Category Archives: Articles & Features

The Write Stuff: Put Pen to Paper to Promote Well-Being (for Fit Style)

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The Write Stuff: Put Pen to Paper to Promote Well-Being

If the longest thing you’ve written lately is a shopping list – it’s time to sharpen your pencil. Studies prove that writing your feelings out on the page has a positive impact on physical health, reduces stress, boosts self-esteem, and hones concentration and memory. Writing can improve immune function, fight depression and anxiety, and even alleviate symptoms of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.

Article on the benefits of writing and keeping a journal, with suggested writing exercises, for Fit.Style magazine.

Fashion Plus (for International Market News)

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Queen Latifah: celebrating curves

Fashion Plus: American Women Demand Full-Figured Style

Whichever way you measure it, it’s clear that body sizes are increasing far beyond the fashion industry ideal of a model size 8, which begs the question of exactly what the term ‘plus-size’ apparel means when ‘plus’ becomes the norm and not the exception.

“I do not want to wear knit cardigans with seasonal motifs sewn down the front of the lapels,” says Lorena K. aged 30 of Iowa, a size 24 Lane Bryant fan. “I don’t look good with leaves or snowmen or cornucopias running down my plump front-side.”

Business feature on how fashion brands fit the market, and a straw poll of what curvy women really want.

(For International Market News)

Brands Branch Out (for Just Style)

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Brands Branch Out

National Geographic, JCB, Jeep, Pepsi. We all know the brand names – and that’s what marketing maestros are counting on with a spate of new fashion lines that cash in on their parent product’s pedigree.

Article for the subscription-only international fashion and textiles industry site JustStyle.com. Read it in PDF here.

Boost Your Spex Appeal (for Total Fitness)

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Just because summer is over, there’s no reason to leave your sunglasses at home.

Eye experts recommend shades as a year-round accessory to protect against UV damage, eye strain, and wrinkles. For once, it’s a joy to follow the doctor’s advice.

Eye health and sunglasses style trend feature for Bally Total Fitness magazine. Full feature here. 

Feel-Good Fashion (for Bally Total Fitness)

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Shirts that tell your heart rate, pants that may protect against skin cancer, peppermint-scented sportswear to boost energy, and pantyhose that keep your legs soft.

With the double-action fabrics now in store or on the radar screen for the future, fashion finally proves that it’s more than just skin deep.

 

A New Muse for London: Zandra Rhodes

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A New Muse for London

Dubbed The Princess of Pinkness, fashion visionary Zandra Rhodes is famous for her flamboyant use of color, and London’s Fashion and Textile Museum stays true to her spirit.

Rhodes appointed prize-winning Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta to design a modernist building on the site of a former warehouse in Bermondsey Street, just a short walk from Tate Modern. It was Legorreta’s first European project, but as Rhodes points out: “There was no need to hold a pointless architectural competition. I immediately felt that here was an architect who created grandeur, but who could also create a museum that would not dominate or overwhelm its contents. The job in hand was to convince him.”

Convince him she did, and the Fashion and Textile Museum’s stunning pink and orange exterior injects a bright flame of color into the Dickensian backstreets.

(Museum report for International Textiles)

The Luxury of Superior Sales

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There’s nothing like the feel of Chanel.

The Luxury of Superior Sales

As a refreshing contrast to the notion that the UK is crammed with cost-conscious consumers who will travel fifty miles out of town to pick up a bargain at a discount store, the luxury fashion sector is proving surprisingly buoyant.

There are now an estimated 47,000 millionaires in Britain. However, the taste for luxury is not solely a millionaire’s prerogative. “Today it seems that for many, only the best will do,” says Anna Starmer of trend consultancy Global Color Research Ltd.

Report by special correspondent Tania Casselle, UK, for International Market News.