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.

Fashion statement: The red carpet is unforgiving

With a lifetime of red carpet misses ranging from uncomfortably busty Guinevere gowns to something reminiscent of Grandma’s doily tablecloth, Disney princess Miley Cyrus hasn’t exactly been fashion It Girl material. Until now.

The sleek and chic futuristic white dress Cyrus wore to the People’s Choice Awards on Jan. 11 was so well-received that it could single-handedly turn the star’s fashion fortunes around. The dress was by David Koma, a designer who hails from Georgia, shows in London and is so new to the fashion scene that his website is still under construction.

When it comes to the red carpet, it’s easy to think that a beautiful dress is just that: a beautiful dress. But the right dress can be a game changer when it comes to how a celebrity is perceived and the career opportunities that follow. And the wrong dress can mean this year’s fresh young thing is forgotten by the time the Oscars red carpet is rolled up.

Some people get it. Rooney Mara, for instance, has been appearing on red carpets in tough-and-sexy black gowns by Nina Ricci and Roksanda Ilincic that have more than a hint of her Lisbeth Salander character in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” Berenice Bejo, on the other hand, has been blending into the background, wearing a series of blue gowns by Gucci and Elie Saab, each one indistinguishable from the last, and missing an opportunity to stand out, either on her own behalf or on behalf of her hit film “The Artist.”

“Some actresses don’t understand that a great dress on the red carpet does have an impact,” says Hal Rubenstein, In Style fashion director and author of the new book “100 Unforgettable Dresses.”

“They are just looking for the pretty dress, not the right dress.”

Compare Bejo to Marion Cotillard, another French ingenue who was a relative unknown when she burst on the awards show scene in 2007. Nominated for several film awards for playing Edith Piaf in the film “La Vie En Rose,” Cotillard was on a red carpet merry-go-round similar to Bejo, who has been nominated for several awards for “The Artist.”

“When Cotillard was nominated, she wore one distinctive dress after another,” Rubenstein says. “‘La Vie En Rose’ wasn’t a film that was going to be a big hit, yet she looked so distinctive, even the public who didn’t see the film was asking who is this woman. Berenice Bejo is a lovely actress and a lovely woman, but her clothing is generic. So consequently, we’re not noticing her.”

Emma Stone pulled off a red carpet coup at last year’s Golden Globe Awards when she showed up in a simple coral Calvin Klein gown and white-blond hair and upstaged everyone.

“She was a brand new girl who had an unexpected hit in the kids’ film ‘Easy A,’” Rubenstein says. “And when she showed up, it was like someone opened a window. She was so striking, it introduced her to an adult audience.” In the year since, Stone has become a Hollywood and fashion world darling. In 2011, she racked up Glamour, Elle, Teen Vogue and Vanity Fair magazine covers.

The dress Cyrus chose for the People’s Choice Awards speaks volumes about where she would like her career to go. For the first time, she came across less as a hard-partying, trash-talking, peace sign-flashing teen and more as a sophisticated, well-dressed, refined young woman. And as it turns out, that’s what her stylist intended.