This new detailed guide to learning the skills and techniques of drawing modern fashion and figure is also a rich reference source for a broad range of modern garments and accessories. Extensively illustrated, this introduction teaches by example, the power of drawing as a means of communication and expression and strives to show students how to perceive things in order to be able to draw them correctly. The first section is dedicated to drawing the human figure, while the second portion deals with how to draw a wide range of modern garments and accessories and the types of techniques used to render them convincingly and elegantly in different fabric designs and textures. This volume offers a complete presentation of proportions of the croquis, draping the figure, accessories, flats, and features an encyclopedia of details, how to draw textiles and real clothes, the art of illustration, and computers and fashion drawing. For designers, fashion professionals, teachers and students of fashion.

Luxury Fashion Branding: Trends, Tactics, Techniques - Book Description

“Luxury is a necessity that begins where necessity ends.” These words, spoken by Gabrielle Coco Chanel in the early twentieth century, remain as true as ever in our current society. Luxury fashion has seeped into every sphere of our consumer society. It has become the norm to aspire towards attaining the delectable goods of brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Dior. This desire is further heightened by the fact that fashion has been made more available to the masses by brands like H&M and Zara who continuously offer luxury-style goods at lower prices. Also, globalization and technological and communications advancement have made fashion even more accessible. Consumers can now shop at will on the Internet, access a wide variety of goods and exchange instant brand experiences. These have made the average fashion consumer savvy, demanding and restless. To put it mildly, the luxury consumer and the luxury landscape have changed!

What do these imply for luxury fashion brands? A changing sector currently undergoing an important market evolution, internal management shifts and rapid expansion, in dire need of strategic business direction.

Luxury Fashion Branding is the groundbreaking first book of its kind that addresses the business of luxury fashion from a strategic viewpoint. It critically analyses the essential aspects of the luxury fashion sector from tracing the origins of luxury fashion to assessing its consumers, retailing tactics, branding and marketing strategy, business modelling and e-retail.

Presented in a clear language with pictorial illustrations, Luxury Fashion Branding will make an engaging reading for anyone who wishes to learn about the captivating business of turning functional products into objects of desire.

Dress Like a Million (On Considerably Less): A Trend-Proof Guide to Real Fashion - Dressing like a million is easy when you’ve got a million to spend. The challenge is trying to do it on a budget. With her top-selling fourth book, Dress Like a Million, fashion guru Leah Feldon, guarantees that every woman can meet the challenge with ultimate style.

In Dress Like a Million, Feldon gives you all the tools you need to put together a look that is not only effortless, flattering, and relatively inexpensive, but also one that is timeless, perfectly suited to your body type, and packed with personal style. With snappy text, fun illustrations, and unique insights, Feldon entertains as she informs—a winning combination that has marked her as one of the best style writers in the business.

Feldon has been on the fashion scene for more than twenty years, as a stylist, designer, image consultant, journalist, author, and television host. She has dressed models, celebrities, and real people alike, and if there’s one thing she has learned in her varied career it’s that money is not the deciding factor of style and chic. Know-how is. InDress Like a Million she shares her considerable knowledge and shows you how savvy, smarts, and a good sense of self can give you equal footing with any Park Avenue princess.

Dress Like a Million has the definitive word on: Building the perfect wardrobe with the right look for every occasion Dressing up and down with taste and style Flattering your individual body type Hair and Make-up do’s and don’ts The final word on color theory How to choose timeless classics Sixteen basics every woman needs in her wardrobe.

IQONS is a new on-line fashion community with the aim of replicating the impact on fashion that MySpace had on music. The free on-line community enables communication and promotion of everyone from inspirational recognisable designers, stylists and photographers to fashion fans and consumers.

Co-Founder, Rafael Jimenez stated at the launch, “The on-line global communication took off last year, with MySpace becoming an inspiration for highlighting music talent and we thought, how could we apply that to fashion?”

The site officially launched to a global audience in London this week, coinciding with London Fashion Week. The site already had an experimental launch over the past two months, hosting events in Paris and New York and proved an immediate hit, attracting thousands of like-minded fashion fans.

Who is behind IQONS?

Rafael Jimenez – Co-Founder
Born in Venezuela, and based in Paris, Rafael worked at Comme des Garcons for eight years where he occupied different roles in sales and marketing leading to the birth of the Guerilla Store. These stores would open for one year in unusual locations and be run by partners with no previous experience in retail. This concept rose in response to the slick, “marbled-floor” environment habitually used in fashion. Rafael then moved on to a personal project, Plan 8 Ltd, a company aiming to create innovative marketing and commercial strategies for fashion designers and brands. In 2004, he met Suran Goonatilake and started collaborating on two key projects that Suran founded; The Centre for Fashion Enterprise and Bodymetrics.

Suran Goonatilake – Co-Founder
Suran is the Chairman and co-founder of Bodymetrics, a company pioneering the use of body-scanning and virtual reality technologies in fashion. At Selfridges, in Oxford Street, and in Harrods, Knightsbridge, customers can get their body-scanned and order perfect-fitting designer jeans and women’s luxury suits. He was previously a co-founder of the Centre for Fashion Enterprise (CFE), a ground-breaking initiative based in London that finances and nurtures high-growth fashion designers. The CFE pioneered a new model of building luxury fashion companies and drew upon lessons Suran learnt in technology start-ups and practises from the film and music industries. In June of 2005, Suran was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s birthday honours list for his services to Entrepreneurship.

Diane Pernet – Co-Mentor Iqon
Diane Pernet has pioneered the use of the Web as a medium for fashion communication through her highly influential Blog, www.ashadedviewonfashion.com. With a background as a fashion critic and a video journalist, Diane has opened the doors for new fashion talent and ideas globally. Her Blog is mandatory reading for anyone in fashion whether they are a new designer starting their career in Paris or an established magazine editor tracking street fashion in Seoul. Having started the on-line fashion-media revolution through her Blog, now Diane is partnering with IQONS to continue her exciting journey.

It never ceases to amaze how many times Madonna can re-emerge and re-invent herself over and over again — with great sucess each and every time!

MADONNA HAILED AS A ‘FASHION ICON’ - Madonna has been honoured for her experimental and ever-changing personal sense of fashion at this year’s Elle Style Awards.

The recognition comes soon after Madonna announced that she is to launch her own designer clothing range through the high street store H and M:

Related in the News:
Madonna named Elle’s Style Icon - The 48-year-old star was honoured with the Style Icon Award for a career which has encompassed countless different looks over two decades….(RTE)

Madonna becomes H&M’s material girl - She has been known as the Material Girl for years. Now Madonna has really become one by launching a fashion line for high street giant H&M….(Thisislondon.co.uk)

Madonna designs heading for the high street - Madonna — the world’s highest earning female performer, worth an estimated £165 million — still has time for a few little jobs on the side…(Telegraph UK)

Related in Blogs:
Get Ready for M by Madonna - The M by Madonna collection at H&M is almost here and this time she’s giving us something a little more exciting than tracksuits…(PopSugar)

More Madonna H&M Ads - Here are even more of Madonna’s latest H&M ads shot by celebrity photographer Steven Klein. Madonna’s very own designer clothing line, M by Madonna, will hit H&M stores on March 22….(JustJared)

Madonna Found the Fountain of Youth - In case you hadn’t noticed, Madonna is 32 again. Or at least that’s what they guys at H&M want you to think….(CelebSlap)

The organizers of the Pasarela Cibeles, Spain’s biggest yearly fashion show, told five out of 69 models they were too thin to participate this year. In September 2005, the show had decided not to permit women whose body mass to height ratio was less than 18 percent to be in shows.

According to AP, Dr. Susana Monereo, of Madrid Getafe hospital’s endocrinology and nutrition department, said three of the five models who were rejected were not spanish.

Monereo was responsible for assessing the models along with two other doctors.

She said one model who was told she could not take part had a ratio of 16, the equivalent of being 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighing under 110 pounds.

Leonor Perez Pita, director of Pasarela Cibeles, said the models’ low weights may have been due to their hectic work schedules - two had been in 25 shows in New York before they went to Madrid.

“It could be that they lost weight during that period,” Pita said.

But no excuses were allowed - Pita said Madrid’s show intended to send a message of “health and beauty.”

“Five hundred people will see them here, but through television it’ll make it six million, and a young girl may think it’s a definition of beauty and may even make herself ill as a result,” Pita said.

H/T Vitabeat

GOOD for them, I say! I would love to see some healthy women on the catwalks!

Here’s my city style:

Aspen: Aspen fits you to a T. What can be better than carving turns in the morning and hitting the cobblestone streets dense with designer goods in the afternoon? You revel in throwing on high-performance sports gear and pushing your limits. But afterward you’re likely to treat yourself to a little indulgence, whether it’s by bundling up in a cashmere throw in front of a fire or ordering an awesome bottle of pinot noir at a ridiculously good restaurant.

Take the quiz.

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Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style - The massively popular Project Runway, with over 2 million viewers every week, introduced the world to a new fashion authority: Tim Gunn. As the show’s style consultant, Tim has won over television audiences everywhere with his unique brand of honest, incisive advice. He’s been featured in Entertainment Weekly, the New York Post, and Metro, and is quickly on his way to becoming a household name. Now, for the first time, readers everywhere can benefit from Tim’s fashion wisdom in Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste, and Style.

Tim discusses every aspect of creating and maintaining your personal style, all in the witty and reassuring voice that millions of fans adore. Hot topics include how to dress for everyday occasions, how to shop (from designer to chain stores to vintage), how to mix your best “fashion cocktail,” how to buy clothes for a man, how to be your own best fashion designer, and much more. Whether you’re a seasoned fashionista or a style neophyte, Tim can show you how to “make it work!”.

About the Author
Tim Gunn is one of the stars of the hit Bravo reality show Project Runway. He is the Chair of the fashion design department at Parsons, The New School for Design. He lives in New York City. Kate Moloney is the Assistant Chair of fashion design at Parsons, The New School for Design. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

GIORGIO ARMANI has joined the campaign to get curvier models on the catwalk and has urged his fellow fashion designers to follow suit. “I have never liked thin girls and never sent them down the catwalk,” he says. “At my shows you will find girls in size 42 (UK size 12), outfits. Sure, I choose very feminine women with little breast and straight hips. However, there are other designers out there who like to provoke, who like to make a show so they get talked about.” Armani’s comments come in the wake of the annoucement by the organisers of Rome Fashion Week, that will take place in January, that they are demanding to see “good health” certificates from all the models taking part. vogue.com

I like it! I think it’s time we evolve beyond “Twiggy” and start seeing some REAL women up there! I’ve updated the Uptown Girls Poll to the right - you’ll see this weeks poll question:

Curvier Models on the Runway - Yay or Nay?

Your options are:

Absolutely Yes! About Damn Time!
Noway - I like stick figures modeling clothing!
I don’t really care

Don’t see an answer in there that you’d give? Leave a comment and start a discussion on what you think about it! Heck, leave a comment either way and discuss your answer. Have fun!

Polls Archive

Related In The News:
Gaultier swaps Size O models for ‘Size 20′
Lagerfeld shrugs off concerns over skinny models
This is the model who sparked size zero debate
Channel 4 to air ’skinny’ Super Size Me film

Related In The Blogosphere:
Models too thin, says ex catwalk queen - Celebrity Nation
Too Thin to be a Model - Martin Varsavsky
Weighing in (on Weight) Again - BlogHer
Claudia Schiffer talks crazy - The Superficial

Secondhand Chic: Finding Fabulous Fashion at Consignment, Vintage, and Thrift Stores - In recent years, increasing numbers of people have become aware of something that impecunious but savvy folks have known for a long time: You don’t have to be rich to wear high-quality, high-fashion clothing. You just need to know how and where to shop for it at incredible, bargain prices–secondhand, vintage, consignment, and thrift stores.

Christa Weil goes the whole nine yards here, explaining how to spot quality, understand labels (and fakes!), and find your size when labels are missing. She knows which flaws are easily fixed, how to organize your wardrobe, how to look “done” without looking “overdone,” how to care for your clothing and accessory treasures, and even how to make money on your unwanted clothes.

For anyone who likes to dress well and get an incredible bargain in the process (and who doesn’t?), this is an indispensable guide. Weil’s light, conversational writing style and her numerous hilarious asides (like “Why Socks Disappear in the Wash”) make this an entertaining and lively book to read or browse.

What woman wouldn’t want to find a designer original at a fraction of its original cost or some long-gone artifact from another fashion era? With that goal in mind, Weil packs her guide to the secondhand clothing market (consignment, vintage, and thrift) with so much detail and coursework that one should have a Ph.D. by book’s end. Weil insists that a good secondhand shopper needs to study fabrics, design qualities, and designers to make the most of the shopping experience. She recommends field trips to high-end department stores and boutiques to evaluate specific designers, with note-taking essential.