Dress by Number: Camilla Belle

The beautiful Camilla Belle wore this cute and casual outfit to lunch at Urth Cafe in Beverly Hills with friend Joe Jonas. I'm posting this in part because a reader asked me for suggestions on how to wear a sweater vest aka sleeveless cardigan, and voila! Here's a simple, smart way to do it.

Another great thing about this outfit is that if you look closely, you'll see that Camilla is also working the whole spring-tribal-trend with subtle accessories and a tribal-print headscarf. If you prefer not to wear one on your head, you could tie a vibrant printed scarf to your purse. I adore Camilla's bag, btw, and I'm sure it cost a pretty penny (or maybe it was a freebie), but that color, shape and size? Love it, and did my best to find something close. thebudgetbabe

Kim Kardashian in Fall Navy and Black

Kim Kardashian gears up for fall in a navy wool coat, black turtleneck, black beanie and black over-the-knee boots. thebudgetbabe

Fashion Brands Transform Ravaged Rice Fields

We have previously talked about the number of innovative projects that have sprung up in the wake of the events in North Japan. Another fantastic project that caught our eye at the recent Tokyo Fashion Week, and is already harvesting results, aims at turning damaged lands in the Sendai area into fertile grounds for fashion. The big collaboration project that now includes more than 20 apparel manufacturers and retailers, was initiated by people from the textile and fashion industry such as Kondo Kenichi of Taishoboseki Industries,, in order to commence cotton farming in Tohoku area, where hundreds of hectares of land were devastated by the tsunami.

In the tsunami the rice paddies in these areas were not only destroyed, but left with high concentration levels of saline. “When the salt concentration level in the soil exceeds 0.2% it is impossible to grow rice on it, but cotton can grow on soil with 0.5% to 0.6% salt concentration” says Kondo.

The attempt of the Tohoku Cotton Project aims to create long term employment for the rice farmers by planting cotton crops on what used to be rice farms before the disaster. The cotton seeds were provided to affected farms and Taishoboseki buys up the cotton crops to spin them. The spun yarn is used to create commercial products and will eventually reach consumers.

Actual product sales are expected to commence in January 2012 and since the demand is already higher than anticipated, Taishoboseki plans to blend harvested cotton with other organic cotton to create approximately 20 tons of yarn.

The project is generating a lot of attention, especially after the recent Tokyo Fashion Week where top fashion designer Yuma Koshino announced her participation in the project and will be launching her products together with Japan Airline (JAL) for her next collection.

Other apparel brands such as Urban research, Lee and Lowrys Farm to name a few, are also delivering their message “Don’t forget Tohoku! We are still alive!” with the vision of seeing in the near future a sea of white cotton fields that spread far and wide all over the Sendai area and more importantly give residents employment and a new sustainable lifestyle.Yana

Valentino /Spring 2012 RTW

As four weeks of shows draw to a close, it’s apparent that the value of the sincere and personally felt vision is almost the paramount thing in fashion. To make a lasting impression, any house or individual designer needs the ability to open a window on a world of their own—and then make us believe we can be part of it. Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli have reached that state of grace at Valentino—a house which has always “owned” such nebulous qualities as prettiness, fragility, and romance. At one point, it seemed as if those notions could have slipped into history with the retirement of Valentino himself. But now his successors are achieving an effortless balance between maintaining the fantasy, and making it beautifully accessible to a modern girl. Their spring show was a long essay on Valentino’s supremacy in the art of finessing everything that can be done with lace – but brought wholly into a contemporary context.

Chiuri and Piccioli said they’d been looking at Mexican folk embroidery and the photographs of Graciela Iturbide and Edward Weston—not that you really need to know this. The knack they have is for using intricate and delicate fabric and making it simple to wear. Their first looks, which they said were derived from “dowry lace,” were made in a cotton canvas—reminiscent of the linens you still see used in Italian homes. From there, they worked on lace appliquéd onto organza in flounces, fine Chantilly net, lace worked into micro-flowers, denser, and crunchier guipure right through to silvery, slightly Deco metallic lace for the finale.

It could easily have been a case of overkill—or just an exhausting exhibition of couture-grade fabric wares. But for all the labor that goes into the materials, the clever part is the way the designers reined it back from being cloyingly ingénue or sugary.

Part of that is due to their modest but flattering shapes, usually neatly fitted into a slightly raised waist, with high necklines and some kind of quiet emphasis on the sleeves, which bloom into gentle puffs or soft balloons caught into the cuff. And part of it is their modern and realistic understanding of how a girl wants to feel and move when she goes out. Most of their girls walked in flat thong sandals with tiny, glittery block heels, looking as if they’d just shrugged on their dresses and run out, feeling easy and comfortable with themselves.by Sarah Mower

Fashionable Food

Combining a love for healthy snacks with flirty fashion, the Lookbook Cookbook blog features Terry Richardson- and American Apparal-like images alongside easy to follow recipes for a unique experience. Targeting young hipsters and fashionistas alike, it provides an awesome way to get them to take an interest in food and cooking, not to mention eating healthier. trendhunter

Chanel / Spring 2012 RTW

Beneath the soaring glass domes of the Grand Palais, the Chanel set transported us to the undersea world of Karl Lagerfeld; an aquatic wonderland of gleaming white stingrays and sea horses adrift amongst coral branches and shells on a sandy sea bed. Lagerfeld had promised “the ground of the sea, but in a very poetic way,” and his models, meandering through this dramatic set to a techno soundtrack abstracted from Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” looked like magical deep-sea sirens, from the pearls scattered in their hair to the sea- urchin shells that propped up the heels of their sandals.

Lagerfeld deconstructed some of the house symbols. Coco’s iconic pearls were used as buttons or as belts to girdle his round-shouldered dresses, and Lagerfeld banished her signature braid trims altogether in place of fine black ribbon set in geometric blocks across pale suiting, a detail inspired by the “fabric paintings” of German abstract artist Blinky Palermo that he had admired in a recent exhibition at Dia.

Lagerfeld worked with innovative techno fabrics to create the effect of light through water. Airy waffle-textured organzas and iridescent synthetics, open-weave tweeds and knits, and a palette of sea foam, shell pink, and mother-of-pearl (anchored with the inevitable black) created an otherworldly effect.

And the details brought a whisper of the haute couture to the ready-to-wear season; changeante organza ribbons were appliquéd to trail across little shift dresses like seaweed swaying in a riptide; silvery embroideries or a frosting of nacreous sequins spilled down black dresses like the phosphorescence on a moonlit sea.


Swimsuits were anchored by pearl clasps or veiled in clear plastic “virtual jackets” printed with a tracery of fine black swirling lines like seaweed washed up on a seashore.

The technical mastery of this house was also revealed in the elaborate pleating and draping techniques that transformed diaphanous organza and (specially commissioned) seaweed motif lace into shapes and formations that recalled corals, seashells, and waving underwater algae, and provided the most complex takes on the pleated skirts that have become such a strong trend of the season.

As the final short evening dresses appeared (frothed with ruffles at the hips like lightweight eighteenth-century panniers—or reduced to a single flounce), a giant oyster shell opened to reveal Florence Welch (in a silvery dress trailing strands of seaweed ribbon), whose plangent tones brought the show to a spectacular end.by Hamish Bowles

Street Style: Paris Fashion Week

Our street-style photographer Phil Oh has recently returned home from Paris Fashion Week. His findings while away? First, despite the fact that we're heading into October, the unseasonably warm weather (perhaps taking a cue from the runways?) put a little spring in the air, with nary a pant or sweater in sight. Second, there is a reason the City of Light is known for its insouciant sense of style—and here are the photographs to prove it.Phil Oh