Top 10 Fashion Gossip

Monday, 6 August 2012

Fashion Inspired By The Art Of Ballet

Watching the Fire Bird ballet by Igor Starvinsky in Vienna was a revelation for Sanchita Ajjampur. “It was an opportunity to savour the interplay between music, choreography and visual art,” says the designer, recounting the experience. So when she was looking for inspiration for a new line, the Fire Bird was a natural choice. To be unveiled at the Lakme Fashion Week on Monday, Sanchita’s Fire Bird line is a “tapestry of dark and delicate stories from the iconic ballet, highlighting the glamour of the ball gown and its contextual accessories down the fashion decades,” the designer says, adding, “This line is all about balancing ecstasy and harmony and making it excitingly modern.”

Sanchita’s collection is divided into the womenswear and menswear segments, with the line for women featuring plenty of delicate sheers embellished with exotic cut feather shapes and punched fabrics, metallic black, gold and rigid plastic (to impart a futuristic feel) and chiffons with opulent embellishment. The menswear segment however, draws from a vastly difference source — the Wild, Wild West.

“The creative spirit of the Wild West is an endlessly renewable style,” says Sanchita. “The Native Amer-ican influences are seen in the decorative detailing and add to the functionality of the garment. I’ve tried to deconstruct and explore mythology through new proportions where art and functionality collide.”

She may count Isabella Duncan and Tabitha Simmons among her personal style reference points, but she doesn’t design for any particular muse, Sanchita says: “It’s about a whole lifestyle where everything you inhabit is sumptuous. The clientele is mainly fashionable art-lovers, whose clothes reflect their avant-garde thinking. My creations are the ultimate expression of style, for those wanting to project it. I design for a stylish person who can balance individuality with conformity, and most of all, is intelligent, with a strong sense of self.”

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."

Exciting Fashion Trends Monsoon

It’s been a while since we bid Spring/Summer 2012 adieu. With the rains making a more frequent appearance, it is also time to wash out our wardrobes and say hello to the exciting fashion trends Monsoon 2012 has brought with it. The focus of this season is the colour palette. The monochromatic look is in. B-town stars like Genelia D’Souza, Kareena Kapoor and Anushka Sharma have paved the way for this trend. Apart from making you look slimmer, monotone dresses are ideal as day as well as evening wear.

Here’s where you can accessorise all chunky and bling. This is that time of the year when you swap your pretty pastels for brighter colours. Marigold yellow, psychedelic pink, electric blue, indigo and raspy orange are the hot and happening shades now. The key to wearing these colours right is by teaming them up with neutral shades.

Black and white, together and separately, are prime choices for dresses in particular. The one item of clothing that can never go out of style is the ubiquitous denims. However, each season, they make their presence felt with a quirky twist. This time around, ripped jeans are in vogue, especially in the flared and boot cut styles. Tank tops go best with this getup. If you prefer to wear your skinny jeans, make sure you team it up with either a biker jacket or a non baggy sweatshirt to complete your look.

As women get daring, it comes as no surprise that hot pants have won the adulation of many a damsel. But you’ve got to have toned legs to carry it off. Colour block tops are in. However, wearing such apparel with a combination of more than three colours could spell disaster.

Where fabric is concerned, silicon washed materials for trousers are advised. A blend of rayon and cotton is a sensible choice. Men should wear linen trousers through this season. As far as accessories go, it is obvious that the umbrella is something you cannot not carry this season. Move over black, colour block, pop art and newsprint umbrellas are a hit.While crocs, flip-flops and rubber mules are usually given preference, don’t forget platforms, wedges and boots also raise your fashion quotient. In terms of makeup, always wear waterproof makeup and go for nude tones. You can wear your hair loose or you braid it. The whole point is to keep your look simple but chic.

Fergie Joins Case-Mate To Launch Mobile Device Fashion Accessories Campaign

Case-Mate is the international design company known for creating fashion-forward accessories that protect, adorn, and enhance mobile technology. In the upcoming campaign, Fergie will join Selena Gomez and Common on Case-Mate's growing roster of fashionable celebrity trend-setters who will inspire Millennials to outfit their smartphones, tablets and other portable electronic devices with cases that complement their various styles and individual personalities.

The integrated marketing campaign will include broadcast, digital, and social media-based programming. In addition, Fergie and Common will be co-hosting a mobile accessories fashion event in New York City for Case-Mate during 2013 Spring Fashion Week this September.

"I'm a huge believer in changing up my look to express the way I feel – and am always looking for fun accessories to spice up my outfit so I feel confident and sexy," said Fergie. "I'm really excited about partnering with Case-Mate – they are such a fun, edgy brand that I relate to on so many levels."

The rock-star-turned-fashion-designer is known for her chic and flirtatious sense of style. Fergie was named to People Magazine's "Best Dressed" List and has since launched Fergie™ and Fergalicious by Fergie™ footwear lines, along with fragrances Viva, Outspoken and Outspoken Intense.

"Fergie's free spirit and passion-for-fashion make her a perfect fit for Case-Mate," said Shashi Reddy, Case-Mate's founder and CEO. "She's a creative icon that has broken through barriers in film, music and fashion – and we are thrilled to be working with her."

The campaign is set to air beginning in September 2012.

Item Songs Inspired Rohan Arora's Footwear Line

Designer Rohan Arora says he wanted to create a longer lasting impression on fashionistas and therefore based his footwear collection on Bollywood item songs.Arora Monday presented his collection Item, which had a range of colourful footwear for men and women including embroidered loafers and sequenced wedges, at the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week Winter-Festive 2012. He says that it was inspired by bright and colourful look of Bollywood item numbers.

"The collection is inspired from the item boys and girls of Bollywood. An item song is always remembered even if the film flops, in the same way my shoes will be remembered even if the outfit doesn't work for you," Arora said after the show.

His show was followed by Jewellery designer Nitya's collection titled Nouveau Gypsy from her label Valliyan.With folk folk music playing in the background, a perfect ambience was created for models who sashayed down the ramp flaunting gold armlets, long chains with gold tassels and hand cuffs.

"My collection is based on the new age Indian gypsy women. Gypsies travel from place to place with all their jewellery on. But the modern Indian woman likes to store them at home. I want to encourage the tradition of travelling with your jewellery," she explained.

Jewellery designers Kavya and Sasha from the label Outhouse also presented a jewellery collection. Titled Leone d'oro, which means the golden lion, it had strong geometric body armaments for the modern women.The collection included contemporary gold jewellery with colourful stones and "they signify festivity, strength and fierceness," the duo said.

The show ended with Tanya Sharma's garment collection - a mix of men and women wear line - under her label Gaga. The star of her collection was a colourful dupatta draped like a sari on men's formal pants and short collared jacket.

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.

Capes & Cloaks For Fall

Call them futuristic, superhero-ish or out of a vampire movie, capes have an association with a whole lot of fictional figures. Well, fictional if you consider Batman, Superman and Edward Cullen to be limited to the silver screen only. Rebels have translated this comic book and fairytale fashion into the curated wardrobe, giving capes a large appeal.

Capes and cloaks have existed, in one variety or another, through much of our known human history. From early Medieval mantles, to 16th century decorative shawls; from military officers capes and 1940s fur stoles, to the fringed ponchos of the 1960s. But what used to be a British army uniform has now become a must-have item for the fall 2012 fashion season. The capes for this season are offering more variety and styling options, as opposed to their popularity back in 2010. The only issue women have with this super-sized silhouette is to risk looking like a pitched tent in the backyard. And because you asked, we have the solution for you that’ll make capes seem as high-end and non-fiction as they can be.

Despite the lack of proportion seen in the fall / winter 2012 runway, the styling of capes seem to have manifested detailing and tailoring. Continue reading after the break on how Fashionising.com sub-sections this superhero uniform into a statement piece for you.