Victoria’s Secret Angel Alessandra Ambrosio to launch fashion and lifestyle brand.

Victoria’s Secret stunner Alessandra Ambrosio’s new lifestyle and fashion brand, ‘Alé by Alessandra,’ will launch in Spring 2014. The model mom is collaborating with Cherokee. The womenswear will hit Latin America first.
A new fashion and lifestyle label ‘Alé by Alessandra’ is set to launch in Spring 2014 in collaboration with US-based Cherokee.

Alessandra Ambrosio, Victoria’s Secret model and star of campaigns for Christian Dior, Giorgio Armani, and Ralph Lauren, is set to launch her new brand in Latin America and hopes to later expand around the world.
The Brazilian supermodel is the sixth biggest earner in the modelling world, with her 2012 income estimated at $6.6 million by Forbes magazine. This latest move comes as something of a surprise to the fashion world, but according to the model it was a natural progression: “this is not a hobby for me. I’ve been a fashion model for 15 years and designing is just an extension of my career,” she told WWD.

The 31-year-old model and mother will partner with US-based retailer Cherokee to work on production and distribution. “Alessandra is an international icon, a confident, active professional and is known around the world for her amazing fashion sense,” said Henry Stupp Cherokee’s Chief Executive Officer.

So what can we expect? The label will be “representative of my life, experiences and style,” said Ambrosio in a statement. Sketch images released by the brand reveal summery, light womenswear with a colorful palette. After the international roll-out, plans for the future also include new jewelry, swimwear and fragrance lines as well as accessories.

New York Fashion Week, which kicks off Wednesday night, is the big game for style magazines and fashion critics. As part of pregame festivities, here’s a peek into the latest issue of Fashion Projects, a magazine that covers the discipline, accessibly, from an academic perspective. The issue, “On Fashion Criticism,” features thoughtful interviews with today’s most prominent fashion writers, including Robin Givhan, Suzy Menkes, and Judith Thurman. Interviewees speak of what draws them to fashion coverage, their thoughts on its evolution within journalism from trivial to respected, and the idea of fashion writing as a gendered pursuit.

This edition’s focus on fashion criticism stemmed from conversations between editor Francesca Granata and her husband, humor writer Jay Ruttenberg, about how some pop-culture criticism has long been respected but coverage of fashion wasn’t recognized as “criticism” in The New York Times until the 1990s, she said.

“It seemed to me that, in the last decade, fashion criticism has been going through a phase of legitimization that other realms of popular culture criticism, such as rock and film criticism, had undergone decades earlier,” Granata wrote in the issue introduction.

Perusing the issue’s spare, bright pages (designed by a student at Parson’s, where Granata teaches) serves as an interesting peek into the psyches behind the bylines that will proliferate during Fashion Week. Here’s one excerpt I enjoyed, by The New York Times’s Guy Trebay:

Student’s designs shown in Prince Harry charities fashion show.

A Washington State University student was one of the featured designers at the Feb. 2 Royal Fashion Show benefit for two charities of England’s Prince Harry of Wales.

Gordon Stumpo of Denver joined nearly 40 fashion students from around the world who had submitted entries for a design competition preceding the show, which was hosted by charities Pink Ribbons Crusade and Sentebale. The competition was judged by all-star designers and popular contestants from the TV series “Project Runway.” Winning designs were showcased at the Bella Collina Towne and Golf Club in San Clemente, Calif.

“Competitions like this one stretch students and allow them an entrance into a formal public arena,” said Patricia Fischer, senior instructor in WSU’s Department of Apparel, Merchandising, Design and Textiles. She worked closely with Stumpo and Marissa Dawson of Seattle, who also entered the competition.

“Both Gordon and Marissa had to learn new and more complex patterning skills beyond those covered in the course content to draft the base patterns for their garments,” Fischer said. “They have both put in a great deal of work outside of class.”
Pink Ribbons Crusade raises funds to fight breast cancer through a traveling exhibit of a multimillion-dollar collection of British royal historical memorabilia, including eight dresses owned and worn by the late Princess Diana, Harry’s mother. Sentebale is a charity for at-risk African children founded by Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso of the Lesotho royal family to honor their mothers.

Stumpo, a junior, submitted two dress designs for the competition, both of which were accepted. A major reward during the project was “taking something that was in my mind, using the tools we learned in the classroom and making it physical, tangible,” he said.

The competition also motivated Stumpo’s honors thesis, due this spring, on the evolution of Princess Diana’s clothing styles over time. Part of the thesis will involve creating three to five half-scale garments that interpret Diana’s garment tradition.

Critics split on Amy Winehouse-inspired fashion show

Fashion critics have delivered mixed reviews of designer Jean Paul Gaultier’s latest collection, which was inspired by the late Amy Winehouse.

The show featured models with huge, beehive hairdos, exposed bra straps and pencil skirts.

The Independent’s Susannah Frankel said: “This was not his most accomplished collection by any stretch of the imagination.”

But writing in the New York Times, Suzy Menkes called it an “exceptional” show.

Backstage, the French fashion designer admitted that although he had never met the star, their styles “had always been similar.”

The 59-year-old told the New York Times that he thought it was a “scandal” that Winehouse had never featured on the front cover of any fashion magazines.

“She was so exceptional in her style; how she held her body; the way she dressed, mixing pieces from different decades.”

The heavily tattooed star became known for mixing 1950 dresses with contemporary blouses and stilettos.

News agency, the Associated Press, said the “show’s concept was hard-edged femininity, dressed up with Gaultier’s signature touch of androgyny”.

The models were accompanied, on the catwalk, by a barbershop rendition of Winehouse’s songs, including Rehab to Back to Black.

Fashion Wire Daily’s Godfrey Deeny said: “In a generous return to form for Gaultier, the collection was a joyful homage to the troubled London chanteuse and her quirky bohemian style.”

Winehouse died in July last year, aged 27.

In November, a polka dot chiffon dress, which she wore on the cover of her hit album Back to Black, sold for £43,200 at an auction.

Last year, clothing brand Fred Perry released a collection of clothes which Winehouse herself had helped design.

The singer favoured the tennis brand, often teaming polo shirts with tight pencil skirts.