ATCHEAP SHOP Blog

I love the way these look. And for those of you who are looking to buy one really good sandal, this is it. What’s super fun about these is that they’re designed as makeup for your feet. They come in groups like Liners (simple, rich colors), Foundations (neutrals to elongate) and  Highlighters (sparkly!). I know a lot of people who just need something that’s simple and pretty to wear for warm weather destination weddings when you need to forgo the heels, or if the weather is the same temperature all year round and you want something in a fall shade but in a season-less silhouette. Well, here’s your sandal!

These TKEES flip-flops are $48, and we love them (so do Angelina Jolie, Lauren Conrad and Ashley Greene!) . Before you all jump all over me and say “This isn’t cheap!” and “Target and Forever 21 have better!” or “You suck, and I’m leaving!” …take a look at these. They are chic, celebrities love them and they are made to last.

These are comfortable on the feet, the range is extensive in colors and they look very lovely on the foot. A ton of these cheap sandals I own fall apart and actually hurt, the thong cuts into my toe and I end up spending more and more on the cheap crap. They are not made well. So, if you want what Angie’s got and want them to last more than one wearing, these are for you.

Pick up a pair at Bloomingdales.com for $44. As a bonus, the Shadows metallic line is on sale for $32!

By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To read more of the Recessionista blog, click here.

"You know, they've got dancers behind them. They've got graphics, lights. Same show."

He said his attitude in response to the competition was: "OK. They are beating us. We've got to make our shows better.

"I'd like to know what is the alternative to what we put on at the moment as an entertainment show."

Mr Cowell, who says he sees "a lot of shows trying to rip us off", was then asked about his own future.

"I'm not going to self-destruct."

"I think after Susan Boyle you can feel it around you on the show. Everyone is very, very, very more aware of whether this person is up for this or not. If we don't think they're tough enough they really aren't allowed to audition.

"I thought, if we don't find real stars from these shows after all the razzmatazz, all the promises, all the hype and you end with somebody who's going to put out a single and then go away it's a waste of time, a waste of my time and everyone's time."

As to the allegation that his shows were like circuses which sought to exploit vulnerable people, Cowell told Today's James Naughtie: "I think what I've learned is, there are people who like to show off who aren't very good and I don't have a problem with that.

"And that's all we did. We just tried our best to make them better."

"I'm smiling now because we're winning at the moment. I wasn't so happy three weeks ago. But not to the point of any silliness."

I see a lot of shows trying to rip us off”

"You've got to also try to retain a balance and a sense of humour."

But early in May, Britain's Got Talent triumphed in the ratings for two consecutive weeks.

End Quote Simon Cowell

Early on the success of The Voice – which is reported to have cost the BBC some £22m – in a ratings battle with Britain's Got Talent led to Cowell writing a congratulatory message to the BBC on Twitter.

With regards to The Voice, he continued, "it's about whether you've got what it takes vocally."

Cowell told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that if the BBC's show was "all about the voice" then "what's the point of looking at them?"

Yet Cowell did say that he had previously worried about the future of his shows when they had failed to find credible acts.

"But people do get through the net. But we don't sit there and go, 'let's try and find someone vulnerable and weak to exploit today to make fun of them.'

‘Getting nervous’

He said: "When The Voice came along it's kind of like, 'roll your sleeves up, we're in for a bit of a punch-up here'.

The Voice's creation was a "roll your sleeves up" time for him, because it was competition for his shows, he said.

Continue reading the main story “Start Quote

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"I'll know when it's time A, for me to leave the shows or B, not to make these shows anymore, simply because people won't be interested," he said.

And he was bullish about the success of his programmes, which also include American Idol.

‘Punch-up’

He said: "We had this conversation about two or three years ago where, with the exception of Leona Lewis, I was getting nervous.

The X Factor's Simon Cowell says he is "puzzled" about why BBC One's The Voice is not on the radio instead of TV.

He also said it had become similar to The X Factor with its use of dancers and stage presentation.

Cowell was interviewed by the Today programme's James Naughtie

Mark Linsey, the BBC's controller of entertainment commissioning, has previously said: "I think other formats it's about the look, the shape of the person."

Cowell, who described himself as "lucky, hard-working and weird", said: "Suddenly I'm watching it a week, two weeks ago. It's the same as X Factor.

The designer explained that he wore the sheer lace dress over boxers because he didn’t want to “wear a tuxedo and be boring.” 5:55 PM PDT 5/10/2012 by Elizabeth Snead

If You Go…

Saint Laurent’s use of transparent materials are represented by two black dresses, one long and completely see-through and the other short with an open lace back, in the centre of a gallery that features his most controversial collection, from 1971. That collection was touted, according to a replica newspaper in the gallery, as the “ugliest show in town” for its use of a retro 1940s style. Saint Laurent sought to reflect France’s troublesome years during World War II with designs like a green fox fur jacket and turbans.

Saint Laurent’s final fashion show in 2002 in Paris plays on a big screen at the entrance to the exhibit. Just inside are six chiffon dresses from that collection. Then, Irving Penn’s famous portrait of Saint Laurent, with one eye peeking out from his hand over his face, welcomes viewers to the galleries.

Muller said Saint Laurent didn’t want to dictate what women wore. His vision was to offer many options — and most importantly, he wanted to be able to dress every woman equally, she said.

The exhibit also includes artifacts from Saint Laurent’s life. They include a replica of his work studio, a sampling of clothes owned by friend and French actress Catherine Deneuve, designs made for other famous friends and an Andy Warhol painting of the designer borrowed from the Berge foundation.

“The fabulous thing about this country is you have major events everywhere, all over the country,” said Heinrich, who is from Germany. “It’s not only everything happening in New York and Los Angeles.”

And what would Saint Laurent, who died in 2008 at age 71 (and never visited Denver), think?

YVES SAINT LAURENT: THE RETROSPECTIVE: March 25-July 8 at Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway, Denver; http://www.denverartmuseum.org or 720-865-5000. Museum hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and until 8 p.m. on Fridays. Timed tickets are required for the Yves Saint Laurent show; adults, $22, children 6-17, $14, seniors and college students, $18.

The retrospective consists of 200 mannequins dressed in mostly haute couture ensembles spanning Saint Laurent’s career. The ensembles were picked from an archive of 5,000 complete outfits conserved by the Fondation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent, the muscle behind the exhibit.

Why Denver? Museum director Christoph Heinrich was the first to ask for it after seeing the exhibit, which originated in Paris in 2010.

Curator Florence Muller spoke passionately of Saint Laurent’s ability to weave his signature gender-bending styles fluidly.

The Colorado city is not what most people think about when it comes to high fashion. But on Sunday, the Denver Art Museum hosts the only U.S. showing of “Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective,” a sweeping look at 40 years of design from the late, influential French designer best known for his tuxedo suit for women, Le Smoking.

One gallery shows how the designer was influenced by his favourite artists, with a heavily embroidered jacket inspired by Vincent Van Gogh and a dress inspired by Pablo Picasso. “The Imaginary Journey” gallery features Saint Laurent’s vision for fashion around the world — though he wasn’t much of a traveller, Muller said. Its collection includes a Spanish bolero, jackets inspired by China and colourfully beaded Moroccan outfits from a ready-to-wear line.

A wall displays 40 incarnations of Le Smoking, perhaps Saint Laurent’s best known design. It debuted in 1966. Opposite this wall are dozens of gowns in gold satin, black sequin and white tulle arrayed along a red-carpeted staircase. The final dress is an haute-couture black velvet ball gown with a “Paris rose” pink silk bow and sheath skirt from 1983.

DENVER – Paris. New York. Denver?

Also on display is Saint Laurent’s Caban coat, which introduced to women the navy-style wool coat popularly known as a peacoat, Muller said. A similar style sits on a mannequin, shorter and paired with a dark dress.

“He would be astonished,” said Dominique Deroche, who worked closely with Saint Laurent as his publicist from 1966, when he opened his Paris boutique, to his retirement in 2002. “But he would be very proud.”

The show “has not only to do with beauty; it really has to do with the history of the last 50 years,” said Heinrich, citing Saint Laurent designs like the trapeze dress, which are familiar classics, whether they carry a YSL label or not. Heinrich’s own safari jacket, he added, isn’t YSL, but the design comes from Saint Laurent’s “creative mind.”

The clothes begin with a set of four trapeze dresses, symbolic of Saint Laurent’s first collection as head designer for Christian Dior in 1958, the year after Dior died.

———

High fashion has proven to be a big draw for museums. The Metropolitan Museum in New York ranked last year’s Alexander McQueen show among its top 10 most popular exhibits ever, with more than 600,000 visitors, and the YSL show in Paris was seen by more than 300,000 people.

Photo: Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz Berlin Fashion Week

—Ana Finel Hongiman

At Berlin’s Fall ‘12 fashion week, just wrapped in the German capital, the city’s status as a European art hub was front and center. It was no accident that the largest hometown brand, HUGO, chose the Old Masters’ Museum as the venue to host its star-studded runway show and party, inspired by “surreal nostalgia” and “theater,” and incorporating recent runway trends like Art Deco graphicism and bodycon cuts inspired by athletic wear. And heat was generated by the young design talents who the city has been incubating. On the less-established front, a handful of Berlin’s “ones to watch” ripened this season with strong shows demonstrating the maturity of their concepts and skills. The best collections embodied the gritty “considered chaos” aesthetic which artists Jonathan Messe, Zhivago Duncan (Michael Milchasky’s collaborator this season) and Kirstine Roepstorff have made into Berlin’s signature creative style.

Along with the sleek sexuality of artists’ favorite DSTM (Don’t Shoot the Messengers), Juliaandben are Berlin’s best bridge between fashion and art. Designer Ben Klunker owned a gallery before he decided to devote himself completely to his collaboration with Julia Heuse. Their tie-dyed pieces used the old bathtub-dyeing technique favored by hippies and adolescents to create a fresh form of city-chic: leggings and dresses that look grungy but are gracefully cut. You could see them slinking off the presentation stage into Berlin’s studios, cafés, openings, and gritty after-opening bars.

Equally expressive of Berlin’s art scene is Vladimir Karaleev’s polished collection of black and Yves Klein-blue draped dresses and coats, in layers of worsted wool, mohair, silk and cotton. The Bulgarian-born Berliner debuted in 2007 when his show culminated in a gown made of twenty interlocking T-shirt fabrics hand-stitched, braided and tied together. Since then, his hand-sewn, abstractly attached and intentionally ragged clothes have inspired appreciation for his aesthetic but not sufficient confidence in their craftsmanship. This time, his collection gracefully balanced reassuring core construction with de-constructed details, in which elegant subtle black leather, artfully interwoven blue mohair and yellows, oranges and tans highlighted well-assembled stitching.