Here's why Ralph Lauren had Victoria and David Beckham going 'apoplectic'

Soccer ace David Beckham and wife Victoria aka Posh Spice reportedly went "apoplectic" when fashion house Ralph Lauren used their sons to drum up a little publicity.

The company issued a press release shortly after the christening of pal Geri Halliwell's baby Bluebell, revealing that the couple's elder sons - Brooklyn and Romeo - had worn 250 pounds Ralph Lauren Wimbledon blazers to the event.
In its press release the fashion giant declared: "Polo Ralph Lauren is pleased to announce that Brooklyn and Romeo Beckham wore the children's Wimbledon blazer by Ralph Lauren to the christening of Geri Halliwell's daughter Bluebell, 22nd April 07. Please note that these photos are not the property of Polo Ralph Lauren, for reference only"
However, what really made the couple see red, was the fact that pictures of the boys were also sent out along with information as to where these pictures could be bought, an insider revealed.
"Victoria and David are fiercely protective of their three sons and went apoplectic when they discovered what Ralph Lauren had done. Neither of them gave their consent for this - as far as they were concerned they went to a friend's private christening with their kids. It's one thing if they are on the red carpet or at a showbiz bash, but this is just ridiculous - and totally irresponsible," the Mirror quoted the insider, as saying.
"They couldn't believe that Ralph Lauren seemed to be going out of its way to encourage people to use pictures of their children. It's exploitative and was clearly done to boost sales of the clothes.
"It is upsetting for them as parents to constantly have to deal with photographers taking snaps of their kids - Romeo especially gets upset when the flashbulbs go off," the insider added.
The suddenly frosty relations between the Beckhams and Ralph Lauren thawed a bit when, less than 24 hours later, the firm apologized to the couple and urged recipients of the press announcement to ignore it.
"With reference to the information below, please be aware that this was not circulated with the co-operation of the Beckhams, and attention to the children is not endorsed," the email stated.
"The issue has been resolved," A Ralph Lauren spokesperson later insisted.

Fashion Feature: The halter bikini is back

Swimwear has come a long way since our mothers’ generation. More and more, it borrows its’ features from lingerie and vice versa. It is just as colorful, but with more support and more cleverly designed to flatter the female form.


With Memorial Day just a few weeks away, the summer season is fast approaching. And what better way to flaunt that well-toned figure than with a Roxy swimsuit. Swimwear has come a long way since our mothers’ generation. More and more, it borrows its’ features from lingerie and vice versa. It is just as colorful, but with more support and more cleverly designed to flatter the female form.
Roxy is a brand manufactured by Quiksilver, Inc. which creates stylish but casual apparel, accessories, and surf equipment for the adolescent and young woman. Think: surfer chic. They have recently expanded to include bedroom décor, footwear, cosmetics and jewelry to become a complete lifestyle brand. Originally, the line was based on the concept of producing a collection of girls’ board shorts and rash guards as an alternative to donning male-designed surfwear.
Among the various styles of suits that are hot this season is the halter top. The hula halter is pure retro glamour reinterpreted for the 2000’s with a bit of Roxy style thrown in. The top is a plunge halter with soft removable padding. It offers both dramatic cleavage and optional coverage. The top has ties at the neck and the mid-back. It comes in thick sporty green-and-white stripes with lettering on the front.

The extra low-rise bikini bottom comes in the same green-and-white stripes with adjustable ties, making gathered closures at the sides. It features the Roxy logo letters on both front and back. The hipster style bottom offers moderate coverage in the front and back.
This halter set is suited for those with long torsos, and looking for modest coverage in the bottom. The suit can be worn either swimming, surfing, or perhaps just working on that elusive tan. The halter top can also be worn with board shorts, which are also part of the Roxy line. The look is youthful, hip, and carefree. The halter and extra low-rise bikini bottom are made from a blend of nylon and lycra, and can be hand washed in cold water. The halter is made in USA and the bottom is imported. The pieces are individually priced with the top at $42.00 and $38.00.

For a more nautical look is the 70’s halter top and 70’s low rider side-tie bottom. The halter top comes in thick navy-and-white stripes with a striped tie at the neck and a band of fabric at the bottom with hook closure in the back. The plunge halter is adjustable in the middle with a red-and-white polka dot string tie which binds the two sides together. It also has soft removable padding and bears the heart-shaped Roxy logo in the front.

The 70’s low rider side-tie bikini bottom comes in the same navy-and-white stripes as the halter. The side-ties also have the same red-and-white polka dot string as the top and form gathered closures. The back of the bottom bears the official Roxy logo. The bottom gives moderate coverage in front and back.
The top can also be worn either with the bottom or with a pair of board shorts for a sportier look. Both pieces are made from a nylon/lycra blend and are imported. The halter is priced to own at $44.00 and the lowrider side-tie bikini bottom at $40.00.
Roxy swimwear can be found at select Macy’s and Lord and Taylor department stores nationwide.

News Copyright © Sawf News. May not be reproduced without explicit written permission

Model Kate Moss's clothing line to stir London sale frenzy

Security guards, stampedes and catfights over pairs of skinny jeans await British shoppers battling for a piece of this year's hottest clothing collection, designed by supermodel Kate Moss for a British apparel chain.

Fashionistas will likely queue for hours at the flagship store of the Topshop group in London's Oxford Street before the official launch Tuesday of a range which has received near-blanket media coverage here since it was announced last September.
The range, which Moss helped to design, features pieces costing between 10 and 200 pounds (15 and 293 euros, 20 and 400 dollars) and will be on sale at 300 stores in Britain, as well at Barneys in the United States, Colette in Paris and Corso Como in Milan, Italy.
Moss is not the first star to put her name to high street clothes -- Madonna endorsed a range for Sweden's H and M, David Beckham helped to design for Marks and Spencer and pop star Lily Allen's New Look range is out soon.
But some of these have proved more successful than others -- the Beckham tie-in received a lukewarm reception, while by contrast, analysts attributed a 17 percent increase in H and M's March sales to Madonna.

This suggests that, despite the British public's voracious interest in celebrities, retailers cannot rely on recruiting just any star to endorse their goods -- there must be a convincing "fit" between the product and the face.
PR experts say the massive interest in the Moss range came about partly because shoppers find it easy to believe that she herself would wear clothes from the chain.
"The thing about Kate Moss is that she has been seen in stuff she's bought in thrift shops and vintage," Sally Sykes, a board member at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, told AFP.
"The point about good PR is that it does have to be grounded in reality."
Despite the apparently strong match between model and brand, the retail chain did take a calculated risk in signing up Moss, who often attracts disapproving headlines in the British press.
Nicknamed "Cocaine Kate" by the tabloid media after photographs of her apparently taking the drug emerged in 2005, she has been widely criticised for her relationship with troubled pop singer Pete Doherty, a recovering drug addict.

Her modelling career seems unaffected by such claims, though -- a situation underlined by her appearance on the front of British Vogue in March modelling a 55-pound black lame minidress.
Graham Hales, of branding consultancy Interbrand, said that Moss's ability to emerge unscarred from controversy could actually have made her a more appealing figure to shoppers.
"She's ridden these cycles and she's been through tests. The whole nature of celebrity requires them to stay in the public eye but the difficulty is that people can disengage from that," he said.
While Topshop looks set to benefit from its involvement with Moss, Moss will also likely reap the rewards of working with the group, he added.
"They're such uber-celebrities that they almost want to demonstrate that they're still in touch with the average man, woman or girl on the street so to a degree it restores their credibility," he said,
Moss could also use the tie-in to open up other design opportunities for herself, Hales predicted.

And with Allen launching her New Look range and Australian singer Kylie Minogue fronting a swimwear range for H and M in May, the high streets will be dominated by more celebrity tie-ins in coming months.
Far from instilling a "fame fatigue", though, experts say that the more stores that use starpower to sell their wares, the more persuasive the endorsements will become.
"Given all the noise of these marketing pitches, the clarity of the message becomes vastly more important than in the past," said Richard Hyman, managing director of Verdict, a retail consultancy.
"You need to have a very focused message that gets across very quickly and I would say that celebrities are the fulcrum of that."

More than a thousand flock to launch of Kate Moss collection

More than a thousand people flocked to clothing store Topshop's flagship Oxford Street branch in London on Monday for the launch of the Kate Moss collection.

Supermodel Moss drank champagne inside the multi-storey fashion store with select invited guests and the boss of Topshop's parent company, Philip Green, and briefly posed alongside mannequins that were displaying a red dress that she had designed.
"It is exciting," Green said.
"It wouldn't be here if we didn't believe in it. This is about building a business. This is about whether we can build something that is real."

Shoppers had been queuing outside the central London store for up to eight hours for the sale, which began at 8 pm (1900 GMT), and ended at midnight. The collection goes on sale nationwide on Tuesday.
They were all given individual wrist bands that allotted them 20-minute time slots giving them access to the Moss collection, in batches of 150 at a time. They were each allowed to buy only five items.
The collection included a 45-pound (66-euro, 90-dollar) floral print dress, as well as skinny jeans, one-shoulder mini-dresses and t-shirts ranging from 12 pounds to 150 pounds.
"I think it has exceeded the hype," said 24-year-old fashion blog editor Kim Foster.
"We didn't really think anyone was really coming down this afternoon. I'll see what happens quality wise because a lot of them (the clothes) are quite highly priced."

Celebrity Watch: Ashlee Simpson and boyfriend Pete Wentz

We sometimes wonder at the style of Ashlee Simpson - actually, all the time. She's got the looks, talent, and beauty of her sister with a more edgy quality.

Black is in
April 30 2007 (Sawf News) - We sometimes wonder at the style of Ashlee Simpson - actually, all the time. She's got the looks, talent, and beauty of her sister with a more edgy quality. A self-confessed fan of vintage clothing, Ashlee here seems to be standing by her new beau Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz in matching duds. La Simpson loves to show up in messy hair, hats and pieces that don't necessarily do much for her figure. Half tomboy, and half plastic surgery buff, she's got hearts pounding. Probably the perfect match for punk rocker Wentz, who doesn't seem to care much about his outfit either, but knows how to make the fans swoon.

News Copyright © Sawf News. May not be reproduced without explicit written permission

Gisele Bundchen quits as Victoria's Secret 'Angel'

Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen has reportedly ended her contract with lingerie retailer Victoria's Secret.

Bundchen's sister confirmed that the highest paid model in the world quit as the lingerie line's 'Angel' after the company refused to raise her annual salary from 5 million dollars.
According to a source, the company does not care about Bundchen going away as her demands were shocking and unacceptable.
"Her demands were outrageous. She got a new lawyer who was unrealistic," New York Post quoted the source, as saying.
"Victoria's Secret doesn't care. They have five new hotter, younger girls debuting next year. And they won't have to deal with any craziness," the source added.
Bundchen's representatives and the company have both been silent over the issue.
The Victoria's Secret Angels are the spokespersons for Victoria's Secret. Current Victoria's Secret Angels include Oluchi Onweagba, Selita Ebanks, Adriana Lima, Izabel Goulart, Alessandra Ambrosio, Karolina Kurkova, and Heidi Klum, who will probably come back from a baby-pause.

Kate Moss clothes range hits eBay after British launch

Fashion fans lining up at shops around Britain Tuesday to snap up items from supermodel Kate Moss's clothing range for Topshop might have been better off looking online, where coveted items were already on sale.

With 45-pound (66-euro, 90-dollar) floral dresses now attracting bids of up to 150 pounds on internet auction site eBay, it seems that shoppers have either tired of their purchases already -- or that the pre-sale was targeted by traders.
Even the free goodie bags which were handed out to those in the queue, some of whom waited for up to eight hours, were being auctioned online.
Topshop tried to crack down on people buying items simply in order to sell them over the Internet by limiting to five the number of pieces each shopper was allowed to buy.
While the huge crowds of Monday night's event in Oxford Street, when Moss posed alongside mannequins in a shop window, were not replicated Tuesday, there were still hundreds of people thronging the store.
The much-hyped range, which Moss helped to design, features pieces costing between 10 and 200 pounds and will also go on sale at Barneys in the United States, Colette in Paris and Corso Como in Milan, Italy.