Wednesday 30 November 2011

Gifts you Can Get For Your Man This Season.

A shave Kit - shave kits always makes great gifts for guys. A lot of kits provides a close shave without razor burn and acute face afterward.



T-Shirts/Undershirts - It's always a challenge finding the right style, fit and size of T-Shirt/Undershirts. Doing this search for your man will be very appreciative. Some good ones to consider are Pima cotton, Calvin Klien, DKNY etc.



Do it Yourself Kits - Men loves to be the macho of the house, so helping them with one of two tool kits will be great.



Personalized Wallets - A genuine Black/Brown leather wallet always goes the right way. According to the survey, men loves to show off their wallet,especially when its a designer.

Leather - You like it or not, there are a lot of stylish leather goods for men. Men love leathers, eg. Jacket, Duffel, Carry on/ travel Case etc.

A watch - There are lots of different styles and varieties of men watches out there. Natural Wooden watch, Two tone watch, Leather watch, Silver and Gold etc.


A leather beer Holster - 80% of men drinks beer, here is a good cool beer holster for men while working at home, playing on the field etc.

Briefs/Boxers - Men love the comfortable fit and feel of boxers/briefs. Though some really like to go comando too.

Source: www.fashiongist.com

On The13th Lagos Book & Art Festival

The 13th Lagos Book and Art festival  was a carnival of arts and culture as Writers, Poets, Dramatists and art lovers converged at the Freedom Park, Lagos Island for the 13th Lagos Book and Art Festival.
The 3 days  event which took place from November 18th - 20th, is the brain child of CORA-Committee for relevant art-aimed at translating the teeming population of Nigeria into a fine human resource through arts, literature and culture.
There were reading workshops for teenagers and children, art and craft exhibitions and panel discussions on books such as 'Tipping Point' by Malcolm Gladwell and 'The World is Flat' by Thomas Friedman.
Organizers of the Hay Festival, the biggest literary and culture event in the world were present at the event. The high point of the event was the celebration of the landmark birthdays of members of the art & culture community.
Some of those celebrated are Joke Silva(50), Yeni Kuti(50), Taiwo-Ajai Lycette(70), Richard Mofe Damijo(50), Chukwuemeka Ike(80) and Charles Oputa aka Charly Boy(60)

Monday 28 November 2011

Wishing Halloween was year-round.

Guest post written by Alyssa Martin

I used to always ask my mom when Halloween was going to finally happen when I was a little girl. I guess that I didn't really have any concept of time yet, but I at least knew that I really enjoyed dressing up in a costume and eating lots of candy. Well, not much has changed now except I can buy my own candy and I don't have to worry about going around from door to door just to get some candy.
Even though I really wish that I could celebrate Halloween year-round, I know that I can't. SO I really make the best of it while I can. I was online looking up some last-minute Halloween decorating tips to make sure the inside of my house is as decorated as the outside for my upcoming party, when I came across some info on internet service providers. After I looked through it a little bit, I decided to change over my home internet service ot one of those providers.
It ends up that I did come up with some really great decorating ideas inside in the areas where my party guests are going to be milling about. i want to give them the complete job experience.

Monday 21 November 2011

Jimmy Choo shoe queen Tamara Mellon Leaves Fans Hanging?

Jimmy Choo's co-founder Tamara Mellon is finally walking away from her creation. Now fashion industry experts wonder if she can bring success as well as her sparkle to a new enterprise.

As Tamara Mellon strutted away from the Jimmy Choo shoe empire last week, the predictions began as to what she will do next.
Industry reports suggest that she is working on an eponymous luxury lifestyle brand. Mellon herself is keeping schtum, because she is officially a Choo employee until the end of the year.
In an interview last week, she enigmatically said: "Anyone who knows me knows there will be a new venture afoot; this is not the end. My passion is creating things, and I have a big vision."
In the 15 years since she started the footwear brand with Hackney cobbler Jimmy Choo, the shoes and Mellon have gone global. At the last count, sales were £150m and, thanks to her, its high heels are now a red-carpet staple for A-list stars such as Elle Macpherson, Cameron Diaz and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Mellon's personal stock has also rocketed as she straddled the business pages and gossip columns with revealing photo shoots — in one wearing only a strategically placed cat and a pair of her stilettos. She has had a roll call of famous boyfriends, including Hollywood actor Christian Slater, and played a role in showbusiness legal battles.
Brand experts think "brand Mellon" has sufficient clout to launch more than a clothing line, suggesting she could even put her surname – albeit one retained from her failed marriage to US banking heir Matthew Mellon — to an upmarket hotel or restaurant. 
"It is very difficult to start something from scratch but Jimmy Choo has given enough cachet to her own name to make a success of it," says Graham Hales, chief executive of brand consultancy Interbrand. "Tom Ford has been able to do all sorts of things since he left Gucci because he is seen as being the artistic credibility behind the brand."
With a personal fortune of £150m, finding the cash to finance her next venture is unlikely to be a problem. The entrepreneur has revealed her inbox had been "flooded" with emails from people who want to work with her since the resignation became public knowledge.
Mellon has said she was a "no-hoper" at her expensive boarding school. She attended the same Swiss finishing school as Princess Diana and her early career included stints in PR and as a fashion assistant on Vogue,
She started the company with Jimmy Choo in 1996 with a £150,000 loan from her late father Tommy Yeardye, a successful businessman who co-founded the Vidal Sassoon hair products empire.
Choo sold up in 2001 but Mellon stayed on for a ride that has seen the business change hands four times, each time for an ever larger sum.
That process culminated in this May's sale to Labelux, the luxury goods group backed by Germany's billionaire Reimann family, for £500m – nearly three times the sum paid by the firm's private equity owners four years ago. Mellon continued to serve as chief creative officer but no longer had any financial interest in the group following the acquisition.
Her business success was recognised last year, when the government enlisted the 44-year-old to be one the UK's business ambassadors.
Her appointment, together with that of handbag designer Anya Hindmarch and Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts, saw her labelled a "fashbassador" by the women's magazine Grazia.
Neil Clifford, chief executive of Kurt Geiger, the shoe group which works closely with Jimmy Choo in high-end department stores such as Harrods, credits both Mellon and chief executive Joshua Schulman — who is also leaving — for the brand's success: "Tamara instinctively understood the Jimmy Choo customer, because she is that customer; Joshua was the business brain. Together, it was the right mix of art and science.
"The Jimmy Choo product is genuinely fabulous in terms of quality and style and is made in the best factories in Italy. They will both be missed."
Few would question Mellon's business nose. Choo sales took off after she targeted high-profile events such as the Oscars to get the brand on Hollywood's radar, offering to fit out celebrities for the awards ceremony.
The brand's arrival was confirmed when Carrie Bradshaw, Sarah Jessica Parker's character in the TV show Sex and the City, revealed it was her favourite shoe store.
Like her customers, Mellon has a sense of the dramatic. Four years ago, her ex-husband was acquitted of hiring private investigators to hack into her computer during their divorce and the court case gave a glimpse into the couple's gilded but dysfunctional life, together with parts of the trial likened to a scene from Dallas or Dynasty. For her day in court, Mellon wore a show-stopping outfit with £2,000 four-inch, crocodile-skin Jimmy Choos.
Mellon has become synonymous with the Jimmy Choo brand and this year was even featured falling out of a dress in a steamy advert for its new perfume. Significantly, she is thought to retain the rights to use her own name, which means that unlike designers such as Jil Sander and Roland Mouret, who left the companies they created along with the rights to the brand name, she is free to put it to something else.
The hard part, brand experts say, will be striking gold twice as many entrepreneurs struggle to repeat their initial success. "Her black book must be incredible," says PR consultant Mark Borkowski, but he warns the stakes are high: "If she gets it wrong, people won't look at her in the same way and it could all start to unravel."
Luxury goods companies increasingly bill themselves as "lifestyle" brands, which is code for dressing customers from head to toe in expensive clobber before moving on to their homes. A glimpse at the kind of products Mellon might endorse if she goes down that route was revealed in a recent photo shoot of her New York apartment.
One shot of her living room has Mellon, in her signature stilletos, reclining on a cream leather sofa under six giant pictures of coiled snakes. The effect is completed by a leopardskin rug and a takeaway from McDonald's.
With Mellon keeping her head down, for the time being at least, she is keeping her followers guessing.
She bowed out from Jimmy Choo on Twitter, thanking her followers for their support but with a tantalising: "I will keep you posted."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk

Wednesday 9 November 2011

People Can Have a Clean-cut passion for fashion.

This is a guest post; http://www.chinadaily.com.cn

A janitor's zeal for style trends has made her an online icon. Han Bingbin reports.
Rong Deli couldn't help but interrupt the fashion magazine's photo shoot to interject her opinion that the models' color schemes clashed.
This startled the photographer, who wondered just who this impeccably dressed and remarkably vocal woman was. He was even more surprised when Rong identified herself: "I'm the cleaning lady."
He immediately trained his lens on her and later posted the photos on his micro blog. They were reposted nearly 5,400 times within a week. This is how the "Fashion Cleaner Sister De" became an online style icon.
Media rushed to snap shots of Rong at work. A particularly well-known shot is of her wiping off a table while clad in a long white Chiffon dress.

Rong Deli has worked as a cleaner at a fashion magazine for seven years and has become an unlikely media icon. Photos by Zou Hong / China Daily

Suspicion soon arose that Rong contrived the events leading up to her celebrity as a publicity stunt to land a better job.
She shrugs off the criticism.
"I like this work," the 48-year-old says.
"I'm retiring in a year, anyway. If I look down on the job of a cleaner, wouldn't that mean I despise myself?"
She pauses, busts into laughter and asks, "Is it foolish for me to think so?"
Rong started working as a janitor at the magazine seven years ago, after 22 years as a bookkeeper at a State-run textile mill - a stint that ended when the factory was privatized and relocated to the suburbs.
While many of the magazine's other cleaners have quit over the years, Rong says she stayed because she enjoys working alongside optimistic young people and remains passionate about fashion.
Rong had hoped to become a doctor after a childhood pervaded by illness, but her science scores were too low. She studied Japanese after getting married but lost patience with it.
However, her adoration of fashion has persisted through the decades. She kept tabs on foreign trends via Hollywood and Japanese films as a young woman and continues to monitor the annual Paris and Milan fashion weeks on TV.
Rong can recite the history of fashion magazines' evolution since the 1970s and is glued to the Chinese fashion shows proliferating on TV.
She recalls incorporating fashion trends into the clothing she made for herself in the 1980s. Because she didn't know how to take measurements, she dissected an old dress and replicated its proportions.
She is happy to see the trends come full circle, so she can dig a jumpsuit she sewed decades ago out of the back of her closet.
After her seamstress period, she regularly perused shopping malls and back street boutiques to take the temperature of what was hot in Chinese fashion.


She's now learning computer skills to take her searches online.
"I don't like using computers, but clothes are cheaper online," she says, showing a handbag she insists is genuine leather that she bought for 200 yuan ($32) on the Web.
Rong never wears the same outfit in summer and never twice in the same week during winter.
The cleaner refuses to reveal how much she spends on clothes but says her income determines the price.
"If you gave me a Chanel outfit, I wouldn't even know how to wear it," she says.
"I dress to be happy - not to show off. I appreciate my husband giving me so much leeway. We're not rich, but we are happy."
Rong hopes others can learn from her philosophy of not comparing oneself to others.
"There's a reason some people earn more than you," she says.
"Either you haven't worked as hard or seized as many opportunities. If you don't grab every chance that presents itself, you have to live with an open attitude. And you must have a dream."
Her goal is to open a clothing shop selling her designs.
"It's just a dream. But who doesn't have a dream? I can realize my vision if I win 5 million yuan in the lottery - actually, 1 million is enough," she says, laughing.
"But having a good dream means living a good life. It doesn't matter if it comes true."

Who's the Style Influencer of the Year?

Nicole Richie has been named Style Influencer of the Year at the Accesories Council Excellence (ACE) Awards. The ceremony took place on Monday, November 7 in New York, with attendees including models Agyness Deyn and Petra Nemcova, and designers such as Christian Louboutin and Diane von Furstenberg.


Taking place annually, America's ACE Awards were created in 1996 to credit those who have raised awareness of the accessories industry, with retailers, fashion press and the Accessories Council Board of Directors selecting honorees.

Beginning her career as a reality TV star alongside socialite Paris Hilton in The Simple Life, Nicole is one of numerous television personalities including Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port to venture into the design arena.

Debuting in 2008, Richie's House of Harlow 1960 jewelry line was followed by the womenswear line Winter Kate last year.

Both collections are available internationally in department stores including America's Bergdorf Goodman and Britain's Selfridges. House of Harlow 1960 can also be purchased online from across the globe.


Nicole Ritchie pose for the cameras.


Her success proves that celebrity fashion lines can gain credibility in the fashion industry which can sometimes be reluctant to embrace such stars.

Another such case is former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham. Beckham, whose eponymous dress collection debuted at New York Fashion Week in 2008, is nominated in the Emerging British Luxury Brand category at the annual Walpole Awards for Excellence on November 14.

Beckham will also compete with fashion heavyweights such as Stella McCartney and Tom Ford in the Designer Brand category at the upcoming British Fashion Awards 2011 on November 28.

Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com

Sunday 6 November 2011

THE COLOUR IS BLACK?

Black dress never goes out of fashion, and it is the most versatile of a dresses one can have. It is a must for every wardrobe. It can be worn at any time with the right accessories.

Keep this in mind when buying and wearing your black dress:
1. Divide your black dresses into two categories: those with their own focal points like an intricate neckline, sleeves,  bead work and so on and the plain and simple ones.
2. Dresses with their own focal points need very little accessories like a dash of colour for the daytime or a hint of sparkle with jewellery for the nights are all that you need to get going.
3. Always choose a style that fits you perfectly. Black always looks good provided you wear the right cut and fit.

4. Select a classic style that will not fade out as fashion trends change.
5. Choose the perfect length. Most people agree that a knee-length dress is most versatile for it serves as a multi-occassion garment.

To make the most of your plain little black dresses, team them u with a variety of accessories suitable for different occasions. Spend more time in deciding which handbags wraps, shoes and jewellery to choose.
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