Cheryl Cole's Fashion Evolution

A baby-faced (and heavily made up) Cheryl poses with her new band mates as they celebrate winning Popstars: The Rivals. Pre-stylist Chezza works an interesting glittery denim crop top. Things could only get better...

Working an impeccable golden tan, our favourite Geordie’s still got that tum on show in a baby pink, crocheted cardigan – but we’re loving her glossy highlights at least.

Soooo not a good look! Back to the cornrows, Cheryl and co do the school uniform look at G-A-Y – but it ends up more Grange Hill than St. Trinians.
 Cheryl ‘scrubs up’ for her court appearance, where she was charged with assaulting a nightclub attendant. But in that jacket and those boot-cut jeans, this outfit could be described as a crime in itself.

We’re not sure if camouflage trousers were ever acceptable in the fickle world of fashion (although the Spice Girls might have had you believing otherwise), but we’re certain that these cropped versions really weren’t a good look for Cheryl. Check out Nadine’s get-up, too – Cheryl wasn’t the only Girls Aloud member who needed some serious wardrobe help!

Valentino.Fall 2014 Couture

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a Victorian painter who liked to depict archaeological fantasies of scantily draped girls lounging around Roman villas. Had he been alive today and at the Valentino couture show, he’d hardly been able to contain himself. Every one of the looks Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli sent out were inspired by the works of Pre-Raphaelite painters and poets, but first among them was a white draped tunic dress named after Alma-Tadema’s sultry study of a sleeping nymph, The Siesta, of 1868.

 

Forget historical exactitude, though. This collection was about a pair of Roman fashion designers conjuring up lyrical impressions of the ancient Imperial days of their own city, and building them into a new fantasy, from the delicately cross-laced Roman sandals up. “It’s our past we’re thinking about,” said Chiuri. “Something graceful, regal and a bit more pagan, this time.”

The clever combination of romance and relevance that is coming out of Valentino these days seems completely instinctive and unforced. On the one hand, there’s a grounded sense of how young women want to dress (it’s pretty handy that Chiuri has her eighteen-year-old daughter Rachele for reality checks) and on the other, there are the superb technical abilities which put the house in the category of up-there-on-clouds excellence.

 That sensible sensibility has already brought the long, lace Renaissance-inspired dress to fashion. It continues for fall with breathtakingly complex silver beaded embroidery, trailing in layers, and wondrous gilded gowns with tabard bodices.

But the new thing is simplicity—or rather, silhouettes which are unencumbered by any surface decoration. It’s a truism in fashion that these things are even more difficult to accomplish than any amount of froth and beading. Yet there’s absolutely no panic about that at Valentino. 

The stark, noble toga dresses and subtly dramatic constructs of draped and knotted silk in this collection carry the hallmarks of perfectionism that has been native to this house ever since Mr. 

Valentino Garavani set it up in the fifties. The upshot: What we’re seeing here is the gradual reaching out to different kinds of women—or maybe it’s the same women, in a different mood. 

And whichever way we look at it, Chiuri and Piccioli are turning their Roman couture fantasy into business reality. Such is the success of their work that they say they’ve taken on 30 more people in their couture ateliers to meet the growing demand.

Cara Delevingne and Selena Gomez splash around in St Tropez

First we saw snaps of Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss on holiday in Ibiza, and the latest celeb BFFs to take a trip together are supermodel Cara Delevingne and ex-Disney star Selena Gomez, who were seen splashing about in St Tropez together.
As you do when you're an A-list celeb.

The hot duo were aboard a luxury yacht, but soon plunged in for some respite from the heat.
Surprisingly, Cara looked far from high-fashion in knee-length red shorts and a plain black bikini top, while Selena wore a stunning white one-piece as she pulled off several modelesque poses while on board.

The pair later changed - Cara into white dungarees and a stylish royal blue hat, and Selena into a chic monochrome outfit.
 We'll trade lives with you anytime, guys!

Why A Daily 8-Minute Afternoon Walk Might Change Your Life

Taking a quick stroll to clear your head or find inspiration is hardly a new idea, but now, there’s empirical evidence to support that a short walk boosts creative thinking. So why, then, on one of the first 70-degree afternoons of the year, am I indoors, sitting in the same spot with my laptop as I was at 8:00 a.m.?

As a writer living in Bushwick, Brooklyn, I typically use going outside as a reward—but more often than not, I power through days on deadline without stepping away from my laptop. This week, however, I’ve committed to an experiment, the goal of which is to start to see walking as an important source of stimulus during the workday. 

The study that will serve as my inspiration, published last month in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition and reported in The New York Times, had subjects walk for eight-minute blocks of time, then tested their capacity for brainstorming and creative thinking. According to Marily Oppezzo—who came up with the idea for the study as a Ph.D. student at Stanford University while out for a walk with her adviser—subjects were then asked to think of as many new uses as they could for a button. Post-walk, the undergraduates in the study increased their innovative output by 60 percent.

Given that I spend much of my time writing about fashion, I’d like to think that I would have been particularly successful in this button brainstorm, but, a few days into my experiment, it becomes clear that just getting out the door for the walk is the real mental exercise. I keep waiting for a time when I perceive a genuine need for it—a morning case of writer’s block, for example—or a pure moment when I know I won’t miss an email. But after speaking to Oppezzo on the phone (as a dietician, trainer, and yoga instructor, she also specializes in what she calls “motivational intervention”), I realize that the way I think about the walking needs to change.

Rather than using those eight minutes (or longer) as an opportunity to meditate on one specific solution to a problem, Oppezzo explains, walking should be a time to let your mind wander without a filter. This is also known as analogical thinking and “the best recommendation is to not judge your ideas,” she says. “Don’t filter!”

The results can be powerful whether you’re walking in perfect golden-hour sunshine in Griffith Park, Los Angeles (the site of my last, truly great walk, during which a friend and I brainstormed our personal goals for the year), doing a mini lap around Times Square, or making tracks in a carpeted cubicle-packed office. Even on a treadmill, in “a small room with construction noises and a slit window” or in the pouring rain—both of which were settings for walks in the study—the mere act of walking boosted creativity.

Around the Vogue offices, the mind-clearing effects of a scheduled stroll are well-documented in the less official sense. Fashion News Editor Emily Holt likens her daily constitutional to a “shower for the mind,” while Contributing Editor Lynn Yaeger has been known to whiz across town and back on foot between deadlines. A bit of digging reveals that Vladimir Nabokov, Constantin Brancusi, Virginia Woolf, John Muir, and Friedrich Nietzsche were all big walkers, as was Steve Jobs—a man whose visionary instincts make the case for stepping out regularly. Definitive proof that eight little minutes may be just the thing to help you find your creative footing.

New York Fashion Week

This year’s collections will be the benchmark, and reflect the pride of the American History of fashion for a long time to come.

Some big trends were spotted runway wide in New York last week. Some big big news in fashion this season means customers and retailers will be holding their breath until the wave hits stores in the late fall/early spring.