She dresses to win
Michelle Obama's style connects with elements of the Barbara Bush and Jackie Kennedy images.

Saying farewell to a fashion icon
Instead of glossy red lips, there were red-rimmed eyes as the Parisian worlds of fashion, art and politics turned out to say farewell Thursday to the towering creative figure of 20th-century style, Yves Saint Laurent.
- Yves Saint Laurent: The designer who empowered women
- Saint Laurent's 2002 finale shows why he is an icon (Jan. 24, 2002)

Yves Saint Laurent: The designer who empowered women
The real importance of Yves Saint Laurent is that the designer not only broke the mold -- he also remade it.
- Yves Saint Laurent, fashion icon, dies at 71
- A bit of fashion wisdom from Yves Saint Laurent

Fashion designers honor their own
The CFDA awards, marking their 26th year, have come to be an intersection of celebrities and fashion insiders.

In Tokyo, longing for the old China
Tokyoites have come to view China less as a hostile neighbor than as a fascinating, if often cantankerous and unpredictable, relative, reflected in their embrace of Chinese style.

Christian Lacroix's timely way to go back in time
Christian Lacroix prefers the "magic" of the rails over the irritants of the skies.

Yves Saint Laurent, fashion icon, dies at 71
Saint Laurent exploded on the fashion scene in 1958 and endured as one of the best-known and most influential couturiers of the second half of the 20th century.

Dries Van Noten in full bloom at 50
The unassuming Belgian designer, who turned 50 this month, is known for his splashy prints. He is being awarded the award of International Designer of the year from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in New York.

Sharon Stone and Dior differ over apology
In a telephone interview, Sharon Stone was at first strident and then contrite about her remarks about China.
- Dior on the defensive in China

The Mulleavy sisters: Painting with brush and 'blood'
The Californian sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, under their label Rodarte, are capturing in brush and blood red the wild, dark romance behind this summer's arty outfits.

China's rich have insatiable appetite for haute couture
European and American fashion designers feeling the pinch from the credit crisis can look to the growing ranks of China's nouveau riche to boost sales.

Dress for less and less
The cost of gasoline and eggs may be soaring, but most clothing has gotten cheaper in the last decade, thanks to the movement of manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor and increased competition between traditional retailers and discounters.

Trading places: U.S. designers shift store loyalties
Over the next year, an unusually large group of famous clothing designers, motivated by lucrative new deals, plan to shift their retail allegiances, in many cases abandoning stores and customers who have supported them for years.

Checking the racks around Europe
Whose designs fly off the racks in Liverpool, Mykonos or The Hague? A few of the fashion-forward boutiques around Europe disclose their top sellers

Shanghai: The allure of individualism
Amid the clutter of Shanghai's retail scene, a number of youthful and energetic designers are making their mark by celebrating a personal kind of style.

The platinum queen, Agyness Deyn
Boy-short, peroxide-blonde heads of hair are appearing all over fashionable London, replacing the long and shaggy locks that were the dominant look of the last few years.

Online fashion shopping finally comes of age
According to a recent survey, fashion is second only to books when it comes to shopping online around the world.

Handbag brand Coach plans major expansion in China.
United States handbag maker Coach Inc says China will make up over 4 percent of its turnover by 2013 as it expands into 100 cities across the country over the next 10 to 15 years, betting its increasingly well-heeled consumers will demand more brand-name products.

LVMH says Louis Vuitton sales in U.S. doing well

Sales of the Louis Vuitton brand along with watches and jewelry are doing well in the United States despite an economic slowdown and a weak dollar, said Toni Belloni, group managing director at LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world's largest luxury group.

Gucci sales decline seen as first signal of luxury goods slowdown
The results sent the first signals that a slowdown in consumer spending was hitting luxury goods.

Hermes 2007 net rises as maker of Birkin bags opens new stores
Hermes International's full-year net profit rose 7.3 percent as the maker of Birkin handbags and high-end scarves opened new stores, the company said Thursday.

PPR confident about 2008 luxury goods market
The French retailer, which owns Gucci Group, said its net profit rose 35% in 2007, helped by strong results at its luxury and African units as well as its acquisition of the sportswear group Puma.

H&M adds new house to its growing stable of labels
Hennes & Mauritz AB, Europe's second-largest clothing retailer, agreed to buy Swedish fashion company Fabric Scandinavien to gain brands including the Cheap Monday denim line sold at more than 1,000 stores globally.

Milan's fashion houses are moving into high-tech homes
It's "Ciao!" to the palazzo and "Hello!" to high tech for some of the biggest names in fashion.

The Birkin and Hermès
What would you do for a Birkin bag?

The clutch, in the light of day
Thanks to a whole slew of designers - from Yves Saint Laurent to Sonia Rykiel and Michael Teperson to Belen Echandia - the clutch purse is moving from an evening standard to seeing the light of day.

Jelly brand molds Brazil's footwear style
Cheap, cheerful and totally disposable, the plastic jelly shoe is about as ubiquitous as footwear gets. And in Brazil, it's Melissa that dominates the market.

David vs. "David": The battle below the belt in men's underwear
The David vs. "David" standoff marks the moment that underwear has come out of the drawers and off the shelves to become, to men's fashion, the female equivalent of the handbag. It is an accessory - and even a necessity - that can be turned into big bucks.

Fulco di Verdura: The elegant beguiler of stars
A friend of Cole Porter, discovered by Coco Chanel, the Palermo aristocrat Verdura was the favorite jeweler in a gilded circle that included Greta Garbo, Katherine Hepburn and the Duchess of Windsor.

Will diamonds lose their sparkle?
With the specter of recession haunting the global economy, is the market for luxury gemstones feeling the pinch?

Padua's goldsmiths: modern masters of form
Over six decades, a school of goldsmiths in northern Italy has created original and important pieces of jewelry works based on Renaissance principles of geometry.

An engineer turned jeweler, Hervé Van der Straeten blurs traditional boundaries
In his hands, a mirror mutates into an earring, a light fixture into a lipstick case. A jeweler since the age of 20, Van der Straeten designed the "Palazzo" perfume bottle for Fendi; a sandal for Bruno Frisoni and "KissKiss" make-up cases for Guerlain.

Titanium is winning place among favored materials of avant-garde jewelery
A metal that flouts every major tenet of luxury, titanium has an aptitude for coloration that draws jewelers in search of a challenge.

Boucheron's 150th: A modern take on Art Nouveau
The kitsch and irony of Jeff Koons seems a long stretch from voluptuous and sensual jewelry. And even if Damien Hirst recently embedded diamonds in a skull, you would hardly expect to see his work alongside a swooping diamond necklace.

Whatever 'design-art' is, it's thriving
"Design-art" is a commercial phenomenon, not a cultural one. It's a label adopted by auction houses in the hope of flogging limited-edition furniture for higher prices than it would muster if relegated to the unfashionable category of "decorative arts." And it has been very effective.

All eyes on BarberOsgerby's Iris tables
Like most of this duo's designs, Iris is rooted in an engagingly simple idea - in this case, the pleasure of looking at a rainbow of colors.

Designing the future in raw, fractured forms
At the Milan Furniture Fair last month, lots of designers - especially the young, experimental ones, whose ideas will soon trickle through to the mass market - seemed very pessimistic.

Modern American architectural gems set for auction
The Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, California, designed by Richard Neutra, and the Margaret Esherick House in Philadelphia, designed by Louis Kahn, will go on the block in New York and Chicago, respectively.

Designers give recycling a creative twist at the Milan Furniture Fair
A few cleverly eco-friendly and historic pieces stand out among this year's offerings in Milan.

Confidence pervades Milan Furniture Fair
At the Milan Furniture Fair, opening Wednesday, hundreds of new products are to be launched, and lots of new ventures.

Brand Obama, a leader in the image war
When it comes to choosing the best visually designed U.S. presidential candidate, there's only one contender - Obama.

Navigating a badly informed world of information
For every shining example of good information design, there are many more bad ones. We're all familiar with them, often painfully so. Confusing maps. Misleading signs. Dysfunctional Web sites. Over-complicated forms.

Risk-taking architect takes field's top prize
Jean Nouvel, the bold French architect known for such wildly diverse projects as the exotically louvered Arab World Institute in Paris and the muscular Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, has received the Pritzker Prize.

At Meta, furniture artisans of 18th century are reborn with panache
A Fig Leaf Wardrobe is one of seven beautifully crafted pieces which are to be launched by a new furniture company, Meta, at the Milan Furniture Fair next month.

Video game, the ultimate design fantasy
Video games create entirely artificial environments where everything is conceived and constructed by the development team, which not only determines how the characters, buildings, landscapes and props will look, but what they'll do, and how they'll do it.

China's new designers: Building on a rich heritage of innovation
An exhibition at the Victoria & Albert museum in London looks at China's history of innovation, and the work of a new generation of designers trying to forge a distinctive style.

In the world of watches, the line between the sexes is blurring fast
Once upon a time, timepieces with complications were for men only, but the limited edition Diane from Harry Winston seeks to change that.

"Star Trek"-styled watches flash digitally coded time
Tokyoflash Japan creates watches that are meant to be watched, not just looked at. Started in 2000, the company says it is trying to make objects that revolutionize the way time is perceived.

Applying color with steely abandon
Taking inspiration from the traditional cloisonné technique of enameling used to decorate watch dials, watch designer Alain Silberstein has developed a unique method of coloring his steel watchcases, which are proving popular with Russian and Japanese collectors.

Richard Mille breaks fresh ground with new high-technology timepieces
Coinciding with the Salon International de Haute Horlogerie in Geneva, Mille is introducing a glittering homage to Boucheron, in honor of the Parisian jeweler's 150th anniversary, and a modern interpretation of a classic pocket watch.

Urwerk's 'most complicated' watch to be unveiled in Geneva
The youthful principals of Urwerk, Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei, will present their new watch, a combination of futuristic and artisanal features called the UR-202, on the fringes of the Geneva Watch salon next week.

Sprit of the '70s rides again, in works by young Swiss watchmakers
Swiss watch houses would mostly like to forget the 1970s, when a flood of low-priced, accurate Japanese quartz timers decimated the industry. Now, a new generation of watchmakers is taking inspiration from some of the feistier designs that emerged as the Swiss fought back.

Slimmer watches lure wealthy buyers
What constitutes a thick, thin or ultra-thin watch is a matter of some debate among specialists. However, it is clear that anything towering off the wrist at 17 millimeters in height, as some recent introductions have done, lies at the chunky end of the spectrum.

Watches: Starhill is a kaleidoscope for collectors
The brainchild of Francis Yeoh, chief executive of YTL, Starhill gallery covers 280,000 square feet, or 26,000 square meters in Kuala Lumpur with no less than 20,000 square feet devoted to watches.

Hello Kitty gets high fashion Vogue makeover
She may be cute, but the latest top model to make her debut in Vogue is also podgy with short legs and whiskers.

L.A. Fashion Week takes a celeb-as-designer turn

Just as L.A. Fashion Week took a step forward, the celeb-as-designer trend seems to have sent it two steps back.

Keith Richards the new face of Louis Vuitton luggage
Keith Richards is the new face of Louis Vuitton, the French maker of luxury handbags and luggage.

Survey shows Gucci tops global brand competition
The Gucci fashion label is the most coveted designer brand in the world, according to a survey by market research firm The Nielsen Company.

Madonna, Malawi and Gucci
Madonna, Gucci and a slew of celebs - from an all-smiling, gum-chewing Tom Cruise, through pretty-in-pink Gwyneth Paltrow to Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Lopez - set New York Fashion Week alight.

Never too young for that first pedicure
Cosmetic companies and retailers increasingly aim their sophisticated products and service packages squarely at 6- to 9-year-olds, who are being transformed into savvy beauty consumers before they're out of elementary school.

To shampoo -- or not?
Washing your hair used to be a daily effort but now many people are bypassing it -- and saying the neglect has been good for their hair.

Perfume fades in popularity among Americans
At a time when the number of perfumes on shelves has dramatically increased, consumption of fragrances is declining, industry analysts said.

Bringing a sense of soul back to Estée Lauder
Aerin Lauder brings family sensibility to the beauty company founded by her grandmother.