Double Seven Nightclub Fetes Muse Magazine's Fabio Covi and Luigi Murenu

Jeffrey Jah, co-owner of New York nightclub The Double Seven, hosted a party for fashion magazine Muse Thursday, March 3rd at the Royal Monceau Hotel in the City of Lights. The nightclub aficionado organized the celebration in honor of Muse magazine's editor Fabio Covi and hair stylist Luigi Murenu to celebrate their 25th issue.

L-R: Guest, Ana Dello Russo, Luigi Murenu; Isabeli Fontana; Luigi Murenu and Natasha Poly

Fashion's top runway top models were all in attendance including Isabeli Fontana, Natasha Poly and Joan Smalls. We hear runway star Rie Rasmussen and a fetching of other catwalkers created quite the commotion when they began an impromptu photo shoot (sans tops) at the front door of the party. Kanye West’s muse, Italian fashionista Anna Dello Russo’s got quite the shock when she stopped by to kick off Paris Fashion Week.

Me? I just like the glitz and photos. Ha.

Hong Kong's Strange Beauty Products

One of the coolest things about traveling far away? New beauty products to discover. I always try to duck into a local pharmacy or beauty specialty store when I travel. My favorites are the pharmacies in Paris. They have so many cool products to discover. (Gwyneth Paltrow recently did a great post on French pharmacy products on her Goop website. Click here to read.) We were so busy in Beijing that we didn't have a second to check out the local offerings, so I made sure to find some time in Hong Kong.



I popped into a store called Sasa that was crammed with a hundreds of different products and tools. The closest we have in New York are the Ricky's beauty supply shops. Some of the things were so strange. Tweezers for armpit hair? Someone will have to explain that to me. There were face rollers to improve circulation, fake lash applicators, all kinds of masks and supplements, even a Snooki-type hair bump tool. The weirdest thing for sale was eyelid glue. This comes as a glue (literally) or a type of sticker that some girls use to change the shape of their eyelid. Have any of you used eyelid glue? It sounds kind of creepy, but each culture to its own. Some might find Botox weird, but that's considered normal in the U.S. these days.



I think the eyelid glue has something to do with the doll-like look is all the rage in Hong Kong. The models we worked with and the models in the magazine have a very bird-like/doll-like quality. Very thin, tall, but not as tall as models in New York, heart-shaped faces, pointy chins and big eyes made even bigger with circle lenses and lash extensions. It's an extreme kind of beauty. The same thing happens in New York with fashion models, whether it's gap-toothed smiles (very in right now), wide set eyes and big foreheads, or bushy eyebrows. Different looks will always come in and out.



Enjoy the pictures. I'm typing this backstage at the Victoria Beckham show because it's Fashion Week in New York (and my battery is dying!). We're working with the brilliant makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury on the makeup for the show. The look: glowy, glowy, glowy. I'll have a full report on all the shows later in the week. We're doing Chris Benz on Monday.

Oh, and I almost forgot! We have a giveaway. I brought back two Virtuose Precious Cells mascaras that I bought at the Lancome boutique in Hong Kong. You can't get these in the U.S.! Since it's Fashion Week, tell us the name of your favorite New York-based designer. I'll pick two comments at random. You'll get the mascara and I'll include a Bi-Facil, the world's best makeup remover. : )

Please comment by Tuesday night.



PHOTOS: Armpit tweezers (?), our favorite Hong Kong model, Sasa beauty supply store, weird beauty products!

Sketches.

Daria Werbowy--Back on the Catwalk!

Working with model Daria Werbowy is one of the nice parts of my job. I've probably said this on the blog before. She's insanely gorgeous, has great personal style and is so easy to work with. We did a shoot with Aaron De Mey and Daria the other week (for a U.S. magazine's December issue--details soon) and it was heaven. Daria had just returned from a month of sailing and she was the definition of tawny.



Daria made a rare catwalk appearance this afternoon in Paris for Balmain. She's all but retired from fashion shows, but she likes Balmain designer Christophe Decarnin so she hits their runway every other season or so.



She also modeled in Tom Ford's first women's presentation during New York Fashion Week. (Beyonce Knowles was one of the models too, as was new Lancome spokesmodel Julia Restoin Roitfeld.) If you hadn't heard, Tom is launching his women's collection in the spring. He, however, is doing it his way and is keeping everything under wraps until next year. The only photographer at the show was a house photographer and everyone invited was asked to keep mum. He wasn't Tweeting or live streaming from backstage or any of that. To paraphrase his WWD interview, and I hope I'm doing it correctly, he feels that social media has caused fashion to lose some of its mystery. Don't look for @mrtomford on Twitter any time soon.



That's one way to whip the social media scene into a frenzy! Deny them!!



Let me know what you think.

Wha??? Abbey Lee Has Gone Platinum

The Hair Transitions of Abbey Lee: L-R Fall 2010 for Emilio Pucci; Fall 2010 for Chanel Couture; Spring 2011 for Rag & Bone

Ok, so we know they're all prone to doing it at some point ... the high fashion models ... and platinum blonde hair.  Agyness Deyn, Iekeline Stange and now little Abbey Lee Kershaw.  I say little not because of her stature or popularity, this girl rocks it! I say it because the dear is a mere 20 years old (yes, I know 33 or so in model years).  We've been following her here since she first broke out as a fresh-faced catwalk star Fall 2008.

Here's what fashionologie reports about Abbey's fun new look having spoken with the gorg one herself at Chanel's Soho store opening this past Thursday:

Abbey Lee Kershaw, who not long ago cut her hair short, has taken the change even further. "I was ready for a big change," she explained this evening at the Chanel Soho store opening in New York, where she debuted her newly-dyed platinum blonde hair. She plans to keep the color all season, "unless a designer asks for it to be changed." How's it been received so far? "I only dyed it two days ago, so no one's really seen it yet." She told Modelinia of the dye job: "It took seven hours and I didn’t speak for another four hours. I’ve never dyed my hair before. Also I think that with the cut that I’ve got, it was the time to go white.”

Lee is so beautiful she could shave her head bald and still garner beauty adoration!  On another note, Stay tuned, my loves, some Spring 2011 Mercedes Benz Fashion Week posts about to roll out!

source: fashionologie

New Beginnings.

Believe it or not, this painting was my very first attempt at acrylic on canvas(!). I'm pretty excited about it, although, the last thing I need is another hobby... 

What I realized in the process, however, was that, compared to watercolor, acrylic is disgustingly easy. Now I understand what everyone means when they've been telling me that 'watercolor is really hard'. It definitely requires a lot more control, as you only get one shot, and layering isn't generally an option (at least not a good one). Acrylic, on the other hand you can go over and over on till you get exactly what you want. It generally isn't really time efficient for a designer or fashion illustrator working on the fly (which is precisely why I've never delved in in the past) but, for an artist, it's smooth sailing.

Brilliant. 

Our Spokesmodel Elettra: Green & Gorgeous! (Beauty Blog Giveaway Alert Too!)

I couldn't let Earth Day pass without doing a post on our most excellent spokesmodel Elettra. As some of you might know, Elettra is not only a model but a student and a serious environmentalist. She's studying biomedicine at the London School of Economics and was explaining her thesis to me the other day. (It has to do with global warming and farming. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say, but it was fascinating.) The girl's a total braniac.

And she happens to be as beautiful as she is smart, as these pictures attest. They're from the new issue of InStyle UK. If you live in the U.K. or near an international newsstand, pick up the issue! Elettra's definitely blessed genetically (mom is the legendarily beautiful Isabella Rossellini and dad was a model once upon a time) but she works out a lot to maintain her shape. She told InStyle that to keep her arms tone she'll do 30 pushups at a time and 60-90 when she's with her trainer. (Um, I can't even do one!)

Elettra has a great charity called Just One Frickin' Day that focuses on individual charity projects. Her current initiative is getting solar electricity panels for a hospital in Burundi, the world's poorest country. The hospital has no electricity, so once the sun sets, doctors operate wearing miners' helmets. Can you imagine?

To raise funds last year, Elettra got some of her designer pals like Chris Benz, Rag & Bone and Phillip Lim to design t-shirts. Anyone making a donation of a certain amount received a t-shirt. The shirts sold out, but Lancome made a small donation and got its hands on a special stash. We partnered with several of our favorite blogs on a giveaway today where you can get one of the t-shirts and one of our new Juicy Tubes 100% Natural Origin. Below is a list of the blogs. Make sure to check them out and leave a comment. You never know!

And stop by Just One Frickin' Day to learn more about its Burundi project.

Fab Over 40
Karla Sugar
Blogdorf Goodman
Fete a Fete
The Hungry Asian

VOGUE: More or Less ~ Fashion Model Kim Noorda Journals Her Struggles with Weight

That of which we do not speak ...

Fashion model Kim Noorda braved a year of emotional, mental and physical ups and downs and journaled her experiences for Vogue magazine.  This is a story that can't help but tear at the heartstrings.

When the beautiful dutch model began this process, she was, at five-feet-ten-inches tall, 110 pounds.

In January 2009, 22-year-old Kim Noorda visited the office of Vogue's Sally Singer to discuss her relationship with food. Kim had been identified by her agent at DNA as a worthy candidate for an intervention underwritten by the CFDA Health Initiative.

The CFDA Health Initiative was founded in 2007 to combat anorexia and bulimia in the fashion industry, to provide information and resources to models in the throes of these diseases, and, more generally, to change the aesthetic on the New York runways from extreme skinniness to a more realistic, fit ideal.

What appears below are excerpts from the article appearing now in the April 2010 issue of Vogue and also available online at Vogue.com.

~Sally Singer (Vogue)

She has a soulful grace to her, a certain introspective elegance that has endeared her to such houses as Balenciaga, Prada, and Chanel. But what was apparent by fall of 2008 was that Kim was now very thin—very thin for a statuesque Amsterdam beauty who should have been coming into her own as a woman instead of shrinking to the proportions of a naturally scrawny fourteen-year-old. Our goal, I told her, was to help her see how she could diminish the centrality of food in her thinking to ultimately have a richer and more fulfilling adult life, in and out of fashion—to, in a sense, learn to be “a little more.”  Kim agreed ... off she went to a four-week outpatient program at the Renfrew Center, a facility in New York (among other locales) that has for 25 years been treating patients with eating disorders through a multipronged therapeutic approach. This was the start of Kim Noorda’s journey of self-discovery and wellness.

Extracts from Noorda's Journals

Kim Noorda - Lanvin Fall RTW 2009 L and R

January 2009
Yesterday I went to see my doctor for medical clearance. I told him that I did not have an eating disorder, but that I also believe that I do not take care of myself well enough and that I will learn something through the treatment. I am actually afraid of telling people that I am about to do this. I do not want people to see me as someone with an eating disorder. I want them to see the underlying reasons why I do not take good enough care of myself ... my BMI is too low.

I told her (the Renfrew nutritionist) I would try to agree to (gain one pound per week) because my agents have also told me that they would like me to gain an extra five pounds. She told me that five pounds is not that much, and probably no one would even see it. I told her that people in the fashion industry see every gram of fat. . . .


I have an appointment with the nutritionist and learn that I had lost weight. I was convinced that I had gained. That was the reason I had consciously started to eat less. Surreptitiously I felt somewhat relieved. According to the rules, she had to do a weight-gain contract with me with sanctions if I had not gained at least one pound per week. I was slightly upset.


February 2009
Every season I gained a little weight, and every time it felt like I was doing fewer shows. During the shows the pressure caused me to lose weight, and people complimented me on that.... Not a single person has told me that I have gained weight since the start of the shows. Not during the castings, and not even my European agent has said anything. Everything fit. This confused me, because I thought people could see every gram. Then again, no one has said that I look good, either, or commented on my appearance otherwise. When I started looking at pictures from the first show, there were still some things I disliked. My legs and cheeks have become fatter. I really need to do something about that. Exercises. On the Internet there are no positive reactions to how I looked.

Kim Noorda - Chanel Cruise, Resort 2010 L and R

Spring 2009
I avoid scales and mirrors. Only my jeans make me aware of my weight gain. My skin is getting worse; I don’t have my period (except that one time during the shows); I don’t fit into nice clothes, don’t sleep well. So what is good about it?

At the end of April I take a job in London and stay on an extra day for castings. I call up my friend Iekeliene, who lives there, and she invites me to come along on a trip to Devon in the camper van she and her boyfriend have just bought. We listen to music, go for walks in the countryside, and talk a lot about all sorts of things, including modeling (it is good to speak with someone who knows that world). Being with them on holiday shows me how relaxed and fun it can be having lunch or dinner all together.

Now I feel quite well in myself, but it has taken a while. There were things that made me start doubting myself again. For example, the Chanel cruise show. It was my first show since prêt-à-porter. I asked my agent several times if she was sure I could do the show given the way I now looked.... I was not 90 hips anymore. My agent called me back and said the 90 hips are a bit stupid. They were going to change it on all the girls’ cards to what it really was. At the show everyone was really nice, though. They specifically said I looked good like this. From then on I got more confident.

Kim Noorda - Alberta Ferretti Lookbook, Resort 2010 (L) and Lanvin Resort 2010 (R)

Summer 2009
I travel in and out of Amsterdam for jobs and quite like it this way. I go to Pilates weekly and go swimming.

I do work for three look books. At Alberta Ferretti I can’t help noticing or imagining that they think I’m too big. Not what they wanted. I just try to do my best. At Lanvin I get canceled on the second day; they want a blonder girl. Next is Givenchy, with two models who are a lot skinnier. I try, but the shoot does not seem to work..... Halfway through the day I wanted to leave and felt I really shouldn’t be there, being this size. So I apologized and left.

Kim Noorda - Stella McCartney Lingerie S/S 2010 

I did a lingerie shoot for Stella McCartney, which was something new to me. I had never dared to do something like that before. It was strange at first but fine after all. I was happy I was not so scared anymore.

Kim Noorda w/ Iekeliene Stange backstage Chanel Haute Couture (L), @ Armani Prive' Haute Couture (Center), @ Jean Paul Galutier Haute Couture (R)

Haute couture in Paris: I expected not to be booked at all. I rent a room with Iekeliene.... I admire how independent Iekeliene is, making her own decisions, looking after what she thinks is important.

Then, before the summer holiday starts, I fly to Milan for one more job. This worries me a little, since it is with a stylist who has always complimented me when I have been really skinny. Indeed, I feel she is not too happy with how I look now. The other model has some difficulty with weight as well. She seems not really happy and at one point asks me if I am happier “like this.” When I try to speak with her more directly about it, she stops the conversation. I got kind of sad about that.

Kim Noorda - Oscar de la Renta Spring RTW 2010 (L), Proenza Schouler Spring RTW 2010 (C), backstage at Lanvin Spring RTW 2010

Fall 2009
In New York I want to be enthusiastic about the shows, but I can’t seem to: I keep being unsure about my weight. By the end of it I want to go home. Skip London. But my agents advise me to go there. Then I let go again and just do my best.... Milan, The shows do not go great, and people definitely made me feel I was too big .... at Bottega I am offered the choice at seven in the morning to bleach my eyebrows or leave, I just want to go. I am crying.... I decide to watch my weight again a little.

Kim Noorda - Nicole Miller Fall 2010 (L) and Emanuel Ungaro Fall 2010 (R)

~ Sally Singer

Just before Christmas, Kim does a flurry of work in London and Los Angeles. She studies for exams and then flies off to Thailand for a vacation with friends: “two vegetarians, one omnivore, one vegan.” When she returns, she feels “energetic and good”; she has not lost any weight.

January 2010
I was in doubt whether to write this article, thinking it should be a success story. The success is not that food and weight are never on my mind anymore, but that the influence of these thoughts has become a lot less. I watch my weight, but I do not want to compromise my health, or my happiness. ...  I see a lot more of my friends. It really feels like my life is getting some more shape.

 
The full feature article may be read in the current issue of Vogue.  You may also check out more on this feature online at Vogue.com.  It's a compelling, heartfelt and thought-provoking story for all women. 


source: vogue; images: fashionspot, style.com, rades