Portal4Fashion.com

First lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, actress Catherine Deneuve and the Shah of Iran’s widow were among mourners today at the funeral of legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent. Applause rose among the arriving guests as Saint Laurent’s casket was carried into the flower bedecked Saint-Roche church near the Louvre Museum and Tuileries Gardens and placed before the altar, draped in an ornate decorated yellow cloth.

Saint Laurent was among the most influential designers during the most important era of Parisian fashion, changing the way generations of women dressed, most enduringly by making it glamorous and feminine to wear pants. Stars, couturiers and dignitaries including President French Nicolas Sarkozy, accompanied by his wife - who once modeled for Saint Laurent - filled the church in a final homage to the designer four days after he died of cancer at 71.

“He changed couture through his art,” said the Rev. Roland Letteron, speaking during the funeral service. Saint Laurent used the art of fashion “to expose the grandeur of life.”

“It is more than brocade he prints on silk. It is light,” Letteron said.

Designers Vivienne Westwood, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Sonia Rykiel and John Galliano were among luminaries seen in the crowd as well as Farah Diba Pahlavi, exiled widow of the late Shah of Iran. Saint Laurent’s remains will be cremated and his ashes kept in the Majorelle botanical garden near a home in Marrakech, Morocco, that he and Pierre Berge, his friend of some 40 years and business partner, owned. A true pioneer from the fashion industry has passed on to the big runway in the sky!

She sure looks good in this picture.  I wonder if she has had too much collegen because she looked kinda gross on America’s Smartest Model and the fact that she made it past the first week made that show look D-U-M-B!

Harper’s Bazaar UK has named who they believe to be Britain’s five most original dressers. Included on this years list is Rosie Oddie, singer from band The Odd Squad and 22-year-old daughter of Bill Oddie. Angel of the North sculptor Antony Gormley’s daughter Paloma, 22, is also named.  The magazine hails the duo for their “luxe eccentric” style, and has photographed them for the latest issue of Harper’s. Also named in the list is beer heiress Daphne Guinness, who the magazine described as “a walking work of art”, cross-dressing Turner Prize-winning potter Grayson Perry, and fashion empress Amanda Harlech.  I am not sure I agree with this list but most of those named would make my top 10.

Sports goods maker Puma appointed fashion designer Hussein Chalayan as its creative director in a bid to vault its style status to the next level marking itself out from rivals like Adidas.  Puma, the world’s third largest sportswear maker, made the announcement during Paris Fashion Week where Chalayan presented a critically acclaimed womenswear collection for fall 2008.

“We want to be different, that’s the idea behind this. We don’t want to be mass market and selling to discount stores, we just want to keep a premium,” Puma Chief Executive Jochen Zeitz, told Reuters in an interview at the presentation.

Chalayan is famous for his thought-provoking designs, would bring his use of new technology and provocative point of view to Puma, Zeitz told a news conference.  Zeitz is credited with turning Puma into a lifestyle brand and making it one of Germany’s best-known exports.

Collaborations with designers are a regular feature in the cut-throat retail industry as the world’s biggest brands seek to differentiate themselves and lure in ever-pickier consumers. Puma, has already worked with edgy, top rated designers Alexander McQueen and Jil Sander.

Meanwhile German rival Adidas has seen its business boosted by its long-term collaboration with Stella McCartney, whose top end fashion house is owned by Puma parent company PPR.

Bernstein Research analyst Marco Giovanelli said the deal was a signal Puma was aiming to move upscale in fashion terms.  If anyone doubts the logic of marrying high fashion with sports gear look no further than the price tag on some of the new basketball runners.

Norma Kamali, a fashion designer known for innovative designs like her sleeping bag coat, her use of silk parachutes as fabric and fashion-sensibility take on jersey sportswear, will design a collection for Wal-Mart, in the latest mass merchant-meets-fashion designer collaboration.
 
The collection, to be produced via a licensing agreement with Cherokee Inc., Norma Kamali and Wal-Mart, will be offered in select Wal-Mart stores beginning in fall 2008.

Kamali is no stranger to partnerships with mass retailers, however ? in 2006 she joined forces with sportswear brand Everlast and Spiegel to bring her brand of multifunctional, mix-and-match style to a wider audience of women.

As with the collections she’s created for Everlast and Spiegel ? offered at lower price points than her namesake Norma Kamali Collection ? Kamali said in a phone interview on Wednesday, Feb. 27, that she will carry the Wal-Mart collection in her store on 56th Street in New York. (Currently, there are no Wal-Mart stores in Manhattan).

“It’s a great opportunity to do what I love to do,” said Kamali, which ultimately for her is to help women look and feel great through well-designed clothes.

“It’s solving the problem that women all have with self-esteem ? there are always a couple of days a month where we don’t feel so great,” she said.

In the case of her partnership with Wal-Mart, she’ll be able to offer a self-esteem boost for her biggest audience yet, specifically targeting style-conscious people on a budget ? students, for example, or women who have a family to take care of, she said.  Another nice move by the giant, Walmart.

Paris Fashion Week is known for boasting the world’s oldest fashion names but the spotlight focussed on a couple of newcomers — Phoebe and Euan, aged 7.
 
The pair, from a primary school in England, were enlisted by Vivienne Westwood, the grand dame of British fashion, along with 34 of their classmates to paint bugs, plants and snakes all over her collection.

The theme? Ecological crisis. “It was just brilliant, and she was very nice and helpful,” said Euan Bonser a working with Westwood who erupted to fame in the 1970s fomenting the punk movement and dressing the Sex Pistols.

Phoebe Ackroyd, seated beside him on the front row, also in her school uniform of green sweatshirt and grey trousers, said the experience of painting dots and dashes on dresses, jackets and a pith helmet left her wanting “to be a model.”

Fashion has always been a vehicle for politics for Westwood, who, most recently in 2005, joined forces with British civil rights group Liberty with a series of T-shirts and babywear with the slogan “I am not a terrorist” to draw attention to the preservation of civil liberties post-September 11.

Monday’s collection, titled “Chaos Point,” was no different. Her vision was a group of freedom fighters trying to avert the planet from ecological disaster and included one model on stilts “distinguish the characters and their clothes,” Westwood said.

Phoebe and Euan found their way to the front row of the world’s premier fashion event because of their teacher, Madeline Bell, 25, who had her class write to Westwood after she taught them about the designer in a lesson on “Great Artists.”

The financial meltdown pains hitting the United States has also hit home on the fashion runway, when New York Fashion Week takes off, but its impact may be surprising.  Certainly, less business will be done than usual, and some designs will be muted, industry experts say. But at the same time, some designers will interpret the financial downturn as an excuse to turn up the fashion excess.

“The wonderful thing about fashion is it will always do the opposite of what you think,” said James Aguiar, co-host of the “Full Frontal Fashion,” a television program that covers fashion shows.

Just when you would think things would be more conservative, there are likely to be more lavish, extreme displays on the catwalk, Aguiar said.

“If anything, people will be more desperate to get attention that they think is going to generate business,” said David Wolfe, creative director of the Doneger Group, a New York trend forecasting company, who also expects more theatre.

But while they may turn up the drama on the runway, there’ll be a big gap between what designers show and what they actually end up selling during the week.

U.S. consumers have curbed their spending in recent months as a decline in the housing market takes hold. Shopping over the Christmas retail season was the worst in five years, even hitting luxury names like Saks Inc, Tiffany & Co, Coach Inc and Richemont.

Designer Rebecca Taylor, whose women’s fashions are sold at high-end U.S. stores such as Bergdorf Goodman, Saks and Bloomingdale’s, said she expects fall 2008 to be more commercial as some retailers, still reeling from last year’s dramatic slowdown, take fewer risks.

“As traffic slows in the department stores, buyers are really looking for bankability,” Taylor said. However, her own orders have tripled over the last year and she expects to drive $5 million in sales between her runway show on Thursday and a trade show the following weekend. She declined to give a figure for last February’s show for comparison.

Retail consultant Sanjay Srikanth of management consultancy A.T. Kearney warned that Taylor’s expectation would be atypical, as buyers trim the size of their orders to keep inventories tight.