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Hemingway's Great-Granddaughter Named the New Face of Gianfranco Ferré

Filed under: Apparel


Willowy blonde model Dree Hemingway, 22, daughter of Mariel and great-granddaughter of famous author Ernest Hemingway, has been chosen to star in the latest ad campaign for Italian fashion house Gianfranco Ferré. The firm's creative directors Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi say they chose Hemingway to portray "the free and fearless nature of an utterly feminine woman" which the collection demanded. Dutch photography duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin shot the images for the Spring / Summer 2010 campaign. Dree has previously appeared in ad campaigns for Abercrombie & Fitch and DKNY and was featured on the runway of Givenchy's Fall / Winter 2009-10 fashion show.

Models Win $21 Million in Lawsuit, Must Donate $2 Million to Charity

Filed under: Charity

The New York Daily News reported last week that five women's charities -- including an eating disorder program -- will share $2 million from a class-action settlement with major modeling agencies, as ordered by a federal judge. The money is what is left over after thousands of aspiring and established models got their share of a $21 million settlement with the agencies, including Wilhelmina, Ford and Click. The models sued in 2002, claiming the agencies fixed prices. A settlement was reached in 2005, but legal disputes delayed the final payouts. Manhattan Federal Judge Harold Baer originally ruled that after the models and their lawyers were paid, the remaining $6 million would be divvied up among the charities. The models and their lawyers appealed his decision, and after recalculating the payouts, a $2 million pool was left. Baer signed a final order that included $347,826 for Columbia University's eating disorders program and $173,913 for its heroin detox program. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute will receive $86,956 for its "Heart Truth" campaign and New York University School of Medicine will receive $347,826 for two heart research studies aimed at women.

Backstage Dior, An Eye-Popping All-Access Pass

Filed under: Apparel, Books


Renowned photographer Roxanne Lowit has been chronicling the fashion scene for the past 30 years; early on she staked out the backstage areas at fashion shows, where the really interesting action takes place, as her prime hunting ground for capturing the most beautiful people in their natural habitat. Now Lowit, whose work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum and others, has an incredible new book just published by teNeues, focusing on brilliant, flamboyant Dior deigner John Galliano's couture concoctions which she chronicled for over a decade. Backstage Dior, with a foreword by Galliano, mixes black-and-white and color images, candids and close-ups, delving into the fascinating details behind the scenes. The book is a must for any devotée of fashion, spectacle, photography, or all three.

Victoria's Secret Fashion Show - A $3 Million Bra and some Crazy Photos

Filed under: Apparel

Marisa Miller
Every year, the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is crazier than the last. This year, at the Lexington Avenue Armory in New York City, we saw an array of outfits that were by equal turns beautiful and baffling. We love how Victoria's Secret always manages to dress the Angels in elaborate designs that sit just next to their bodies -- giant wings and capes that cover nothing ... you'll see what we mean in the gallery.

Pictured here is the most expensive item of the evening, the diamond-clad three million dollar bra, being caressed by Marisa Miller, who had the privilege of wearing it. Honestly, it's a bit of a yawn, but we'd feel cheated if they hadn't BeDiamonded something. What's really fun is the crazy pictures in the gallery. It's only once a year that models get to dress up like harlots from the future and it's like, a big honor. So check it out.

These outfits speak for themselves, but that didn't stop us. Why did we include some of the most awkward pictures? Because we're jealous. Enjoy.

Norman Parkinson: A Very British Glamour

Filed under: Books


British photographer Norman Parkinson's name may not be terribly well known today, but his influence on a subsequent generation of fashion photographers is obvious from a new survey of his work just published by Rizzoli. Norman Parkinson: A Very British Glamour is a lavish portrait of Parkinson's long career from the 1930s through the 1980s, produced in a unique collaboration with the Norman Parkinson Archive in London. Parkinson got his start at Vogue in London, was a protégé of the great Alexander Lieberman at American Vogue when he came to New York, and did some of his most innovative work in the Diana Vreeland years there. In a career that spanned more than four decades, Parkinson worked with the greatest models, from Carmen Dell'Orefice, often called the first supermodel, who was Parkinson's early muse, to the young Jerry Hall, whom Parkinson shot for her first Vogue cover as well as in an historic 1975 shoot staged in the USSR. His iconic photographs for the likes of Vogue, Queen, and Harper's Bazaar are reproduced in the volume alongside a trove of previously unpublished fashion work.

Donald Finally Mixes Business With Pleasure In The Trump Model Agency

Filed under: Services


Donald Trump needs no introduction, nor does his penchant for models. Ironically enough, he has now started his own model agency (Trump Model Management). While it isn't know how much of the daily operation of the business he will oversee, I can easily see him sitting in on some of the interviews and model submissions. The agency will add the Trump luxe touch to the hiring out of high-achievement models. The high distinction ladies have the regular array of "miss this, and miss that" titles ensuring that your $2,000 - $20,000 a day fee is (arguably) well spent. Tips are of course extra.

What you do with the models is then up to you I am sure. The Trump Model Agency has enlisted a star list of model managers to help book gigs for the growing list of international faces on the company ledger. If you are a model or want to submit someone you better be up to snuff. Oh, and they will have to be between 14 and 20 years old and at least 5'8 in height. Get em young, eh Trump?

Glamour Back in Fashion at Miami Swimsuit Shows

Filed under: Apparel


At Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Miami designers just showed the latest looks in swimwear for Spring 2010. "Old glamour is back in a big way" declared the Miami Herald of the numerous collections on display at the chic Raleigh Hotel in South Beach. Check out the video above for some highlights - you'll enjoy it even if you can't wear any of the suits yourself. Other trends of note to emerge from the round of eye-popping events, according to the Herald: hot pink is in, ditto transparent material; as for shape it was "all about the bandeau and the monokini (attached bikini) or cutout one-pieces," while high-waisted and ruffled looks made a splash as well. Many of the suits were "sexy in a feminine way - not overtly flashing a lot of skin." Oh well.

Terry Richardson Shoots the 2010 Pirelli Calendar

Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos


For the past 40 years, Italian tire company Pirelli has issued a limited-edition calendar to a select list of VIPs - the kind who have fleets of Pirelli-shod Ferraris - featuring scores of nude supermodels. As we reported back in December, the 2009 Pirelli Calendar features an African theme and was shot in Botswana by famed photographer Peter Beard with models including the stunning Isabeli Fontana, Malgosia Bela, Daria Werbowy and Raquel Zimmermann (along with a fleet of agreeable elephants and not a lot of clothes).

The 2010 calendar was just shot by fashionably perverted lensman Terry Richardson in Brazil with a whole new crop of beauties, including stunning upper class British model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (above), who's said to be related to the Queen of England. Huntington-Whitely has sizzled before in campaigns for the likes of Agent Provocateur and Burberry. You can check out some video footage after the jump, but be forewarned - it's possibly NSFW and the running commentary is in Italian.

Top Models Still Earning Big Bucks

Filed under: Wealth


The modeling industry, as with other luxury-linked businesses, has been struggling in the sluggish economy. Agencies and designers alike are more cautious with their spending making a coveted modeling contract even harder to get these days. But for the elite models, top earners as measured from June 2008 through June 2009, the modeling world does not hold any obstacles. Still making millions, gaining new contracts and diversifying their stakes between endorsements, catwalks and reality shows, such well-known models as Gisele Bündchen (#1) and Heidi Klum (#2) haven't lost anything in the changing marketplace.

These top-models can be likened to professional athletes whose contracts and million-dollar-checks don't decline with the fluctuating economy. A-Rod and Kobe Bryant won't see a decrease in their earnings just because Wall Street is fickle. I would doubt Hollywood's top earners are affected either. It seems when it comes to celebrities, whether cover girls, sports entertainers or the silver screen's finest, matters of the world economy just don't hit home. I bet those millionaires who made their wealth through investments, business transactions and real estate are wishing they could have been blessed with long, lean legs and dynamite smiles right about now.

Martini Girl Too Hot for Formula 1 Drivers in Monaco

Filed under: Spirits, Luxury Cars & Autos, Events, Sports


A billboard featuring sultry model Jessiqa Pace (above) on the racetrack at the Monaco Grand Prix had to be taken down after it proved too distracting to Formula 1 drivers over the weekend. Pace, 29, appears in the campaign for Martini, the Italian winemaker founded in 1863 and famous for its iconic vermouth.

F1 team representatives asked for the posters to be taken down after drivers complained during trial runs; champ Lewis Hamilton crashed in Saturday's qualifying round close to the gigantic image of Jessiqa. "All the attention is overwhelming," she told the London Daily Star. "I find it really funny. Obviously it's very flattering that I'm distracting the drivers so much, but I'd feel terrible if someone got hurt."

Stefan May: Women Only

Filed under: Art, Books


The other day we wrote about some of Helmut Newton's work being offered at auction. Sadly, Newton died in 2004, but a few photographers are carrying on in his spirit of fashion-meets-fine art-meets-erotica. Chief among them is German lensman Stefan May, who has a brilliant, lavish new monograph coming out from teNeues on June 15 titled Women Only. The book, available for pre-order from Amazon, cements May's place as the master of the sensual nude. The collection combines duotone and color images in an imaginative assortment, and the "contrast between photographic modes helps the reader fully appreciate form and texture, as well as interplays of light and shadow." It's also damned hot.

The Classicist: A Closer Look at Car Show Girls

Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos, Events, Art, Books, The Classicist


All week we've been treated to gorgeous new cars from the world's leading marques at the Geneva Motor Show. In most of the pictures we also got a tantalizing glimpse of thigh, shapely arm or other anatomical fragment of the equally alluring models hired to show off the luxurious machines to best advantage. For most these women are a mere sideshow, a sort of added attraction, but for Dutch artist Jacqueline Hassink they're the main event. Hassink, who has received critical acclaim for her books and exhibitions that deal conceptually with issues of power and social relations, spent the past five years traveling to three continents photographing car show girls.

The resulting body of work from major car shows in seven different cities on three continents, including New York, Paris, Geneva, Tokyo, Detroit, and Shanghai, is collected in her new book, Car Girls (Aperture, $85). Hassink used these sites to reflect on "differing cultural values with regard to their ideal images of beauty and women." The series captures the moments during the women's performances when they "become more like dolls than individuals." The luxuriously produced book, limited to an edition of 1,500 copies, takes a subversively fun yet conceptually astute approach to examining "differing cultural values and ideal images of femininity as used to define corporate identity," and luxury car brands in particular.

"Car companies are global players who need to continually re-present themselves to local markets," Hassink notes. "Each year they show off their latest car models at extravagantly staged shows in major cities across the globe. The shows that take place in Detroit, New York, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Geneva, and Paris are the most important according to the industry. Less important are the shows in New York and Shanghai. At these shows, the auto manufacturers take great pains to distinguish their brands, but they all present their latest cars in the same way: with the help of female models. Essentially, the women become tools to present the corporate image in a very distinctive way." See the gallery for examples from Ferrari, Maserati and more.


Ducati Unveiling: The New StreetFighter

Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos, Events


Isn't that a gorgeous motorcycle? I was overjoyed to get a sneak peek at the all-new Ducati Streetfighter at the unveiling party last week! Before the show started, I headed backstage to the loading dock to check it out, and they even let me sit on it.

The event was crazy. Half-naked women and boxers six inches from your face-crazy. Here's what happened, in pictures. More photos of the great motorcycles to come!

New Chanel Ad: Inside Lagerfeld's VT House

Filed under: Apparel, Estates


Those of you who have been following the saga of Karl Lagerfeld's newest purchase, an 1800s Greek Revival house in Vermont, will recall that he staged a photo shoot there not long after taking possession. The results, and an inside peek at Lagerfeld's Lake Champlain digs, can be seen in the new Chanel Spring / Summer 2009 ad campaign starring leggy blonde German model Toni Garrn (above). The interior looks quite bare as Lagerfeld had not yet moved into the house at the time of the shoot in November. While far from the opulence one usually associates with the Kaiser, the house obviously has an appealingly pared down, classical aesthetic. Perhaps this is emblematic of the designer's somewhat scaled back lifestyle these days.

Julia Stegner Sexes Up Mercedes-Benz

Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos


Super-hot German model Julia Stegner has just been chosen as the new face of Mercedes-Benz, giving the brand a much needed dose of sex appeal in a stagnating luxury car market. Stegner will make her first official appearance for the marque at Berlin Fashion Week later this month. Stegner just shot a new ad campaign (above) with photographer Michelangelo di Battista co-starring the brand new Mercedes-Benz CLS 350 CGI Grand Edition in outfits by French designer Anne Valerie Hash.

"Julia particularly represents the connection between German origin and international flair," Mercedes exec Anders Sundt Jensen tells Berlinista. "That's why in our key visual we have very consciously placed her together with the new CLS Grand Edition, which will be launched on the market in March 2009." Stegner, who hails from Munich, has appeared on the covers several fashion mags and runway shows including Victoria's Secret, as well as in ad campaigns for the likes of Chloé, Dolce & Gabbana, Escada, Guerlain, Dior and Hugo Boss.


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