PARIS (AFP) ― As the economy splutters, fashion will naturally turn to solemn greys and blacks, right? Wrong, according to fabric gurus who unveiled their top trends for spring-summer 2013 in Paris on Thursday.“We don’t believe for a minute that fashion is going to turn all austere, that consumers are going to start dressing all in black,” Pascaline Wilhelm, fashion director at textile fair organizer Premiere Vision, told reporters.From neon pink to deep ochre or metallic silver-blue, and a slew

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Bookshelves groaning under the weight of every issue of American Vogue ever published since December 17, 1892, and there have been about 2,800 of them, can now heave a sigh of relief.Two years in the making, an online Vogue Archive is being pitched to fashion designers, photographers and stylists for whom rummaging through musty back issues for inspiration is an everyday part of the job.“That’s about 400,000 pages. It’s everything,” said Matt Dellinger, a writer and multimedia

TOKYO (AFP) ― Outlandish pannier skirts with layers of frilly lace; teenage girls with larger-than-life make-up; a dash of sexuality and lashings of Victoriana are the order of the day for Japan’s Lolita girls.What began as a street fashion two decades ago as youngsters aped the doll-like European styles of baroque and rococo has morphed into a near mainstream movement, with dozens of offshoots.Popular Lolita models such as Misako Aoki were big hits at this autumn’s Japan Fashion Week, showing o

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― A mascara ad featuring Taylor Swift has been pulled from U.S. magazines following a complaint that it had been digitally altered to enhance the looks of the chart-topping country music star.The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus Claims said Proctor and Gamble, maker of CoverGirl cosmetics,“discontinued the advertisement in question” after it challenged its claims.“The advertising at issue featured a celebrity looking up to highlight her lon

PARIS (AFP) ― Italian designer Giambattista Valli is to join the exclusive club of haute couture fashion, showing a spring-summer collection in Paris next month, organisers said Monday.A Paris commission including existing haute couture labels has awarded the 45-year-old designer the coveted appellation, France’s fashion federation said in a statement ahead of the Jan. 23-26 shows.Haute couture exists only in Paris, where it is a legally protected appellation subject to strict criteria such as t

BEIJING (AFP) ― A remote region of northern China that began growing grapes for fine wine just a decade ago has beaten the centuries-old French wine-producing region of Bordeaux in a blind tasting held in Beijing.A group of wine experts ― five French and five Chinese ― ranked the bottles from the remote and sparsely populated Ningxia region above those from Bordeaux at the tasting, held on Wednesday in Beijing.The jury sampled five wines from each region, selecting a cabernet sauvignon from the

Male university students apply skin lotion at a job-hunting support fair at Nihonbashi Takashimaya department store in Tokyo.Many of today’s university students ― male and female ― are making greater efforts than previous cohorts to improve their looks to boost their chances of landing a job.Male and female students are taking classes on how to dress appropriately, and having professional photos taken with makeup so their resumes will pass the first stage of applicant screening. Experts recommen

PARIS (AFP) - Francois Lesage, a master embroiderer who for decades crafted exquisite pieces for haute couture giants from Chanel to Yves Saint Laurent, has died aged 82, his workshop said on Thursday.The doyen of French embroidery, a central figure in the fashion world, died in a hospital near his home in Versailles outside Paris on Wednesday night following a long illness, the Lesage workshop told AFP.Lesage took over his father‘s firm aged just 20. In an interview last year, he told AFP how h

PARIS (AFP) ― Francois Lesage, a master embroiderer who for decades crafted exquisite pieces for haute couture giants from Chanel to Yves Saint Laurent, has died aged 82, his workshop said on Thursday.The doyen of French embroidery, a central figure in the fashion world, died in a hospital near his home in Versailles outside Paris on Wednesday night following a long illness, the Lesage workshop told AFP.Lesage took over his father’s firm aged just 20. In an interview last year, he told AFP how h