Luxury luggage woos the jet set
Well-known luggage brands like Samsonite, as well as luxury brands better known for fashion like Gucci and Prada, are tapping into a desire for distinctive luggage.

Haute cuisine hits a fashion high
It's not just a fashionista's fantasy: Pret-a-Portea at the Berkeley Hotel in the Knightsbridge section of London really does serve edible versions of designer collections, updated every six months for a fashionable high tea.

Jourdan Dunn named model of the year
Jourdan Dunn, 19, picked up the award as model of the year at the British Fashion Awards last week.

Sonia Rykiel: Designer for the independent woman
"Sonia Rykiel, Exhibition" at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (until April 19) celebrates 40 years of the designer who was part of a generation that rejected the staid grandeur of haute couture and made prêt-à-porter for the newly emerging, dynamic woman of the 1960s.

Hats off for milliner Stephen Jones

Wearing a crown of his own design, Stephen Jones, milliner extraordinaire, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the model and fashion personality Erin O'Connor at the British Fashion Awards.

Matthew Williamson to design collection for H&M
Swedish fashion retailer H&M AB on Tuesday said Britain's Matthew Williamson will design its summer guest collection.

Jennifer Aniston: Screens Goddess
Jennifer Aniston could watch herself on a TV, a movie screen, an iPhone or a laptop. But mostly she tunes herself out — while everyone else tunes her in.

Trying to grasp the revolution that was YSL
The challenge for the de Young museum in San Francisco, which is hosting "Yves Saint Laurent" until April 5, is to put this great body of YSL work in context.

Jeanne Lanvin's art collection to be auctioned
Jeanne Lanvin's collection of 31 artworks, which reads like a list of Impressionism to early Modernism, goes on sale at Christie's in Paris on Dec. 1.

Paris's newest and hippest shopping destination
The elegant shop that Yohji Yamamoto opened last week in Paris marks a fashion moment: a flagship on the cusp of haute couture and hip style for the Japanese designer, and the consecration of a discreet new shopping street - the Rue du Mont Thabor.

Romeo Gigli launches a new line

Romeo Gigli, the Italian designer who defined the softer and poetic side of the brash 1980s, is back. But not under his own name, which no longer belongs to him, but a combination of words that the cognoscenti will recognize immediately: io ipse idem. With Italian investment, the renaisssance was announced on Thursday.

Luxury waits for no recovery
What global financial meltdown? Ready or not, here comes a new wave of jewel-encrusted accessories.

The 24-karat handbag
With an eye toward diversifying, jewelers are giving their trade a whole new context: deluxe designer bags, embellished with precious metals and stones.

Fifth Avenue outdoes itself for the holidays
From Saks to Bergdorf Goodman, from Tiffany to Harry Winston, creative geniuses try to outdo each other with window displays that delight the eye and lift the spirit.

For personal shopping services, no order is out of the question
From the very rich to the simply well off, customers who need shopping done quickly can find people to do it for them.

In the lap of luxury, dog's paradise
From Saks Fifth Avenue in New York to Mitsukoshi in Tokyo, and several places in between, luxurious pet departments are flourishing.

New scents crowd thriving perfume field
Feeding an insatiable appetite for novelty, perfumers now bring more than 300 new scents to market every year - more in a single year than the total number of new fragrances introduced in the 1970s and 1980s combined.

Artists in luxury sculpt China's new cultural revolution
As China sets out to rebuild its artistic heritage, support is coming from an unexpected source: The global luxury industry. The big brands have targeted the country - both for exhibition displays and for collaborations with contemporary artists.

Rei Kawakubo and H&M team up in Tokyo store
Savvy shoppers in the Harajuku district in Tokyo waited hours to be first inside the fast fashion retailer's new store.

The return of the interview suit
Pants or skirts? Opinions vary, but all agree on a more formal look for these sobering times.

Upping the color quotient
Color has emerged as a major hook for fashion brands and retailers, with mid-season injections of merchandise translating to a vast array of shades in stores.

Japan's 'inner wear' revolution
Tokyo women have become increasingly attuned to concepts like comfort and eco-friendliness without ignoring their sensuality.

Tattoos gain new visibility
Artists with prominent Chelsea galleries and thriving careers, practicing physicians, funeral directors, fashion models and stylists are turning up with more holes in their faces than nature provided, and all manner of marks on their body.

Hong Kong style, with a bit of sparkle
The moment that the Hong Kong singer Eason Chan Yik-Shun started wearing 1980s-style MC Hammer pants at live performances, it seemed inevitable the look would start appearing on the street and in trendy clubs.

Adding muscle to skinny jeans
Men's wear designers at New York Fashion Week look to the world of sports to muscle up their collections.

Japanese linen, out of the closet and into the mainstream
Up until now, linen had been about summer shirts and suits, but these days the subtext is changing from mere summer fashion to year-round lifestyle.

Tokyo hones its vintage clothing market
Tokyo has now reached a point where it's safe to call it P***t Vintage - with its 400-plus shops scattered over the city.

India to reconsider luxury brand limits
During a visit to Paris on Wednesday, the Indian trade minister, Kamal Nath, said he would think about allowing foreign retailers to own 100 percent of their companies in India, up from 51 percent today.

Weaving a story in Laotian silk
Anou Thammavong, a French designer of Laotian descent, is creating high-end silks that he hopes will crack the upper echelons of the fashion world.

New Parisian boutiques in all shapes and sizes
While the major players are reaching out to their clientele with larger stores and a more targeted offer, small, innovative boutiques are investing in elegant back streets for a highly intimate shopping experience.

Building fashion empires of their own
Although LVMH, PPR and Richemont shifted their acquisition engines down a gear in recent years, it still is obvious that these multi-tentacled corporations wield a mind-boggling power in the fashion business.

Online fashion studies arrive in Italy
Italian fashion companies have come to recognize the potential of online sales and now one of the country's most highly regarded universities is stepping in to train a new breed of managers for that growing industry.

Dubai to finance Villa Moda growth
Majed al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti lifestyle retailer known in the fashion world as the "Sheik of Chic," has teamed up with the government of Dubai to create a global brand development strategy for his Villa Moda enterprise.

Conquering the frontiers for luxury
A seismic shift has begun in how fashion marketers view the world's mature, emerging and frontier markets, with many to focus on countries that were once on the fringes of fashion.
- Risk prerequisite for profit

Handbag heaven
Caroline Calabria, owner of the Vintage Art Gallery, is often one of the first arrivals at a local market to search the jumbled stalls for vintage handbags.

Handbags - big and bigger
Far from the world of the tiny beaded clutch, iconic French bags combine quality and quantity - think the chunky Louis Vuitton Speedy, the spacious YSL Muse or the roomy Hermès Birkin.

Blahnik puts his foot down
Worship at Carrie Bradshaw's feet? Here are your shoes.

HP laptops go high fashion at show in New York
High-tech took on a fashionable twist in New York when the designer Vivienne Tam sent models down the runway clutching slim, red Hewlett-Packard laptops instead of evening bags.
- MTV and HP collaborate on digital art reality show

Magazine or artsy accessory?
Even the purest of messages can be corrupted by the power of a bag.

Fall shoes: Preening pumps and feathered feet
Ornithologists say there are 10,000 species of birds inhabiting the earth. Of course, that doesn't include the feathered and furry, outrageously festooned specimens spotted in the fall footwear collections.

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

In London, a rocking celebration of jewels
London Jewellery Week was kicked off with spectacular celebrations and included works by Zaha Hadid and Prince Dimitri, while Nadja Swarovski was bringing on the bling at Runway Rocks.

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.

Enzo Mari: A rebel with an obsession for form
An exhibition of works by Enzo Mari opened last week at Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin and it offers a timely reminder of what a gifted designer he is.

Wanted: Genius designer
As the curtains part, fashion awaits a new hero. Maybe that's the problem.

Creating solutions to a water crisis
"1% Water and our Future," an exhibition at Z33 gallery in the Belgian city of Hasselt, explores our relationship to water, and how design can help us to use it more responsibly and productively.

Bill Gibb: A bittersweet story of a forgotten designer
"Billy: Bill Gibb's Moment in Time," an exhibition at London's Fashion and Textile Musuem remembers a forgotten fashion hero.

Philippe Starck is tilting toward windmills
Starck is battling on a new front - developing cheap, attractive, energy-saving products to "introduce everybody to ecology."

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.

Watch sales slowing down
The emerging markets miracle will not be enough to prevent 2008 from being the year the Swiss watchmaking industry suffers its first significant slowdown in half a decade.

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.

The Paris-New York rivalry
A new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York studies the relationship between the Big Apple and the City of Light in their competition for status as the world's fashion capital.

A new address in style: Palais Royal
The sleeping beauty of Paris is finally starting to stir thanks to a number of suitors, each with his unique luxury kiss.

Lanvin in talks with Qatar investor
Lanvin is in talks to sell a stake to an unnamed investor in Qatar in a deal that could value the French fashion house at around €150 million.

Identifying fakes by hand
Assuming that you didn't buy the dress in a back alley from some shifty guy in dark glasses, it's often difficult to tell a designer garment from a fake.

Fashion film gets a life of its own
In a digital age, fashion companies are making short films, typically one to five minutes long and produced for the internet.

Dundas to join Pucci
Peter Dundas, the Norwegian designer of colorful, hippie de luxe glamour, will be the new creative director at Emilio Pucci, with an official announcement expected Friday from its parent company, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

A royal stamp of approval still produces sales
The labels that contribute to the iconic style of Queen Elizabeth II are among the more than 850 companies with Royal Warrants, businesses that are allowed to identify themselves as suppliers to the queen, Prince Philip or Prince Charles.

Ready for a closeup
Makeup sellers seeking to make their products stand out on crowded cosmetic counters are expanding into a niche once reserved for people who live under the scrutiny of the camera lens: high-definition makeup.

I'm down here, up to my eyes in cuticles
As fashion brands continue to emphasize luxury handbags and shoes, the perfectly groomed extremity is becoming the ultimate marketing tool.

Garden is a seedbed for Dr. Hauschka cosmetics line
Dr. Hauschka cosmetics born in a German garden

Americans pull back from expensive plastic surgery
Plastic surgeons are increasingly competing with other specialists, and even non-specialists, for a finite pool of beauty clients.