Fashion Icon Enlists Kiddies

Designers are tamed by recession fears

(NEWSER) - Thanks to the recession, “disciplined good taste” reigned on the Paris runways this week, leading Bloomingdale’s fashion director to dub the season “terrific, from a commercial point of view, but not so much so that it’s safe and boring.” Guy Trebay begs to differ. “If success is measured by distance traveled, then this has been the Paris season that ran the gamut—as Dorothy Parker once famously sniped about Katharine Hepburn's acting range—from A to B,” he writes in the New York Times. More»

Designer slams her eye makeup, for one...

(NEWSER) - Kate Middleton is a style icon, right? Wrong, says fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. The Duchess of Cambridge projects the image of an "ordinary woman," not the "extraordinary woman" she should be, Westwood complains to Britain's Sunday Times Magazine in an interview picked up by Australia's News Network . More»

Not interested in fashion? Check out the falling models

(NEWSER) - Wondering what you’ve missed so far from Fashion Week? We’ve rounded up five trends to keep your eye on—check out examples of each in the gallery:

• Wearability: Designers from Derek Lam and Vera Wang to, yes, even Marc Jacobs and Rodarte are offering clothes the average person might actually wear, reports the Wall Street Journal .
• Comedic interlude: Models are falling.

Fashion designer found in apparent suicide

(NEWSER) - British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, 40, is dead of an apparent suicide just weeks before the unveiling of his Fashion Week show in Paris. He is believed to have been found hanged in his London apartment, the Mail reports. His Twitter feed, which has since been removed, included a post a few days ago referring to his "F-----g awful week," the Wall Street Journal reports. More»

Fashion Week's underwear looks leave a lot to be desired for real women

(NEWSER) - The lingerie-inspired looks currently abounding on the Paris runways make a person wonder: What woman would really leave the house wearing “micro miniskirts, transparent blouses, pointy Mad Men bras, and panties worn as shorts”? The looks “reveal how hard the industry is struggling to grab shoppers' attention,” Christina Binkley writes in the Wall Street Journal—but will that work for the average shopper? More»