NEW YORK — A month after the death of Yves Saint Laurent, Christie’s is auctioning seven pieces of the legendary French fashion designer’s clothing and jewelry representing nearly every decade of his career.

The items at the July 2 auction include a 1958 cocktail dress for Dior and a 1970s Rive Gauche camel cable-knit sweater trimmed in fox fur similar to one Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis wore.

“What’s exciting about the collection is that you see the progression of his career. He was a real style-setter,” said Christie’s couture specialist Laura Leyfer.

Saint Laurent died on June 1 at age 71. Considered one of the most influential designers of the 20th century, his creations _ from pop-art print mini-dresses to peasant skirts and elegant pantsuits _ endure to this day.

The cable-knit sweater _ with a pre-sale estimate of $250 to $400 _ is a version of one Onassis was often photographed wearing, a style she owned in several colors, according to Christie’s auction catalog.

All of the items are in excellent condition and are relatively inexpensive because they aren’t new designs and have been worn, Leyfer said Friday. “That’s part of the appeal and it’s what makes it a collectible,” she said.

Another item for sale is a dusty pink layered tulle evening dress with metallic pink and silver embroidery, which Saint Laurent designed for Dior in 1958. It’s could fetch $1,000 to $1,500.

The costume jewelry includes a floral gold-tone metal and crystal stone necklace from 1990, estimated to sell for $1,000 to $1,500, and a hammered gilt-metal “ethnic” necklace from the 1970s that could bring $600 to $800.

The sale also includes pieces from other designers including Christian Lacroix, Thierry Mugler, Balenciaga and Gianni Versace. Source

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U.S. fashion company Tommy Hilfiger and music group Sony BMG teamed up on Wednesday to launch a fashion and music online TV website, a latest sign of ever closer union of the world’s of style and song. I totally loved the site, and the first introduction video is an outstanding performance of one of my favorite bands Faithless doing a live version of their hit Insomina. I was instantly impressed by the site and the music featured on it.

Here is the story from Reuters….

Read the full story

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Can anyone else besides my sister Michelle who is 47 and stunning say they look this good at 49? I doubt Madonna has had  surgery , little if any because her face in general looks like it’s aged gracefully . Obviously there was some serious photoshopping going on to make her face look so smooth but there is no person featured in a fashion magazine with un-touched photos, so why not her?  These are some of Madonna’s latest pics from her Elle Magazine fashion shoot. Her body is so natural , fit , tight and FABULOUS! She truly is an icon because she has shown women that it is clearly possible to stay healthy, hot, and susscessful in middle age. It’s pretty sad when a woman who  is practically 50 has a better body than her much younger “it” girl counterparts like Britney Spears, Heidi Montag, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan. Sure they have younger skin and their faces are more youthful in appearence (except for Lindsay Lohan who looked 30 at 20), thats because they are young! Do you honestly think that at age 50 , Lindsay Lohan is going to look this good? That’s if she lives to be 50..ouch Read the full story

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PARIS (AFP) - Rolling Stones guitarist and rock-and-roll bad boy Keith Richards is to become the new public face of Louis Vuitton the French luxury fashion house said on Tuesday.

For his first ever ad campaign, the 64-year-old Richards — who has a rocky history of drug use — is seen cradling his guitar on a hotel-room bed, the lights part obscured by skull-print black drapes.

“Some journeys cannot be put into words. New York. 3 am. Blues in C,” runs the slogal of the ad, shot by US photographer Annie Leibovitz and due to appear in the magazine press next month.

Richards plans to donate the fee for the ad to the Climate Project, launched by Nobel-winning former US vice-president Al Gore and backed by Louis Vuitton.

Famous faces stars to have represented Vuitton in the past include former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, French screen icon Catherine Deneuve, and US actresses Scarlett Johansson and Uma Thurman.–Story from yahoo news

How weird…Why??? Anyway, good for Keith..this guys just gets one break after the next, he must have been a saint in a former life. I guess it’s good to be Keith Richards.

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Aretha Franklin looks so big, and unhealthy it actually hurts to look at her photos. With all this weight she gains each year, I’m shocked to see the poor, and very tacky fashion choices she continues to make. These low cut dresses that exposes her massive cleavage, and leave nothing to the imagination makes any fashionista cringe at the sight of such a mess.

The Queen of Soul proves year after year that she may be a diva on  stage but is clearly a major fashion disaster. I am so so afraid for little Brandy in this pic, Miss Franklin’s cleavage looks like it’s ready to explode out of that tacky dress and give Brandy 2 black eyes!

Here’s a pic of Aretha when she was young and healthy. What a beauty!

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February 4, 2008 — The beauty of Betsey is her consistent ability to translate a very over-the-top East Coast trashy Lolita teenage aesthetic into something a little more, um, Pan-American. Maybe it’s her infectious good humor, warm-and-fuzzy crazy grandma image, or her unabashedly wild styling — we can’t help but love whatever she hurls down the runway each season.

For fall, Johnson presented the high school 60s and 70s-inspired beatnik wardrobe every girl dreamed she had — in technicolor. Suede jackets replete with fringes, embossed catsuits, elaborately trimmed faux-fur chubbies, flouncy ruffled blouses, and girly floral rompers may occasionally, in Johnson’s signature oddball color combinations, invoke patent-leather-biker-bumble-bee imagery or flashbacks to piano recital dresses from your childhood, but, for the most part, the looks came off as utterly adorable.

Front row, Tyra Banks, Russell Simmons, Reverend Run’s daughters, and MisShape Leigh Lezark sat around cafe-inspired table set-ups complete with bubble-gum “cigarettes” and ashtrays. In celebration of the 30th anniversary of her label, Johnson presented a retrospective catwalk featuring 18 of her favorite iconic pieces from past collections.

Let’s hope she reprises these pieces from her archives and puts them into production for collectors and a generation who may have missed the first go-around.

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The finale at the last Valentino show. The ovation was still going as I moved toward the backstage, slowly and then at a brisk walk. I passed Marisa Berenson and

Marie-Chantal of Greece, who was with her husband Pavlos and her in-laws, Queen Ann-Marie and King Constantine. I saw [...]

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NEW YORK - Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday at a downtown Manhattan apartment, and police said drugs may have been a factor. The Australian-born actor was 28. Police said Ledger was naked in his bed with an unknown number of sleeping pills near the body. Read the story

I absoultely loved this actor. Just the other day I watched his movie Casanova with my sister the other night and loved it. He didn’t buy into the Hollywood bad boy act and each role he took on seemed more challenging and unique than the other. I love you Heath, and we will all miss you .

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When you look back at the stellar career of the late Italian designer Emilio Pucci, it’s hard to imagine how this icon of the fashion and design industry managed it all. According to Wikipedia, Pucci was a member of the Italian olympic ski team of 1934 and in 1935 won a skiing scholarship to Reed College in Oregon. He first ventured into clothing design at Reed by creating the ski team’s uniforms. In 1947 he was photographed by Toni Frissell, a photographer working for Harper’s Bazaar, wearing skiwear Pucci had designed himself. Upon learning this, Frissell’s editor asked Pucci to design skiwear for a story on European Winter Fashion, which ran in the winter 1948 issue of the Bazaar, the rest is fashion history. Read the full story

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Perfection thy name is Linda Evangelista & Naomi Campbell…. - isabella gucci

These two divas are the inspiration for this new blog and they are also the first models I ever really began to pay attention to. Yes, I am speaking of the living deities Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell! Unlike most who praised the mainstream , conventional looks of Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer , my attention was squarely on these two. First lets talk about Linda E. , I mean, my God, the woman has the sexiest last name ever, Evangelista…how freakin hot is that?

I can’t explain it but Linda sometimes looked so beautiful sometimes that it seemed she wasn’t real, but more like a beautiful exotic , artist rendering of some kind. I rember when I saw this stunning photo of Linda drenched in diamonds with her bleached blonde hair, ice blue eyes, seductively smoking that cigarette, I actually gasped from shock over how incredible she photographed. I thought to myself, this bitch just cannot take a bad photo! Whatever this girl was selling I was more than ready to buy! She looks at the camera with such intensity, as if she’s ready to seduce it with her eyes. I love how she can look so differently in every shot, and how she morphs into radical hairstyles and colors with ease. Linda stills looks good , but I wouldn’t say she has aged as well as Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington. All in all, Linda worked the Diva factor like a pro. She was one of the best high fashion models ever.

This is whats missing from today’s models. The Diva factor. We all know the whole story behind the demise of the supermodels..They say the industry got tired of all the drama, of the whole “supermodel” issue and decided to no longer idolize just a top few they way they did in the 90’s. They saw how much hysteria was created over the “Trinity” of Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington, and others. Don’t you remember the Fashion Cafe, forgettable movie roles, misguided excercise video tapes, fashion award shows,and misplaced marketing ad campaigns? The hype behind these women was much too much for the industry to handle. It soon became more about the supermodels and less about the designers and the clothes. I have to admit that idea was true genius because I like many was getting tired of the uber insanity surrounding these women. Linda in my opinion is one of the most beautiful models ever to walk this Earth . Yeah we know she is like a chameleon because she could change her look so dramtically with just a tube of hair dye and a cut. Her beauty has been described by many as hypnotic , haunting, and seductive, but to me it was those eyes, and her unique facial structure that made her one of the fiercest supermodels ever.

Now lets focus on the Queen Bee of Supermodels Naomi

First of all this woman is a spoiled, selfish, pushy brat. I didn’t find her cell phone beat downs of working class servants very lady like either. It also explains alot to me as to why she hasn’t had any real success since ending her career years ago. Maybe the beat downs are a shameless attempt to keep her name in the spotlight because everything else like her music and acting career in bascially in the 50% off bin at Walmart & Target. Whatever the reason for her behavior, who really gives crap? Nobody looked like Naomi, nobody worked the runway like Naomi, and NO ONE, NO ONE had a better body than Naomi.

Forget the obvious trail that she blazed for so many aspiring young black models, and the diva like behavior that we secretly couldn’t get enough of. The woman was a walking, talking pile of sex appeal and raw, sultry sophistication. She had a runway walk that left dust in the face of those behind her. She was the first black model who appeared on the cover of Vogue Paris as that publication’s first Black cover girl. In addition to Vogue Paris, Campbell also became the first Black model to appear on the cover of Vogue UK, Vogue Nippon and Time magazine(according to wikepedia). It couldn’t have been easy having to be the first to break down so many barriers and she did with sex appeal, boldness and panash. Naomi always keep it real, remember when she decided to disasociate herself with Peta when she realized how much she loved wearing leather, fur, and eating meat? It’s not easy admitting to the world that your a hypocrite , but like always, she did it with style and she did it HER way. This is what’s expected of a true diva,and Miss Naomi Campbell has never let us down.

And for those who doubt the Naomi is the real deal…check out these runway shots of Naomi tearing the catwalk up in July ‘07, keep in mind she 37 years old! This bitch is too bad! Bow Down! Photos courtesy of BrownSista.com

Still to this day I go nuts when I see that classic George Michael video freedom with the entire “Trinity” of supermodels including my two favorites Naomi and Linda. They just don’t make these kind of divacentric model drenched videos anymore. LOL

Linda is the first to shown, check out the video

If you ask me, there wasn’t a need for the male model in the video, the girls could handle it all own their own!

Now here’s another classic video (too funky) from George Michael soaked with more supermodels. It became very clear to me just how gay George was when I saw this video…not for any one thing in particular, but so many supermodels in one video could only be the brainchild of a very gay man. Here at issabellagucci.com we are very gay friendly, we actually encourage it!

This video even has some retro Tyra and her huge wig, but my fav of course is when Linda steps out onto the catwalk first after her diva like tantrum backstage. I also dug the designer in the white lab coat who rips off her coat and wig then works the runway in her black latex catsuit. Smashing indeed!

The supermodels featured in this video(too funky) include Linda Evangelista, Tyra Banks, Beverly Peele, Nadja Auermann, Emma Sjöberg, Rossy de Palma, and Estelle Hallyday

Everytime this video is played, a Diva buys new shoes

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