Fashion and Apparel

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      in Movies

      Fashion True Crime Documentaries to Stream

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      Four picks across television, film and podcasting that examine dark stories about some of the most trendy clothing brands.In recent years, several popular apparel brands have made news for troubling reasons. Most often, they have been accused of corporate greed, having predatory practices that exploit young women, and propagating abusive systems at all levels of production, promotion and distribution. These headlines have, in turn, inspired a string of documentaries, docuseries and podcasts.Here are four picks that explore the stories of such companies, all of which have been marred by corrupt leadership or sudden tragedy.Documentary“Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion”Having barely heard of the Brandy Melville brand, I wasn’t particularly eager to watch this documentary that was released in April on Max. But as it turns out, that is kind of the point. This film from director Eva Orner not only is a searing examination of the toxic culture at this Gen Z-targeted, social media-fueled label, but it also manages to expose the many unethical systems endemic to the global fast-fashion industry. Footage from Ghana, where mountains of clothing waste from the United States blanket towns and shorelines, chilled me to the bone.As for Brandy Melville itself — maybe most famous for selling only tiny clothing with disingenuous “one size fits most” labels — the film highlights many of the takeaways from the journalist Kate Taylor’s Business Insider investigation, including scores of allegations of racism and of widespread predatory practices by the brand’s shadowy leaders, Silvio and Stephan Marsan. It all becomes that much more grim with a rape allegation against a manager by an employee.Documentary Series“Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Venice Film Festival Looks: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt And More

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      No amount of star power can truly outshine the beauty of La Serenissima, the ancient republic better known as the city of Venice. But the Venice Film Festival, with its parade of A-listers arriving for movie premieres in water taxis, comes close.Typically held not long after the fall couture shows in Paris, the Venice Film Festival benefits, in pure fashion terms, from being a showcase of the newest garments from some designers. How these elaborate, often form-fitting, confections are transferred so rapidly from Parisian runways to Venetian red carpets hardly matters to looky-loos with their eyes perennially pressed to the glass of fashion.This year’s festival, running from Aug. 28 until Saturday, has not just been an exhibition for new designs, but also of vintage pieces. Some looked as fresh as ever. Garments old and new are among these 15 looks, which will be hard to forget for reasons good and bad (but mostly good).Taylor Russell: Most Modern Retro!Louisa Gouliamaki/ReutersThe actress radiated an icy elegance in a Loewe gown reminiscent of the creations of Jean Louis, a designer who had the lock on high glamour during the golden age of Hollywood studios.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Phil Donahue’s Neutral Wardrobe Kept the Focus on His Subjects

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      The talk show host made a career of exposing polarizing topics while dressed in a relatively neutral wardrobe.The hoary tabloid axiom “if it bleeds, it leads” played no small part in the decades-long career of Phil Donahue, the pioneering host of “The Phil Donahue Show,” who died on Sunday at 88. Mr. Donahue spent three decades exposing subjects difficult for many Americans to confront — homosexuality, atheism, civil rights, consumer protection and abortion among them — to the disinfectant light of daytime TV.Central to Mr. Donahue’s success was his physical appearance. A conventionally handsome man with a boyish cast to his features, he had a perpetually merry look of bemusement and a virile, Kennedy-esque thatch of hair that grayed and then whitened as he aged in front of viewers in their living rooms. The aura Mr. Donahue conveyed was that of genial, avuncular family doctor who distracts you with innocuous banter as he rips off the bandage.Mr. Donahue deliberately played to that look with an on-air wardrobe that occasionally veered toward dapper — vested three-piece suits, wide ties, broad ’80s lapels — but was seldom, if ever, flamboyant. No “groovy” Merv Griffin shirts or turtlenecks for him, or the loud jackets and pastel polyester suits that were Johnny Carson’s sartorial signature. By comparison, Mr. Donahue’s style was resolutely neutral: He wore good clothes that fit his trim frame neatly but still seemed unremarkable, as though bought off a rack at J.C. Penney.When at times Mr. Donahue shed his jacket, it was to roam the studio aisles with his shirt sleeves rolled up, wielding the mic like a baton and putting it and the authority into the hands of audience members, whose questions he once remarked were often better than his.“Donahue’s subjects were often sharp, but his presentation was soft,” Wayne Munson, the author of “All Talk: The Talk Show in Media Culture,” said in an interview. Mr. Munson’s 1993 book took aim at a cultural form that, reviewers noted, blended interpersonal exchange and mediated spectacle and that would ultimately, as few then predicted, give way to all the yapping now consumed on social media.Mr. Donahue’s appearance, demeanor and habit of sharing the mic with audience members suggested his was never to be the authoritative voice of God but that of a neighbor.Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Alain Delon, Godfather of the Belted Trench

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      As a titan of French cinema, he dressed the part, even when playing a killer.Alain Delon, the French film star who died on Sunday at 88, was not big on smiling.He smiles little in “Le Cercle Rouge,” the 1970 caper in which he plays the mastermind of a jewel heist.He smiles little in “La Piscine,” the sexy 1969 thriller in which he plays the boyfriend of a woman whose friendship with an older man drives him to madness.And he smiles little in “Le Samouraï,” the luscious 1967 noir that cemented his status as a titan of French cinema and arguably does as much to glorify fashion as it does a life of crime.That one opens with a shot of Mr. Delon, as a hit man named Jef Costello, lying fully dressed on his bed, staring at the ceiling as he smokes a cigarette.The room is dim and bare. The suit he wears is a beautiful cadet gray. The double-breasted trench coat he puts on before exiting onto the street — well, that quickly becomes its own character.We see Jef step into a car, which is not his car. We know this in part because he carries a bracelet of keys with which to boost it. The shot of him reaching for the correct one serves as an opportunity to show off the thin leather strap of his Baume & Mercier watch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Mísia, Who Brought a Modern Flair to Fado Music, Dies at 69

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      With her smoky voice and her high-fashion look, the self-proclaimed “punk of fado” found stardom by shaking up a venerable Portuguese genre.Mísia, an acclaimed singer who helped modernize fado, a traditional Portuguese music known for wistful songs of fate, loss and regret, with a runway-ready style sense and an eclectic approach that earned her the label “anarchist of fado,” died on July 27 in Lisbon. She was 69.Her death was announced by Dalila Rodrigues, Portugal’s minister of culture, who called Mísia “a fundamental voice in the renewal of fado.” News reports said the cause was cancer.Fado — the name is derived from the Latin word fatum, meaning fate — is an urban folk music spiced with Arabic and other global influences that arose in the 19th century in the grittiest quarters of Lisbon. Marked by a minor-key plaintiveness, the music is rich with feelings of longing and resignation.Like the American blues, fado long functioned as the song of the disenfranchised, a search for transcendence amid struggle. “It was sung in the taverns and the houses of prostitution,” Mísia said in a 2000 interview with the American arts magazine Bomb, “where a lot of sailors and rough people, people who had a hard life, went to hear the music.” Fado, she added, “was the shouting of the people with no power.”Fado is also known for its theatrical, if spare, presentation: stylized, almost ritualistic performances by vocalists typically dressed in black, accompanied by traditional instruments like the Portuguese guitarra, a 12-string guitar dating to the 13th century.Her ascent to global success began with the release of her critically acclaimed debut album, called simply “Mísia,” in 1991; she eventually performed in the esteemed music halls of New York, London and Tokyo and attracted a particularly avid following in France.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Missy Elliott on Her Out of This World Tour and Groundbreaking Career

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      The tour’s fun house stage The tour’s fun house stage “Lose Control” (2005) “Lose Control” (2005) Another look from the Out of This World tour Another look from the Out of This World tour Elliott’s “sexy hip-hop” outfit Elliott’s “sexy hip-hop” outfit Elliott’s ‘Out of This World’ stage design Elliott’s ‘Out of This World’ stage […] More

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      in Music

      Blondie’s Debbie Harry Taps Personal Style for Wildfang Collection

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      For a new collection with the brand Wildfang, the Blondie singer took inspiration from a personal wardrobe she cultivated by dressing “as daring as you could.”A designer lives inside Debbie Harry. She’ll tell you so herself.As the lead signer of the pop-punk band Blondie, iterations of which have been performing for six decades, Ms. Harry has assembled her own stage wardrobe, a rough-hewn bricolage of shredded prom dresses, spandex bodysuits, fishnet arm warmers and skin-baring vintage castoffs.“I’ve always fiddled around and tried to make statements out of combining things that normally would not be looked at,” she said. “That was the fun — to make it as rock ‘n’ roll and as daring as you could. It was part of the expression of breaking out.”Since forming Blondie in the 1970s with the guitarist Chris Stein, her onetime boyfriend, Ms. Harry has rarely drifted out of public consciousness. In recent years, she has released a memoir and, with her band, albums featuring new music as well as classic songs like “Heart of Glass,” the disco track that helped make Blondie a household name. It has been covered by younger performers like Miley Cyrus, who, in a 2020 interview with Rolling Stone, credited Ms. Harry with blazing a path for new generations of artists.To some, Ms. Harry’s image as the Blondie front woman has been as influential as the band’s music. Her rocker style was the basis for a new collaboration with Wildfang, a brand in Portland, Ore., which this month released a small collection inspired by pieces that the 79-year-old singer pulled from her closet.Pieces in Ms. Harry’s Wildfang line are inspired by items from her own closet.Nicholas O’Donnell/WildfangThe collection includes a suit jacket and trousers, two shirts and a sweatshirt. Those items, priced from about $45 to $200, make liberal reference to Ms. Harry’s familiar wardrobe staples — and to her raw, tear-down-the-barricades sensibility.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Taylor Swift Gets the Museum Treatment

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      Costumes and memorabilia from the pop star’s personal archive are now on display at the V&A museum in London.“Disappointed Love,” painted in 1821 by the Irish artist Francis Danby, is a scene of eternal teenage wistfulness, its visual codes as readable now as they were back then. A young girl sits by a river, tearful and heartbroken, her head in her hands, her white dress pooling around her legs. In the water, pages of a torn letter float among the waterlilies. By her side are props of femininity: a straw bonnet, a bright red shawl and a miniature portrait of the man who wronged her.The work hangs in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, in a red-walled gallery tightly packed with Georgian and Victorian paintings. As of recently, Danby’s weeping beauty has a new neighbor: a ruffled cream Zimmerman dress worn by Taylor Swift in the music video for “Willow,” from her 2020 album “Evermore.”The gown is one of more than a dozen items from Ms. Swift’s personal archive featured in installations across the V&A galleries. Danby’s painting is “so her vibe,” the curator Kate Bailey said of Ms. Swift, gesturing to the lovesick girl and her assortment of trinkets — “the dress, the scarf.”It was not yet noon on a muggy July day in London, and yet Ms. Bailey, a senior curator in the V&A theater and performance department, had already clocked more than 8,000 steps on her iPhone pedometer as she rushed about the museum overseeing the Taylor Swift installation. The V&A galleries, spread across multiple floors, stretch seven miles. (The exhibition, “Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail,” will be open to the public through Sept. 8.)“Whose idea was it to put a trail around the whole museum?” Ms. Bailey asked as she arrived, cheerful and panting, in the gilded Norfolk House Music Room. The V&A acquired the room in 1938, when Norfolk House was demolished, and reassembled it in its entirety, panel by panel, in 2000.Ms. Swift’s “Speak Now” blasted from speakers, and her iridescent tulle ball gown, worn on the back cover of the album, was encased on a mannequin in a vitrine in the center of the room, like a ballerina in a giant music box.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More