Flower Girls
Cold-weather temperatures don’t exactly scream for blossoming buds. So it was one of the surprises of this Fall 2011 season to find that, at many of the most directional shows, florals stole the show. From graphic,Wholesale Coogi jeans, Pop versions snaking up dresses at Versace to wilder prints at Balenciaga (marking, as Nicole Phelps noted, the first time flowers had been seen at Balenciaga since Spring 2008), all-over motifs at Jil Sander and winding patterns at Givenchy, the season offered a gardener’s bounty of blooms. No green thumb required.
Top row, left to right: Jonathan Saunders; Miu Miu.
Second row, left to right: Jil Sander; Balenciaga.
Bottom row, left to right: Givenchy; Versace.
Photos: Yannis Vlamos / GoRunway.com (Saunders); Monica Feudi / Feudiguaineri.com (Miu Miu, Balenciaga); Gianni Pucci / GoRunway.com (Jil Sander, Givenchy, Versace)
‘Pond’ writer parodies politicians and protesters
CONCORD, N.H. As candidates crisscross New Hampshire in their quest for votes, an Academy Award-winning writer thinks the time is ripe for “Political Suicide.”
That is the title of four one-act plays Ernest Thompson who wrote “On Golden Pond”_ will stage beginning Sunday at Pitman’s Freight Room in Laconia.
The plays are dark comedies that parody politicians and protesters alike.
One is about taking the best attribute from each of the candidates to make one candidate who might excite two jaded polling place workers. Another is about a small-town protester who longs to be part of a movement but attracts the attention of no one but the police chief.
Thompson told the Associated Press on Friday that the plays each take a different angle on where our culture is at, but called them “equal opportunity offending plays.”
“I like stirring things up a little,” Thompson said.
Thompson bills his plays as “funnier than the debates” and said the debates inspired one of the plays “Mr. Potato Head” about rolling all the candidates into one dynamic candidate.
“They were pretty funny to watch those debates but also pretty sad, because you kept thinking someone has to stand up and say something profound,” Thompson said.
Thompson says he purposely did not shape his characters to resemble any of the current candidates.
“What I’m hoping is that four years from now we can do these same plays and they’ll have the same resonance,” he said.
Thompson wrote one of the plays_ about a disillusioned senator _six years ago. He says he wrote the other three recently, as campaigning intensified.
The 1981 movie “On Golden Pond” filmed in New Hampshire netted Oscars for Thompson and stars Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda. Last summer Thompson directed the stage production of the play, which he wrote in 1978 for a summer stock theater in Holderness.
Thompson, 62, moved to New Hampshire from Los Angeles 21 years ago.
“The fun part of being in New Hampshire is that you really get to see those characters up close and personal,” he said of the candidates.
Thompson said he chose Pitman’s Freight Room in downtown Laconia in part because of the short commute from his home and production studio in New Hampton. He said the venue holds about 70 and features a stage they assembled for the 16 performances,Inflatable Bouncers, including one the night of the primary Jan. 10. The play runs through Jan. 15, then reopens for six additional performances in early February.
Pitman’s owner Dick Mitchell said that there is a lot of buzz around town about Thompson’s production and that it’s exciting for the renovated train depot to host its first theater production.
“It’s very timely, and I think his message is on target everything is screwed up,” Mitchell said.
Thompson he had a run-in with the Mitt Romney camp Friday not over politics, but turf.
Romney campaign workers wanted to take over Pitman’s Freight Room for nine hours Friday to set up for and stage an evening rally, Mitchell said. But Thompson has dibs on the property.
“The show has to go on,” Thompson said, laughing.
Congress presses rating agencies on MF Global
(Reuters) Congressional investigators have launched an inquiry into the work of credit rating firms that examined MF Global Holdings Ltd’s risky bets on European government bonds and whether they overlooked crucial information in their evaluations.
Congressman Randy Neugebauer, who chairs an investigative panel of the House Financial Services Committee, sent letters to Moody’s Corp Chief Executive Raymond McDaniel and Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services President Douglas Peterson asking for detailed information about their procedures for determining MF Global’s credit-worthiness.
In letters dated December 27, Neugebauer asked each of the rating agencies to respond to his inquiries into the matter by January 15 and to turn over a lengthy list of documents concerning bankrupt futures brokerage MF Global.
The subcommittee is also seeking to hold a hearing in the coming weeks on the role of the ratings firms in the MF Global mess, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
The Wall Street Journal first reported about the congressional inquiry.
MF Global filed for bankruptcy on October 31 after it was forced to reveal that it had made a $6.3 billion bet on European sovereign debt, spooking investors and customers.
Downgrades of MF Global’s debt rating by Moody’s to near-junk status on October 24 helped trigger the panic among investors. Moody’s and Fimalac SA’s Fitch Ratings later both downgraded MF Global to junk on October 27.
McGraw-Hill Cos Inc’s S&P, meanwhile, warned of a possible downgrade on October 26, but did not take any rating action until after MF Global filed for bankruptcy.
A few months prior to Moody’s first downgrade of MF Global, the company revealed it had made repurchase-to-maturity trades collateralized with European sovereign debt in the footnote of a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Those transactions allowed MF Global to move its exposure off its balance sheet, even though it faced enormous risk in the event of a default.
That disclosure caught the eye of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority,Cheap Ed hardy Shoes, which began looking into the matter and along with the SEC ultimately forced MF Global to put up more capital. MF Global disclosed the capital charge on September 1.
In his letters to S&P and Moody’s, Neugebauer asked the rating agencies when they became aware of the repo-to-maturity transactions and whether or not they had any reason to question whether such trades put MF Global at risk.
Spokesmen for S&P and Moody’s both declined to comment on the letters.
It was not immediately clear on Thursday whether or not congressional investigators would also be asking Fitch questions about MF Global. Spokesmen for Fitch did not respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Alexandra Alper in Washington and Rachana Khanzode in Bangalore; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
Mitt Romney shares his views on PBS, federal funding
NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) He doesn’t want to drown him in a bath tub, but Mitt Romney said Wednesday that if he’s elected president, Big Bird will have to sing for his seed.
“We’re not going to kill Big Bird,Inflatable Bouncers, but Big Bird is going to have advertisements,” Romney said, while speaking at Homer’s Deli in Clinton, Iowa.
Like virtually every other conservative candidate, Romney has had it — had it! — with government expenditures like public broadcasting, and he wants to save taxpayers money by cutting federal funding to programs like PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts.
On the campaign trail Wednesday in Iowa, Romney declared that if he is elected president, PBS and the NEA will lose federal funding.
Instead, the man from the private sector will turn to — where else? — the private sector to support them.
So what’s Romney’s test for which programs warrant federal support.
“Is a program so critical that it’s worth borrowing from China to pay for it?”
Salvor Projects’ Desert Rose
For Salvor Projects’ Ross Menuez, if it can’t be made nearby, he won’t make it. When the industrial designer-turned-fashion designer opened his Lower East Side shop earlier this year, he stocked it exclusively with pieces made at his nearby studio.
The local-is-better approach had always ruled out silk pieces from his womenswear collections; silks are more often than not made and printed in the Far East. “I’d wanted to do silk for a long time, and it’s been really frustrating,” he told Style.com. “Almost everyone does silk in Asia, but I feel so dissociated when it’s happening so far away.” But thanks to the discovery of an ink from Fuji—one not intended for fashion purposes, from the same Fuji that manufactures high-end camera equipment—he’s begun hand-printing silk pieces in New York. Mid-November, the first of these new pieces, a range of printed scarves, hits the floor at Barneys New York; this spring, tops and dresses will follow at the Salvor shop.
To celebrate the new addition, Menuez tapped Charlotte Free, the pink-haired model of the moment, for a lookbook. Free’s been enjoying a banner season, shooting editorials for Love and the upcoming issue of V and campaigns for Topshop and Pamela Love. Menuez explained that he met Free through his daughter, India. “We decided to do it with Charlotte before we had even made half of the prints,” he said. “All of those prints were designed specifically for the shoot with Charlotte in the desert.” The images were shot by Keetja Allard outside of Free’s home in Southern California’s Canyon County, where, as it happens, the sun-faded rocks matched the fade in Free’s hair. “She looked like this bizarre rainbow spirit ghost floating around in the desert,” Menuez remembered. “The whole crew was just staring at her.”
—Matthew Schneier
Photos: Keetja Allard / Courtesy of Salvor Projects