AmyWinehouse

The Fashion Statement: More Celebrity Hookups Good or Bad?

Filed under: Big Givers, Celebrity Design, The Fashion Statement

Celebrities have no intention of staying away from fashion, even with all the bad press lately (see last season's disastrous Lohan/Ungaro mash up). Last week Madonna teamed up with Iconix Brand Group to produce a tween line inspired by her daughter Lourdes. Early this week, she struck another deal with Dolce & Gabbana to produce a line of eyewear called MDG. Amy Winehouse hooked up with Fred Perry for a line scheduled to hit stores in the fall. And then there is Sarah Jessica Parker and Halston and a myriad of Olympic stars lending their now recognizable names to brands.

Since the days of Jaclyn Smith for Kmart in the '80s and Kathy Lee Gifford for Wal-Mart in the 90s, celebrities have been ubiquitous in the fashion field. It's not hard to guess what their primary motivator is. A brand generally spends loads of money for the privilege of using a household name.

But does it do anything for a brand? Based on some marketing studies I found online, the jury is out on that one. One guy called it the lazy man's brand building. Another said it's very hard for the consumer to keep track of what celebrity is with whom and harder still to trust a brand just from a celebrity endorsement alone. And if a celeb is hooked up with lots of different brands, each individual brand could really suffer.

Tags: amy winehouse, AmyWinehouse, celebrity endorsement, celebrity endorsement deals, celebrity endorsements, Celebrity fashion designers, celebrity fashion lines, Lourdes, Madonna, Tiger Woods, TigerWoods

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So Rich They Can Afford to Look Poor

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Apparel

There is apparently a point at which some excessively rich individuals decide to do away with decent standards of dress altogether. They are literally so loaded they can afford to look homeless; their rags become a sort of reverse status symbol. In fact, as author Paul Fussell noted in Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, shabby clothes "advertise how much of conventional dignity [the upper classes] can afford to throw away. The wearing of clothes excessively new or excessively neat and clean suggests that your social circumstances are not entirely secure."

We'd like to think that's the reason behind the appearance of the celebs on Nerve's new list of the "Top 10 Rich People Who Look Poor." It would certainly seem to be for notoriously-underdressed billionaire Condé Nast owner Si Newhouse, who clocks in at # 7. But we think it's more than likely that the Olsen Twins (#6), Britney Spears (#3) and Amy Winehouse (#1), who's reportedly worth $20 million, are actually just slobs. Check out the full list here.

Tags: Amy Winehouse, AmyWinehouse, Britney Spears, BritneySpears, Cond Nast, CondNast, expire-images2009-4-28, Nerve, Olsen Twins, OlsenTwins, Paul Fussell, PaulFussell, Si Newhouse, SiNewhouse

Amy Winehouse, Pop Art Muse

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Art

The icons of an age are often immortalized by artists. Artist Gerald Laing may not be as famous as Andy Warhol for his Pop Art portraits but he has been doing them since the early 1960s when he created Pop Art pictures of Brigitte Bardot. His latest work includes picture of Amy Winehouse, Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham. Moss has been sort of all-purpose muse for a variety of artists ranging from Banksy to Lucien Freud.

The works represent a turn in Laing's recent work, a sharp commentary on the war in Iraq that featured images of torture from Abu Ghraib prison. The sweetest of the pictures is The Kiss, a picture of Amy Winehouse on a red carpet kissing her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil. You can pick up a imited edition prints of this picture for £1,000 from the Ocontemporary gallery.

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Tags: amy winehouse, AmyWinehouse, art, gerald laing, kate moss, pop art, victoria beckham