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, but Gigi does address her privilege in an honest and thoughtful way:
"I mean, I understand it. I come from privilege, and I recognize my privilege. But because my mom was on a TV show [Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills], people think that my whole childhood was fame. It absolutely was not. My mom was a model. She moved to the States when she was 16 to send money back to her family in Holland. My dad was a refugee and worked his way up in every way. I work hard to honor my parents."
Theodore McCarrick, previously the Archbishop of Washington, DC and Newark and a high-ranking Cardinal was defrocked last week and sent to live out his days in “prayer and penance'“ over sex abuse claims against him.
The New York Times has delivered a staggering, in-depth look at the Catholic Church and its crisis over sexual abuse — and sexual abstinence generally, considering the scale of it homosexual population among priests. Entitled ‘It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.’ Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out, writer Elizabeth Dias navigates the complexity of church doctrine that drives away homosexuals in shame, while attracting a preistly population estimated to be minimally one-third gay.
CNN Style wasn’t kidding, when Stephy Chung introduced an in-depth profile of a legendary New York style icon with the words ”Even at 96, Iris Apfel shows little interest in slowing down.”
Known for her bold and eccentric mix of haute couture with flea market finds, Apfel’s notoriety got a major boost in 2005, when her personal clothing collection went on display at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Renamed the Anna Wintour Costume Center in May 2014, the renovated Costume Instutute Space includes the Carl and Iris Barrel Apfel Gallery to orient visitors to The Costume Institute's exhibitions. That, dear friends, is known as making a name for yourself.
A year later, Chung’s description of Iris Apfel was one the money, with the 97-year-old signing with IMG, one of the biggest and most prestigious model and talent agencies in the fashion world. The company will represent Apfel in modeling contracts, as well as appearances and endorsements.
"I’m very excited. I never had a proper agent," Apfel told WWD. "I’m a do-it-yourself girl. I never expected my life would take this turn so I never prepared for it. It all just happened so suddenly, and I thought at my tender age, I’m not going to set up offices and get involved with all kinds of things. I thought it was a flash in the pan, and it’s not going to last. Somehow, people found me. People would just call. Tommy Hilfiger said that was no way to do it, and he put us together. I’m very excited and very grateful."
Apfel hopes that her success will inspire other older women to do the same. "I don’t think a number should make any difference and make you stop working," she said. "I think retirement is a fate worse than death. I love to work, and love my work. I feel sorry for people who don’t like what they do. I do it now to the exclusion of everything else. I meet interesting, creative people, my juices flow and I really have a fine time."
MERCI STORE PARIS. PHOTO BY ROBIN BENZRIHEM ON UNSPLASH
'Paris Good Fashion' Launches 5-Year Plan Making Paris Center Of Sustainable Fashion Industry
The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of the world’s carbon footprint and is considered to be the second biggest polluter of fresh water globally, producting 20% of the world’s industrial wastewater. Forbes adds that the global fashion industry uses 24% of insecticides and 11% of pesticides required to produce crops used in garments.
Until now, London has led the international pace in the fashion sustainability movement. This week, Paris weighed in with a new five-year plan designed to establish French credentials in this critical arena of public policy and environmental action.
Called ‘Paris Good Fashion,’ the project outlines a five-year plan to build an open, collaborative community of fashion professionals, entrepreneurs, designers and experts working together to make Paris a sustainable fashion capital.
Frédéric Hocquard, deputy to Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, and Antoinette Guhl, deputy in charge of social economy and solidarity, as well as former fashion journalist Isabelle Lefort, promised a more comprehensive project outline at a June 2019 event that will also feature campaigns promoting fashion recycling and conferences surrounding sustainable discussions
WYNWOOD, MIAMI. PHOTO BY MERIÇ DAĞLI ON UNSPLASH
New Study Confirms Communities of Color Are Hardest Hit By Growing Wealth Inequality
By Chuck Collins, a director of the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies. Originally published on Yes! Magazine.
The story of the growing inequality in the United States has many dimensions.
There is the overarching story of the last four decades of polarizing income, wealth, and opportunity. But the many ways these inequalities manifest depend on people’s gender, race, age, immigration status, and other experience.
One piece of the story is to understand how 40 years of public policies have worsened the racial wealth divide and enriched the top 1 percent.
Wealth is where the past shows up in the present, both in terms of historical advantages and barriers. Measures of wealth—what you own minus what you owe—reflect the multigenerational story of White supremacy in asset-building.
For example, the median White family now has 41 times more wealth than the median Black family and 22 times more wealth than the median Latino family. These are among our findings in “Dreams Deferred,” a new study on the racial wealth divide that I co-authored for the Institute for Policy Studies.
Overall, inequality has grown as wages for almost half of all U.S. workers have been flatlined since the late 1970s. Meanwhile, expenses for housing, health care, and other basic needs have risen. This has touched people of all races, fueling some of the discontent of both regressive and progressive populism.
Zoë Kravitz Chills With Michelob Ultra In Superbowl Sunday Quiet Moments Commercial
ELLE US shares Zoë Kravitz’s upcoming Michelob Ultra Super Bowl Sunday commercial, and it’s as chill as she is. Kravitz has made drinking beer — well, soothing. The ‘Big Little Lies’ actor whispers quietly into two giant microphones, opening her bottle of Michelob Ultra against a lush green vista of low-range mountains and cascading waterfalls.
Directed by Emma Wastenberg with a mostly female production team, the commercial is positively tranquil, a palate cleanser in a raucous, high-stakes football game.
We can’t get a good look at Zoe’s earrings, but they share design DNA with GlamTribal™ Double Sweet Pink Elephants Bone Tagua Earrings. A new design adaptation is in the offing.
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10% of retail price supports Kibera (Nairobi) School for Girls and elephant conservation in Kenya
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Handcrafted in America; natural variations and minor substitutions for sizing apply. Statue not included. Earrings shipped in burlap pouch w/recycled tissue.
Bubble, the new online destination for curated, innovative health & wellness products is live. Bubble features the best-tasting, highest-integrity health foods designed for a variety of foodie needs and lifestyles, including Keto, Paleo, Vegan, and Gut health. With new seed funding from supermodel and entrepreneur, Karlie Kloss, NBA star, Miles Plumlee, and OpenNest’s investor Tyler Wakstein, Bubble plans to introduce more independent food brands to its marketplace and launch its own branded products, including their first release of Hella, a new, better-for-you cocoa hazelnut spread.
“At Bubble, we’re on a mission to refresh ‘clean eating’ by removing the limits of previous health food marketplaces so people can redefine the way they shop, discover, and eat food,” said Jessica Young, Bubble’s Founder & CEO. “We want to be the place someone first hears about what is happening in health food and can buy it. Our marketplace is designed to be the one-stop shop for vetted health products, curated to fit individual dietary and functional needs. We are creating our own world in the future of food, a bubble, where things are easy, transparent and protected.”
Writer Nicole Dennis-Benn Shares Her Brooklyn-Based, Black Beauty Fashion Inspirations
Nicole Dennis-Benn Finds Her Voice Through Fashion ELLE US
Bern explains that given that “I’ll always be ‘alien’ as a black person in America’, originally from Jamaica, she wears clothes from people who have her back. Literally. Bern bagged dressing to assimilate for years, trading her lower style profile to dressing to be seen in clothes created by black designers.
I have found community in black-owned boutiques. Martine’s Dream, in the heart of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, brings to mind the Caribbean with its island-inspired, bohemian-chic airy cotton dresses and skirts, its kimonos and caftans. TracyChambers Vintage and Indigo Style Vintage, also both Brooklyn-based, sell timeless pieces— from sweaters reminiscent of Denise Huxtable’s wardrobe on The Cosby Show to pleated dresses with shoulder pads and gold buttons that are very Clair Huxtable.
Why Sierra Leonean Women Don’t Feel Protected By Domestic Violence Laws
By Luisa T. Schneider, Postdoctoral research fellow, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. First published on The Conversation
Sierra Leone has a long history of sexual and gender based violence, dating back to the colonial era and stretching into the years of independence which began in 1961. The country’s civil war, which raged between 1991 and 2002, brought international attention to the high levels of violence against women.
In this way, Sierra Leone is similar to many young democracies in Africa with a violent history; it struggles with patriarchal attitudes and high levels of violence against women and girls.
After the war, several legal changes were made to try and address this kind of violence. One was the Domestic Violence Act, ratified in 2007. It criminalises all forms of violence – physical, sexual, emotional and economic — against women and outlines strict punishments for perpetrators.
Ivanka Trump Is MIA In DC But Quietly Handed Five New Chinese Trademarks As Trade Talks Begin
Presidential daughter Ivanka Trump seems to be MIA these days. In a pull-no-punches change, fashion magazines like Vogue US don't hold back in levying major criticism against both Ivanka and Melania Trump. This is a first in my memory.
Because Ivanka is so thoroughly capitalizing on her biz interests in China -- being awarded fiva new Chinese trademarks just as trade negotiations begin again -- it's clear that the presidential daughter has not ended her biz operations. Reality appears that she intends to build a major name for herself in China.
Conflict of interest? NEVER have American citizens have a family just 'rub our noses in disdain' for our silly, stupid attempts at not having an imperial presidency run by an imperial, disdainful-for- little-people family. The Trumps are so audacious that her ‘daddy’ (her word) has been quietly promoting his daughter to become president of the World Bank.
American Women's Satisfaction W/How They Are Treated His All-Time Low, But Men Think We Are Fine
How interesting that Republican white men are saying that Democrats are undoing all the progress women have made. Politico has photographed the 36 new women members of the House. 35 are Dems; 1 lone WV woman is a Republican.
I would say that Republican white men are really running scared if electing women to Congress -- unlike their white men party -- represents a step backwards for women in 2019. Let that sink in. The party that elected 1 freshman woman to the House is telling the party that elected 35 freshmen woman to the House that we are setting women back.
Hey, boys, maybe your War on Women worked so well that once and for all, you stirred up a heap of trouble for yourselves. As for your inner fears . . . you probably should be runnin' scared.
For most of you -- the ones left -- you embrace a version of Christianity that says women must be subservient to men and obey you. No wonder you're confused about the hurricane arriving in DC. All your witches on brooms jokes will get you nowhere. DEAL WITH THEM. And just remember that you and your egregious, anti-people policies are a key reason they are so pissed off.
Related: Women’s satisfaction with how society treats them hits a record low. Marketwatch
Eye: KKW Beauty Classic Red Crème Lipstick Is Perfect Color For Democratic Women Going Bold!
Superwoman Kim Kardashian is set to fire up followers worldwide with the launch of her first, straight-up red lipstick. Using her own incredible star power, Kardashian West has used her KKW Beauty Instagram pages to create the buildup to launching KKW Beauty’s Classic Red Crème Lipstick online and in a pop-up at South Coast Plaza on Friday Jan. 25. Images by Greg Swales.
There’s no doubt that the new shade — which is very Old Hollywood glam — creates a new wing of the previously neutrals, nudes, and pinks KKW Beauty assortment. Is KKW becoming as bold as America’s new women presidential candidates, and the newly-elected Democratic party lady posse that has arrived in Washington, DC?
I seem to recall that Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was just sworn in as the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress, used the public response to her red lipstick as a means of honoring a Supreme Court justice.
Michaela Coel Launches Hugo Blick Netflix Drama 'Black Earth Rising' About Rwandan Genocide
The February 2019 issue of Vogue US touches base with writer and actor Michaela Coel in a small cafe near her London apartment. AOC first met up with the Bafta-winning actor Coel in the February issue of British Vogue. Her essay ‘Flight Or Fight: Michaela Coel On Why We Need To Talk About Race’ was calming, as she dug deeper into the topic of ‘white privilege’ and racial stereotypes than the usual talking heads. I can learn from Michaela Coel.
Coel, now 31, rose to fame in Britain in the “semiautobiographical and widkedly funny TV series ‘Chewing Gum’. After dropping out of university twice, Coel ended up in drama school. So totally disenchanted with the roles offered to her, she wrote her own one-woman theatrical show, one that eventually became ‘Chewing Gum’.
Her latest TV project ‘Black Earth Rising’ is an eight-part drama by Hugo Blick, in which Coel plays Kate Ashby, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. The series will debut on Netflix January 25.
Kate is raised as the adopted daughter of Eve (Harriet Walter), a British barrister, who joins forces with her colleague Michael (John Goodman) take on the prosecution of an African warlord who played a role in ending the genocide.
In the series, Kate has to reevaluate her ideas of right and wrong, which is perhaps why she wrote such an insightful essay on race a year ago. “This role changed me as a person,” she says.
Heji Shin's Kanye West's Kunsthalle Zurich Gallery Show: "I Knew People Would Hate This Exhibition"
Artist Heji Shin is no stranger to controversy, writes Tom Waite for Dazed.
Shin is currently showing some of her newest works at the Kunsthalle Zurich gallery, with an exhibition featuring nine larger-than-life injet portraits of Kanye West. The two separate prints are pasted together and printed directly onto the gallery’s walls.
Why do people hate the exhibition, according to Shin? “This desire to have art to meet their moral and political standards has always existed. Today, more than ever, art is considered as the ultimate validation.”
The artist’s Kanye portraits express a rebellion to political correctness sweeping the art world.
After meeting Kanye in Chicago, she joined him in rural Uganda, with a generally detached attitude about the rapper’s comments about slavery, his idolizing of Donald Trump or his often incoherent tweets. The actual images were shot in 10 minutes in LA.
Shin’s disinterest in Kanye’s political attitudes changed quickly when I saw people getting really mad. I was interested in how the media portrayed him all of the sudden, “when he expressed his opinion.”
Rising Photographer + Global Humanist Bibi Cornejo Borthwick Doesn't Buy Into 'Flawless'
Two words pop up in most narratives around the photography of Bibi Cornejo Borthwick: ‘intimate’ and ‘revealing’. Borthwick doesn’t shoot digital, preferring film. Her visual lens is not one of perfection. A quick survey of the Brooklyn-based daughter of fashion designer Maria Cornejo and photographer Mark Borthwick creates a defining image, one that resonates deeply with AOC.
Borthwick’s fashion photography career has moved into high gear in recent months. In the last six months, she’s shot three major editorials for Vogue US — including ‘Personal Best’ for the February 2019 issue, Victoria Beckham for Vogue Australia’s November issue and ‘Coolest Stales’ for WSJ Magazine’s December/January issue.
The activist appeared on the new Dazed 100 list. What got our attention is the Dazed reference to her Bellies project, cofounded with NBA player Wilson Chandler, the unisex sneakers for kids help America’s kids. For every pair of shoes sold, Bellies “feeds a belly”, working to nourish inner city areas while educating communities on the importance of nutrition in a bid to eliminate child hunger in America.
USA-France ambassador Jane D. Hartley, Rihanna, Bernard Arnault, and his wife Hélène Mercier at Christian Dior SS 2016 fashion show.
Rihanna and LVMH Team UP With Potential To Create Dynamic, People-Centric, Global Luxury Brand
Vanessa Friedman asks for The New York Times: “Is Rihanna the Coco Chanel of the 21st century?” Can the multi-hyphenate talent, without an ounce of fashion training, launch a new powerhouse luxury brand?
Bernard Arnault, chief executive of LVMH, thinks so and is in serious talks with Rihanna about launching a new global Fenty brand. Friedman writes that execs at Fenty Beauty and LVMH corporate were astonished over the runaway success of Fenty Beauty, launched in a diverse array of skin tones and with a fan base of 6.3 million Instagram followers. Fenty Beauty was named one of TIME magazine’s 25 Best Inventions of 2017.
Robyn Rihanna Fenty IS a real, live heritage brand with a global reach. No ‘authentic’ story must be created around her image. Rihanna IS the story and she has created it — not with mood boards on Madison Avenues — but with her entire life.
Rihanna comes to the world of luxury brands having made them her canvas for a decade. Luxury fashion has brought her far beyond the limits of the music world. Styled by Mel Ottenberg since 2011, Rihanna has aligned herself with emerging designers and luxury brands like Lanvin and Givenchy. Rather than working with a luxury house exclusively, she used these same brands to suit her purposes.
In 2014, she was named fashion icon of the year at the Council of Fashion Designers of America awards, where she appeared in a sheer crystal-spangled Adam Selman dress and matching cap, a white fur wrap strategically draped around her body, setting off a so-called naked trend in red carpet dressing. The next year, at the Met Gala, she wore a giant yellow cape from the Chinese designer Guo Pei, and enshrined her skill at making an entrance.
Not mentioned in Friedman’s piece, but a key component in the forthcoming Rihanna/LVMH alliance is the social conscience of the new luxury brand. Here there is an opportunity to set a very high bar, and all my instincts say that Rihanna and Arnault understand well global politics and human suffering.
RIHANNA AT THE COSTUME INSTITUTE GALA 2018. Image DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
With governments in chaos worldwide, but Rihanna anchored deeply in the lives of everyday people, I fully expect a new paradigm to emerge with a Rihanna-led Fenty house that is an activist house, too. Rihanna is deeply embedded in the obligations that women leaders have assumed in creating real change in the world.
If LVMH is equally courageous and up to the task, we might see a new luxury brand DNA that moves beyond the rarified and exclusive vision of Coco Chanel to one that touches people in big and small ways worldwide. If anyone can jumpstart this new 21st century, luxury brand vision, it’s the combined prowess of Rihanna and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault.
The GOAT won the first round of the Australian Open on Monday, besting Germany’s Tatjana Maria in a 49-minute match. Serena competed in a green Nike Jumpsuit, which she calls a ‘Serena-tard’. The stories of black fishnets are erroneous, as her tights were flesh-tone fishnets with all the circulation-boosting support that Williams needs to keep her safe from bloodclots.
In a piece of old news, the Women’s Tennis Association in December 2018 issued a ruling that makes Serena’s controversial black catsuit from the French Open appropriate attire.
Photo by Jaromír Kavan on Unsplash
Scientists Call for Drastic Drop in Emissions. U.S. Appears to Have Gone the Other Way.
By Abraham Lustgarten , ProPublica. This story was originally published by ProPublica.
The signals are blaring: Dramatic changes to our climate are well upon us. These changes — we know thanks to a steady drumbeat of alarming official reports over the past 12 months — could cripple the U.S. economy, threaten to make vast stretches of our coastlines uninhabitable, make basic food supplies scarce and push millions of the planet’s poorest people into cities and across borders as they flee environmental perils.
All is not yet lost, we are told, but the demands of the moment are great. The resounding consensus of scientists, economists and analysts tells us that the solution lies in an unprecedented global effort to immediately and drastically drop carbon emissions levels. That drop is possible, but it will need to happen so fast that it will demand extraordinary commitment, resolve, innovation and, yes, sacrifice. The time we’ve got to work with, according to the United Nations, is a tad more than 10 years.
And so it stings particularly badly to learn from a new report released this weekby the Rhodium Group, a private research company, that U.S. emissions — which amount to one-sixth of the planet’s — didn’t drop in 2018 but instead skyrocketed. The 3.4 percent jump in CO2 for 2018, projected by the Rhodium Group, would be second-largest surge in greenhouse gas emissions from the United States since 1996, when Bill Clinton was president.
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