WWD Blog

WWD Blog tag:blog.wwd.com,2008-06-26:/wwd//1 2012-02-03T19:30:34Z Movable Type Enterprise 4.32-en The Passionate Reader: February 3, 2012 tag:blog.wwd.com,2012:/wwd//1.5610020 2012-02-03T18:43:00Z 2012-02-03T19:30:34Z

Fans of PBS' much-talked-about series "Downton Abbey" on "Masterpiece" often want to read more about the Edwardian era and World War I....

Lorna Koski
]]>

A good place to start is with Edith Wharton's novel "The Buccaneers," published after her death in 1938, which is about American heiresses crossing the Atlantic to marry into titled English families in the late 19th century, à la Lady Cora, Elizabeth McGovern's character in the series.

Then there's E.M. Forster's celebrated 1910 "Howard's End," which concerns the conflict between three classes in turn-of-the-century England over a piece of property. Hector Hugh Munro, a.k.a. Saki, satirized Edwardian conventions in his remarkable short stories, such as "Esme," "The Open Window" and "The Un-Rest Cure." Although officially over-age, Munro enlisted in the British Army Fusiliers and died in 1916 at 45 at the front in France.

Among the books which were popular reading during the period were the novels of John Galsworthy's intergenerational "The Forsyte Saga," the first of which, 1906's "The Man of Property," concerns the nouveau riche Soames Forsyte, who is obsessed with controlling the life of his beautiful wife, Irene. At the time, Galsworthy's novels were lauded for stripping away the Victorian pieties about family relationships. The books were made into a very popular British miniseries in 1967 and again in 2003.

To read about World War I, begin with Vera Brittain's lyrical memoir, "Testament of Youth," published in 1933, which describes the loss of a sizable portion of a generation of idealistic young Englishmen. The combined casualties of the war -- wounded, missing or killed on both sides -- added up to an almost unimaginable 38.88 million. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916, the British suffered 57,470 casualties. At one point, English mounted equestrian troops were going into battle against German machine guns. The years-long stalemate in the trenches was irrational, enervating and sordid.

Vera's younger brother Edward Brittain, fiance Roland Leighton, and friends Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, accomplished public school students who were headed to Oxford or Cambridge, were all killed during the war. Their correspondence with each other appears in the book "Letters from a Lost Generation: First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends," published by Abacus in 1999. One result of the carnage of the war was that Brittain, who had left Oxford to become a nurse with the V.A.D. during the conflict, became a lifelong pacifist. After the war, she returned to university and later became the mother of the Liberal member of Parliament Shirley Williams, (now Baroness Williams of Crosby).

Then there are the works of the great World War I poets, first among them Wilfred Owen, whose "Poems" appeared two years after his 1918 death. Owen was strongly influenced by Siegfried Sassoon, who edited his poetry and was also instrumental in getting it published. Sassoon was known for his reckless bravery at the front, which earned him the nickname Mad Jack; he eventually was wounded and could not return to fighting. Owen had been hospitalized with a concussion and shell shock, but later went back into battle and died a week before the Armistice was announced on Nov. 11, 1918. Bells were ringing in celebration when his parents received the letter that told them of his death.

The poem of Owen's that must be read is the brilliant, harsh "Dulce et Decorum Est" -- a Latin tag that means, "Sweet and Fitting It Is" -- which is about a death during a gas attack. It begins, "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks/Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,/ Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs/ And towards our distant rest began to trudge./ Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots/But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;/Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots/ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind./Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,/ Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; /But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,/ And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime..."

Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth" starts with the lines: "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?/ Only the monstrous anger of the guns./Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle/Can patter out their hasty orisons."

Sassoon lived to be 80; one of his most notable poems, ironically, is "How to Die." Here is its second stanza: "You'd think, to hear some people talk,/That lads go West with sobs and curses,/And sullen faces white as chalk/Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses,/But they've been taught the way to do it/Like Christian soldiers; not with haste/And shuddering groans; but passing through it/With due regard for decent taste."

Sassoon had become great friends with poet Robert Graves at the front, but he was alienated by his portrait in Graves' wonderful memoir of the war, "Goodbye to All That: An Autobiography," which first came out in 1929. The book describes Graves' experiences in combat -- he suffered for years afterward from shell shock -- and explains why he is leaving England.

Patrick Shaw-Stewart, for his part, seems to have written only one poem before he fell in France in 1917, but it's a great one and reflects his reputation as a classicist: "I saw a man this morning/Who did not wish to die/I ask and cannot answer/If otherwise wish I/Fair broke the day this morning/Against the Dardanelles;/The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks/Were as cold as cold sea-shells./...Was it so hard, Achillles,/So very hard to die?/Thou knewest, and I know not-- So much the happier I."

Rupert Brooke's reputation has suffered from what many see as the jingoism of his best-known poem "The Soldier": "If I should die, think only this of me/That there's some corner of a foreign field/That is for ever England." Then there's the fact that he was devastatingly good-looking, which can lead people to underestimate men as well as women; even Virginia Woolf bragged of skinny-dipping with him!

However, Brooke never made it to the front lines -- he died of sepsis at 27 on a hospital ship off Greece -- and so was unlikely to write the sort of verse about the horrors of trench warfare for which Owen and Sassoon are known. But he did write "Dust," which begins, "When the white flame in us is gone,/And we that lost the world's delight/Stiffen in darkness, left alone/To crumble in our separate night;/When your swift hair is quiet in death,/And through the lips corruption thrust/Has stilled the labour of my breath -- When we are dust, when we are dust!"

Then there are the novels. Ernest Hemingway's second, 1929's "A Farewell to Arms," concerns a doomed romance that takes place between Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse, during the Italian campaign of the First World War. "Le Feu [Under Fire]," is Frenchman Henri Barbusse's story of life at the front; Barbusse enlisted at 41 and later became a Communist and went to live in Russia.

There are also Wharton's less-well-known novels, "The Marne," published in 1918, about American Troy Belknap and his tutor, M. Grantier, who are in France

when war breaks out, and "A Son at the Front," about American painter John Campton and his only son George, who was born in France and thus drafted into the French army, which appeared in 1923.

No catalogue of World War I literature would be complete without Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 classic "All Quiet on the Western Front," which concerns the disillusioning experiences of a German soldier. And finally, there is Woolf's modernist masterpiece "Mrs. Dalloway," which came out in 1925. It takes place just after World War I, and is about a society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway, who is preparing for a party, and a shell-shocked veteran, Septimus Smith.

]]> Into the Groove: Madonna Celebrates 'W.E.' at The Standard tag:blog.wwd.com,2012:/wwd//1.5569260 2012-01-25T19:48:03Z 2012-01-25T19:56:06Z

Most nights atop The Standard hotel, the golden-hued Boom Boom Room -- as many of its habitues still refer to it, despite an official name change a while back -- is the exclusive wing, while the nearly pitch-black, grittier...

David Lipke - Senior Editor, Men's http://www.wwd.com
]]>
Of course, where Madonna goes, so goes the action, and the soiree's center of gravity quickly shifted to Le Bain, as partygoers clamored to gain access. But the Material Girl was inside celebrating with a close circle of backup dancers, employees and personal friends -- and wanted a chance to let loose in private. The pop icon ditched an elaborate Marchesa gown for a camisole, pants and a jacket tied around her waist and grooved on the small dance floor of glowing cubes. Surrounded by her youthful dancers of assorted ethnicities, and a sizable disco ball spinning slowly above her head, she looked remarkably free, happy and almost ordinary, for one of the most celebrated icons of our age. The passage of time has done little to outwardly diminish Madonna's famously toned body, nor has it diminished her fondness for dancing, apparently.

The "W.E." celebration doubled as an assistant's birthday party, and a cake with sparklers was brought out. Madonna grabbed a microphone from the DJ and gave a heartfelt speech thanking the assistant -- recalling a scene in the documentary "Truth or Dare," although no poetry was involved -- and led the small crowd in singing "Happy Birthday." A volunteer emerged to apply a birthday spanking, with Madonna enthusiastically counting the spanks.

Some celebrity friends materialized in the room. Cinema Society founder Andrew Saffir, who co-hosted the premiere and after party with Forevermark diamonds, played traffic cop at the door, ushering in Madonna pals like Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Andy Cohen, Ingrid Sischy and Sandy Brant, who clustered around Madonna like moons in orbit. The hip-hop musician Eve sat contentedly on a corner sofa taking in the scene.

Madonna may have her signature imperious moments, as in her recent outbursts against hydrangeas and Lady Gaga's supposedly reductive "Born This Way." But her appreciation and affection for the people who work for her -- and help keep her star burning incandescently, as Harvey Weinstein termed it earlier in the evening -- seems genuine and plain.

At the Ziegfeld earlier that night, she teared up while thanking the three film editors who helped craft "W.E." into the elegiac tale it is. "If we had to go to war, I would want you guys in my foxhole," she declared. "You went way beyond what you had to do for me. That's what family is all about, and that's what creativity is all about -- surrounding yourself with a group of people who aren't looking at the clock and aren't punching a time card. They are worrying about the project and the final product. They are worrying about the creation." She also sang the praises of her publicist, Liz Rosenberg, the only publicist she's had over the course of her entire career, which must be an industry record of some sort. "Can you imagine? Can you imagine? Can you imagine?" she noted, to laughter. "What she's had to put up with. What she's had to listen to. From the very beginning, when we smoked a joint together 27 years ago in your office," adding, "She doesn't smoke any more."

Smoking or not, Madonna was still steaming along as the clock struck one in the morning at Le Bain.]]> Polyvore and CoverGirl Launch 'Polyvore Live' tag:blog.wwd.com,2012:/wwd//1.5488200 2012-01-12T23:53:04Z 2012-01-13T15:30:38Z

Polyvore, the online fashion community, has partnered with CoverGirl to launch 'Polyvore Live,' a fashion show during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week that will showcase the collections of four alumni from the Fashion Institute of Technology....

Kristi Garced Polyvore, the online fashion community, has partnered with CoverGirl to launch 'Polyvore Live,' a fashion show during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week that will showcase the collections of four alumni from the Fashion Institute of Technology.
The show will take place on Monday, Feb. 13 at La.Venue and will be live-streamed online at Polyvore.com. Prominent fashion bloggers -- to be revealed on Polyvore.com one week before the show -- will walk the catwalk.

FIT's four emerging designers -- Dana-Maxx Pomerantz, Lauren Bagliore, Sergio Guadarrama and Vengsarkar "Ven" Budhu -- were chosen by the Polyvore community from a group of FIT alumni who submitted designs.

"Polyvore's mission is to democratize fashion and we're thrilled to be a launch pad for four amazing up-and-coming fashion designers," said Jess Lee, Polyvore's co-founder and vice president of product. "Whether it's having an all-blogger catwalk, giving budding stylists a voice or showcasing brilliant new design talent, Polyvore opens doors."

Polyvore's community will be able to preview the four collections through a series of online challenges -- one for each designer -- which will take place Jan. 16-27. Users will be asked to create "sets," i.e. digital collages, with pieces from the featured designer's collection as well as items from CoverGirl. The designers will personally choose their favorite Polyvore set, and the winner will get the chance to sit front row at the show.

]]> The Passionate Reader: January 12, 2012 tag:blog.wwd.com,2012:/wwd//1.5487500 2012-01-12T21:50:29Z 2012-01-18T20:41:09Z

Gabriel Garcia Marquez once said, "Everyone has three lives, a public life, a private life and a secret life." That may be true, but these days, there seems to be a shortage of public intellectuals....

Lorna Koski
]]>

The U.S. has never had as robust a tradition of cultivating them as, say, England or France. The protean Simon Schama and Christopher Hitchens, each of whom spent years in the U.S., were both born and educated in the U.K. There is even a book of essays on the subject, "Public Intellectuals: An Endangered Species?" But at the moment, there are also excellent biographies available on two of the genus: one American, one English. The U.S. subject is George F. Kennan, who appears in John Lewis Gaddis' remarkable book, "George F. Kennan: An American Life" from The Penguin Press.

Gaddis, a Cold War historian, has made a highly complex man -- a diplomat and excellent writer who articulated the American policy of containment during the Cold War in his celebrated Long Telegram of 1946 and his "Mr. X" article in Foreign Affairs in 1947 -- come to life. Henry Kissinger summed up his influence by saying, "George Kennan came as close to authoring the diplomatic doctrine of his era as any diplomat in our history."

Kennan, who trained as a Russian specialist and was a foreign service officer in the Soviet Union early in his career, was attached to the American Embassy in Berlin when the U.S. entered World War II. As the second in command there, he had to handle the travel and accommodation arrangements for the American Embassy staff and journalists who were held under house arrest for months in the spa town of Bad Nauheim. As he wrote later, "perhaps those of us who served in Moscow were not quick enough to understand the whole Nazi phenomenon, because we couldn't imagine that there could be any regime as nasty as the one with which we were confronted."

When later presented with what might have been thought to be his goal, an ambassadorship to the Soviet Union, Kennan swiftly got into trouble. A comment he made to The New York Times, which he believed was off the record, was published, saying that his isolation as ambassador was worse than what he had experienced while under house arrest in Germany. The Soviet government demanded his immediate recall. As for his private life, Kennan loved working on his small farm in Pennsylvania, and he regarded the physical labor he did there as a necessary corrective to dealing with diplomatic bureaucracy, something he never found easy to do. His secret life? Kennan, a handsome and courtly man, had a way with the ladies, which he sometimes exercised during his long, successful marriage to the former Annelise Sorensen. Gaddis was working on this biography for a seemingly endless amount of time, since he began it when Kennan was in his late 70s, and the Cold War theoretician lived to be 101. Characteristically, Kennan apologized to the writer for the delay. But every year seemed to simply burnish the diplomat's reputation further, and he was one of those fortunate people who not only live to a great age but do so with all their mental capabilities intact.

The other tome is "An Honorable Englishman: The Life of Hugh Trevor-Roper" (Random House) by Adam Sisman. The wonderfully lively biography is a perfect match for its brilliant, acerbic subject. Trevor-Roper, the author of "The Last Days of Hitler" and "The Hermit of Peking" was the Regis Professor of Modern History at Oxford, then the master of Peterhouse at Cambridge, and famed for writing about a polymathic range of subjects. He was also notably willing to get into intellectual dustups with dons and others. His detractors said he had never written an important book about his special subject, early modern English history. Even his stepson -- also an academic -- gave him a hard time about this. But Trevor-Roper preferred to devote himself to journalism and to his favorite literary form, the essay. Sisman makes a good case for the idea that it didn't really matter whether the don wrote a "big book" or not, since he often created intellectual controversies which resulted in long books written by others.

Probably the biggest contretemps of Trevor-Roper's life came in the early Eighties, when he was sent by The Times of London to evaluate a group of diaries purportedly by Adolf Hitler that the German magazine Stern was planning to publish. Under pressure to make a decision quickly, he concluded that they were authentic, then changed his mind.

Unfortunately, his volte-face was ignored by the Times' owner, Rupert Murdoch, who had the paper trumpet the existence of the diaries and run their own excerpts. A few days later, the results of tests Stern had run came back; the paper the journals were written on was modern. Trevor-Roper wrote an apologetic letter, which appeared in the Times, taking responsibility for the mistake. Although Sisman maintains that no one under 40 remembers the controversy, it damaged the historian's reputation at the end of his life.

There's also a new biography of a very different kind of public figure, Peter Longerich's "Heinrich Himmler," (Oxford University Press), translated by Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe. It's the first full-length biography of Himmler, who, as head of the SS under Adolf Hitler, was the architect of the Final Solution. As he put it in his Posen speech in 1943, it was necessary to be "honest, decent, loyal, and comradely...to those of our own blood and to no one else. How the Russians or the Czechs fare is a matter of indifference to me....Whether or not 10,000 Russian women collapse with exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch concerns me only insofar as the anti-tank ditch is being dug for Germany." This fascinating, horrifying and comprehensive book (1,000 pages with footnotes and index) contains a wide range of information. Among its revelations: Himmler was extremely involved in the details of the lives of his men, even handling personally many incidents involving drunkenness or bad debts and frequently involving himself in decisions about whom SS men could marry -- they had to apply for permission -- with many minute calculations about whether the proposed bride was "ethnically sound" or not. One of Himmler's major concerns: Mass executions had a bad effect on the morale of his men; thus, a better way to kill the targeted populations had to be found. One of the many pretexts for murdering Jews was that they were all partisans.

Then there's "Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest" (Alfred A. Knopf) by Wade Davis, which tells the more-than-twice-told tale of the great mountaineer George Leigh Mallory and his colleague Sandy Irvine, who disappeared on the mountain in 1924. Mallory's perfectly preserved body was found by a mountaineering party in 1999; Irvine's ice axe has been found, but not his corpse. As the subtitle of the book suggests, the thesis is that the losses in World War I had a great influence on attitudes toward climbing Everest. The carnage was so universal and the war itself was so nonsensical that it created a whole group of young men who wore their lives -- rather than their learning -- lightly like a flower. The thought was that conquering the mountain would be a beautiful achievement that could mitigate the waste that characterized the conflict. (In a curious twist, the father of Hugh Trevor-Roper's wife, Xandra, was General Douglas Haig, whom a number of writers about the war blame for the nightmare of the Somme.) Wade has done an enormous amount of research about what every member of the Twenties Everest expeditions had been through during the war. It isn't a pretty picture.

The depiction of Tibet of that time is also very detailed and particularly interesting. The lamas had to repeatedly warn the British mountaineers not to kill the local animals, which were, it seems, as fearless as those on the Galapagos, since they had no natural predators.

"Into the Garden with Charles: A Memoir" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) by Clyde Phillip Wachsberger is a memoir about finding romance relatively late in life with a terrific gardening

partner. Wachsberger was a set designer and trompe l'oeil painter who bought a dilapidated 300-year-old house in Orient, N.Y. and began restoring it, planting his dream garden there, which was wild, varied and featured many exotic plants. Then he met Charles Dean, who was a maitre d' at New York's Carlyle and was also keen on gardening, but who didn't have a plot of his own. Over time, the result of their collaboration was a beautiful showplace; Wachsberger, who died last year at 66, also began doing remarkable paintings which, from a distance, had the look of photographs.

There's a photo connection with "To Pieces (on the developing of Velox paper)" by Henry Parland, (Norvik Press), translated by Dinah Cannell. The book is the sole novel written by Parland, the son of English and Baltic German parents who were living in Russia, then moved to Helsinki. Parland was meant to be studying law at the University of Helsinki, but he neglected his studies to lead the life of a flaneur, so his parents sent

him to stay with relatives in Lithuania, where his uncle was a professor. There, he became intrigued by the Russian Formalists, who influenced "To Pieces," as did the work of Marcel Proust. Its poetic narrative, which concerns the narrator's faithless lover Ami, now dead, is set in Jazz Age Helsinki and compares mental processes to the development of a photograph. He wrote, "When you are bent over a developing bath...feature after feature shoots forth, each one complementing -- giving new weight and meaning to -- the next, finally coalescing as a picture which, wide-eyed, takes in the room like a newborn child."

Parland's novel, which has been hailed as a groundbreaking modernist work, was published after he died of scarlet fever at 22 in 1930.

]]> Pamela Love, ShopStyle Team Up tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5412940 2011-12-05T19:14:43Z 2011-12-05T19:17:02Z

ShopStyle is jumping into the designer collaboration ring....

Roberta Correia
]]>

Last week the fashion search engine launched its first exclusive collection with jewelry designer and CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist Pamela Love at an event at the Tribeca Grand in New York.

Available only at PopSugar Shop, the limited edition, three piece collection features a rose gold plated tribal spike necklace, a silver plated diamond pendant necklace and a red resin tribal spike cuff. The pieces range in price from $175 to $225.

"ShopStyle is known for coveted brands and major retailers, but it's also a place for breakthrough designers and new brands as well. And Pamela Love is a great example of that," said Melissa Davis, ShopStyle's vice president of marketing.

For her part, Love praised ShopStyle as "a great place for discovering what's trending in the world of fashion."

"They really understand every facet of a woman's style and how important jewelry is to making a look stand out," Love said. "For the exclusive collaboration we experimented with new colors and new finishes to create a fun, carefree collection. The shapes are traditional, but with a twist that's very modern."

]]> The Passionate Reader: December 4, 2011 tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5412080 2011-12-05T02:27:43Z 2012-01-18T20:41:47Z

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow opined in "A Psalm of Life" in 1838 that "Lives of great men all remind us/We can make our lives sublime/And, departing, leave behind us/Footprints on the sands of time." While both writers and readers today take...

Lorna Koski
]]>

The facts of Van Gogh's life as they're generally understood have long been familiar. But that doesn't mean that these details are written in rock. One of the most remarkable revelations in "Van Gogh: The Life" (Random House) by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White -- who also wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Jackson Pollock" -- is the writers' claim that, rather than committing suicide with a gun, the painter, who had been enduring bouts of mental illness, was probably shot by a local boy, Rene Secretan, who had been teasing him. Van Gogh, the writers infer, "in a final act of martyrdom" protected his assailant, although the painter took several days to die. This sprawling (950+ pages), magisterial tome, written with access to materials from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam which have never before been studied by biographers, is both readable and fascinating. It brings to life many hitherto-unknown characters in the artist's life, such as his mother, Anna, and sheds new light on his famous relationship with his younger brother, the art dealer Theo. Among the many riveting details: His mother disliked his work and always disposed of any paintings he gave her; Theo tried endlessly, in many different ways, to try to get Vincent to change his painting style. The details of Dutch history and the writers' insights into its citizens' national character are also highly revelatory.

In "Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life and Lost, 1934 - 1961," (Alfred A. Knopf), Paul Hendrickson, who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his last book, "Sons of Mississippi," in 2003, traces the life of the legendary writer through the story of his boat, Pilar, which he used in Florida and Cuba, and eventually left in Cuba. Much of what has been written about Hemingway in the past two decades has focused on what was least appealing about him as a person; Hendrickson's sympathetic approach is intended partly as a corrective to that. While Hemingway was certainly an easy-to-caricature figure in life, that shouldn't erase his contribution as the author of "A Farewell to Arms," "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Moveable Feast." But what are most novel in this biography are the extensive passages about one of his three sons, Gregory Hemingway, a complex character who was a doctor, father of eight children, a transvestite and transsexual. Ernest Hemingway's interactions with him were mixed, but at times surprisingly sympathetic. Gregory, aka Gigi, wrote the 1976 book "Papa: A Personal Memoir," and eventually died of a heart attack in jail in Florida after an arrest for indecent exposure.

Serf's up! Rosamund Bartlett's "Tolstoy: A Russian Life" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is the first new biography of the writer in 20 years. This remarkable book aims to examine the author of "Anna Karenina" and "War and Peace" in his role as a political figure and philosophic thinker who had a tremendous influence on Russian life; he was more respected than the czar at the time of his death. His philosophical ideas, though, were sometimes implemented at a cost to his wife and children; the towering writer and secular saint was no deity at home. As Bartlett notes, in certain ways Tolstoy's attitudes remained very much those of an aristocrat of his time. On the question of women, for instance, he did not side with John Stuart Mill (who wrote, "The Subjection of Women"). When Tolstoy's wife, Sonya, wanted to stop having children, he disagreed with her utterly, and won the day. "It was not just that Tolstoy could not conceive of marriage without children -- he regarded a woman's main vocation as being to bear children, breast-feed and raise them, and was therefore horrified at the thought of his wife avoiding future pregnancies," she writes. Life at his provincial estate Yasnaya Polnaya and in the dusty property he attempted to settle in far-off Samara were not at all utopian for her. Bartlett also points out that "Anna Karenina" was inspired by the death of a real person, Anna Pirogova, a relative of Sonya's, who, after her lover told her he was marrying another woman, had committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a goods train.

A.N. Wilson, who published "Tolstoy: A Biography" in 1988, has just come out with "Dante in Love" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Wilson, who has been reading Dante for most of his life and who has a daughter named Beatrice, wrote this book, he says, to place the great Italian poet in the cultural context of his time. "It is important to recognize that autobiography is a form of fiction," Wilson writes. "Dante the pilgrim in the 'Comedy' or even Dante the 'I' of his 'Vita Nuova' or his Canzoni or Ballate is not a police witness on oath. He is a literary creation. Of course, he is based on a real-life person of the same name who lived at a particular time, and in a particular series of places in history. But we don't get very far if we start thinking he has something to hide, or that he should be writing about his wife rather than Beatrice and this other 'gentle' lady. That is not the point of what he is doing. And one of the things he is doing is expanding the Augustinian idea of confession -- that deeply personal thing -- as a reflection upon the general condition of human sinfulness." And by the way, as for Beatrice, Dante barely knew her. Wilson carefully and fluently reviews what we know and do not know about the poet and his work -- which should have the effect on the reader of inspiring a visit to the primary sources.

Meanwhile, with effortless erudition, Paul Johnson brings to life the world of the great philosopher in "Socrates: A Man for Our Times" (Viking). Socrates did not leave his own written record, so Johnson relies on those of others, including, of course, his star pupils Plato and Xenophon, along with Aristophanes, Diogenes, Herodotas and others. Among his deductions: that Socrates was a good soldier, fighting in the Athenian winter retreat from Potidaea when he was 46, during which he saved the life of his friend Alcibiades. Wilson also excoriates Plato for misrepresenting Socrates' ideas, then explains in painstaking detail the episode of Socrates' life that is probably most puzzling to moderns: his conviction in a trial for corrupting the youth of Athens and impiety, which ended in his being forced to drink poison. Wilson notes that, during a time of considerable unrest in Athens, many leading figures were convicted of crimes, exiled or both; Socrates was apparently convicted because of guilt by association with a trio of very unpopular government figures who were all already dead. Wilson states that the philosopher did not flee abroad, which he could easily have done, didn't take any legal counsel, and argued his own case in a way which was likely to make him seem arrogant and antagonize the jury of commoners. It did.

In "Spencer Tracy" (Alfred A. Knopf), James Curtis delivers a remarkably balanced and comprehensive view of the great actor, whose work clearly speaks for itself, but whose life has been distorted, Curtis argues, in a series of books that portray him inaccurately in a variety of different ways. Curtis benefited from the cooperation of Tracy's daughter, Susie Tracy, who gave him access to everything she could without suggesting that she be consulted on the final product. Curtis presents both the actor's long marriage to his wife Louise and his long relationship with Katharine Hepburn in great, but dispassionate, detail, making sense of the roles that these two commitments played in his life. The Hepburn-Tracy romance, in particular, has been sensationalized elsewhere. Curtis also illuminates Louise Tracy's role at the John Tracy Clinic, named for her deaf son, pointing out her substantial role as a pioneer in the education of the deaf, for which she was widely recognized and honored. And the writer, who had access to the actor's datebooks, points out that his storied drinking bouts were punctuated by long periods of sobriety -- which, of course, makes perfect sense -- because, otherwise, how could he have had the career he had? ]]> David Dyer and the Truth tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5387933 2011-11-23T16:49:00Z 2011-11-23T17:09:07Z

David Dyer, president and chief executive officer of Chico's FAS Inc. did a rather shocking thing yesterday: He told an unadorned and uncomfortable truth....

Evan Clark- Deputy Editor, Business

]]>

He should get high marks for that, but we also need to acknowledge that when it comes to frankness from the corner office, we grade on a serious curve.

Chico's namesake brand was on a roll in July and August with double-digit comparable-store sales increases. Dyer saw an opportunity and bet big, loading up on goods for the third-quarter.

"We were really coming off some very, very strong momentum and, honestly, I took a shot," Dyer told Wall Street analysts on a conference call. "We went for the inventory. We thought that we could continue that momentum, and it didn't happen."

Later, he added, "I was wrong. And so we move on."

Net profits sank 8.2 percent, the firm missed Wall Street estimates and the stock dropped 14.4 percent. Dyer's stock, on some level, seemed to rise.

Analysts grilled the ceo on the call, but also noted his forthrightness. Consultant Marni Shapiro, co-founder of The Retail Tracer, told the ceo his approach was "refreshing...kudos to you. This is retail. People make mistakes."

I agree completely, and I give the ceo full credit for taking the bull by the horns. I give him even more credit for admitting that he was doubling down and taking the same bet on the on-the-rise White House|Black Market division. "Fashion businesses are not for the faint of heart," he said.

But let's not confuse doing one's job with leaping tall buildings in a single bound.

I'm sure Dyer wants his subordinates to be frank and honest with him. It's only fitting that he act the same with his bosses -- the company's shareholders.

Dyer stood out on Tuesday's call not so much for his constitutional fortitude, but because he largely stood alone.

The impulse of so many top executives in fashion is to make excuses for failures, to point to the weather or a calendar shift when sales are bad, to preen excessively with adjusted pro-forma profits before taxes as net losses pile up.

They're smart people and I don't think dishonest. I think they see all the shucking and jiving as part of the game they have to play as high-powered, highly compensated ceo's. Thing is, it's not so much of a game to everyone else.
]]> Shopbop Launches Holiday Gift Shop tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5383220 2011-11-21T19:41:07Z 2011-11-21T20:37:27Z

Global online retailer Shopbop.com has welcomed the holiday season with a dedicated boutique showcasing a cherry-picked selection of gifts curated by their editorial team....

Kristi Garced Global online retailer Shopbop.com has welcomed the holiday season with a dedicated boutique showcasing a cherry-picked selection of gifts curated by their editorial team.

Spanning everything from designer clothing and accessories to decorative items and books, the microsite resembles a brick-and-mortar store with shoppable, virtual "window displays" separated into five different categories catering to various "types" of girls: The Thinker, The Natural Wonder, The Consummate Hostess, La Femme/Flirt and The Media Maven.

Some top picks from the shop? Elizabeth and James' "Bethune Glasses," a DL & CO. Signature Scallop Candle and Rag & Bone's quilted leather driving gloves. Shoppers can visit the boutique for a limited time at Shopbop.com/holiday-gift-boutique.

Numerous editors and bloggers have joined in on the retailer's initiative, making appearances on various social media platforms to share their favorite picks from the shop; some include Leandra Medine of Man Repeller, Carol Han of Milk&Mode, Zanita Whittington of Zanita, Laetitia Wajnapel of Mademoiselle Robot, Chiara Ferragni of The Blonde Salad and Hillary Kerr and Katherine Power of Who What Wear.

Additionally, today's surprise guest, actress Ashley Greene, has given an intimate insight into her holiday plans and daily style recommendations.

]]> Enter the Era of Ron Johnson tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5371227 2011-11-15T23:10:24Z 2011-11-16T19:45:49Z

Ron Johnson's tenure as chief cheerleader and chief executive officer at J.C. Penney Co. Inc. got its public start in the most scripted of forums this week -- the prepared remarks portion of the company's third-quarter conference call....

Evan Clark- Deputy Editor, Business
]]>
He also said he and the all-star team he's building (including marketing hotshot Michael Francis from Target Corp. and Kellwood Co. ceo Michael Kramer) would be helping them to "rethink every aspect of our business."

In short, the message to employees, at least as it was tweaked for Wall Street's ears, was: "You're doing everything wrong and that has to change and we're going to help." "I'm not here to improve, I am here to transform," Johnson said. "I'm investing considerable energy in a strategic review of our product, our pricing and our promotional strategies in order to create an exceptional, a new, a better way for people to shop."

All of this has shades of Apple. The ambition. The brave charge to not just face the future, but create it. The mandate to employees to "think differently" even plays on the famous Apple marketing campaign.

This is all an exceptionally heavy serving of corporate rhetoric, especially given the challenge of reversing the market share losses at a company the size of Penney's, which has more than 1,100 stores.

But there's this, "What if?" thing.

What if the success of the Apple stores isn't mostly about the insanely cool products?

What if some of the genius of Steve Jobs rubbed off on Johnson, or was already present when he joined Apple and made retail history?

It also cuts the other way.

What if Johnson learned the spiel at Apple and did amazing things there, but falls short when it comes to reinventing such a large business with so many moving parts and an audience no smaller than half of all American households?

Francis and Kramer appear to be betting that won't be the case. And their presence lends Johnson's rhetoric a kind of intriguing credibility.

Reinventing anything as big as Penney's is going to be incredibly tough, but what if when he talks about creating "a new, a better way for people to shop" he actually means it? And what if he pulls it off?
]]> The Online Tipping Point tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5357140 2011-11-08T21:26:56Z 2011-11-08T21:39:39Z

This week, retailers begin their third-quarter dance with Wall Street....

Evan Clark- Deputy Editor, Business
]]>
The immediate prospects of a company, as seen in the outlook, will more likely than not drive its stock.

But the good stuff, the details about burgeoning Web businesses that would speak to the broader evolution of retail and companies' longer-term prospects, will no doubt be glossed over, again.

So far, companies have gotten away with few Web statistics beyond the often eye-popping overall sales growth of 40 percent or more, even though the size and shape of retailers' budding online businesses and how they interact with their stores has become increasingly important. A recent paper from Harvard Business School professor Rajiv Lal and lecturer Jose Alvarez put the online revolution in stark terms, noting that the "category killers" now fiercely struggling against online competitors are only the first retailers to feel the pinch.

Chains such as Barnes & Noble, Best Buy and Staples took over whole segments of retail with sharp pricing, big stores and laser focus.

"Today, however, these same characteristics may prove to be the undoing of the big-box stores," Lal and Alvarez wrote. "We believe that retailing generally is at a tipping point, with category killers being the first significant casualties of the (r)evolution that is occurring. Retail store asset productivity has been in decline since the start of the recession in 2007, and we believe this trend will accelerate over the coming years."

Lal and Alvarez paint a picture of big-box stores on a slippery slope of sorts, with the economics of many stores derailing if the Web makes 5 to 10 percent of their floor space unproductive. "As entire sections of these stores die from online competition, category killers are being pressed to come up with solutions to keep their overall model afloat," the pair noted.

And they said the pressure from online players will only increase as younger shoppers who are more comfortable with the Web come into their own.

Lal and Alvarez prodded retailers to think about what needs cannot be satisfied online and how stores can offer a unique shopping experience. They suggest that retailers can face the future by creating a showroom experience, renting out space in their stores, developing service expertise à la Best Buy's Geek Squad and focusing on smaller, more flexible stores.

Wall Street is largely interested in the holiday season and early next year, which could be characterized by weaker trends despite the mostly upbeat vibe headed into Black Friday. A boost from the still-small online businesses will be welcomed and expected.

The future, though, is not going to grow out of the holiday sales trends. It's taking root in how these companies approach their digital businesses.

That's what I want to hear about. ]]> Sunglass Hut Debuts New Artist Series by KNITTA tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5335783 2011-11-07T05:01:00Z 2011-10-26T18:39:45Z

Yarn bombing artist Magda Sayeg, founder of 'Knitta Please' who is also known as KNITTA, has been tapped for Sunglass Hut's latest Artist series....

Kristi Garced Yarn bombing artist Magda Sayeg, founder of 'Knitta Please' who is also known as KNITTA, has been tapped for Sunglass Hut's latest Artist series.

Sayeg is considered to be the mother of yarn bombing, which got its name because of its association with graffiti and street art, and is credited with spawning the movement on an international level. Based in Austin, Texas, she leads community-based projects to beautify urban areas around the world, and her installations have also been featured at The Standard Hotel, South by Southwest and the Austin City Limits Festival. "The fact that the Sunglass Hut actively seeks out emerging artists and provides them with an opportunity to share their work in a new way is incredible," said Sayeg.

"Once I saw Magda's yarnbombing and how she was introducing this old-fashioned hobby as an art form to a younger generation, I knew that we had to work with her," said Kristen McCabe of Luxottica. "There's something very intimate, very personal about her work and I liked how the fuzzy knits contrasted against hard materials in her art... The consumer reaction is expected to be very strong. Magda perfectly combines sweet with street."

This is the fourth edition of the Sunglass Hut Artist Series, which was created to support up-and-coming artists; previous artists' collections include Chris Mendoza, Maya Hayek and Mike Ming.

Each hand crafted piece will retail for $130, with $30 from each purchase being donated to OneSight, a family of charitable vision care programs dedicated to improving vision through outreach, research and education.

]]> Seven Billion Souls tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5344505 2011-10-31T21:31:18Z 2011-10-31T21:33:16Z

Today we are seven billion....

Evan Clark- Deputy Editor, Business Today we are seven billion.

Global population has soared 75 percent since 1974, when there were just 4 billion of us. And someone born in 1927 has seen our numbers shoot up by 250 percent.

Whether or not this mad dash is wise or sustainable or controllable or a sign of serious trouble ahead, it's something to marvel at.

Go humanity go!

But where? Where are all these fresh faces?

Asia, which today accounts for 60 percent of global population, is projected to continue to be the world's most populous region in 2100 despite a slow late-century decline. Africa is set to swell from 1 billion to 3.6 billion people by the end of the century.

In contrast, the combined population of the Americas, Europe and Oceania is poised to grow from 1.7 billion today to nearly 2 billion by 2060 and then begin to drop off.

Fashion and the rest of the business world are attuned to these changes.

U.S. and European companies are looking internationally for growth in general and to China specifically, where Levi Strauss & Co. launched its Denizen brand, Hermÿs has Shang Xia and Starbucks has 500 coffee shops.

With all these people everywhere, China's not the only game in town. The biggest kid on the block, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., recently gained a toehold in Africa when it took over Massmart Holdings -- a promising sign that at least something is going on with the consumer there.

Broadly speaking, I bet retailers and apparel makers are ready to tackle the sheer numbers of these demographic changes.

It's the changing consumer mores that will probably throw established brands for a loop. Not only are there more of us now, everyone's talking -- on Facebook, on Twitter and elsewhere. Consumers are touch-screen ready and they're comparing notes and when they shop online they're comparing prices. They're logging on and tuning in to brands and participating in the process in ways they never did before. And they're doing it from everywhere.

The companies that are really going to own the increasingly borderless market with 7 billion shoppers are the ones that know how to talk to these new consumers.

]]> DKNY Times Blog Revamped tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5341280 2011-10-29T12:42:57Z 2011-10-29T12:49:44Z

DKNY Times is getting a facelift. The brand's in-house blog has been redesigned, complete with a cleaner modern look, top navigation bar access to exclusive content including the nymag.com sponsored "Where to Wear," and weekly agenda listings of upcoming New...

Roberta Correia
The brand's in-house blog has been redesigned, complete with a cleaner modern look, top navigation bar access to exclusive content including the nymag.com sponsored "Where to Wear," and weekly agenda listings of upcoming New York events.

]]>

"We updated the DKNY Times to better showcase its 'up to the minute' news -- content is added four times daily to the feature story. The redesign also encourages cross-platform engagement with both Facebook and Twitter," a spokesperson for the company said.

With the redesign, the brand's "Notes on a City" section, which is billed as a "stylish look at the city's newest cultural happenings," is striking out on its own and heading over to Tumblr.

Moving "Notes on a City" to Tumblr was an effort to take the content to where people are already engaging, according to the brand, as well as capitalize on the Tumblr sharing metrics and leverage the its existing presence with DKNY PR Girl. ]]> A Bon Vivant Moved to Brooklyn tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5338100 2011-10-28T04:24:31Z 2011-10-28T18:43:54Z

The art of being a true bon vivant in today's society is too quickly undervalued."Everyone is so serious in New York," art director, entrepreneur and, as of today, NoLIta boutique owner Ramdane Touhami laughed on a September afternoon in SoHo....

Alessandra Codinha
"Everyone is so serious in New York," art director, entrepreneur and, as of today, NoLIta boutique owner Ramdane Touhami laughed on a September afternoon in SoHo. "Everyone needs to learn how to enjoy and have fun!" Touhami is a person who generally speaks in exclamation points.

]]> mais bien sur.

There is seemingly no profession that Touhami has not tried at one point or another in his career. The 37-year-old import (from Paris, by way of Morocco, and plenty of places in between) has a curriculum vitae that spans the worlds of art, interior design, fashion, music, journalism, filmmaking and perfume. He also cites plans for a restaurant in the works for downtown New York.

Attempting to follow Touhami's career trajectory is headache-inducing. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. "I launched the first French skatewear brand," Touhami offers of his 1994 line, King Size. For the subsequent decade and a half, he seemingly zigzagged across the world. "I can't ever stop," Touhami offers by way of explanation. "I'm just always...going. Different things, different products, different places, people! Let's go!" In 2001, he and wife Victoire de Taillac founded La Parfumerie Generale, a scent company that cites "true alternatives to all those mass market products with their bland, standardized formats aimed at winning over vast numbers of consumers." Touhami followed that with creative-direction stints at Le Bon Marche in Paris, Tokyo's And A and Liberty in London. While working for Liberty, Touhami launched two clothing lines: an upscale ready-to-wear line called R.T. (carried at Barneys New York and Nom de Guerre in New York) and Resistance, which Touhami explained as being "inspired by a more urban universe, with a dissenting tone."

In 2006 he helped relaunch venerate candle company Cire Trudon and sold it five years later. In 2008 he was living in Tangier, where he started a lounge and restaurant called L'Africain, which he describes as "an African neo-brasserie...the place to be for two years, in Tangier."
Now, he intends to swing back to the sartorial, partially because he's bored of the volume of uninspiring boutiques that line the streets of SoHo. "I'm changing the rules," Touhami exclaims, explaining, "The store will have wool on the storefront and granite on the furniture. It's going to look like a UFO!"

Touhami's designs are modern takes on classic items, often with a touch of Gallic charm. A Barbour-inspired waxed jacket is offered in lipstick red and a smattering of military-esque gold buttons. Easy Scottish angora wool sweaters are for sale in a multitude of flattering shades. Price points are accessible, "everything is for everyone!" Touhami exclaims, as he always is, though the line is only available in the New York flagship.

And what's on tap for him after this latest opening? "Well, first the party, of course, the party that night! But then I'm directing a horror film based around the line," Touhami laughs in the fashion of a cartoon maniac for effect. The film in question? A short written and directed by Ramdane, a sort of surrealist horror/fantasy film that will also serve as advertising, as the victims wear Ramdane. It is set to debut at the end of the month, or as he exclaims with more than a little wicked glee, "Just in time for Halloween!"

Ramdane, 64 Kenmare Street, New York
Opening party from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 27.
]]> Bring Zombie Boy Home to Mom, Thanks to Dermablend tag:blog.wwd.com,2011:/wwd//1.5319464 2011-10-20T19:04:42Z 2011-10-20T19:36:31Z

Dermablend, best known for its dermatologist-recommended coverage cosmetics, boasts its ability to successfully conceal everything from undereye circles to more serious skin conditions....

Kristi Garced Dermablend, best known for its dermatologist-recommended coverage cosmetics, boasts its ability to successfully conceal everything from undereye circles to more serious skin conditions.

Genest, the 26-year-old model and fashion muse who is covered in head-to-toe skeletal tattoos, gained notoriety after appearing in Lady Gaga's video for "Born This Way," as well as walking the Mugler Fall 2011 runway show in Paris. He has since gained a cult-like following.

Dermablend's "Go Beyond the Cover," produced in collaboration with Tuxedo Agency, shines quite a different light on the model. The video begins with a seated, shirtless Genest sporting his signature piercings but nary a tattoo in sight. As he begins to rub away the product on his skin, the tattoos underneath become more and more visible until the full transformation manifests itself -- and at last, Zombie Boy appears in his natural, tattooed state.

"The point that we hope to drive home is that sometimes we catch ourselves judging an individual based on appearance alone, but appearances can be easily changed," said Renee Mininni, assistant vice president of marketing for Dermablend. "[We] provide products for those seeking coverage, and it will do the trick flawlessly -- but be inspired to go beyond the cover."

The video can be seen at www.gobeyondthecover.com and on Dermablend's Facebook page.

]]>