PARIS – When it comes to putting on blockbuster shows, the sky is literally the limit for Chanel. For its fall-winter 2011-12 haute couture collection, the deep-pocketed French label recreated a life-sized model of Paris’ Place Vendome jewelry Mecca – complete with a starry night sky.
The Chanel display usually takes place in the morning, but to add to the nighttime feeling of Tuesday’s show, it was held at the unprecedented hour of 10 p.m. That meant a fatigued fashion crowd, which had been working largely non-stop for the previous 11 hours, traipsed into the venue – Paris’ glass and steel Grand Palais.
TORONTO – Kate opted for more formal attire for the Yellowknife leg of the royal tour, choosing to sport the look of a Danish label for the first time on her trip to Canada.
The Duchess of Cambridge wore a Bullet dress from By Malene Birger as she and Prince William did a walkabout Tuesday among the crowds clamouring to catch a glimpse of the royal newlyweds in the Northwest Territories capital.
TORONTO – Some people might presume that many new Canadians are unsafe and accident-prone drivers, dealing as they do with unfamiliar roads and customs, along with extreme weather conditions. But researchers say recent immigrants actually seem to be steadier behind the wheel than long-term residents.
In a decade-long study, researchers tracked almost one million recent immigrants to Ontario and compared their involvement as drivers in serious road crashes compared to long-time residents of the province, matching each subject in the two groups by age, gender, living location and economic status.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – When Stephen Zawistowski got his first dog 50 years ago, she was the only dog in the neighbourhood that was spayed.
“She had an incision that must have been a foot (30 centimetres) long and was sewn up with what looked like piano wire,” says Zawistowski, science adviser for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
A mother whose life changed when her daughter was diagnosed with severe food allergies has taken advantage of what was a crisis to develop a food system that works for her entire family.
And Stacy Fokas hasn’t stopped there. The Caledon, Ont., wife and mother of two has parlayed her research and knowledge of healthier eating into “Freshalicious: Over 125 Simply Delicious Dairy-free Seasonal Recipes” (Infokas Productions, $29.95, hardcover).
NEW YORK, N.Y. – One mother chose home birth because it was cheaper than going to a hospital. Another gave birth at home because she has multiple sclerosis and feared unnecessary medical intervention. And some choose home births after cesarean sections with their first babies.
Whatever their motivation, all are among a striking trend: Home births increased 20 per cent from 2004 to 2008, accounting for 28,357 of 4.2 million U.S. births, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in May.
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PARIS – Couture and art collided with a spectacular bang at Stephane Rolland’s fall-winter 2011-12 show Tuesday – a collection dominated by high-drama gowns that were less garments than ambulatory sculptures.
Satin catsuits with dramatic slits up the thighs and built-in billowing capes were cinched at the waist with oversized metal belts that glinted with chunks of fool’s gold. Gold tubes stacked in an hourglass shape embellished the front of long-sleeved sheath dresses.
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version misspelled Rolland in the long headline.
Influenced by Spanish, Italian, French, Turkish, Moroccan and Greek seaside lifestyles, Mediterranean decor is simple and relaxed, and easily adapted to western homes.
The natural hues of the region – marine, almond, olive, sunshine and chalk – frame the palette. In furnishings, the style’s ethnic, often rustic, origins tend to dominate. But modernist interpretations – think of Riviera yachts and summer homes, for example – are just as popular.
ATLANTA – Colon cancer deaths continue to drop across the U.S. – except in Mississippi, health officials said Tuesday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report that echoes earlier findings of a national decline in colon cancer deaths. Rates fell by as much as five and six per cent in a few states – Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
PARIS – If the devil were a woman on the prowl for a wardrobe capable of persuading any man to sign over his soul, she need look no further than rising French star Alexandre Vauthier’s all-red fall-winter 2011-12 haute couture collection.
As if the weather were conspiring to lend Vauthier’s inferno added credibility, Paris temperatures soared Tuesday to 32 C, turning the cramped show venue – a historic high school library illuminated by red spotlights – into a hellish sauna. The elaborately costumed audience of fashion glitteratti fanned themselves and wiped their streaming brows as Vauthier’s she-devils skulked the catwalk in clothes that faintly dripped sensuality.
TORONTO – Summer camp season is here and though many kids have been shipped off for countryside swims, canoe trips and marshmallow roasts, a small group of youngsters at a Toronto animal shelter is getting a hands-on education in training man’s best friend.
For Justine Bystram, a 10-year-old attending Pawsitively Pets Kids Camp’s junior dog trainer program, the toughest task on the first morning of the camp is getting Zoe, a well-fed Pug, to do what trainer Margaret Pender calls a “doggie push-up.”
LONDON – Egyptian sprout seeds blamed for Europe’s massive and deadly E. coli outbreak are still on the market and were shipped to more countries than was previously believed, including Austria, Britain and Spain, officials said Tuesday.
The European Food Safety Authority confirmed in a report that one lot of contaminated fenugreek seeds from Egypt was probably the source of the recent food poisoning outbreaks in Germany and France, but the number of European countries that received parts of the suspected lot is “much larger than previously known.”
PARIS – Giorgio Armani Prive dedicated his collection of wildly expensive made-to-measure skintight column dresses and painted-on pantsuits to the victims of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.
“Homage to Japan,” shown Tuesday on day two of Paris’ rarified fall-winter 2011-12 haute couture shows, incorporated Japanese silks and shapes culled from kimonos into the Italian designer’s trademark lean, clean-lined shapes.
PARIS – When your collection notes read like an abbreviated history of the art, architecture and fashion design of the 20th century, you know you’ve got a problem.
Such was the case at Dior’s first show in 15 years without its disgraced former creative director John Galliano. The British designer was fired in March amid a scandal over alleged anti-Semitic remarks, and his former right-hand man stepped in Monday, fielding a fall-winter 2011-12 haute couture collection that cited as influences interior designer Jean-Michel Frank, architects Ettore Sottsass and Frank Gehry, graphic designer Jean Paul Gouda, watchmaker Jean Dunned and fashion designer Marc Bohan.
TORONTO – An analysis of studies on smokers taking a popular drug to help them quit finds a higher rate of cardiovascular events in this group than in smokers who were taking a placebo.
“You’re talking about a drug which already is given to smokers that have high risk of heart disease. Now you’re talking about a substantial increased risk,” said lead author Dr. Sonal Singh of Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Maryland.
PARIS – Hoots and thunderous applause erupted from backstage, but the audience at the Dior show Monday greeted the storied label’s fall-winter 2011-12 haute couture with a short-lived flurry of halfhearted claps.
The collection was the first in 15 years not under the label’s disgraced former creative director, John Galliano – and it showed.
TORONTO – A chorus of concern about the management of a number of hospitals in Ontario’s Niagara region is growing amidst an outbreak of Clostridium difficile that’s been linked to the deaths of 16 patients.
The patients were being treated at three hospitals experiencing clusters of cases of the bacterial disease: four have died at the Greater Niagara General Hospital, 10 at St. Catharines General Hospital and two at the Welland Hospital since the outbreak was declared May 28.
TORONTO – Massage can make a difference to people with chronic low back pain when it’s added to their usual medical treatment, new research indicates.
Low back pain is the second most common cause for visits to general practitioners, right after the common cold, experts say, and improvements to treatment could help cut down on disability and absenteeism in the workplace.
PARIS – Talk about making an entrance. Italy’s Giambattista Valli fairly erupted onto the haute couture calendar Monday with a stunning fall-winter 2011-12 collection of glamorous sheath dresses and evening gowns that dripped drama.
Valli’s signature retro bourgeois dresses have made his pret-a-porter line a favourite of the jet-setting It Girl set, and dedicated fans like socialite Bianca Brandolini turned out to support his debut among the elite cadre of Paris’ purveyors of couture: ultra-expensive garments made-to-measure for a handful of the world’s wealthiest women.
Here are some tips for choosing and storing watermelon from dietitian Cara Rosenbloom and the National Watermelon Promotion Board:
– Watermelons should be firm, symmetrical and without bruises, cuts or dents. Scratches are acceptable – that’s just part of it growing naturally in the field.
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