Greek Designer Sophia Kokosalaki, Diesel’s Fashion Engine

Greek Designer Sophia Kokosalaki, Diesel’s Fashion Engine

The iconic fashion brand Diesel may be an Italian company, but it has a young Greek designer who has helped make it a must-buy for its fans: Sophia Kokosalaki, who has her own brand in London and in the past few years has been working as Diesel’s creative director, prepared her last show for them.

Kokosalaki was born and raised in Greece,  where she studied literature before moving to London to try her hand in the fashion world and open her own company in 1999, before joining Diesel as well. Kokosalaki worked for the company’s upscale denim brand Diesel Black Gold a/k/a DBG. Since June 2009, Kokosalaki has supervised Diesel creations, turning the Italian firm into a reference point for media and enthusiasts in the modern fashion field.

According to fashion sector followers, her talent and creativity have given a dark and romantic touch to the brand’s clothes and have become an essential part of the New York Fashion Week. The Greek designer’s final collection for the Diesel brand will be showcased at NYC Fashion Week in September this year. Alexa Chung, Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson are some of the celebrities who’ve chosen to wear Kokosalaki’s creations at several events.

RiRi Roams London Streets Secretly For Fashion Inspiration

RiRi Roams London Streets Secretly For Fashion Inspiration

London, August 13 (ANI): Rihanna has revealed that she secretly wanders around the streets of London to check out what the Brits are wearing.The 24-year-old, who is producing Sky Living series 'Styled To Rock', also confessed that she loves the capital.

"London has always been one of my favourite cities to come to. I always go out on the street walking around to see what the kids are doing. They always set the trends for the designers," the Sun quoted her as saying.

"I find that the kids in London have so much style, so much street style and so much talent. This show was a way for me to give these kids the opportunity to see how far they can go.

The show, whose pilot launches on Tuesday, will hunt for a new British designer, who will create an outfit for the Bajan beauty to wear at London's Wireless Festival next July.The show will be fronted by Girls Aloud singer Nicola Roberts and feature designer Henry Holland.

"We're hoping to find the next superstar designer to dress superstars. What I'm really looking to find is the next innovative young designer, someone like Vivienne Westwood or Alexander McQueen," Rihanna said.

"These designers are actually the fashion kids on the street who don't have the opportunity to get to the next step.

"The fashion kids always do something new, always do something innovative and that's what this competition is all about, and that's why I came to London. I really wanted to do this show because I love discovering new designers and finding things that are fresh and trendsetting," she added.

Each episode of the show will also feature famous celebrities, including Cheryl Cole, Katy Perry, Little Mix and Pixie Lott. 

Island Paradise

Island Paradise

The high street chain River Island has roots in the bomb sites of post-war London, but last week came speculation that the company would be expanding into the US early next year.

And with the announcement last month that the store was working on a collaboration with international megastar Rihanna, which will launch next spring, the company seems to be writing its own success story regardless of the recession.

River Island is already firmly established across Europe and Asia, but may yet follow its rival Topshop, which opened a New York store in 2009, and has since expanded across the American heartland. In the US, the concept of the "high street" doesn't exist as it does here, and Topshop's pocket money-friendly take on quirky and cool clothing has proved a hit among young shoppers across the pond.

Although nothing has been confirmed yet, an early season check-in proves that River Island has plenty to shout about: its new collection is stocked full of its own take on the baroque splendour seen on the rather more exclusive catwalks of labels such as Dolce & Gabbana and Moschino for autumn.

Other key influences include edgy youth and street culture, tailored to a customer base that is directional and discerning but keen for a bargain. Prices remain resolutely low, even on items such as shoes and bags that boast thoughtful and complex design features.

"Our customers want fashion with an added twist, and that's exactly what we do," explains Farida Kaikobad, the store's brand director. "New lines go in each week, keeping the stores looking fresh and ensuring customers come back for more. The whole team is very creative and I think this is reflected in our stores – we're often referred to as the 'boutique of the high street!'"

Born as a tiny East London wool shop in 1948, River Island started out as an independent clothing chain across the UK called Lewis Separates, which later morphed into the Sixties high-street hit Chelsea Girl, selling poppy fashion to the teeny-boppers who congregated on the Kings Road. It acquired its current name only in the early Nineties – incidentally, a decade that much of this season's stock harks back to, style-wise.

Having resurrected the Chelsea Girl line in recent years, the company has also added credibility by working alongside designers such as William Tempest, whose line for the brand launches next month, and sponsoring events at London Fashion Week. This season sees the chain hooking up with fashion designers and film-makers too. "River Island is such a successful brand because its style feeds in straight from the street," says Katherine Ormerod, senior fashion news editor at Grazia. "When you're in the stores, you see references taken from music videos, from street style websites and from style icons outside the world of catwalk fashion."

In fact, joining forces with Rihanna came about after the star was spotted out and about wearing several pieces from the store: a simple grey marl T-shirt emblazoned with a Rolling Stones logo; an Aertex mesh cut-out dress, and a pair of barely-there denim hotpants garnered plenty of column inches.

"It's no mean feat when luxury labels are falling over themselves to dress her," continues Katherine Ormerod. "Rihanna is the ultimate street-styler – mashing up insider labels with high street and designer labels, she seems more authentic than many other starlets."

"The River Island shopper is fashion savvy, but not a slave to trends or achingly cool," says Farida Kaikobad. "They all have their own style and shop for either great modern classics or fun seasonal pieces with us."

Fashion Blog Dedicated To Olympic Scrunchies Emerges

Fashion Blog Dedicated To Olympic Scrunchies Emerges

With the London games still in full swing, it seems everyone has come down with a case of Olympic fever. And while most are glued to their TV sets hoping to catch a glimpse of the newest athlete to win that coveted gold, there are some more fashion-focused viewers who are interested in one thing only: the scrunchies.

The scrunchie, as you probably know, is an elastic hair tie covered in a ton of fabric. They were most popular in the '80s-'90s, but still pop up now and then on the likes of a wide array of Olympians, as well as on Hilary Clinton.

"Olympic Scrunchies" is a fabulous Tumblr dedicated to the most fantastic array of Olympians and their hair accessories of choice that was discovered by the folks at Racked.

A blog dedicated to the hair accessory, the site proudly declares: "There should be Olympic medals for the best scrunchies."

While the blog hasn't been updated in a few months, its relevance is clearer than ever amidst the excitement of the 2012 Olympic games. I mean, just look at it's most recent post:

"1 white angelic Nancy Kerrigan scrunchie, and 1 black hot mess Tonya Harding scrunchie."

Cutting Edge Introduction: Followers Of Fashion

Cutting Edge Introduction: Followers Of  Fashion

Focusing on how often a trading strategy ends on the winning side can distract from the question of whether it profits on average. The key is in the return distribution’s skew – and at least for trend-following strategies this can be directly controlled. Laurie Carver introduces this month’s technical articles

Asset price bubbles are often driven by investors on winning streaks that then spectacularly fail in the following bust, known in financial folklore as picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. The track record of such traders looks great – until their gains are wiped out. But the flipside of this – tail risk strategies – can get a bad rap, as the big win that makes up for a long history of small losses may take time to arrive
Trend-following strategies can sometimes appear this way – racking up a large fraction of losing trades – but may still have positive expected returns over a sufficiently long horizon because of the outsize gains when a trend kicks in. This effect means the distribution of trading returns of pure trend-following strategies are positively skewed, even if market returns are not, as Richard Martin, chief quantitative investment officer at Longwood Credit Partners argues in Momentum trading: ’skews me. It is this skewness of returns that allows the strategy to retain earnings while the market moves away from the trend, regardless of what the expected daily return is.

Martin uses results from the theory of complex functions to derive analytic formulas for the skew in the simple case where the position taken is an exponentially weighted moving average, and shows it has a characteristic shape as a function of the number of trading days in the return period, decaying slowly after a peak. Two datasets are examined, one on Swiss franc-US dollar futures, and one on S&P 500 futures.

“If you rate fund managers using a win ratio or the Sharpe ratio, you leave yourself open to this effect of a big loss wiping out your gains further down the line,” says Martin. “For instance, if you wrote protection on high-grade corporates, you’d make money about 99% of the time, but that last 1% of the time you might lose very badly. In the trend-following case, the strategy is simple enough that it’s possible to get hold of that effect in the skew.”

Once trend following is mixed with the reverse strategy – investing counter to trends – more general skewness profiles can be generated. There is a trade-off between the short-term negative skew of the counter-strategy and the positive skew of the trend. “The idea is the market can vibrate back and forth, so you try to cash in on some of the short-term mean reversion as well. It’s dependent on the investment horizon – the long-term survival probability of the strategy is linked to having positive skew at that timescale,” he says.

What is perhaps most striking is the generality of the results – they are independent of assumptions about expected returns – and the wide skew shapes that can be realised. “It seems quite robust with respect to expected returns, which is good because unless you believe the efficient market hypothesis – in which case it’s zero – then you don’t really know much about that,” says Martin. “But the tractability of these strategies to analysis of the skewness means you can tailor them to generate particular shapes for how gains and losses are distributed.”

Also this month, Vladimir Piterbarg, head of quantitative research at Barclays in London, returns to the effect of collateral agreements on derivatives pricing following his celebrated article published by Risk in 2010 (Risk February 2010, pages 97–102). Cooking with collateral attempts no less than a re-examination of the foundations of derivatives pricing in an all-collateralised world. It turns out many classical arguments are still valid, provided one keeps track of the right rate at which collateral appreciates interest.

Until a standardised credit support annex becomes a reality, removing some of the non-standard features of collateral agreements – such as exposure values that trigger collateralisation, or the option to choose which currency to post in – they should be treated as embedded derivatives (Risk September 2011, pages 24–27). In this latter case, Piterbarg gives a simple model to value the contract, based on a first-order expansion of the spread between the rates earned on the different currencies.

What Happened To The First Lady Of Fashion?

What Happened To The First Lady Of Fashion?

 

Michelle Obama has been living up to her 'First Lady of Fashion' nickname this weekend in an array of bold looks.So it came as some surprise to see her watch Team USA beat the French in today's preliminary basketball game wearing an uncharacteristically understated outfit.A far cry from yesterday's mismatching monochrome and Friday's  the U.S. First Lady went for a soft grey top and matching cardigan, with cream trousers.

While it was by no means lacking in style - her hair was worn back in a ponytail and she had accessorised with a double-strand silver necklace - it lacked the bold style statements of other ensembles she has worn during this London visit.

Yesterday, for example, another jam-packed itinerary, saw Mrs Obama go for a more typically fashion-forward look to watch Ryan Lochte take Team USA's first gold medal in the 400m individual medley.The green, black and monochrome-patterned top with a triangular cut-out at the neckline was a $138 design by BCBG Max Azria.

Earlier that day, for Serena Williams' opening tennis match against Serbian Jelena Jankovic, she was seen in prints again, in an artfully clashing number from one of her favourite designers, Tracey Reese.The $388 dress, from the label's latest collection, was designed to look like a patterned top and checked skirt, creating a daring multi-textured look.

But perhaps Mrs Obama's decision to play it low-key today is a reaction to criticism for her rather more divisive fashion choices on Friday.Though the dazzling J Mendel jacket and skirt worn for a pre-Opening Ceremony Buckingham Palace reception won critical acclaim from the style set, some political commentators are furious that she elected to wear a garment that cost $6,800.

The design was almost armour-like in style and embroidered in shimmering silver, with cap sleeves that showed off those famously toned arms.
However Gateway Pundit has taken issue with the fact that the design 'cost more than the average American family makes in a month ($4,284)'.'She does this as Americans continue to suffer through a deep recession and record unemployment,' writer Jim Hoft said. 'Michelle feels your pain.'

Rihanna To Design Clothing Collection For River Island

 

River Island is delighted to announce an exciting and exclusive collaboration with Rihanna; she will be designing her first clothing collection for River Island. The capsule collection will launch in Spring 2013.

Rihanna said:

“I’ve been wanting to design my own collection for some time. River Island is the perfect partner for me to collaborate with and working with a British, family run business also really appealed to me. I find London really inspiring and River Island loves to have fun with clothes. I’m looking forward to working with them and creating something really special.”

River Island is a brand with Great British heritage. Founded and based in London, the business was created and is managed by the Lewis family. With design at the heart of the business River Island continues to grow globally as it enters its 64th year. River Island has over 300 stores in the UK, Republic of Ireland, Russia, Holland, Poland, Belgium, Middle East and Far East and offers worldwide shipping through its website.

“We are thrilled to be collaborating with Rihanna and to be the first fashion brand to work with her in this way,”River Island chief executive Ben Lewis added. “Rihanna is a style icon, from street to chic she enjoys her fashion. As soon as we started to work together we knew this was a perfect fit. Rihanna will be designing the collection and we will be sharing our fashion experience with her to develop a range her fans will love.”

The brand is positioned as a fast-moving fashion business offering great value and distinctive women’s, men’s and kid’s clothing, footwear and accessories.With over 60 years of fashion retailing experience, River Island is one of the most successful companies on the High Street.River Island has nearly 300 stores across the UK, Ireland and internationally throughout Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

As Preen Return To London Fashion Weak

As Preen Return To London Fashion Weak

  
After six years showing at New York Fashion Week, London design duo Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi, will bring Preen’s next collection back to London Fashion Week.The fashion house known for strong colours and tailoring has been trending on Twitter since the announcement was made. Fashion Monitor, fashion journalist Jim Shi, Moda Operandi and everyone who’s anyone are tweeting about the exciting news. Celebrity fans of the London-based label include the amazing Scarlett Johansson, Claire Danes and American first lady Michelle Obama.

Thornton and Bregazzi met when they were just eighteen years old in their hometown of the Isle of Man, and opened their store on Portobello in 1996. A mere ten years after later, they were one of three labels nominated for a ‘British Designer of the Year Award’. After years of success showing in New York, they are returning home, and have said that they are, "delighted to be part of LFW again, it feels great to be back on our own turf." London Fashion Week is from the 14th to the 18th of December. Welcome back, Justin and Thea!

Designing For 'Cocktail' Was Easy Anaita Shroff

 

Chic designs, florescent colours and tribal prints dominate the wardrobes of the lead actors in "Cocktail", which is grabbing eyeballs for its characters that take fashion forward. Designer Anaita Shroff Adajania says making the ultra modish clothes was not that difficult.

The film is directed by Anaita's husabnd, Homi Adajania and it revolves around the lives of three friends - Veronica, Meera and Gautam - played by Deepika Padukone, Diana Penty and Saif Ali Khan, respectively. 'Cocktail' is releasing on Friday. 'The characters were defined nicely by Homi. He was very clear on the characters and gave us a lot of information on the personalities of these characters. And having all that information, it was easy for us to understand how they would dress,' Anaita told IANS.Talking about the characters, the designer describes Veronica as the most fashionable in the film, while Meera is a shy person. 

 

Veronica is a very fashion forward person. She loves fashion and is happy to flaunt her body. It was like mixing high street fashion with luxury designer labels as somebody like her would do,' she said.'While Meera is a simple girl who came from Delhi to London. she comes in her Indian clothes but slowly adapts to western clothes. She is not one to flaunt skin and is shy. So even in her western wear, the choice of clothing is conservative she added.Anaita has previously designed for movies including 'Dhoom 2', 'Love Aajkal' and 'Ra One', apart from styling for advertisements.

 She says that designing for movies is 'toughest' and added: 'I enjoy every aspect of styling which I do, be it for Vogue (magazine) or advertising styling. The only taxing thing about films is time commitment. I hate being tied down to such long commitment. But I enjoy if the team is organised.'