Fashion hits the virtual world of video games

Gamers unleash their creativity on the fashion world as name brands get in on the action.

NEXT month, shoppers will be able to walk into H&M and buy a nautical-inspired minidress designed by 21-year-old Beau Fornillos, who created the sporty frock using a computer video game.

Fornillos isn't a professional fashion designer. He built the dress on the Sims 2 video game and uploaded it to an online runway, where it was judged by a panel of H&M designers in Stockholm. Coming in first meant having his outfit actually manufactured and sold by the chain store. Sort of like a "Project Runway" challenge in cyberspace.

The dress is bricks-and-mortar evidence of just how pervasive fashion has become in the shoot-'em-up world of gaming. What began as a few product placements in sports games has morphed into a category of its own.
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Discrimination on the catwalks?

PARIS (AFP) — Though America stands poised for its first black president in history, the fashion world descending on Paris for this week's couture-show summit will be treated yet again to a "white-out" on the catwalks.

After the emergence 30 years back of black faces on catwalks -- thanks largely to recently demised French couture giant Yves Saint Laurent -- fashion in the first decade of the 21st century has turned relentlessly white.

"I asked the modelling agency for black girls for our next show but there simply aren't any," said Mario Lefranc, half of the Lefranc-Ferrant designer duo, one of 40-odd labels presenting couture collections in Paris over the coming week.

"I'm sick of blonde Russian girls," he told AFP. "Clearly the trend now is all for blue-eyed blondes."

And at Jean-Paul Gaultier's, a designer renowned for using models of all ages, sizes, and origins, one assistant said: "It's really very difficult at the moment. There are no black models on the market, the agencies have none."

In the last few years, she added, "there's been an invasion of girls from Eastern Europe, of their type of beauty."

Former model Mounia, now 40-something and born on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, was one of the first top black models to hit high fashion those few decades ago, along with by Iman, Katousha, Naomi Campbell, Jourdan Dunn, Alek Wek and Pat Cleveland.

An aspiring air hostess discovered by Hubert de Givenchy, then propelled onto the catwalk by Saint Laurent, she acted as the face of YSL for some 15 years from 1985 onwards. "He was inspired by the colour of my skin," Mounia told AFP. "I was his black model, his first black muse."

"I've noticed there are many fewer black models on the catwalks today and I think it's a pity," she said. "Particularly when you look around at what is going on worldwide, at how society has evolved, at what is going on in America."
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The celeb-alike fashion site that's grabbing the 'Heat' generation

500 new items and 3 million hits a month – and the share price is soaring: Judi Bevan checks out ASOS.

Imagine all the fashion shops of Oxford Street available at a click of your mouse and you have some idea of ASOS, the only listed British retailer right now where sales are growing at 80 per cent a year.

On the website you can find more than 8,000 outfits and accessories, many of them remarkably similar to those worn recently by Sienna, Kate, Victoria and friends. You can even see pictures of your favourite celebrities wearing the original, or watch a video clip of a model twirling in the outfit of your choice.

If you don't have the right belt, bag or bangle to go with that new dress, don't worry; a choice of accessories will pop up alongside the garment. Do you need a pair of sunglasses for summer? Just upload your photograph and click, click, click to see how the latest designer shades will look on you. Thank you, broadband.

You had better be quick, though, because 500 new items are added each month and when they are gone, they are gone – or WIGIG, as they say in the retail trade. As the managements of Zara, H&M Hennes and Topshop know, creating the impression of scarcity is a wonderful way to keep that stock turning over fast, and that cash-flow flowing.

When ASOS announces full-year figures tomorrow, it will provide some welcome news in a depressing retail firmament. Analysts expect profits before tax of at least £7m – more than double last year's £3m – on turnover of £80m (up from £43m). They also expect the website's founder and chief executive, Nick Robertson, the great-grandson of Austin Reed, who gave us the quintessentially English menswear brand, to make bullish noises about future expansion plans. The company will shortly open a new warehouse that should see it through the next five years, and Robertson wants to increase the range on offer. "We hope to double the number of brands within 18 months," he explains.
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Designer brands Sex and City fashion 'dull'

Designer Vivienne Westwood says she was not impressed by the outfits she saw on the big screen version of 'Sex and the City'.[Agencies]

Legendary fashion designer Vivienne Westwood has hit out at the 'Sex and the City' movie, branding the fashion "quite dull".

Despite her creations featuring in the hugely popular film, the 67-year-old admits she was not impressed by the outfits she saw on the big screen.

She said: "'I thought 'Sex and the City' was supposed to be about cutting-edge fashion and there was nothing remotely memorable or interesting about what I saw. I went to the premiere and left after ten minutes."
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