Betty or Veronica? M.A.C takes the eternal debate to a vote! | Hollywood yohana




Before we were all deciding if we were Carries or Samanthas, we picked sides on another fictional personality divide: were you sweet, girl-next-door Betty Cooper or fiery diva Veronica Lodge? M.A.C Cosmetics and Archie Comics are teaming up to give us the opportunity to finally embody our favourite girl in real life, at least when it comes to our makeup. The “Archie’s Girls” collaboration will draw inspiration from over 70 years of the Riverdale beauties’ looks, from Veronica’s up-scale poise to Betty’s no-fuss styling.
The collaboration may not be slated to launch until Spring 2013, but at the San Diego Comic Con today and tomorrow, there are events underway to celebrate the upcoming partnership. Archie comic book artist and illustrator Dan Parent will be on hand at the city’s M.A.C Gaslamp location, where fans can get custom sketches done by Parent himself and watch him demonstrate illustrations. As if that wasn’t already enough, a whole street team of Archie look-alikes will be parading around the San Diego streets, undoubtedly causing heart palpitations along the way (though we were personally always more fond of the ever-cool Jughead).
If you can’t wait until next spring to get in on the Archie action, you can text M.A.C at 898622 with either “Betty” or “Veronica”—your votes will go toward determining who will win Archie’s heart, and the winner’s fans will be repaid by being the first to know when the collection will become available online.

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Tamara Mellon leaves Jimmy Choo in a hurry, but why?|Hollywood yohana




News broke over the weekend that Tamara Mellon, co-founder and creative director of the world-renowned Jimmy Choo, would be leaving the company—and information about the split is still being released to the curious public.
Mellon, who was going to finish out the month as a creative consultant for the design team, is now being reported to have made her resignation immediate, and we can’t help but suspect some kind of bad blood. Jimmy Choo was bought by luxury firm Labelux last May, and Mellon gained over £85 million from the sale, a good reason not to stay with a job that is no longer completely enjoyable.
Leaving at the same time as Mellon is Joshua Shulman, the CEO of Jimmy Choo, and the timing of their departures is making more than a few fashion industry insiders suspicious, and Shulman’s recent statement doesn’t seem to help: “We’re not going off together [to pursue a new project].” Many assume that Mellon will start another brand—she didn’t seem adverse to the idea in a recent interview she gave. Mellon and Schulman are heralded for their design sensibilities and business smarts—they’re “the perfect cocktail of art and science”—and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that some kind of partnership is at play.

THEY SAID…
Daily Mail: “Her departure, along with the label’s chief executive Joshua Schulman, has raised more than a few eyebrows in the industry.”
Fashionologie: “According to Labelux, Mellon left ‘to pursue [an] independent career,’ and the company has no plans to replace her as chief creative officer.”
Fashionista: “It’s the end of an era, for sure, and always interesting to watch how a company changes when it loses a founder.”
The Cut: “In related news, Jimmy Choo will probably have to get a new face for its fragrance.”

WE SAID…
Emilie Dingfeld, copy editor: “Her sudden departure could be due to trouble in paradise since Labelux purchased the brand, or it could just be an alignment of the stars—85 million pounds is a pretty good reason to get up and move. It’s clear that Mellon was critical to Jimmy Choo’s success, so it’ll surely be a challenge to find a replacement who understands the brand as well as she does—but change can be good. Whether or not she’s going to collaborate with Shulman is open to speculation, but let’s hope that the dynamic duo will pair up and give fashion another brand to covet. She wasn’t named Businesswoman of the Year by Harper’s for nothing, right?”




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How gleaming metallics and the like are lighting up both art and fashion | Hollywood yohana

Art: How luminescence is lighting up both art and fashion


The art world—much like the fashion world—loves to redefine colour every chance it gets. Recently, a new batch of materials and technologies has enabled artists and designers to work with exquisite light-infused hues, ranging from peek-a-boo prismatics to sizzling minerals and gleaming metallics.


Iridescence, for example, can be seen in both cutting-edge exhibits and the latest fashion collections. A visual property of mother-of-pearl and moonstones, oil slicks, alloys and minerals, iridescence occurs when light plays over micro-grooved surfaces and separates into prismatic colours. For a visual cue, see photos of Carey Mulligan at this year’s Met Ball: her scaled Prada halter dress, made entirely of metal paillettes, reflected a different spectrum of hues in nearly every red carpet shot.
One artist leading the way with iridescent materials, especially when it comes to the mineral and fluorescent ranges, is Anselm Reyle. The German painter and sculptor’s body of work includes large striped canvases covered in PVC foil and glitter, LED- and neon-light sculptures, and huge assemblages of crumpled foil. Reyle has devoted the past two years to designing accessories for Christian Dior; among the most spectacular of his prototypes are plum-coloured metallic leather bags with quilted neon-yellow topstitching. “A number of people from the [fashion] industry had been collecting my [art] work,” he says, explaining his transition from art studio to atelier. “It was appealing because of my focus on texture, colours and materiality.”
In London, Central Saint Martins fashion design graduate Crimson Rose O’Shea is following a similar route. She pleats transparent iridescent foil into artful objects and costumes that look like glossy, operatic neo-Elizabethan neck ruffs and underskirts.
Always in flux, iridescence is glimpsed rather than seen. In Saskatoon, artist Marie Lannoo creates achingly beautiful prismatic foil wall-works and installations in which the colour appears to “turn on” when you look at them. In a collaboration with scientists at the University of Saskatchewan, Lannoo created new colour and light effects with high-tech prismatic foils. “I’m interested in enlarging the dimensional aspect of colour,” she says.

The optical or illusionistic possibilities of holographic foils are being ironically explored by 40-year-old Toronto artist Sandy Plotnikoff. Known for crafting tinsel-bright renderings of loosely daubed brush marks, he uses pink, green and gold foils—which can be bought by the yard from novelty manufacturers—to send up high art abstract-expressionist painting. The result is a group of works that brighten up as a slew of bonbon wrappers would if they were strobe-lit with halogen light bulbs.
Toronto artist Joseph Drapell places his reflective messages in various opalescent abstract paintings. His pieces often provide the viewer with high impact colour like gleaming greens and glinting reds. Some of his most gorgeous pieces take metallic and luminous pigment effects to new heights. Their brilliance is achieved with a variety of tools. Drapell applies swaths of paint in wildly varying viscosities, using raking devices or a squeegee to create light-refracting grooves. Ravishing molten abstracts result, such as his four-foot-square Mirror of Music (2012): actual multicoloured glitter lies beneath translucent layers of midnight blue, azure and violet, interrupted by orange-copper and blue-violet swirls. His newer hues recall those seen in Hubble telescope images of nebulae, galaxies and other cosmic wonders.
Alberta-born artist Christian Eckart, now based in Houston, produces fractal-based paintings and sculptures that would not be amiss on the set of Doctor Who. Made up of triangle-shaped glass panels cobbled together like facets of a quartz crystal, Eckart’s 2011 free-floating, 10-metre-long Glass Hexagonal Perturbation—“Hive Brane” (short for “membrane”) evokes sublime luminosity in the east lobby of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. Eckart’s reputation, however, is based on his ongoing series Curved Monochrome Paintings, which are shiny, shield-like aluminum sculptures coated with automotive lacquer in pearlescent colours such as pink-lavender and blue-gold. Looking into their highly reflective depths, you see yourself and the space around you awash in vibrant harmonic colour. However, one of the world’s tallest examples of luminescence is Toronto’s brightly LED-ed CN Tower. It glows over the city in remarkable nü-hues after dark and changes its canvas with vibrant bursts of light.
This growing focus on iridescence may be telling us something. We are in a post-millennial moment when messages of importance must sparkle in order to make us look away from the dazzle of our iPhone screens and take notice. Perhaps this new luminosity is the next chapter in the evolution of colour and a sign about the future of the gallery wall—that it will keep reflecting the sheen for as long as we need it to.

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A D&G showdown at the O.K. Corral | Hollywood yohana

Photos via nymag.com


 Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce took a trip to the O.K. Corral for their Spring 2010 D&G collection. There were plenty of ripped jeans and snap-up denim shirts, but more than cowboy chic, this was high-noon Wild West camp: Robber barons in three-piece pinstiped suits, barmaids in tiered denim and eyelet minis and leather bustiers, and (presumably) gun-slinging frontier women in ruffled maxi skirts. If you’re a D&G girl, then this collection has all the fun, sex and frills (and denim) you require. And if you aren’t, well, then ruffled, high-waisted leather bloomers were never really for you anyway.


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Mercedes-Benz Start Up awards Duy Nguyen as its Quebec City semi-finalist! | Hollywood yohana






After last year’s impressive show in Montreal, 2012 saw the Mercedes-Benz Start Up semi-finals set up shop in Quebec City. And so it was at the fairy tale-esque Château Frontenac where I was reunited with the permanent panel from last year’s inaugural edition, plus two new local fashion experts.
JoAnne Caza, the captain of Mercedes-Benz Canada, wowed me with her perfect bilingualism (she’s from the West Island). Local Twitter fashion fans were ecstatic about photogenic Aussie-native Jarrad Clark who heads IMG Fashion—and who was also a judge on Project Runway Australia. Then, of course, there was Hans Koechling, president of The Image Is (who just got back from working on Next Top Model in Britain), and, the Simon Cowell of the group, Robin Kay, president of the FDCC. Joining me in guest judge duties were Christiane Garant of Myco Anna and Louise Maheux from Simons.
The four up-and-coming brands that were invited to show in a group runway presentation were Masabni by Jennifer Masabni, Duy by Duy Nguyen, By Thomas by Natasha Thomas and the eponymous Catherine Henry. I was delighted to meet up backstage with super-stylist Christina Louiso (she jetted the very next day to work in Merida, Mexico) who put together four distinctive looks for the designers. Front row seats were reserved for none other than Pao Lim and Danielle Martin, the dynamic duo behind 2011’s winning label Martin Lim.
After the judges’ deliberations, we all decided that Duy had the chops to move forward to the final round to be held at World MasterCard Fashion Week in Toronto in October. His couture silhouettes and avant-garde detail floated elegantly down the runway. On the train ride home, Nguyen was actually my seat neighbour and so I already have insight on his future design plans. But I guess I’ll have to wait with everybody else to see the fruits of his labour. Good luck, Duy!


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True Blood recap: We take wardrobe cues from Bill’s punk days, Pam’s sparkly mini and what Jessica wore to dirty dance at Fangtasia | Hollywood yohana




When we left off last week, we’d been quickly caught up on what had been happening in Bon Temps while Sookie took her Fae sabbatical. Now that the fairy dust has settled, we start to see what this season will be about: Jason’s new animal urges, Eric and Sookie playing house, and a woo-ooh, witchy woman, who’s got the moon in her eyes.
Somebody’s Baby Tonight
-Eric and Sookie continue their not-yet-lovers quarrel about Eric’s landlord status—he asks nicely for her to be his so he can protect her, but she’s not biting and neither is he for now.
-Sookie heads to Bill’s to appeal to him for help and learns about his new royal rank from his guards.
-She interrupts Bill and Katerina, the sexed up spy-witch, finishing up from some post debriefing de-briefing. By this we mean that they were doing the deed, which makes it the second between-the-sheets scene for the season. Check!
-Bill is kind of noncommittal about helping Sookie and basically tells her to move on and move out. Out with the henleys, in with the ‘tude?
Sookie’s guide to what to wear to ask your ex for a favour
A chambray dress and mustard yellow cardie say: “I don’t want to seduce you, but you better still think I’m cute.” ($177


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Andrej Pejic is getting a reality show | Hollywood yohana




Finally, a reality show we’re actually excited for! Reps for Andrej Pejic, the world’s most famous androgynous, gender-bending model (and our February cover star), have finally confirmed the blonde stunner’s forthcoming reality show, which will trail Pejic for weeks as he performs normal model duties.
In an email to Fashionista, DNA Models (Pejic’s New York management) wrote: “It’s still in the early stages, but yes, there is a show being developed around Andrej,” confirming year-long rumours that were first sparked by a tweet from Pejic himself.
Also appearing in the show is Jadranka Savic, Pejic’s always-supportive mom, who told Australian media last year that Pejic was “the most beautiful girl I’ll ever see in a wedding dress” after he closed the Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2011 haute couture show as a bride. “It was always that I wanted to be pretty, to look beautiful, as a girl would want to,” he told NY Magazine, adding that he’s always focused on simply being himself rather than playing into gender identity.
Groundbreaking gender-bending aside, we think Pejic will be incredible reality show fodder: this is the person who staged a fake pregnancy at an airport just to mess with reporters, after all.


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We’re following Grimes on tour, catching Cannes films in Montreal and checking out Toronto’s retail happenings | Hollywood yohana




 Despite being in full Fall 2012 mode during the week—the September Fall Trends issue of FASHION just wrapped—on the weekend it’s all about the summer lovin’. We’ve got new stores and pop-up shops to check out, movies imported from Cannes to watch, and a rooftop barbecue party to attend. Oh, and Grimes is in basically every town.

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