VIVIENNE WESTWOOD FOR Green

            Ever more frequently the world of fashion is stepping up to lend its voice to social and environmental issues. A cause today supported by countless designers but whose pioneer is one of the most enterprising personalities of the international fashion scene: Vivienne Westwood. And now her boundless creativity is backing the GreenUp initiative. We are proud to present the original Tree-shirt, a YOOXYGEN exclusive for a greener planet.

www.yoox.com

ext June world leaders will meet in Brazil to address the situation of the environment, at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development “Rio+20”. In view of this important event, GreenUp was born, a UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) initiative. GreenUp is intended to give rise to a new awareness and bring about new habits in the lives of Europeans, taking the issue of sustainable economies and development to the streets of the old continent. A program of smart monthly actions will be communicated via social networking through the GreenUp site, designed to be a real social hub.
The main supporter of this initiative of a ‘democratic’ and ‘activist’ spirit is Vivienne Westwood, who is unveiling her unique design at its launch (together with the European Climate Foundation) in Brussels on October 11th. The British designer has created the original ‘Tree-Shirt’ for yoox.com, supporting GreenUp’s European reforestation program.
Available in three styles: for him, for her, and unisex; in several colors and with a striking print à la Vivienne , the shirt’s motto is “buy a Tree-shirt, plant a tree!”
YOOXYGEN presents the fruits of Dame Westwood’s labor: the Tree-shirt is available exclusively at yoox.com and all proceeds go to GreenUp.

JAPAN’S GOT TALENT

For the first time ever, yoox.com has teamed up with Japan Fashion Week (JFW) to promote fashion designers with an avant-garde aesthetic, making them available to its worldwide audience scattered in more than 100 countries.  
Just like its counterparts in Paris, Milan, New York and London, JFW is the largest fashion organization in Japan that proactively pushes the country’s emerging talents to succeed in overseas markets via special events and projects.
So, to celebrate the Tokyo Fashion Week Spring Summer 2012 collections, yoox.com and JFW have selected a handful of most promising names whose edgy designs for men and women are on the rise.
Serving as a global showcase and retail platform, yoox.com will go live in October with confections by G.V.G.V., THEATRE PRODUCTS and tiny dinosaur in the women’s arena and ato and soe shirts for men.
Besides selected Fall-Winter looks, yoox.com has secured two online exclusives – a specially designed garment from the Spring-Summer 2012 collection and a video interview with each designer.

Buccellati!

Mario Buccellati at the beginning of the century, Gianmaria Buccellati and Andrea Buccellati today, carry on the design capability, creating a link between the past, present and future.

Every piece is designed now by Gianmaria himself or by his son Andrea, who personally follows the process of realization, interacting with jeweler-artisans and giving them the right directions. This "personalization" of production, entrusted to artisan's manual skills, makes Buccellati jewels unique as well as incomparable.

Hidden behind a Buccellati jewel, there is a philosophy which expresses, like in art, an aesthetic choice, defining the canons of a style: discretion, class, harmony.

Buccellati is still a family enterprise with members of the second and third generations involved in many facets of the company's activities.

Gianmaria Buccellati currently leads the company and his three children are involved in it.

Andrea, artistic heir of the third generation, is co-designer with his father and manages the production of jewelry; Gino, manages the firm that produces silver items; Maria Cristina manages advertising, image and communication for the company.

Gianmaria's wife, Rosie, is active in the commercial department and in shops management.

DISTRIBUTION

UMBRELLA AND HISTORY

 n umbrella or parasol (also called a brolly, rainshade, sunshade, gamp or bumbershoot) is a canopy designed to protect against rain or sunlight. The term parasol usually refers to an item designed to protect from the sun; umbrella refers to a device more suited to protect from rain. Often the difference is the material; some parasols are not waterproof. Parasols are often meant to be fixed to one point and often used with patio tables or other outdoor furniture. Umbrellas are almost exclusively hand-held portable devices; however, parasols can also be hand-held.

The word umbrella comes from the Latin word umbra, meaning shade or shadow (the Latin word, in turn, derives from the Ancient Greek ómbros [όμβρος].)Brolly is a slang word for umbrella, used often in Britain, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and Kenya. Bumbershoot is a fanciful Americanism from the late 19th century.

                                                         

                                               Middle East

In the sculptures at Nineveh the parasol appears frequently.^[ Austen Henry Layard gives a picture of a bas-relief representing a king in his chariot, with an attendant holding a parasol over his head.^[5] It has a curtain hanging down behind, but is otherwise exactly like those in use today. It is reserved exclusively for the monarch (who was bald), and is never carried over any other person.

In Persia the parasol is repeatedly found in the carved work of Persepolis, and Sir John Malcolm has an article on the subject in his 1815 "History of Persia."In some sculptures, the figure of a king appears attended by a servant, who carries over his head an umbrella, with stretchers and runner complete.^[] In other sculptures on the rock at Taghe-Bostan, supposed to be not less than twelve centuries old, a deer-hunt is represented, at which a king looks on, seated on a horse, and having an umbrella borne over his head by an attendant.

                                          Ancient Egypt

n Egypt, the parasol is found in various shapes. In some instances it is depicted as a flagellum, a fan of palm-leaves or coloured feathers fixed on a long handle, resembling those now carried behind the Pope in processions. Gardiner Wilkinson, in his work on Egypt, has an engraving of an Ethiopian princess travelling through Upper Egypt in a chariot; a kind of umbrella fastened to a stout pole rises in the centre, bearing a close affinity to what are now termed chaise umbrellas.According to Wilkinson's account, the umbrella was generally used throughout Egypt, partly as a mark of distinction, but more on account of its useful than its ornamental qualities. In some paintings on a temple wall, a parasol is held over the figure of a god carried in procession.

                                         Ancient Greece

In Greece, the parasol (skiadeion), was an indispensable adjunct to a lady of fashion in the late 5th century BCAristophanes mentions it among the common articles of female use;they could apparently open and closePausanias describes a tomb near Triteia in Achaia decorated with a 4th-century BC painting ascribed to Nikias; it depicted the figure of a woman, "and by her stood a female slave, bearing a parasol".Its use seems to have been confined to women. For a man to carry one was considered a mark of effeminacy.^[ In Aristophanes' Birds, Prometheus uses one as a comical disguise.

It had also its religious signification. In the Scirophoria, the feast of Athene Sciras, a white parasol was borne by the priestesses of the goddess from theAcropolis to the Phalerus. In the feasts of Dionysos the umbrella was used, and in an old bas-relief the same god is represented as descending ad inferos with a small umbrella in his hand. In the Panathenæa, the daughters of the Metics, or foreign residents, carried parasols over the heads of Athenian women as a mark of inferiority.

BY YOOX

                                          ROSAMOND BERNIER

A life of adventure between America and Europe; from Mexico, where she flew her own plane and raised a small zoo, to Paris, where she lived for twenty years. There she worked for Vogue and, in 1955, set up L’Oeil , a magazine dedicated to the most innovative and prestigious art of the era. Rosamond fell into the circle of the most important European artists of the period, masters such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Max Ernst and Alberto Giacometti. Through the years she gained their respect, affection and trust, and she started to tell the story of their works in numerous conferences around the world. Conferences that attracted not just academics, but true enthusiasts such as Diana Vreeland and Jackie Onassis, and high caliber designers like Coco Chanel and Cristobal Balenciaga, personalities who would ordain her as a true style icon for her incredible charm and exquisite taste in clothes. Now living in New York for the last 40 years, in addition to her career as a lecturer, Bernier has acted as consultant for many art collections. In collaboration with her husband John Russell, chief art critic of The New York Times, she made hugely successful television programs dedicated to Henry Moore, Philip Johnson, Paul Mellon and Joseph Hirshhorn. Rosamond has also received numerous honors for her contribution to art and culture: she was made “Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” and “Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur” by the French government and awarded the “Cross of Isabel la Católica” by King Juan Carlos I of Spain.
Bernier’s lectures are important events in the art world, in which her love of everything beautiful and sense of the aesthetic shine through. Dressed head-to-toe in haute couture, she loses herself in anecdotes of artists’ lives, in intense impromptu narrations, an animated flow of images and captivating memories. And so Some of My Lives: A Scrapbook Memoir  was born, a treasure-trove of unforgettable moments, photographs, sketches, portraits by Matisse, and dedications by Ernst, who details Rosamond’s life; the perfect blend of art, style and culture.

CHANEL

The little black dress, the tweed suit, the quilted leather handbag, and the first-ever designer perfume these are just some of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's lasting contributions to fashion. Little did she know when she opened her small millinery shop in Paris in 1913 that she was laying the foundation for what would become one of the world's most illustrious fashion houses. Offering a selection of sporty clothes alongside her cloches and toques, however, Chanel speedily became the rage among upper-crust mademoiselles eager to don her modishly boyish dresses made of unfussy jersey (a fabric that until then had been used primarily for men's underwear.)

World War I broke out the very next year, of course, but in the long run that only boosted the popularity of Chanel's new kind of chic, as women sought more comfortable garments to replace their restrictive corsets. Throughout the twenties and thirties, Chanel continued to revolutionize the way women dressed, particularly with the popularization of the Chanel suit, which for the first time gave women a social—or perhaps even work—uniform as simple and unimpeachable as a man's business three-piece. Chanel No. 5 was created in 1923 and is still the best-selling fragrance in the world all these decades later.

While Chanel's legacy is legendary, so was the public persona she constructed and promoted. Raised in a French orphanage, she rewrote the narrative of her life, cultivating an aura of privilege. "Coco," the persona known for her royal lovers, rotogravure friends, and rarefied tastes, became her own best advertisement.

Again buffeted by the winds of war, Chanel shut the doors to her atelier in 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. She didn't reopen the business until 1953, introducing the Chanel suit to a new generation of women.

The first lady of fashion died in 1971 at the age of 86 at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, where she had lived for 30 years. While a design team kept the label on life support, it wasn't until 1983, when Karl Lagerfeld assumed creative control, that the house was reborn in all its glory. Today, the company is privately owned by Alain and Gerard Wertheimer, the grandsons of Pierre Wertheimer, who originally funded Chanel No. 5.

VOGUE FEMALE CURVE TRIBUTE