Grampa came about through Taylor’s love of old grandfather clocks; Taylor loved these classic pieces but felt with today’s modern homes and limited hall space they needed to be redesigned and brought into today’s modern times. The end piece is a stunning and elegant streamlined version of a classic.
Alexander McQueen knew since childhood that he wanted to be a fashion designer. Now a famous household name, McQueen has come a long way from his early childhood as the son of a taxi driver growing up in East London, to become one of the most prominent British fashion designers.
In his youth, McQueen had already begun to design clothes for his three sisters, certain that this passion would become his career. At sixteen, he got his first job in the fashion industry: an internship with a tailor, where his clients included Prince Charles. At twenty, he moved to the Italian fashion capital of Milan, where he began working for Romeo Gigli. He later went on to receive a Masters degree in Fashion Design from Central Saint Martin’s College of Arts and Design in London.
Honey and wine trickled over Kim Basinger’s ravishingly naked body. Tiny morsels directed past her clenched-shut eyes and into her pouting mouth by a youthfully hunky Mickey Rourke. For anyone of a certain age, the conjunction of sex and food will always instantly bring to mind such scenes from the now über-naff 1985 movie 91/2 Weeks. Back in the day though, the film inspired us all to a bout of comestible experimentation in our lovemaking. Never can so many bed sheets have been stained beyond redemption, so many mattresses saturated to the point their very springs rusted away, as all the while the berries splattered, the chocolate dripped, and the cream oozed. All very befitting for such a decadent decade. Since then, the event of HIV/AIDS had seemed to make such indulgent sexual practices, or at least their artistic celebration, less acceptable. Now though, Philippe Di Méo’s erotic tableware collection, Souper Fin, confirms that sex and food are firmly back on the menu.
I have just received the third email of the day informing me that I have been super poked by one of my friends and it is only 10am. I stop what I am doing and immediately switch browser windows, open on my Facebook page, and look to see who it was. It was my friend James who is actually sitting at the other end of the room, when I look up he is smiling and waving in sarcastic excitement. I think it is fairly safe to say that social networking sites seem to have taken over people’s lives as the main form of communication between friends, relatives and even “friends” you have never met. People are finding themselves with bigger addictions than Amy Whinehouse as they communicate through sites such as Myspace, Bebo and Facebook, myself included.
The brand Givenchy is associated with the man, Hubert de Givenchy, who was born in 1927 in Beauvais, France. Givenchy was interested in fashion at a very early age; when he was only 10 years old, he visited the World’s Fair in Paris and was captivated by the Pavilion of Elegance, which showed off models wearing designs from some of the most famous French couturiers. Givenchy was hypnotized by the beauty of clothes, and it was after this experience that Givenchy made the decision to become a designer. After the end of the Second World War, Givenchy moved to Paris and began to study fashion design, learning from teachers such as Jacques Fath, Robert Piguet, Lucien Lelong, and Elsa Schiaparelli.
Givenchy opened his first Maison de Couture in 1952 and, inspired by his muse, Bettina Graziani, created the famous “Bettina blouse.” Givenchy met immediate success with this first collection in Paris, and in 1953, he met Audrey Hepburn, the woman who, for him, would embody femininity and become his muse and friend for 40 years. Audrey Hepburn became a spokeswoman for Givenchy, and she wore his designs in many of her films. The association between Givenchy and Hepburn in the eyes of the public helped to create the image of Givenchy that exists even today: he is considered a designer of classic, timeless clothing, especially eveningwear. Cristobal Balenciaga was another close friend who inspired Givenchy, especially with regards to Givenchy’s characteristic structured minimalism.