Fashion revs up - Biker jackets

The leather jacket stands the test of time as a style perennial. But it’s also a bit of a minefield. After all, “leather jacket” encompasses a multitude of styles and sins. Considering spending your hard-earned cash on a leather trench? Remember The Matrix and back away. Brightly coloured padded leather catching your eye? Watch Thriller and realise the error of your ways. What was questionable on Michael Jackson in 1983 has in no way been rehabilitated for 2013. Clearly, not all leather jackets are created equal.

Perhaps, then, on the surface at least, the jacket that’s the most appealing is the most classic: the black leather biker or motorcycle combo. Google it, and be enticed by the constellation of cinematic stars past and present sporting the louche look with rakish aplomb. Probably the most famous image of all is Marlon Brando astride a Harley, sporting a beyond-classic Schott Perfecto in 1953’s The Wild One. When his character, Johnny Strabler, was asked what he was actually rebelling against, his disdainful reply of “whadda you got?” instantly confirmed both attire and actor as talismans of youthful dissent.

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There’s a catch. Marlon makes it all look all-too easy. Both he and the Schott are a hard act to follow, regrettably leading many a man down the biker jacket route for all the wrong reasons. Remember this; for mere mortals like ourselves, no amount of revving around on a motorcycle looking mean, moody and sweaty in a black leather cap is going to turn you into a modern-day Marlon. Real life just doesn’t work like that.

Instead, look to labels such as Belstaff or Matchless for a more grown-up take on the leather motorcycle jacket; incredibly versatile, these 21st-century bikers can be dressed up with a shirt and tie, or down with a simple T-shirt and jeans. Still not impressed? Eschew leather entirely and opt for the waxed version from Barbour – think Steve McQueen astride a Triumph bike – which is actually a damn sight easier to pull off.

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Amazing Makeup Tips to Hide Flu Symptoms

Although flu can make your body weaker, there are great makeup tips that will help you hide it and make you restore your complexion's natural glow. Are you curious to find them out?

Makeup for Flu Face: Concealer

Concealer is essential when it comes to makeup for flu face. Just apply a bit on your red nose and no one will notice you've spent all night dealing with flu. Pick a makeup for flu face product that perfectly matches your type of skin and skin tone, and add it to your shopping list.

Makeup Tips for Flu Face: Lip Exfoliation

Sometimes, cold temperatures can also lead to chapped lips, due to constant wind and rain exposure. So, here's one of the best makeup tips for flu face: lip exfoliation. You should take a washcloth and wet it with lukewarm water, and then gently rub your lips to remove dead skin cells. Now you should use another makeup tip for flu face item: chapstick. Apply a coat of this relieving flu product and then add a bit of light color.

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Makeup Tip to Cover Cold Symptoms: Glossy Blush

Here's another great makeup tip to cover cold symptoms. After you gently wash your dehydrated complexion with an exfoliating cleanser, add a tinted moisturizer and define your makeup with a glossy blush. This lovely product will add a touch of natural color to your cheekbones and will make you glow.

Makeup Tip to Hide Flu Symptoms: Waterproof Mascara

If you want to find out another great makeup tip to hide flu symptoms , you should definitely wear a waterproof mascara. Unlike eyeshadows that can easily wash out, this beauty product will make your eyes look bigger and brighter. Plus, its water resistance makes it a great makeup for flu face product that you can wear both during the day and evening.

Ann Demeulemeester Leaves Her Label

There’s a generation of women who will feel like rising to salute a heroine of fashion integrity today. Ann Demeulemeester, the woman responsible for defining slouchy Belgian cool in the nineties, has written to her friends—in her own beautiful handwriting—to say she’s moving on from the company she founded in 1985. Her very personal sign off says it all about the integrity and human values her fans have admired in Demeulemeester over nearly 30 years. She’s leaving the industry, she writes, as “a happy and fulfilled person.”

As a member of the vastly talented Antwerp Six, who graduated from the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1986 (she was a classmate of Dries Van Noten), Demeulemeester created a highly recognizable fashion uniform for a clan of working women who constitutionally objected to power suits. Her deconstructed suiting, trailing long skirts, and drapey white shirts were functionally elegant and subtly suffused with the indie attitude she continually tested against the principles and poetry of her own muse, Patti Smith.

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Demeulemeester’s growing band of appreciators became a kind of tribe who saw themselves reflected season after season in the family of models who roamed her Paris runways. Her ever-evolving deconstructed-minimalist wardrobe strode on in its own path, strong enough to transcend and withstand trends—even when fashion veered toward cocktail dresses and bling, Demeulemeester showed her grateful faithful exactly how to ignore it.

That won her an emotional connection with the public, which went further than the aesthetics. As she built her company in her own way, Demeulemeester also became a symbolic leader for her peers in refusing to sacrifice motherhood for her career—at a time when fashion industry employers openly doubted whether women designers could do both. When Demeulemeester and her husband, Patrick Robyn, had their son, Victor, she simply had a connecting corridor built between her home and her workspace so she could see her baby any time he needed her and got on with it. Her son now grown, her fashion career completed, Demeulemeester now leads another rare group of pioneers—fashion designers who have done it on their own terms, and are managing to walk away to a private and happy future. Bravo.

Can a Love of Style and a Strong Voice Make Rapper Angel Haze a Star?

In her new single “Echelon (It’s My Way),” Angel Haze name-drops Helmut Lang along with a few other of her favorite designers, a kind of declaration of the arrival of her triumphant personal style: “Fashion Week I’m out here slaying / Dressed in all the latest.”

“Fashion came with success,” Haze says, now standing in the label’s Meatpacking District showroom. “But I’ve always known what I like—the colors and textures.” To gear up for her debut album Dirty Gold and the performances that will come along with it, Haze has linked up with Helmut Lang designers Michael and Nicole Colovos, who are taking her through the showroom and ask the ultimate Helmut Lang question: “Do you wear layers?”

“I love to wear, like, five layers,” Haze replies, pulling a black-netted shirt off the rack. “This is dope. It needs to be really breathable with all the fast talking I do.” She has a tendency toward ensembles in all-white or all-black, but then, there’s the question of a bright pink dress, an anomaly among the gray-scale clothes hanging around the perimeter of the room. “Do you wear dresses?”

A pause. “I only wear dresses when I don’t want people to recognize me.” A black dress with elongated armholes goes on. “It’s sexy, but tough,” Nicole says. “A little goth-ninja,” Haze agrees. After comparing tattoos and talking about a mutual love of “slouching around in leather,” Haze is hooked. “I’m, like, gushing over you guys!” she says, laughing.

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Haze was signed last year, and her debut album, Dirty Gold, is due out early 2014. In the meantime, she’s releasing a series of covers and freestyle tracks on SoundCloud, collectively titled 30 Gold. She’s tackled contemporaries’ hits like Jay-Z’s “Tom Ford” and Drake’s “Worst Behavior,” plus Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” and, most notably, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s “Same Love,” her rework of which delves into her own moving personal narrative, weaving in thought-provoking lines from poet Andrea Gibson. Haze’s emotional honesty cut with intelligent ferocity is what makes fans love her. Because I had to switch the narrative it now makes more sense for the Tweet to come in after she looks at the racks (it was in the midst): Just before she finishes looking at the collection in the showroom, her phone buzzes. “Someone just asked me to go to their homecoming dance on Twitter,” she says.

Onstage, it’s like Haze is ten feet tall in neon socks and Givenchy boots, her flow has such a tough energy. Fashionwise, she gravitates toward clothes she can move in. Correction: “Something I can jump around in! I jump on the speakers!”

Finding clothing that makes performance fluid is the priority: “I gain more of my fans from live performances,” Haze says. “Everything I build my tracks on—they see it come out live.” But before Haze goes on her own tour next year, Vogue has an exclusive first listen of her newest 30 Gold cover of One Republic’s “Counting Stars.” Will a love of style, unstoppable flow, and strong singing voice make her a star? Count on it.

Runway to Red Carpet: Fashion’s Award Shows and a Dressed-Up European Tour

This week was highlighted by a whirlwind European press tour for the cast of Hunger Games: Catching Fire, with photo calls and premieres in London, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, and Oslo. Leading lady Jennifer Lawrence donned a bevy of gorgeous gowns to promote the second film of the trilogy. And while she mostly stuck to her red-carpet favorite, Dior (she is the face of the brand, after all), the actress did throw in a sprinkling of Alexander McQueen, Louis Vuitton, and Proenza Schouler. At Tuesday’s Berlin premiere, Lawrence wore a pale blue double-breasted coat-dress with printed guipure panels from Dior’s Resort ’14 range, which was a perfectly chic way to battle dropping temperatures (remember Leelee Sobieski’s black version last week? We sense a trend coming on). Elizabeth Banks also shined on the red carpet, choosing two shimmering Elie Saab Fall ’13 Couture dresses for the Berlin and Oslo premieres.

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On Monday, the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards and Glamour‘s Women of the Year Awards brought out a stylish crowd. Lily Collins walked the red carpet at the WOTY Awards in a silk flesh-toned gown with a plunging neckline from the Julien Macdonald Spring ’14 runway, while Lady Gaga paired a pearl-adorned jacket with a cargo-pocketed pencil skirt and tall, pearl-encrusted platform shoes from Thom Browne’s asylum-themed Spring ’14 lineup. At the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards, Ciara wore her first Calvin Klein Collection ensemble, stepping out in a tweed wrap vest and cotton twill painter’s pants, with a jacket draped around her shoulders from the Spring ’14 runway. Considering the result, we have a feeling there’s more Calvin in the singer’s future.

The Victoria's Secret catwalk show has nothing to do with fashion

It is the most expensive catwalk show ever staged, but it has almost nothing to do with fashion. They're not really into irony at Victoria's Secret, so the joke gets a little lost in the dazzle of white teeth and diamond-encrusted bras and paparazzi cameras, but it's quite funny, when you think about it.

All the signifiers of a fashion show are in place when Victoria's Secret stages its annual extravaganza. The model line-up always includes high-end Paris fashion week names (Cara Delevingne and Jourdan Dunn have featured in recent years) and the show is styled by Sophia Neophitou, who as stylist and collaborator to Roland Mouret and Antonio Berardi and British Fashion Council ambassador is an undisputed powerhouse of high fashion taste. The 6in high heels are designed for the occasion by Nicholas Kirkwood, the talented young shoe designer who was just snapped up by LVMH.

But there's something missing. Call me old-fashioned, but I sort of think the absence of clothes is a dealbreaker as far as fashion goes. At the Victoria's Secret show, instead of clothes, the models wear underwear and massive fluffy angel wings. I've been a fashion editor for 15 years, I've seen all kinds of crazy accessories anointed a fashion must-have, but massive fluffy angel wings? Nope. Not a catwalk trend. Never.

I know what you're thinking: it's about sex, stupid. Well, here's the thing: I don't see that Victoria's Secret is really about sex, either. The presentation of the Victoria's Secret Angels, to give the catwalk models their faintly creepy official title is look-but-don't-touch in the extreme. Like a very grand ballgown, or a bridal dress with a train, the wings form a kind of exclusion zone, making it physically difficult to get close. Also, even if you did find a woman dressed in an oversized Angel Gabriel costume sexy, which seems a little dubious, you'd have difficulty getting intimately acquainted. The wings Alessandra Ambrosia wore in the 2011 show were gold-plated antique copper decorated with 105,000 Swarovski crystals. They weighed almost 10kg. There is as much neon, crystal, and metallic on the VS runway as there is satin and maribou. The VS catwalk cipher might be look-at-me, but it's hard to argue that it is come-and-get-me. The name Victoria's Secret was chosen, in 1977, to set a mood-music of sobriety and respectability, and that wholesomeness is still there, despite the acres of flesh on show.

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When you visit the store, you notice how little of the product is sexy in the sense of being designed for sex. Much of the shopfloor is dominated by bras bulked up by gel or foam padding. In these, a woman may send a sexual signal when dressed, but she will need to undress alone. The vast "Pink" sub-brand of pyjamas, sweatshirts and logoed vests sells an aesthetic of the tween sleepover, not booty call. But there is no doubt it works: last year, sales at Victoria's Secret totalled almost £4bn.

The VS brand has very little to do with actual sex, and everything to do with sexiness as a status symbol. The brand has as much to do with women looking at other women, as it does with men looking at women: for every 17-year-old boy ogling the model's arses, there is a 16-year-old girl staring at their abs. VS deliberately emphasises the intense competition amongst models to appear on the catwalk; among the most "liked" posts of the endless Instagram photos of Angels-in-training are those which feature the models in boxing gloves, punching their way to a catwalk turn that could earn them a seven figure paycheque.

The Victoria's Secret show takes the cheerleader tradition, and removes the boring old football game. Sportsmanship is old hat; the 21st century is all about being hot. This is the Superbowl, for those gifted with lovely hair, beautiful bottoms and superhuman endurance for juice fasting. These days you can be a champion – an Angel, a higher being – just by being sexy. That's a trend, for sure. But it's got nothing to do with fashion, so don't blame us.

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Fall Fashion: Cutest Organic Leggings for Fall

Looking for some ethical fall fashion that’s cute to boot? Check out these sweet handmade leggings!

Leggings are everywhere this fall. Ev-ery-where. And I kind of love it, because leggings are like pajamas that you can wear out of the house!

The trouble with leggings from the big box store is that you don’t know much about where they were made. Who produced them? Under what conditions? It can be tough to track down cute leggings that meet your requirements for ethical fall fashion.

That’s where handmade goodness comes in! When you buy handmade, you know exactly who produced the fall fashion finds in your closet. And when you buy handmade products that are also made with organic fabric, you’re doing an ethical double-whammy.

I’ve searched Etsy high and low and found the cutest organic leggings I’ve ever seen. These are my faves, and I’d love to hear about which crafters are making organic leggings that are rocking your socks!

1. Colorful Tribal Leggings - These sweet leggings by Shovava would be the centerpiece to any outfit. Pair them up with your favorite little black dress for a pop of color that you can feel good about.

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2. Space Themed Leggings – Eleven44′s bleach-splattered leggings remind me of the solar system, and I love the ruching on the side. They’d be great with just an oversized sweater or your favorite dress over them.

3. Stones Print Leggings - Don’t you love this bold pattern from Komana? I could see these black and white leggings becoming a staple in my wardrobe for sure.

Of course, these are just a few of the awesome organic handmade leggings options on Etsy. Search the site for “organic leggings,” and you’ll find tons of other sweet fall fashion options. One tip: after you do your search, narrow down the category to just “women.” There are a lot of organic leggings on there for kids, and this will help weed those out.

Please Stop Putting Cats on Clothes

I love cats. For instance, real live cute felines like my friend Audrey Gelman’s ginger Persian-mix Lyle and Vogue's Thessaly La Force’s cuddly tabby Catberry. I also enjoy cat jokes: I follow @RealGrumpyCat on Twitter, and I’ve laughed out loud over LOLcats references ever since I Can Has Cheezburger was created in 2007 (I Can Has Prada Bagz?). I was even delighted to learn that Uber offered lovable kittens-for-hire (a fifteen-minute cuddle with a shelter cat) in honor of National Cat Day last week. But when it comes to putting cats on fashion—on bags, pants, necklaces and sweaters, headbands, rings, and loafers—I have a request: Please stop.

Now, for those cat lovers whose claws just came out, please turn your Maison Michel kitten ears this way and hear me out. We’ve now had over four years of fashion cat mania. It began on the spring 2010 runways, with a parade of arched backs and perky tails at Miu Miu. Those clothes were a conversation starter and compliment magnet: What are those on your dress? Cats? Aww! So cute! They were unexpected. They were intentionally cutesy, which made them funny. They flipped the notion of being a “cat lady” from something dumpy and lonely to a source of wit and pride. That moment of playing with expectations is what can make fashion interesting. But as we near the end of 2013, I’d like to argue that cats are an unrelenting trend. Talk about nine lives: Cats have outlived Burberry Prorsum’s owls, Balenciaga’s German shepherds, and even Givenchy’s raging rottweilers.

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They’ve even stood their ground through the whimsy desert of Philo-inspired Minimalism—and they don’t appear to be backing down. Markus Lupfer, Moschino Cheap and Chic, and BCBG Max Azria all have cats on sweaters; Marc by Marc Jacobs has a cat with little almond eyes on all kinds of product (the character even has a name: Rue Cat); Charlotte Olympia, Oscar de la Renta, and Forever 21 sell quirky kitty loafers; and Eugenia Kim, Marie Mercié, and Topshop have offered many variations of eared hats, from beanies to berets and bowlers. The cat-fashion population is so plentiful that I’m tempted to round up any egregious examples, put them in a burlap sack, and send them down the river. But I won’t. Instead, I propose a compromise: Once the Miu Miu cats in the house’s spring 2014 collection and Karl Lagerfeld’s cat accessories inspired by his kitty Choupette are all sold out, let’s take at least a one-season break. A cat nap, if you will.

Because the more we saturate the markets with cats, the less funny, cute, and unexpected they become. Cats become a cheap trick, an easy way to make a fashion statement. No one can ignore an animal’s face on a sweater, or little lace ears. They will say something nice. But, in the process, they may actually be overlooking whatever it is you really have to say. Take a break to find what other clothes and accessories represent your intelligence and humor. Be a cool cat—and chill.

Shock Values: Jennifer Lawrence's Pixie Cut Takes Facebook

What is surprising about an image of Jennifer Lawrence—ensconced in the fuselage of a private jet, wearing a simple white tank, gold chain, and blazer—like the one the Oscar-winner posted to her Facebook today? Nothing, really, if it weren’t for the noticeable absence of her celebrated blonde waves.

Surprise! I have a pixie cut!

It’s a declaration that celebrities and stylish civilians alike have been announcing on social media with increasing frequency lately. Fourteen months ago, for instance, Lena Dunham presented her freshly shorn hair to the world with an image captioned: “I Miley’d the shit out of this Saturday.”

Ms. Cyrus herself chose Twitter to famously reveal her cropped and bleached locks back in August 2012. When Rihanna adopted a halo of ’80s-esque curls this past August, there was no need for a press release: @badgalriri broke the news on Instagram. Perhaps the most buzzed about haircut of the millennium so far—Beyoncé’s short-lived bleached-blonde pixie—has garnered nearly 357,000 Insta-likes to date (more than 797,000 if you count both pictures she posted).

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From a look at the tongue-in-cheek expression on Jennifer Lawrence’s face in her selfie, the actor seemed to understand the impact she was about to have on her dauntless fan base. It’s not the pixie itself that’s shocking—the style has been popular since Audrey Hepburn first catapulted it to fame in 1953’s Roman Holiday—but the dramatic departure from her familiar tangle of curls (most recently styled by Oribe in our September issue cover story) that proves so fascinating. If anything, her cut—rumored to have taken place on the set of an upcoming Dior campaign—seems fitting if you take designer Raf Simons’s preference for short, fifties-inspired hair on his recent runways into consideration.

The takeaway? The pixie is a persistent trend—but so, too, is the impulse to reveal one’s most provocative new look online.

Jennifer Aniston on Her New Short Hair—and Her On-Set Secret Weapon

If Jennifer Aniston’s beauty track record has taught us anything (see “The Rachel”), it’s that the actress isn’t afraid of taking the occasional hair risk. Just this weekend, she revealed that she had cut off more than six inches of her honey-colored hair with the help of longtime hairstylist Chris McMillan the night before. “I actually don’t have any red carpets coming up. This is truly just for me!” says Aniston—who recently finished promoting director Daniel Schechter’s Life of Crime (out next year) at the Toronto International Film Festival—about her swingy new jaw-grazing length. As a co-owner of Living Proof, the breakthrough beauty brand dedicated to eradicating frizz and reducing breakage, she’s no stranger to a good hair day, although she admits to taking a low maintenance approach. “The best thing about Living Proof is that you don’t have to wash your hair,” she says of finding herself able to stretch out the time between regular shampoos. “It makes your beauty routine easy during the week.” Here, fresh out of McMillan’s chair, she talks about her latest transformation, why she’s “not a lipstick girl,” and her favorite on-set secret.

What are your daily essentials for maintaining healthy, shiny hair?

If I’m letting it go naturally, I just shape it around my face because I have some pretty nutty cowlicks. I have a round brush that kind of gets them into position, and then I’ll put Living Proof Amp 2 Instant Texture Volumizer through the hair afterward to shape it. I try to do that as much as possible just because it’s less wear on my hair. If I know I’m going to blow dry it, I put in a leave-in conditioner or the Living Proof Perfect Hair Day 5-in-1 Styling Treatment that just came out. It’s kind of awesome.

You changed up your red carpet hair once, in June, with a tiny braid on the side. What inspired that?

My hair is basic, but I saw a picture of somebody else wearing it, and I thought it looked cool. Normally, I want to be able to run my hands through my hair and not think about it, but I liked that style. It was simple—although yesterday Chris McMillan actually chopped all my hair off, so it’s even simpler now!

Define “chopped it all off”!

It’s right at my jaw line, maybe a little longer. It was kind of spur-of-the-moment. I was flipping through the television channels and I paused it to take a picture and I sent it to Chris, and he said, “That’s [stylist] Lawren Howell from Vogue!” And then he said, “I just cut that!” So that’s it. He went way shorter than hers, but she was the inspiration.

And how do you feel with the new cut?

I don’t know, man. I did it! I feel great. I feel lighter. It’s simple, it’s really simple, that’s for sure. But I’m always one of those girls who does a big old chop just to get it really healthy, to repair all the [damage from] hair coloring and stuff like that. And I just got bored, honestly. It’s fun to change it up once in awhile.

What changes have you made in terms of styling it now that it’s short?

Well, I’m still figuring it out. He literally cut it Thursday night! It kind of dried on its own, we just shook it out. There’s a little round brush we used to get at the root, and then I took the Amp, and I put it all through the root so that it had a little bit of grit to it.

What is your best-kept beauty secret you’ve learned on set?

We start shooting Horrible Bosses 2 in a couple weeks, and I get to wear a wig for that. It’s fantastic, it actually saves your hair because you can put a leave-in conditioner in, wrap it, and then it’s like putting on a hat. It’s easy and fun and you get to change your look. I did that for Life of Crime as well. It’s one of those things they say: “Once you start wearing a wig, you’ll never go back.”

And what about makeup for the red carpet?

I leave that to the professionals! But I do like to focus on the eye. I’m not really a lipstick girl. I can’t keep it on that long! I would never do a lip with a smoky eye unless it’s a natural, tawny shade—or a glossy nude.

If we spilled out your makeup bag right now, what would we find?

Just so much crap! [Laughs] There’s a Chanel compact that’s got three eye shadows, three lip glosses, and a blush. It’s fantastic. You’d also find a lot of Laura Mercier lip liner, my Aveeno lip balm with SPF, my Benefit powder, Chanel mascara, and an eyelash curler.

What is your technique for getting your eyelashes so long and perfect?

I actually have a Japonesque heated eyelash curler. That’s kind of my new favorite. It sounds scary but it’s actually easy to use. I did try perming my eyelashes once. I would not recommend it!

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