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.

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

Jamie McCarthy/WireImage

Jim Spellman/WireImage

Jaeger-LeCoultre is pushing its film connections this week, too, honouring Barbra Streisand at the 40th anniversary Chaplin Award Gala at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
   Jaeger-LeCoultre has a multi-year partnership with the Society and recently launched its Filmmaker in Residence initiative. The partnership also covers the Society’s most prestigious annual event, the New York Film Festival, which will be held from September 27 to October 13 this year.
   Present at the event were Liza Minnelli, Tony Bennett, Michael Douglas, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Stiller and Blythe Danner. Minnelli, last year’s winner, Catherine Deneuve, and actor Jeremy Irons, donned their Jaeger-LeCoultre Grande Reverso watches at the event.
   Streisand received the award from former US President Bill Clinton at Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
   The legendary singer, actress, producer and director has won the Grammy 15 times, and had been nominated 57 times.
   The event was held one week after Charlie Chaplin’s birthday on April 16. Chaplin was the first honoree in 1972: he had spent four days in New York fêted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center at a gala event prior to heading to Los Angeles to accept his honorary Oscar. Chaplin had been in a 20-year exile in Switzerland after he was denied entry in the United States in the 1950s.

Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Grey Goose

Charles Eshelman/FilmMagic

April 25: Beyoncé releases ‘Beyoncé as Mrs Carter in H&M’—see her new video here

H&M’s latest spokeswoman, Beyoncé, has teased her Mrs Carter Show World Tour with video clips.
   A month ago, Lucire revealed that the music star would be the Swedish retailer’s latest model. Since last year, most likely thanks to the influence of its creative director Donald Schneider, H&M had connected itself successfully to major music acts. First it was Lana Del Rey, and now it has tied in with Beyoncé’s latest world tour.
   The campaign features ‘Beyoncé as Mrs Carter in H&M’, and now Beyoncé has revealed more details of the tour itself.
   The video shows her in multiple costume changes, including glittering catsuits, as well as scenes atop a piano and flying on a trapeze. She performs ‘Halo’, ‘Run the World (Girls)’ and ‘Love on Top’.
   Sixty-one shows are planned for Europe and North America (detailed on her website, along with ticket purchase links), so the ‘world’ aspect of the tour is not entirely accurate. Beyoncé’s promotional team is offering tour exclusives, ticket pre-sales and VIP packages as part of the tour for those who wish to provide their personal details to join her ‘Beyhive’ blog.

Top A Fast & Furious 6 tie-in from G by Guess. Above Madrubb, the Madrid Latex fashion company, launches its spring–summer collection.

The Fast and the Furious franchise might not be Lucire readers’ cup of tea, and our closest connection to it was when we featured actress and former Miss Israel Gal Gadot on our cover a few years ago.
   However, Guess isn’t shying away from an opportunity, as its G by Guess brand is releasing a collection tying in with Fast & Furious 6, the latest instalment in the film series.
   G by Guess targets a younger consumer, which the Fast & Furious films are aimed at.
   The limited-edition capsule collection for men and women reaches stores on May 14, 10 days before Fast & Furious 6 hits US cinemas. The 15-piece collection has motor racing details, gritty prints and what G by Guess calls ‘destroyed styles’, with an emphasis on being ‘young, bold and sexy.’ Both the men’s and women’s lines have jackets, T-shirts and tank-tops, while the women’s line also features a tank dress. Accessories include aviator sunglasses, a men’s watch, and an embellished cap.
   A sneak peek is available now at GbyGuess.com/Fast6, with events being held at 30 G by Guess locations on May 18. An online competition lasting 10 days appears on GbyGuess.com and via Facebook.
   Madrubb, the Spanish Latex fashion label, has shown its spring–summer 2013 range, entitled Lxve to Lxve. It also débuts a new technique which it calls ‘Embroidery in Latex’, which it hopes will take its line into a ‘Latex haute couture’ realm.
   Madrubb, based in Madrid, also emphasizes its brighter colours for the season, calling them ‘full of life and freshness’. The palette includes bubble-gum pink, mint green, orange and jade, while there is a cream dress with embroidered sequins and crystals. The company’s website can be found at www.madridrubber.com.
   Avon, meanwhile, is launching its Anew Clinical Pro Line Corrector Treatment in Australia and New Zealand through its reps. The formula features Amino Fill 33 and claims to be a ‘game-changing innovation’. The British launch had a 60,000-strong waiting list, says Avon, and was its fastest seller.
   Avon’s R&D senior skin care manager, Anthony Gonzalez, says, ‘A-F33 is potentially as game changing in the fight against wrinkles as alpha hydroxyl acids (AHAs) and Retinol were in the 1990s.’
   In the main part of the website, publisher Jack Yan looks at Dunedin’s Undone label, the stand-out at ID Dunedin Fashion Week, while Paris editor Lola Saab reports from Portugal’s fashion week, this season held in Lisboa and Porto.

Rachel McAdams, Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko attended the Los Angeles première of their latest film, To the Wonder, directed by Terrence Malick, at the Pacific Design Center.
   Kurylenko was not the only Bond alum in the film: Spanish actor Javier Bardem also stars.
   McAdams, Affleck and Kurylenko had nothing but praise for Malick. McAdams speaks of Malick’s ability to appreciate beauty; Affleck says he learned from Malick as a director; while Kurylenko talks of his story-telling.
   McAdams wore a black lace Maria Lucia Hohan dress, while Kurylenko wore a Christian Dior dress and Manolo Blahnik sandals.
   The movie is about a married couple, played by Affleck and Kurylenko, finding problems with their relationship. Affleck then encounters an old flame, played by McAdams. Bardem plays a local disillusioned priest. Early reviews indicate it will appeal to many of Malick’s fans.
   The film has already been shown at Venezia and Toronto.

Click here if you want to read the short version: a Q&A summary of what happened.

Those of you using Chrome, and I understand some of you using Firefox, were unable to access this website because of Google misidentifying it as distributing malware.
   As those who know this publication realize, Lucire would never do that and that readers should ignore such warnings.
   What I can tell you is that on Saturday morning, New Zealand time, we were hacked. Hackers put code in to our ad server and, curiously, the code has Google’s name all over it. I haven’t had confirmation of this, but it could be Google Adsense code. I’ve posted the code at this page and you can view it in a screen shot here. That code linked to another site that they hacked, which did distribute malware unknowingly.
   We found this, and deleted all the injected code as soon as possible—in our case, this took place within hours. We did this manually, literally going through every ad entry on our server. After a few more hours, our web experts had deleted every change the hackers made to our advertising server back-end, and locked it down. And, rightly, Google cleared our ad server of any problems.
   Strangely, however, Google refused to clear any site that used our ad server, even though none of them were distributing any malware, or linked to any site distributing malware. Google labelled all of them ‘attack sites’. This is, of course, highly damaging to our reputation. For days, Google continued to misidentify clean code linking to a clean ad server as malicious. The great irony is that a lot of this clean code links to Google’s own Doubleclick banners.
   It’s sad to say, but this is typical of our experience of Google. Once I helped a friend get his blog back but instead of the 48 hours Google promised, it took six months of a lot of arguing and the intervention of Blogger’s product manager. We’ve uncovered privacy blunders with its advertising network on behalf of netizens. If you were an Iphone user who opted out of Safari’s tracking, Google found a way around it, so we know it has some really strange ideas of what constitutes malware (if they engage in it, it’s OK). Their detection systems should be better, and people expect them to be excellent because it’s a multi-million-dollar firm. Unfortunately, this experience reminds us that they aren’t perfect, and somewhat hypocritical—and that honest folks can get hurt sometimes.
   We even went to Google Plus to tell readers, but we discovered today that that status vanished from people’s feeds and from our Google Plus page (though we can still see it). It appears that you aren’t allowed to criticize Google on Google Plus.
   I wouldn’t be publishing a statement about this if I didn’t have my facts straight. Today, out of frustration, I went to a forum dealing with badware, called Badware Busters. An expert in the area, Dr Anirban Banerjee, told me that Google can make these mistakes. Even though you have done everything and cleaned up your sites, Google can keep identifying a clean site as malicious. He suggests we remove all our ad server code from our websites for a few days, get the all-clear, and then put things back to normal. We followed that advice today, and I hope that the block will be lifted shortly. [PS.: After a manual review, StopBadware.org cleared Lucire after this post was originally published.]
   Or, as I said on my blog today: ‘there may be a drunk driver swerving left and right at the wheel of the Google truck, so it’s your job to make sure that you build a nice road in front for them, rather than insist that they clean up their act and stay on the road.’
   We apologize to readers for any inconvenience, especially if you were put off by the false warnings. Rest assured that apart from a brief moment on Saturday morning, this site is secure and your surfing would not have resulted in any harm to your computers. We surf it, too, and we see the same version of the site as you do, so we want things to work properly. We might not be as big as Google, but we do have good systems, and our readers’ best interests at heart.—Jack Yan, Publisher

You can follow a bit more about this saga as it unfolded on Jack Yan’s blog.

Sebastian Professional has teamed up with fashion designer Mara Hoffman, which sees a Mara Hoffman for Sebastian custom scarf given away with its latest limited-edition designer gift set.
   The gift pack comprises the Sebastian Professional Volupt shampoo and conditioner, along with Hoffman’s scarf, which features bold colours and graphic prints, inspired by her own spring 2013 collection, which had a São Paulo theme. The scarf has a retail value of US$120.
   Sebastian Professional lead hairstylist Thomas Dunkin says the scarf suits current trends: ‘This print is bold, beautiful and inspiring. Combine this with braids for a cool urban look or leave hair down and very natural, and tie the scarf in a bow at the crown for a more ’50s vibe.’
   The choice of Hoffman, with her Brazilian-themed spring collection, ties in with Sebastian’s Urban Explorer promotion, which educates consumers on different hair trends around the globe. The gift set shows step-by-step styling tricks from Dunkin as part of the promotion.
   Dunkin himself had led Hoffman’s hair styling at her spring 2013 show at New York Fashion Week.
   The pack will be available from Sebastian salons across the US for US$25 from May–June 2013.
   Details of Sebastian salons can be found at www.sebastianprofessional.com.