A Lucire special promotion

Many of our female readers are already sold on ASOS, so it’s great to see the online retailer give the men some consideration.
   It’s started on an item of clothing that most men should have no trouble ordering online: denim. The two new videos promoting the ASOS Menswear Denim range—which has over 600 styles—are cheeky and should appeal to most men. It’s asking men to send them challenges, and ASOS will respond to the best ones using items from the range.
   The first video is a humorous look at how one can become a drummer—with ASOS skinny jeans, of course—while the second, on how to save a football team from relegation, requires ASOS denim shorts.
   Netizens are asked to submit a challenge to ASOS at its Twitter account at ASOS_Menswear, hashtagging denimchallenge, or via an email form at the end of its videos.
   Challenges could include a request for help to meet a girl, or freezing jeans, as the company.
   ASOS says it will reply back to the best challenges, each using a product from its denim line.
   The idea behind the humorous campaign is to spark a conversation.
   ASOS has also launched a competition to tie in with the campaign, opening the morning of May 10, and closing at 4.30 p.m. BST. The winner is the one who Tweets the best denim challenge, as determined by the judges—with humour and imagination the two criteria they are looking for. The winner takes home a denim item of their choice. Full rules can be found at ASOS’s website.
   ASOS was founded in 2000 in the UK, and was floated on the AIM at the London Stock Exchange the following year. It now carries over 50,000 branded and own-label lines, with 1,500 new product lines being introduced each week.

Post sponsored by ASOS

Above From Starfish’s heyday: the summer 2010–11 collection, Free Radical.

The companies behind Starfish have appointed liquidators, according to public notices placed in metropolitan newspapers today.
   Both Starfish Retail Ltd. and Starfish Wholesale Ltd. went into liquidation as of May 8, with creditors expected to make their claims with Price Waterhouse Coopers in Wellington, New Zealand by June 12.
   Starfish has had a long history in Wellington, and is one of the labels most closely identified with the city. Founded by sisters Laurie and Miriam Foon, initially selling out of the boot of their car, the company soon became known for its commitment to corporate social responsibility and the environment.
   Laurie Foon was Lucire’s first feature interviewee in 1997, at a time when Starfish was behind a movement to stop the city motorway bypass. It was one of many social causes that the company stood behind in its 20-year history.
   The companies that are in liquidation now were incorporated the year after, though the label itself started in 1993.
   Starfish also launched a more premium label, Laurie Foon, in the 2000s.
   Its fashion consistently ranked among this magazine’s picks for each season, and was a highlight of New Zealand Fashion Week for Lucire fashion editor Sopheak Seng.
   Alongside Untouched World, Starfish was highlighted in Summer Rayne Oakes’s international guide to eco-fashion, Style, Naturally.
   Throughout its history, Starfish remained passionate about the environment and stayed true to its ethos. On principle, it resisted offshore manufacturing when many of its rivals opted for cheap labour.
   Starfish’s liquidation follows the closure of long-time label Ashley Fogel and another highly regarded Wellington brand, Alexandra Owen.

Kate Moss is the new face of St Tropez, the self-tanning brand, leading its first global advertising campaign.
   Two shots have been released: one of Moss in a white, one-piece swimsuit, and another in the nude.
   The campaign will be in print and online, and appear in point-of-sale materials from summer 2013. St Tropez is also encouraging users to use the hashtag offtosttropez on Twitter for a prize draw, which will include a holiday.
   The company has also issued a how-to video on how to get Moss’s tan in the campaign. Says Nichola Joss, St Tropez’s global tanning and skin-finishing expert, ‘To achieve Kate’s pool-side bronze for the shoot, the St Tropez Self Tan Bronzing Mousse applied with a St Tropez Applicator Mitt gives a natural-looking, streak-free result with a flawless finish. St Tropez Powder Bronzer perfects the look with a beautiful contoured effect and enhances the natural shape of Kate’s body.’
   The iconic supermodel says she has used the St Tropez brand since its inception.
   Michelle Feeney, CEO of PZ Cussons Beauty, the owner of St Tropez, said in a release, ‘As a global beauty brand with a heritage in tanning, St Tropez is now in 18 countries and women from Rio to LA are seeking the benefits of safe tanning. Kate’s fashion icon status is important to us but now her growing number of beauty campaigns proves that her appeal as a beauty icon resonates with confident women across all age groups globally.’

Above A preview of some of the locations in Lamborghini’s 50th anniversary convoy.

Cars for a convoy commemorating the 50th anniversary of Lamborghini arrived at Milano today. The Grande Giro, with 350 models from the Italian supercar maker’s stable, will pass through Lombardia, Toscana, Lazio, Umbria and Emilia Romagna, stopping over in Forte dei Marmi, Grosseto, Roma, San Giustino Valdarno and Bologna. After Bologna, where the cars will be by Friday afternoon, they will make their way to Sant’Agata Bolognese, the home of Lamborghini.
   Organizers say that the convoy will be 4·5 km long, and features models ranging from the original 1963 350 GT to the current Gallardo and Aventador. Sixty-five per cent of the drivers are male, the youngest at 22, the oldest at 75.
   The cars meet at the parc fermé in Piazza Castello, Milano at 10 a.m. on May 7 and leave for Bobbio tomorrow.
   Lamborghini was founded by tractor maker Ferrucio Lamborghini, who believed he could out-do Ferrari. It was incorporated on October 30, 1963. The brand was put on the map with the 1966 Miura, a mid-engined vehicle that changed the way exclusive sports cars were configured. Up until then, they were commonly front-engined.
   To some, the Miura remains the most beautiful car ever made, and the credit for its styling, by the house of Bertone, remains the subject of debate today. Some say it was the work of Giorgetto Giugiaro, others Marcello Gandini.
   The Miura was succeeded by the Countach, a dramatic car with “beetle wing” doors and razor edges, styled by Gandini.
   Lamborghini had changed hands over the years, with Chrysler taking a controlling stake in the late 1980s. An investment group took over in 1994. It is currently a subsidiary of the Volkswagen group.

Lauro Atti, David Kaiser and Wolfango.it

BFAnyc.com for the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The talk today at Lucire was the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual costume gala, and who was the best and worst dressed.
   Our friends at ITN had a slightly different view to us, as we felt that Kim Kardashian let the side down with an unflattering floral-print dress. There is great maternity wear out there, but Kardashian’s look didn’t do it for us.
   We’re not sure how her dress was punk, which was the theme of this year’s gala, Punk: from Chaos to Couture.
   Beyoncé wore a gown with a flame motif and a long train by Givenchy, but we wouldn’t class that as the worst. Since largely every celebrity there was a punk poseur rather than an exponent of the movement, we thought it was a good interpretation of the theme while staying true to the red-carpet looks of previous Met galas. There was a sense of the DIY nature of punk even if her gown was put together by Riccardo Tisci.
   Taylor Swift was am ITN favourite with her J. Mendel black silk crepe gown and crystal neckline.
   However, our favourite was Sienna Miller. Miller wore a Burberry gown and studded leather jacket, and had studs in her ears and her hair. She expressed the punk spirit the closest, according to Lucire fashion editor Sopheak Seng.
   Sarah Jessica Parker, another favourite of ours, wore a Giles Deacon gown, a mohawk by Philip Treacy and Christian Louboutin boots, but managed to flash her knickers—as did Madonna in a plaid Givenchy jacket.
   Lucire also rated Rooney Mara donned a half-sheer Givenchy, while Christina Ricci properly went punk with a Vivienne Westwood plaid gown and Harry Winston jewellery.
   Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour wore a pink floral Chanel gown.
   Others were less punky and missed the essence of the roots of punk. Miley Cyrus and Anne Hathaway sported new blonde hairdos. Cyrus wore Marc Jacobs, while Hathaway, in Valentino, said she was inspired by Debbie Harry.
   Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Katie Holmes got ITN’s thumbs-up, with Holmes in a Calvin Klein halter dress by Francisco Costa. Jennifer Lopez appeared in a Michael Kors sequin-embroidered gown.

Actress Helen Flanagan (formerly of Coronation Street, where she played Rosie Webster) is the top-placed Briton on FHM’s Sexiest 100 Women list, thanks to reader votes. Mila Kunis topped the poll, voted via fhm.com, followed by Rihanna. Flanagan found herself in third place in the list of international celebrities.
   Rounding off the top ten—and showing how FHM’s largely British reader base often voted in their own—were Michelle Keegan, Kelly Brook, Kaley Cuoco, Pixie Lott, Kate Upton, Cheryl Cole and Georgia Salpa. Tulisa Contostavlos just missed out on a top-10 placing, in 11th.
   Our colleagues at ITN caught up with her in a very low-cut black gown at the party announcing the list, but presumably the volume prevented Flanagan from hearing the first questions posed to her.
   Once tuned in to the interviewer, the 22-year-old Mancunian actress got through her questions more quickly.
   Flanagan says that she has an obsession with Angelina Jolie and also regards eighth-placed Kate Upton as being sexy.
   She also notes that she is ‘socially shy’ and would prefer a gentleman with manners to a ‘bad boy’.
   Flanagan leapt from 47th place in last year’s poll.
   The full list can be found at www.fhm.com/girls/100-sexiest-women.
   Our second video features Emily Atack, Keeley Hazell, Jorgie Porter and Laura Whitmore.

Updated May 17, 2013 at 12.46 p.m. GMT with videos from Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

In the 36 years since The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended, we’ve had snippets of information here and there: TV specials celebrating various anniversaries, articles when the release of the disappointing Mary & Rhoda TV movie appeared, and retrospectives when Mary Tyler Moore herself was presented with a SAG award. But no one, till now, has put together a tome on how the show was created and its eight-year history.
   Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted and All the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic is the best researched book on the topic. Newly released by Simon & Schuster, Armstrong has talked to the surviving members of the cast and crew, including writer Treva Silverman, and producers and creators Allan Burns and James L. Brooks, as well as Moore, Valerie Harper, Gavin MacLeod and others. She has exhaustively researched period articles and even feminist conferences. But don’t expect a laborious effort to get through the 300 pp.: anyone with even a passing interest in television sitcoms, television history in general, recent American history or the media’s role in the development of feminism will find Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted an absorbing and entertaining read, tracing the origins of the show in the 1960s to the years after its final episode, told chronologically.
   It’s hard to believe now just how revolutionary The Mary Tyler Moore Show was in 1970. It’s even harder to believe that it had a difficult gestation and plenty of doubt among network executives. CBS had expected it to flop after its 13-episode commitment, not take home multiple Emmys. Ed Asner could have walked away permanently after a bad audition. But it became a ratings’ winner, catching the smart, urban crowd, and the fictional Mary Richards became the first mainstream character to tell America that it was OK to be single, over 30, and independent.
   Jay Sandrich’s style of directing is mentioned—he believed that actors should play to each other, rather than on stage in the theatre, performing to the audience. That, the live audience, and the use of film helped lend The Mary Tyler Moore Show a different style. The use of Evan-Picone as a sole supplier of Moore’s wardrobe also helped with realism: Mary Richards might repeat an outfit during a season, which a real working woman would. Brooks and Burns, in their own commitment to reality, sought out female writers, who were extremely hard to come by in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to give the show an authentic voice. The networks themselves had remarkably few women, with the few female executives who had broken the glass ceiling needing to leave their high heels outside the washroom so that their male colleagues knew they were inside.
   Norman Lear’s remake of Till Death Do Us Part, called All in the Family, which proved more ground-breaking in pushing the envelope, is also mentioned more than just in passing. All of it is placed into the context of the social changes in the United States at the turn of the 1970s, making Armstrong’s book a particularly useful text, covering many bases.
   We read about male friends writing to CBS angrily when it was implied that she had stayed over at a boyfriend’s, or even about how ground-breaking one scene was when Mary’s visiting mother, talking to her father, says, ‘Don’t forget to take your pill,’ to which both father and daughter replied, ‘I won’t.’
   The team’s personal demons—Ted Knight had anxieties stemming from his slow rise to stardom, for instance, and the pressure put on Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore’s marriage—are dealt with, and Armstrong successfully transplants the reader to the 1960s and 1970s as though the events were unfolding before us. The fact Mary Richards fought for equal pay but still accepted a lower rate did not endear the show fully to feminists, but The Mary Tyler Moore Show largely stayed true to not dealing with the issues of the day—rather, it would address them through character-driven plots, with one or two exceptions. On that note, it was quite unlike All in the Family, which would deal with racism or sexism head-on.
   Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted is better than any DVD commentary or documentary so far produced on the show. With over 300 pp., it is the definitive reference on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and to a lesser extent, its spin-offs. In terms of interest among American readers, we think it’s going to make it after all.

Armstrong has emailed Lucire with some of the events she has planned to promote her new book.
   ‘If you’re in New York, I especially encourage you to join us for MTM-related bar trivia to celebrate release week. There will be prizes—T-shirts, books, mugs, and free Entertainment Weekly subscriptions!’ she says.
   ‘So far I’ve got stuff planned for New York, DC, Chicago, Milwaukee, and LA, but I’ve still got more in the works, so if you’re somewhere else, please check my website for updates.’
   Right now, those events are (please check her website for corrections and updates):

• Thursday, May 9, 7 p.m.: Mary Tyler Moore Show trivia night for Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted release. At Pacific Standard, Brooklyn.
• Monday, May 13, 12 p.m.: Mary Tyler Moore Show discussion and reading from Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted. At 92nd Street Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street.
• Friday, May 17, 7 p.m.: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted reading and discussion at the Village Zendo, 588 Broadway (near Houston), Suite 1108.
• Monday, May 20, 12 p.m.: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted reading and signing at the National Archives, Washington D.C.
• Tuesday, June 4. 7 p.m.: The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the Modern Woman discussion at Boswell Book Co., Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• Wednesday, June 5, 8 p.m.: Sexy Feminism and Chicago Doll party, Old Town Social, 455 W. North Ave., Chicago—join us for a fundraising raffle, cocktails, and fun.
• Thursday, June 6, 7 p.m.: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted Chicago launch party, Hemingway House and Museum, Oak Park.
• Friday, June 7: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted reading and talk at Book Cellar, Lincoln Square, Chicago.
• Sunday, July 7, 7 p.m.: How to Write a Non-fiction Book Proposal workshop with LA Writers’ Group.
• Tuesday, July 9, 7 p.m.: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted panel discussion: What Has Changed for Female TV Writers Since the ’70s? With Mary Tyler Moore Show writer Treva Silverman. At Book Soup, Los Angeles.
• Thursday, July 11, 7 p.m.: A dialogue and how-to discussion about pop-culture writing with Gavin Edwards, co-author of VJ: the Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave. At Pop-Hop Bookshop, Los Angeles.

   Jennifer Armstrong’s website can be found at jenniferkarmstrong.com, and her Twitter account is jmkarmstrong. Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted can be pre-ordered via Amazon at this link in hardcover, and at this link for Kindle. Release is May 7, 2013.—Jack Yan, Publisher

Finnish-owned label Lindex has released imagery from the second push for its spring 2013 season, featuring actress Penélope Cruz.
   The first part of the campaign, which showed Cruz in casual and red-carpet settings, broke on April 24.
   This latest campaign sees Cruz wearing her favourite items in a home environment.
   The company says this part of the collection has a Latino inspiration, with neutral colours (khaki, black, grey, white) offset by pepper green and mandarin red. The patterns include animal and jungle prints, fringes and tie-dyes.
   There are the usual staples of dresses, singlets and shorts. Lindex’s design manager, Nina Starck, gives the example of shorts, knitted top and a bikini underneath for a boho-chic look.
   To emphasize a retro feel, Cruz can be seen in one image posing next to a turntable with an LP.
   This latest part of the Lindex spring collection hits stores, online and offline, on May 6.
   Cruz won an Academy Award for best supporting actress in the 2008 Woody Allen film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. News of the Lindex spring campaign breaking first surfaced on April 15.
   While a Swedish-originated brand, Lindex was acquired by the Finnish retailer Stockmann in 2007. It currently has around 400 stores, including Russia and the Middle East.