Tag Archives: Life & Style

Vivienne Westwood's 'Frozen Planet' Collection

Posted on by

 Autumn – Winter 2012/13

 

Our collection is in support of David Attenborough’s documentary series ‘The Frozen Planet’, which will go to America but unfortunately without the final episode where he explains that we humans are responsible for the ice melt. So we took the polar explorers as our heroes and we love polar bears. Barack Obama never mentions the words climate change.

If our leaders would admit the fact of climate change and conduct their politics from that perspective then we might have a chance – we have 10 years at the most to stop it.

 

How impossible it is for us to imagine ourselves victims of disaster.  We suffer for the poor people who were thrown into the sea from their cruise ship off the coast of Tuscany, some losing their lives.  Imagine a world of accelerating natural disasters, one after the other so that nobody can help anyone else.

 

Public opinion is the only thing that will save us.

 

 

GreenUp! Europe Campaign

 

I was approached by the United Nation Environmental Programme to design a t-shirt for their GreenUp! campaign – when you start doing things you find people come to you. They’re starting with a terrific idea which is to plant corridors of trees to link Europe’s forests. This new initiative is about triggering new habits for a greener Europe and for greener economies.  I have created a design for UNEP in support of the project.  It’s a really practical idea and it raises public awareness – it’s great for the environment, great for people, great for animals.

 

My design has been printed on a t-shirt provided by sustainable manufacturers, ANVIL. The ‘Tree-shirts’ will be sold exclusively through YOOX.com on a worldwide level and in our Milan shop during menswear fashion week with all proceeds to be donated to the GreenUp! fund, helping to re-plant trees in Europe’s worst affected regions.

 

 

For more information on the project please visit www.unep.org

 

Love and Facebook

Posted on by

Heartbroken men take four weeks to change their Facebook status following a break-up – while women do so almost straight away, it has emerged.

The majority of fellas (63 per cent) “prolong the misery” of updating their profile from ‘In a Relationship’ to ‘Single’ for a month or more, while some (eight per cent) fail to do so at all.

If and when they do, only a third admits if they were dumped – and even fewer (15 per cent) reveal the reasons why.

Women, on the other hand, tend to ‘go public’ within a few days, often with a new description and photograph to reflect their “happy single” status.

The study by new dating site ALovingSpace.com was based on a survey of 1,000 unmarried 18-65 year-old male and female members across the UK.

It found that male respondents generally coped with splits far worse than women, and were more likely to bottle-up their emotions and “present a tougher front” to pals.

Almost 20 per cent of female respondents, on the other hand, admitted they had or would change their social media profiles immediately – often in order to hurt or humiliate their ex-partners.

A spokesman for ALovingSpace.com said he was “not surprised” about the results, which appear to overturn the widespread assumption that women are more vulnerable after a break-up.

“On the face of it, men are the tough talkers and the ones who present a tougher front but that is just societal conditioning. Behind the façade they hurt just like women, but because they suppress their emotions it ends up hurting even more,” he said.

“Our research appears to suggest that men are hit the hardest by relationship break-ups and, as a result, prolong the misery of telling the world about it on social media platforms such as Facebook.

“Women, on the other hand, seem to see things in a more positive light, viewing a break-up as an opportunity to move on and find someone who they are more compatible with.”

Earlier this year, disagreements about money was named as one of the biggest causes of relationship breakdowns in the UK.

Figures showed that just under 60 per cent of single people blamed money for the split, compared to 21 per cent for infidelity.

Some 17 per cent said they had fallen out of love, and 15 per cent said work had got in the way of their relationship.

A spokesman for AlovingSpace.com – which adapts ancient and modern wisdom, including psychological astrology, to help members find a partner and become more self-aware – said a “significant proportion” of relationships break down because couples enter into “shallow” partnerships based purely on looks and “compatibility”.

He added: “Don’t get me wrong, compatibility is nice because it provides a measure of comfort. It’s a component we consider carefully when matching our members. However, it really has very little to do with self-awareness and good relating. Lots of people are completely compatible on paper but when it comes to being in a partnership it doesn’t actually help them at all.

“There is no question that relationship breakdowns cause an immense amount of heartache for all involved. The purpose of ALovingSpace.com is to minimise this heartache by making it incredibly simple for people to meet a new partner and giving them the tools to help them better understand themselves and each other.”

A Tribute to Adonis

Posted on by

First U.K solo exhibition of art works by great Syrian poet

3 February – 30 March 2012                                                          

The Mosaic Rooms, 226 Cromwell Road, London, SW5 0SW

 

‘His vision is extraordinary. His poetry sublime… He is for me a master of our times’ V.S. Naipaul

 

The Mosaic Rooms is delighted to announce for 2012 a tribute to the Arab world’s greatest living poet, Adonis. From February to March 2012, the Mosaic Rooms will host an exhibition of Adonis’ exquisite drawings alongside a series of literary events celebrating his life, poetry and criticism. This is the first solo exhibition of Adonis’ artwork in the United Kingdom.

 

Adonis, who is now in his eighties, has been painting and creating works of art for the past 12 years. His pictorial pieces are beautiful collages, made up of rags, yarn, fabric, documents, ancient papyri, used cans, and other found objects that have inspired him. By unifying these materials which belong to different cultures, Adonis aims to give sense to objects that have previously had no significance.

 

Each collage has a background of Arabic writing, not only used because it is Adonis’ native language, but also because he considers the language to have an exceptional graphic quality. Through his art work Adonis demonstrates the beauty of the Arabic language, both in its musicality and also in its literal written form. ‘The written word’, he says, ‘is a picture in itself’.

 

The Italian artist Marco Nereo Rotelli has previously described Adonis’ artworks as being ‘like a short story told in an instant.’ Adonis himself considers the pieces to be an extension of his poetry, defining his art work as poems but in a different form.

 

Winner of the 2011 Goethe Prize and a favourite for last year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, Adonis is recognised as the man who led the modernist movement in the Arabic literary scene in the past 50 years and brought Arabic poetry the international recognition it deserved. He is also famous for his critical views on Arab culture, politics and current affairs and even today, at 81years of age, he retains his fresh and critical outlook on the events in his homeland, attracting controversy and debate because of his cautionary and critical worlds on the Arab Spring.

ADONIS: A BIOGRAPHY

 

Adonis was born Ali Ahmad Said Esber near the city of Latakia, western Syria, in 1930. He had no formal education for most of his childhood, learning the Quran at the local mosque school and memorising classical Arabic poetry, to which he was introduced by his father. His formal education began after he impressed the then President of Syria as a teenager by reciting one of his poems. He was given a scholarship to a French lycée and went on to study philosophy at Damascus University.

 

In 1956, he was forced to leave Syria after being imprisoned following his involvement with the Syrian National Socialist Party. He moved to Beirut, Lebanon, and, together with Yusuf al-Khal, set up the legendary Shi’r (Poetry) magazine, one of the Arab world’s most influential literary journals. Adonis then studied in Paris before returning to Beirut and taking up a post teaching Arabic Literature. In 1982, he and his family relocated to Paris as a result of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and they have remained there until this day.

 

Adonis’ work includes over 50 books of poetry, criticism and translation in his native Arabic. His multi-volume anthology of Arabic poetry (Diwan al-shi’r al-‘arabi) covers almost two millennia of verse. He has also translated a number of works into Arabic, including the first complete Arabic translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (2002). He has won several awards, including the Goethe Prize in 2011, and has been shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for Literature a number of times.

 

London Fashion Week Casting

Posted on by

Fashion Models of ALL Nationalities Needed for London Fashion Week Show

Fashions Finest Season 3 official off schedule London Fashion Week show will be taking place on the 18 & 19 February. FF LFW are looking for high fashion catwalk/runway models to participate during these special Olympic year shows.

Show Requirements:

· MUST be able to model for BOTH days (18 & 19 February) and will be required for two full days

· This is an UNPAID role, models will be fed, provided with pictures (by email), participate in a London Fashion Week show for international designers

· Women – minimum height is 5.8 and for men minimum height is 5.11

CASTING INFORMATION:

· Casting Date: Friday 20 January

· Casting Time: is at 7 pm sharp

· Casting Address: Sewing Room, Rag Factory, 16 Heneage Street London E1 5LJ

· Models (male & female): must wear blue or black jeans and a tight fitting white T shirt or shirt

· Female models must wear or bring high BLACK stiletto heels (no boots or wedges

· Must bring a picture that they will leave behind (it will not be returned) and they will be required to complete a form which means you must know your accurate statistics

To confirm your attendance please like our Fashions Finest Facebook page

Further Information:
Learn all about the fashion world with the Guide to Online Schools.

Londoner's LIfe 21 – By Phil Ryan

Posted on by

The big sleep is over and now we begin to take stock of the year ahead. And for Londoners the hardest thing to come to immediate terms with are the usual high price rises on the tubes, trains and buses. It now being cheaper to travel in London by car! Honestly I worked it out. 2 people in a car popping across to say Camberwell (not of course via the congestion charge zone that’s only for the super-rich and white van drivers). Not very green I’ll grant you but very nice. Comfortable and clean. You get to listen to your own music and not the tinny wasp farting noises from the headphones of the JB sports clad gimp in the hoodie glaring at his iphone from a seat saying for pregnant ladies and the elderly. In an average sized car you shouldn’t use more than a fivers worth of fuel per trip. Cheaper than two Oyster card worth of trips. Of course there are a few drawbacks to this concept. Thanks to Camden and Westminster Councils whose Chief Executive Officers are more like Afghan warlords than public servants nowadays you can’t stop easily. Not without facing the ludicrous parking charges and restrictions they so delight in inflicting on us AFTER public consultations. Where are these public consultations? We had one in Camden once about the greatest con trick of all – the dreaded Residents Permits (or a tax to use your own street every year). The Council sent out a questionnaire using hysterically loaded questions. DO YOU WANT STRANGERS FILLING YOUR STREETS AND RAPING YOUR FAMILY? Tick A or B. You know the sort of lies they use. A bit like the new green re-cycling madness. I now have SIX bins. I’m not making this up. Everyday some trucks trundle up and down my street taking away stuff. It’s getting very specific. I saw a bin by a bus stop that said only suitable for 18th century manuscript paper with a picture of Jane Austen on it for the hard of hearing.

But in an Olympic year my favourite new London game is spotting the very tenuous Olympic links everyone is using to push prices up. Of course top of the charts are those soulless parasites the London estate agents. Every borough I’ve been in recently apparently is perfect to access the Olympic stadium from according to estate agents boards and ads. Including far flung spots like Barnet, Roehampton and Ilford presumably viewing the Olympic Park by radio telescope. Of course there are those local areas directly around the stadiums who are also twinned with Helmand Province in the safety stakes which they handily fail to point out! I’ve also realised the prices going up now will presumably not fall afterwards despite the fools and suckers buying an overpriced flat to see a waste of money that only lasts a month. That’s property in London I guess. But many new terrorized folk will at least be able to shuffle around the Stratford Westfield shopping centre or take in the empty velodrome. The great legacy is getting vaguer. But the areas are certainly being built up. Mainly ‘so called ‘luxury’ apartments with names like The Point, The Wave and The Shoe Box (I made the last one up) But take a wander around Canning Town station to see the ghastly rabbit hutches being thrown up left right and centre. With ceiling heights too low for the average hobbit and walls thinner than a cream cracker these ‘architect designed’ monstrosities will presumably fill up quicker than Cheryl Cole at her next sacking. And bizarrely they all have tiny balconies allowing them to see other people on their tiny balconies. Just a sample of the new examples of the wonderful ‘design’ we can expect over the coming property developers feeding frenzy Olympic year.

And on the subject of London’s ever changing design I have to say the new layouts around Exhibition Road in South Kensington are just very surreal. Apparently it’s all based on a Dutch concept of ‘space sharing’. In plain speak it means ripping up the pavement, covering the surfaces of the roads and streets with curious red and white flat cobblestones and then letting pedestrians ‘share’ the road space with cars. It’s akin to the way that South Africans ‘share’ the coast line with Great White Sharks. I was having tea in Le Pain Quotidien amusing myself by watching baffled tourists soiling themselves as various Buses and cars apparently mounted the side streets they were walking along and chased them. Window shopping suddenly stopped being ‘charming’ instead becoming a kind of game of chicken. It’s a very nice concept. A bit like socialism. But in practice it turns a quiet stroll into a dice with death. Very exhilarating I’m sure but not great for the terminally nervous. And as for the locals do they like it. No not really I was told. But did they care? No not really. It’s a London thing.

Sienna Miller Pregnant and Engaged!

Posted on by

Sienna Miller, the heroine of hackgate, is pregnant with her first child. Miller is also reportedly engaged to Tom Sturridge, the baby daddy. 29-year-old Miller started dating 26-year-old Sturridge last March after ending her relationship with on-again, off-again ex-boyfriend Jude Law.

Sienna’s sister, fashion designer Savannah, confirmed the news on Twitter. Savannah tweeted ‘THRILLED’ about her siblings first pregnancy which was first reported by Us Weekly.

According to Life & Style magazine, Sturridge proposed to Miller when a vintage Victorian ring during a post-Christmas trip to Paris.

Congratulations to them both!

Staying Motivated When Dieting

Posted on by

STAYING MOTIVATED

By Alison Clark, independent nutritionist and spokesperson for Europe’s no 1 healthy eating plan, Eurodiet.co.uk

The New Year is a great time to set positive goals and make resolutions, and many of us use this time as an opportunity to try and embrace a healthier lifestyle. Making these plans is the easy part but sticking to them can be more difficult! Follow these tips to stay motivated and make 2012 the year that you achieve your health goals.

1. Team up

Changing old habits that may have been ingrained for ten or twenty years can be hard and having the support of friends and colleagues will help you to stay focused.

* Share tips and test new recipes with friends, family and colleagues. Online communities can be hugely helpful here, Eurodiet has a Facebook community.

2. Get organised

Try to plan ahead, jot down which ingredients and products you need. This will make it easier for you to stick to your eating plan and less likely to pick up unhealthy options when you are on the go.

* Try cooking larger amounts and freezing portions for the days when you don’t have enough time to cook.

3. Clean out your cupboards

Having tempting foods in the house or in your desk will make it much more difficult for you to resist eating them.

* Give away any post-celebration goodies which are still lurking around the house – if they are not there you won’t be able to eat them!

4.Don’t be defeated on ‘Difficult days’

It is normal to have days where you find it more difficult to stick to your resolutions. The important thing is not to let these days get you down and stop you from continuing with your good work – draw a line and stay positive. It’s what you do most of the time that counts!

* If you have a sweet craving try one of the low calorie sweet options available on the Eurodiet.co.uk eating plan – like gooey vanilla caramel chocolate bars or apple crumble.

5.Identify your triggers

Next time you have a hard time resisting a second helping or you skip an exercise class, think about why it happened. Try to identify the feelings that triggered your behaviour, for example hunger, fatigue or stress. How could you change the outcome next time?

* Control your hunger by eating regular meals and ensure you have enough protein in your diet. Protein is essential for sending signals to the brain to say, “Thank you, I’m full”. Introduce healthy snacks if needed like cereal bars or fruit.

6.Make it fun!

Write a list of milestones you expect to pass on your journey towards your final goal and find ways to reward yourself as you reach each one. This will encourage you to stay on track and make the challenge more enjoyable too!

* Treat yourself to a massage, enjoy a spa day, take a new class, buy a new dress, try a new sport.

* Stay positive!

How to Get Out of Debt and Avoid Fraud

Posted on by

Be careful with credit counseling agencies that don’t always deliver what they promise

More than one and a half million people file for bankruptcy every year. Many people fall behind on their bills because they’ve lost their jobs, suffered from a long-term illness, or because they were unable to manage their personal finances properly.

Fortunately, there are many resources out there that can help you put together a plan to pay off your debt, including credit counseling agencies.

Signs Your Finances Are in Trouble

You don’t have to be close to filing for bankruptcy to realize that you are in financial trouble. These are some signs that you might have too much debt:

* You are frequently late on your payments
* You are close to your credit limit on your credit cards
* You use your credit cards to make payments on other cards
* You find it difficult to save money
* You’ve been denied credit recently

How to Get out of Debt

To get out of debt and set your finances straight, carefully analyze your income and expenses. Make sure you:

* Make a budget and stay within its limits.
* Figure out your total debt and also what you owe to each creditor, your monthly payments, interest and payment due dates.
* Prioritize repayments, focusing first on things such as your mortgage, rent, and utilities.
* Make a repayment plan for each creditor and determine how long it will take you to pay off the debt. Make sure to review your credit card statements, as they will include information about how long it will take to pay off your balance, per new credit card laws that went into effect in 2010.
* Don’t incur any additional debt.

How to Choose a Credit Counseling Agency

Consider a credit counseling agency if your debt is too much to handle. These companies offer workshops on how to manage your money and advice on how to administer your debt. They can also help you create a budget and even negotiate your debt with creditors.

Many of these companies are nonprofit organizations, however be careful, as some charge excessive fees for their services and others might not even deliver what they promise. Consider these important suggestions before choosing a credit counseling agency:

* Pick a counseling agency that offers several services. This will help you avoid organizations that promote only certain services.
* Avoid credit counseling agencies that charge you for simply providing information, or agencies that demand a percentage of the amount that you are supposedly saving. Ideally, you should request the cost of their services in advance and in writing.
* Stay away from agencies that ask you to stop making payments on your debt or ask you not to contact creditors.

The Department of Justice has a list of credit counseling agencies that are approved to provide pre-bankruptcy counseling.

SOURCE GobiernoUSA.gov/USA.gov