By Kat Stoeffel 3/14 10:00am

style

17 Photos

Rooney, we're not sure whether you're the problem or the solution.

Snip, Snip, Bangs, Bangs! From Rooney to Runway, Cropped Tops Come to the Fore(head)

Rooney Mara stayed in character for months after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo wrapped. Call it method marketing: From the pages of Vogue to Jimmy Fallon, she almost always appeared wearing simple black dresses with severe, skin-baring cut outs—Lisbeth Salander goes to prom.

It made sense that Ms. Mara, blandly pretty in her Social Network days, would hitch her rising star to her character’s signature look. Trish Summerville, the Dragon costume designer, had already capitalized on the best-seller heroine’s appeal with a capsule collection at also-Swedish H&M.

But who would have guessed that when Ms. Mara showed up for the Oscars last month in a lacy cream Givenchy gown, Lisbeth’s weird baby bangs—short, black and severely straight across her forehead—would stay in the picture? Read More

By Drew Grant 1/24 9:22am

self improvement

The final look

Menace to Society: Wannabe It Girl Gets a Style Makeover

I’ve always been a great lover of fashion. I own a range of ball gowns and multicolor high tops, which can be pressed into duty as day or evening wear. I have at least four pairs of jeans, a few from recognized labels. (Well, someone would probably recognize them.) I even went to Bloomingdale’s last year after watching that Oprah episode and found out my bra size. It turned out I was wearing 36B when I was actually…larger than that. Double-letter larger.

I don’t even own a mirror; that’s how confident I am of my look.

Admittedly, my sense of style is somewhat singular. I’m creative, funky. I pair pieces that the “fashion world,” as it’s called, would label a “Don’t”—but then I’ll wear them for weeks at a time. Who says a $200 black cocktail dress can’t be worn with a lumpy blue grandma sweater, some purple Uggs, and a cape? Who says that maroon doesn’t go with red? People with mirrors, I bet.

Read More

By Guelda Voien 11/16/11 12:06pm

The Lease Beat

Tokyo tunes into 530 Seventh Avenue.

Tokyo Fashion House Comes to Seventh

Onward Kashiyama! said all involved parties last Thursday, as the Japanese fashion house by that name renewed its lease at 530 Seventh Avenue for three years.

Tokyo-based Onward Kashiyama distributes a number of men’s and women’s apparel lines, including preppy men’s clothier J. Press. The Connecticut-born retailer is perhaps best known for selling sweaters emblazoned with the logo of Skull and Bones, Yale University’s most notorious fraternal organization. Onward also owns top ballet shoe makers Chacott and Freed of London, and designs custom clothes for brands such as Calvin Klein and Sonia Rykiel. Read More

By Laura Kusisto 5/11/11 7:41pm

lease beat

Famed Calvin Klein Photog Workin’ It on Hudson Street

Bruce Weber, the world-renowned fashion photographer, whose ads for Calvin Klein and Abercrombie & Fitch, famously feature everything but, has snapped up some new Hudson Street digs. 

Mr. Weber and long-time partner and agent Nan Bush will take 11,152 square feet for 10 years on the 10th floor of 205 Hudson Street. “He’s an internationally Read More

By Chloe Malle 5/05/10 2:27am

‘No Spanx Tonight’: Glamour Moms Gisele, Kate, Stella Suck in for Vogue’s Big Gala

Arriving at Vogue’s annual Costume Institute gala at the Met (theme: “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity”), editor Anna Wintour emerged from a chauffered black SUV wearing a dove-gray gown covered in a Chanel silver-sequined jacket. It was the ultimate boyfriend blazer.

She was accompanied by her daughter, Bee Shaffer, in floor-length, ivory Balenciaga covered Read More

By Michael Miller 10/13/09 10:44pm

Something Is Getting Between Him and His Calvins

Size matters. But if you don’t have it, just trick people into thinking you do with a little cleverly constructed fabric. That’s the promise of the new Body by Calvin Klein Jeans—retail price, $79.50—with their “body-defining fit for an enhanced profile.” With some padded-fly trickery, Body Jeans presumably gives guys the optical illusion of more Read More