Youth brand Hurley held a fashion design competition for high schoolers last night, and Bar Rafaeli—this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model—Benji and Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, Taboo of the Black Eyed Peas, Robert Buckley of Lipstick Jungle and Frankie Delgado of MTV’s Bromance and The Hills were called on to judge at House of Blues in Anaheim, California.
   Hurley founder Bob Hurley and Rosemary Brantley of OTIS College of Art and Design were also on the judging panel.
   Fountain Valley High School took home top honours and a $5,000 donation to its art and music programme. Gahr High School won a special design challenge and could see their two original head-to-toe designs featured in a future Hurley collection. The company also launched the Hurley Microphone for Youth T-shirt design competition, where young people can upload their designs to its website and the public can vote on them till March 30.

Above: Bar Refaeli and Good Charlotte’s Joel and Benji Madden, judging Hurley’s Walk the Walk in Anaheim on February 26.

Swiss-based watch company, Aspen, introduced its Aspen One luxury timepiece, earlier this month. The launch took place at the Aspen Mountain Club, where supermodel Elle Macpherson was presented with the diamond version of the One, retailing at US$49,900 (the standard, limited-edition version is a “mere” US$38,900). Macpherson chose to donate her watch to two non-profit organizations, Challenge Aspen (helping people with disabilities) and Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club (AVSC).

Cirque du Soleil was the subject of a large article in the first Twinpalms Lucire in Thailand, but we didn’t expect it would really get in to fashion. Enter Reebok, which has followed up the Step Reebok programme of the late 1980s with Jukari Fit to Fly, an exercise routine developed with the circus arts’ group. The idea, as outlined on our fashion features’ page, is to give women the sensation of flying while strengthening and toning bodies.

See what we mean? We didn’t request extra photographs of Mischa Barton—she just seems to be in the Zeitgeist again. Here is the actress in a hat by D&Y—its hats and scarves are apparently favoured by Miley Cyrus, Taylor Momsen and Audrina Patridge, according to the company’s PR firm, P3R.

Of all the news we are getting about celebrities, one seemed to appear more often over the last week in conversation and news: Mischa Barton.
   Barton has had a whirlwind few months with filming in India, stopping off in the UK, New York Fashion Week, and now Los Angeles.
   At New York Fashion Week, Barton was spotted constantly with a Pantera Dual ring with a diamond Maltese cross charm, Pantera Trio necklace (pictured below), and golden Mahlia Belize bracelet.

Another video that came during New York Fashion Week, but which we didn’t want to run as it would have got lost: the Mini E christening an electricity charging-point for cars in Berlin, Germany. For those who feel that plug-in electric cars would be problematic when they run out of juice, BMW and Vattenfall answer that concern with the first power-point in Berlin-Treptow, powered by renewable resources.
   As the UNEP-partnered fashion magazine, this is a very important step for the automotive industry, especially in difficult times when we should seek alternatives to petrol. New Zealand made good headway in the late 1970s to 1996 with a comprehensive natural gas network nationally—something it has moved away from, sadly—while Germany is starting on a path to help the development of clean, exhaust-free electric cars.

With all that was going on during New York Fashion Week, we decided to delay these videos in case they got lost. They’re from the Brands with a Conscience ceremony at MIP in Paris earlier this month (we detailed the winners here at Lucire in January), which the Medinge Group has been running for six years. The filming was done by Elmine Wijnia, wife of long-standing member Ton Zijlstra.
   The first is a video introducing the ceremony, featuring Medinge chairman Thomas Gad, Medinge CEO and Lucire travel ed. Stanley Moss, and Pierre d’Huy, one of my fellow directors. Noted member and author Sicco van Gelder introduces one of the videos.
   The Colin Morley Award was presented posthumously to Paul Newman, who was voted the winner by a large margin by the BWAC committee. In the words of Stanley: ‘On a per capita basis, he was the most generous person on Earth. He gave away, in his lifetime, over $250 million.’
   The subsequent videos feature the acceptances from Ragbag, Ekomarine, One Water and Chhatra Sagar.

Ragbag

Ekomarine

One Water

Chhatra Sagar

The last show on the official calendar, Chado Ralph Rucci, completed New York Fashion Week at the Bryant Park tents for the fall 2009 season.