I LOVE NICE THINGS.

Revolutionising the fashion industry for just over fifty years, Balenciaga altered the fashion silhouette of women in the mid-20 th century, and became one of the most influential fashion innovators of all time. “No woman can make herself chic if she is not chic herself.” Balenciaga accentuated the essence of how a woman could embody his garments. He demonstrated how shape and silhouettes could correspond around the physique to exemplify the figure. Similarly to Vionnet, Balenciaga used the technique of wrapping material away from the body, applying volume to his garments whilst at the same time enhancing femininity. He achieved this by revealing certain aspects of the body, such as elongating the neck. Often, he would use one piece of material and cut in only designated areas such as arm-holes or the neckline. Notorious for incorporating his Spanish roots into his designs, Balenciaga mastered the art of captivating the essence of both culture and chic. The Infanta Gown was inspired by...

Marisa Berenson has spent a good portion of her time on this planet being photographed, whether as a model playing muse to the likes of Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, and Irving Penn, or as an actress appearing in films such as Luchino Visconti’s  Death in Venice  (1971), Bob Fosse’s  Cabaret  (1972), and Stanley Kubrick’s  Barry Lyndon  (1975), or as a woman whose very life has unfolded like a transatlantic cinematic narrative filled with lots of high glamour, dramatic twists, and tragic turns. So there was no shortage of material to mine in compiling the new book, Marisa Berenson: A Life in Pictures  (Rizzoli), a sweeping visual biography due out next month. The book traces Berenson’s journey: from growing up as the daughter of U.S. diplomat Robert L. Berenson and countess Gogo Schiaparelli in the substantial—and at times difficult—orbit of her grandmother, the legendary designer Elsa Schiaparelli; to her move to New York...

T he call that came in from a local Safeway one day in March 2011 was unlike any the Organized Retail Crime Unit of the Prince George’s County Police Department had fielded before. The grocery store, located in suburban Bowie, Maryland, had been robbed repeatedly. But in every incident the only products taken were bottles—many, many bottles—of the liquid laundry detergent Tide. “They were losing $10,000 to $15,000 a month, with people just taking it off the shelves,” recalls Sergeant Aubrey Thompson, who heads the team. When Thompson and his officers arrived to investigate, they stumbled onto another apparent Tide theft in progress and busted two men who’d piled 100 or so of the bright-orange jugs into their Honda. The next day, Thompson returned to the store’s parking lot to tape a television interview about the crimes. A different robber took advantage of the distraction to make off with twenty more bottles. Later, Thompson reviewed weeks’ worth of the Safeway’s security footage. He ...

“I wanted to share my method with the women in my life,” says Giambattista Valli, the Roman designer whose intricate couture techniques have found a Hollywood following in Diane Kruger, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore. Documenting the journey from concept to runway, Valli has collected photographs, mood boards and sketches of eight years’ work in a 400-page book, previewed here. The designer behind the eponymous ready-to-wear and couture labels made his Paris debut in 2005, taking inspiration from Louise Bourgeois, red-tipped flowers and, for his recent Paris Fashion Week show, Pier Paolo Pasolini. “All the people in the book come from specific chapters in my career,” explains Valli of the Rizzoli-published title, spliced with essays from muses including Francesco Clemente, Franca Sozzani and Lee Radziwill, and dedicated to his collaborator, the Italian architect and jeweler Luigi Scialanga. “It was great to do a work-in-progress book; one that has no start, and almost no e...

Popularized by the American tennis player of the same name in 1971 after winning the U.S. Open, production was interrupted in 2011.  The end of the controversial career launched in 1964. Whatever the Stan Smith returns and the opportunity to reissue the Stan Smith, the German brand is launching a contest on Twitter.  adidas offers users to save their own custom pair of Stan Smith with their photo on the tongue.  The principle is simple: just twitter his photo with # hashtags and @ stansmith adidasfr between 01/13/2014 and 17/01/2014 10am to noon included. 1500 winners will be amended and circulated by adidas Originals photo and receive the shot turned into custom logo tab and each day one of the winners will be randomly selected and will receive a custom pair of shoes Stan Smith (worth 95 euros) with its own custom logo tab. It was time, mine began to no longer power.

That simplicity has very little to do with the kind of pristine Minimalism that has often dominated the design scene in recent decades. When Biesenbach bought the Manhattan apartment in 2007—after seeing it listed in The New York Times online classifieds—he took out a few walls and refinished the dark wood floors, but he left most of the place untouched, not even bothering to repaint the living room walls. (You can still see faint outlines where the previous owner’s pictures hung.) Clearly it’s an approach that allows him a break from the countless aesthetic judgments that his day job requires. As MoMA’s chief curator of media, Biesenbach oversees the museum’s fast-growing collection of multimedia installations and video and performance pieces. (He co-organized last year’s Olafur Eliasson survey, curated the current Pipilotti Rist exhibit and is preparing upcoming shows of Marina Abramovic and Tehching Hsieh.) “Normally I have to make so many decisions about the tone of white and the t...

ith her swanlike neck and clever sense of humor, Gloria Guinness effortlessly reigned over the jetset in the Sixties and Seventies. Born to modest means in Mexico, she rose to the top of the social heap after wedding banking heir Loel Guinness. (It was either her third or fourth marriage, depending on the account.) Despite being a fixture on best-dressed lists, Guinness, who favored Balenciaga and Halston, insisted she was no slave to fashion. “I think everyone envisions me sitting at Alexandre’s all day, picking out beautiful clothes from passing couturiers,” she told W between puffs of a cigarette at her 600-acre Normandy stud farm in 1980. “My God, could you imagine the boredom?” She did, however, appreciate elegance in others. “I love to look at women with good bones and good bodies in good clothes,” she informed W in 1976. In addition to the Normandy place, Guinness also maintained residences in London; Paris; Lausanne, Switzerland; Acapulco, Mexico; and Palm Beach. She loved host...

Comme des Garçons is partnering once again with Disney to produce a new capsule collection for Spring / Summer 2014, a colorful and unique collection. Applying their rebellious aesthetic Comme des Garçons icons of our childhood, the capsule "Camo" collection includes two t-shirts with slightly different cuts and a shirt. The grounds and use the face of our beloved Mickey Mouse and achieve a kind of camouflage printed.  The work is also made more interesting when we look more closely, since it is an all-over printed with Mickey silhouettes disparate shapes and colors that merge onto the fabric.