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Tel Aviv, Israel |
Scientists in Israel unveiled a 3D print of a heart with human tissue and vessels calling it a first and a "major medical breakthrough" that advances possibilities for transplants.
While it remains a far way off, scientists hope one day to be able to produce hearts suitable for transplant into humans as well as patches to regenerate defective hearts.
The heart produced by researchers at Tel Aviv University is about the size of a rabbit's.
It marked "the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers," said Tal Dvir, who led the project.
"People have managed to 3D-print the structure of a heart in the past, but not with cells or with blood vessels," he said.
But the scientists said many challenges remain before fully working 3D printed hearts would be available for transplant into patients.
Journalists were shown a 3D print of a heart about the size of a cherry, immersed in liquid, at Tel Aviv University on Monday as the researchers announced their findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Science.
Researchers must now teach the printed hearts "to behave" like real ones. The cells are currently able to contract, but do not yet have the ability to pump.
Then they plan to transplant them into animal models, hopefully in about a year, said Dvir.
"Maybe, in 10 years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world, and these procedures will be conducted routinely," he said.
But he said hospitals would likely start with simpler organs than hearts.
- Producing 'ink' -
In its statement announcing the research, Tel Aviv University called it a "major medical breakthrough".
Cardiovascular disease is the world's leading cause of death, according to the World Health Organization, and transplants are currently the only option available for patients in the worst cases.
But the number of donors is limited and many die while waiting.
When they do benefit, they can fall victim to their bodies rejecting the transplant -- a problem the researchers are seeking to overcome.
Their research involved taking a biopsy of fatty tissue from patients that was used in the development of the "ink" for the 3D print.
First, patient-specific cardiac patches were created followed by the entire heart, the statement said.
Using the patient's own tissue was important to eliminate the risk of an implant provoking an immune response and being rejected, Dvir said.
"The biocompatibility of engineered materials is crucial to eliminating the risk of implant rejection, which jeopardises the success of such treatments," said Dvir.
Challenges that remain include how to expand the cells to have enough tissue to recreate a human-sized heart, he said.
Current 3D printers are also limited by the size of their resolution and another challenge will be figuring out how to print all small blood vessels.
But while the current 3D print was a primitive one and only the size of a rabbit's heart, "larger human hearts require the same technology," said Dvir.
3D printing has opened up possibilities in numerous fields, provoking both promise and controversy.
The technology has developed to include 3D prints of everything from homes to guns.
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Athens, Greece |
A team of Greek and Spanish doctors announced the birth of a baby using DNA from three people after a controversial fertility treatment that has provoked intense ethical debate.
The team used an egg from the infertile mother, the father's sperm and another woman's egg to conceive the baby boy, transferring genetic material with chromosomes from the mother to the egg of a donor whose own genetic material had been removed in a process its creators hailed as a medical "revolution".
A similar DNA-switching technique was used in Mexico in 2016 to avoid transmission of a mother's hereditary illness to her child.
But the case in Greece is the first time an IVF (in vitro fertilisation) technique using DNA from three people has been deployed to allow a mother otherwise unable to conceive to have a child.
The baby, born Thursday and weighing in at 2.96 kilos (6.5 pounds), was delivered by a 32-year-old Greek woman who had undergone several unsuccessful attempts at in vitro fertilisation, Greece's Institute of Life said in a statement.
Institute of Life president Dr Panagiotis Psathas, stated: "Today, for the first time in the world, a woman's inalienable right to become a mother with her own genetic material became a reality.
"As Greek scientists, we are very proud to announce an international innovation in assisted reproduction, and we are now in a position to make it possible for women with multiple IVF failures or rare mitochondrial genetic diseases to have a healthy child."
Dr Psathas added: "Our commitment is to continue to help even more couples facing fertility issues to have children with their own DNA, without having recourse to egg donors."
- 'Will help countless women' -
His scientific collaborator of the Institute of Life, Dr Nuno Costa-Borges, also hailed the news.
"The completely successful and safe implementation of the Maternal Spindle Transfer method -– for the first time in medical history -– is a revolution in assisted reproduction," Dr Costa-Borges said.
He added that "this exceptional result will help countless women to realise their dream of becoming mothers with their own genetic material."
In the Mexican case, the mother had been suffering from Leigh syndrome, a rare illness which affects the developing nervous system and can be fatal. In her case, the disorder had previously caused the deaths of two of her children.
Using the triple DNA technique to aid in infertility cases raises complex ethical issues, however.
Tim Child, Oxford University professor and medical director of the Fertility Partnership, expressed his concern.
"I'm concerned that there's no proven need for the patient to have her genetic material removed from her eggs and transferred into the eggs of a donor.
"The risks of the technique aren't entirely known, though may be considered acceptable if being used to treat mitochondrial disease, but not in this situation," said Child.
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Washington, United States |The kidney of a 35-year-old HIV-positive woman has been transplanted into another patient with the virus that causes AIDS, US surgeons announced, in a major medical breakthrough.
The surgeons at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore performed the operation , calling it the first in the world of its kind.
"I'm feeling good," said the donor, Nina Martinez, at a news conference following the surgery.
The recipient, who has not been identified, is doing "beautifully," said Christine Durand, associate professor of medicine and oncology at Johns Hopkins.
They are "incredibly grateful for this gift and now we just monitor for the long term outcomes," Durand said.
Martinez initially wanted to donate the kidney to a friend, but after that friend died, she pursued her wish to be an organ donor, Johns Hopkins said.
The Atlanta resident, who was inspired to donate her kidney by an episode of "Grey's Anatomy," said she was excited to be part of a medical first.
"I knew that I was the one that they had been waiting for," she said. "For anyone considering embarking on this journey, it's doable.
"I've just showed you how and I'm very excited to see who the first follow-on might be."
Before this transplant operation, doctors had believed it too risky to leave an HIV-positive patient with only one kidney.
The decision to move forward with the transplant highlights the confidence scientists have in current anti-retroviral medication, which allows those with HIV to lead normal, productive lives.
Thousands of people die each year in the United States awaiting organ transplants.
- 'Doors are now open' -
Dorry Segev, an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said about 500-600 HIV-positive patients could donate organs each year, benefiting about 1,000 people with the virus.
Until now, HIV-positive patients could receive organs from dead HIV-positive patients but not from anyone living with the virus.
They could also previously receive an organ from someone who was not HIV-positive.
The possibility of using organs from living donors would significantly change the equation.
Johns Hopkins University Hospital received authorization in 2016 to move ahead with the first transplant from a living donor with HIV. Surgeons had been waiting to find compatible patients.
Martinez and the recipient of her kidney will have to keep taking their anti-retroviral medication.
"The doors are now open for people living with HIV to become kidney donors," said Segev. "Now anybody can do this anywhere in the world, provided that they screen the patients accordingly.
"For us, this is not only a celebration of transplantation but a celebration of the progress of HIV care," he said.
"And the fact that 30 years ago, a disease that was basically a death sentence has been so transformed, that today somebody with HIV can save somebody else's life."
Like other countries, the United States suffers from a shortage of donor kidneys and there is a waiting list of around 100,000 people, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
Durand said about 10,000 HIV-positive patients are currently suffering kidney failure and on dialysis.
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Washington, United States | Parents of premature babies who spent time in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) remember all too well the burdensome vital sign sensors stuck on the infants' tiny bodies -- linking them through a mess of wires to monitoring equipment.
An innovation in sensor technology by a team of US engineers and doctors could make it far easier for parents to cuddle their babies in the NICU -- a simple gesture with major health benefits for the children.
The researchers who developed new ultra-light silicone sensors that are flexible and wireless have unveiled their invention in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
In a traditional set-up, five electrodes and sensors are placed on a baby to monitor heartbeats, breathing, temperature and oxygen in the blood.
But here, the researchers created sensors just two and 0.8 inches (five and two centimeters) long for the chest and the foot that operate without batteries and use a water-based adhesive gel that is 10 times lighter than the standard fare.
A minuscule antenna sends data to a transmitter under the incubator and transfers power.
The sensors used in today's incubators are basically the same those used in the 1960s, said John Rogers, professor and director of the Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics at Northwestern University.
Around 2016, his team -- which specializes in integrating electronic components in the human body -- started working with pediatricians in the neonatal service at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago.
"We were drawn to the neonatal health monitoring area, because we felt like our devices would add maximum value in that context," Rogers told AFP.
"Premature babies are at a fragile health status, they require a lot of monitoring, and at the same time, their skin is underdeveloped -- it's very sensitive, it's easily damaged and disrupted."
The researchers compared the quality of the data transmitted by their system to the data yielded by the traditional one for 80 babies so far -- and results showed the technology was just as precise.
Now, they need to secure approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, which likely won't come until next year, according to Rogers.
- Skin-to-skin -
"This is a phenomenal breakthrough," said Kelli Kelley, who had two premature children, including a boy who weighed only about 1.5 pounds (700 grams) at birth and stayed in intensive care for four months.
"It is very very difficult to feed your baby so tiny and small and hooked up to so many machines. It causes a barrier in being able to hold and bond with a medically fragile child," said Kelley, who founded the family support group Hand to Hold.
Her son is now 18. But she said one of his nipples was damaged so severely by the sensors' adhesives that a portion had to be removed.
A premature baby born after a 24-week gestation period has skin 40 percent thinner than a full-term child. Many premature babies grow up with scars from the sensors.
Current adhesives need to be resistant to the powerful tension exerted on the wires that are pulled as soon as the baby moves, is held or changed.
Wireless sensors avoid that problem entirely. They can even adhere to the skin naturally without an adhesive, even though a hydrogel 10 times weaker than conventional ones was used in the study.
In American hospitals, doctors strongly recommend skin-to-skin contact between parents and their children, but with all the wires in conventional incubators, it is challenging to sit comfortably with the baby in your arms, and movements are confined to the immediate proximity of the incubator.
"We know that skin-to-skin contact is so important for newborns -- especially those who are sick or premature," Amy Paller, a pediatric dermatologist at Lurie Children's, said in a statement.
"It's been shown to decrease the risk of pulmonary complications, liver issues and infections."
The new sensors are still being tested in Chicago.
They will be distributed in a pilot program in Zambia starting in April, followed by similar initiatives in India and Pakistan thanks to support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Save the Children.
The sensors will even include an accelerometer to track the baby's movements.
"You can study how the baby's vital signs change when it's being held, and you can really quantify all of those things, how the heart rate is modulated by mother-child interaction," said Rogers.
London, United Kingdom |
Prince William has launched a withering broadside at football clubs, lambasting them for a "dereliction of duty" in their lack of care for players' mental health.
Prince William, who along with younger brother Prince Harry have spoken openly about their own mental health issues, said clubs appeared to only see the players as investments not as human beings.
Prince William, who is the President of English football's governing body the Football Association (FA), made the remarks during a meeting at Windsor Park, the home of the Irish Football Association in Belfast.
"Some clubs don't do anything about mental health. We've got to change the whole way we look after players," the 36-year-old Prince said to members of Ahead of the Game, an organisation that delivers mental health support to grassroots football clubs.
"Many players come from difficult backgrounds and may have all sorts of issues going on.
"So just to have them as a complete financial asset...it's a dereliction of duty, I think."
Prince William, who decried the manner in which players are "discarded" and said they should be "supported" instead of the clubs wiping their hands of them and told to "move on", said he was in talks with the FA over the possibility of organising a "Mental Health FA Cup".
"We're working on something with the FA at the moment, trying potentially to get a mental health FA Cup to have a really punchy campaign we can base something around," said the Prince, who is a noted supporter of second tier English side Aston Villa.
Prince William's rare outspoken comments drew praise from across the football community including Michael Bennett, the Professional Footballers' Association's head of welfare.
It emerged last year a record number of players approached the body for support with mental health problems.
"Clearly, not everyone is earning £100,000 ($133,000) a week," said Bennett.
"There are things you don't see. Players could suffer an untimely death in the family or suffer a serious injury.
"Money isn't going to stop emotional feelings surfacing," he said.
Several former and current high profile players have spoken of their battles with mental issues including Tottenham Hotspur and England star Danny Rose, former England international Aaron Lennon and the now retired Stan Collymore.
Collymore, 48, is presently struggling admitting for the last three weeks he has been sleeping for 20 hours a day revealing his "longing never to wake" but he said the Prince's remarks could be a game changer for the issue.
"Prince William's comments will carry a serious amount of clout and are potentially game-changing for the way mental health issues are dealt with in football," Collymore wrote in the Daily Mirror.
"If this doesn’t resonate through the organisation, as guardians of the game, and through the corridors of power at the Premier League and the English Football League then, frankly, I don’t know what will.
"Football is like a factory these days with clubs looking for the next Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo."
Former Wales star Robbie Savage said Prince William's remarks would hopefully prompt the clubs to be more caring of those they let go.
"It can only be a good sign Prince William, who genuinely cares for the game, is taking such an interest," Savage told the Daily Mirror.
"This summer, dozens of teenagers who dream of a career in professional football will be released –- and it's important that they are not simply left to pick up the pieces."
Ha Long Bay, Vietnam | Most visitors to Vietnam's famed Ha Long Bay opt for cruise views of the UNESCO heritage site but from tourists can hop on a helicopter to see the area's famous karst rock formations from the skies.
Nervous flyers beware.
A pair of five-seater helicopters soared up to 300 metres (1,000 feet) to offer passengers aerial views of the limestone towers, cruise ships and the odd houseboat dotting Ha Long's green waters for the maiden flights
Helicopter manufacturer Bell said the trips, which start at $125 for 12 minutes, were aimed at tapping into a growing number of tourists to Vietnam -- many from the world's second biggest economy.
"With the Chinese economy growing, you're seeing more tourists come here," said David Sale, Bell's managing director for Asia-Pacific.
The number of visitors to Vietnam grew nearly 20 percent last year, with one-third of the total coming from its powerful communist neighbour to the north.
Domestic tourism is also booming among Vietnam's fast-growing middle class with expanding appetites -- and budgets -- for travel.
Ha Long Bay is one of the country's top draws, with as many as 500 cruise ships in the bay every day and a newly-opened airport helping to funnel visitors into the area.
But the tourist boom has also prompted environmental concerns in the once-pristine bay in Quang Ninh province, also home to home to rapid industrialisation.
"We're under pressure from the coal industry, the urbanisation process, the arrival of more tourists and the population increase," said Le Minh Tan, deputy director of Quang Ninh's tourism department.
He added that a waste-water management system is set to be rolled out soon to deal with sewage spewed out by cruise ships daily.
"We're launching many programs in the area to ensure the environment of Ha Long is green and clean."
Frankfurt am Main, Germany | Slicing through juicy cuts of pork belly alongside rarer delicacies of ox brain and sheep intestine, young butchers at a Frankfurt trade hall cast a suspicious eye towards the so-called fake meat products on display.
Puzzlingly, for the butchers, the fake meat seems to be popular.
"As a butcher, it just can't be that we have to get into plastic!" said Paolo Desbois, an 18-year-old French butcher, referring disparagingly to the synthetic burgers, sausages and nuggets at the IFFA meat industry convention.
The concept that animals are meat -- and plants are not -- never used to challenged.
But increasingly plant-based protein products are trying to muscle in on the meat market.
Derived from sources like soy, peas or beans, the synthetic products are being manufactured without using animals.
And Desbois, who placed second in a young butchers competition at the convention, feels they undermine "the essence of the profession".
"It's just not possible to work with synthetic meat," he said.
Another budding elite butcher from Switzerland, 20-year-old Selina Niederberger, agreed.
"As a butcher, I'm for real meat. I think a lot of people would see it the same way," she declared.
Non "real" meat products have been making headlines lately, backed by investors with an appetite for supplying plant-based burgers and sausages to the trendy diet-conscious masses.
The celebrity-backed vegan burger start-up Beyond Meat, for example, made a sizzling Wall Street debut on May 3 when it more than doubled its share price.
Backed by Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the firm and its competitors aim to turn plant-based foods mainstream and capture a huge potential market.
- Ethical concerns -
Whether meat substitutes will ever be able to 100 percent replicate the taste, colour, smell and texture of a freshly chopped up slaughtered animal is debatable.
But some young butchers suspect their growing popularity will inevitably have a transformative effect on their trade.
"It's just shifting with the world and working with it rather than against it," said 19-year-old British butcher Lennon Callister.
Trade skills are "what sets butchers apart from supermarkets," he argued, but accepted consumers are starting to look at food differently.
Josja Haagsma from the Netherlands, who won the young butchers competition, agreed that synthetic meats were changing opinions.
"It makes you think about how you can use meat and how you can change it, how you can use more vegetables," she said.
"Maybe the next generation" will be the ones pressed to apply their knives and creativity to the task, Haagsma said.
Vegetables used to be considered a side dish, at best, for carnivore connoisseurs.
But in increasingly health conscious societies, where governments warn about the dangers of consuming too much red meat, plant-based products are widening in appeal.
Alongside ethical concerns over animals bred for the dinner table and green advocates urging the public to eat less meat to save the environment, the scope for more no-meat products is growing.
- 'They aren't sausages!' -
"It's very important that we think about it, that we consume less" but "good quality meat," said Haagsma.
"You can use organic meat and homegrown cows, and not the cows from the big companies," she said.
The growing numbers of people turning to plant-based meat alternatives include vegans, who shun all animal products, and flexitarians, who advocate moderate consumption of meat.
One sign of their expanding popularity? Silicon-valley company Impossible has linked up with Burger King to offer a plant-based version of its signature Whopper.
Nestle and Unilever are also aiming to cement their presence in the sector.
The move by big conglomerates into the sector has made young butchers note that changes are on the way.
"There'll be less of this mass-produced stuff, which is also really, really bad for the climate," said 23-year-old German Raphael Buschmann.
However, while recognising environment-conscious citizens are rethinking their diets, Buschmann predicted a limit to the industry changes.
Vegetarian sausages would not be added to his displays any time soon.
"They aren't sausages," he said. "That's just the way it is."
Washington, United States |
A lipstick pistol, a button-hole camera, a lethal umbrella and an authentic waterboarding table: the espionage world's heroic, ingenious and sordid sides are all on show in Washington's all-new, much-expanded International Spy Museum.
The hugely popular showplace that once conjured James Bond and Austin Powers as much as it did actual life-and-death Cold War intrigue has grown and, in the tailwind of 9/11 and the War on Terror, grown up.
Relocated in a gleaming new steel and glass building double the size of its former premises, the Spy Museum still amazes and charms with the tales and gadgets of the undercover world going back centuries.
But now it also depicts the complex and often unsettling challenges of the world of shadows, with visitors asked in clever interactive games and simulated situation rooms to decide: could I be an intelligence agent?
- Disguises, microdots, suicide needles -
The Spy Museum has been one of the US capital's most popular private destinations since it opened in 2002.
The new premises open officially on Sunday, just ahead of the summer tourist season.
On show, as before, is the iconic Aston Martin DB5 from 1964's James Bond thriller "Goldfinger."
But now there is also room for an equally sleek 1980s Amber surveillance drone, the precursor of the Predator.
There is a British World War II one-man submarine, and an actual section of the CIA/MI6 tunnel that penetrated East Berlin in the 1950s to tap Soviet communications.
And there are gadgets galore: a pregnant woman disguise from the CIA and a suicide needle hidden in a silver dollar coin, for use by Francis Gary Powers, the U2 spy plane pilot shot down by the Soviet Union in 1960.
There are historical encryption machines, including Germany's Enigma, and a display on the microdot technology central to spying for decades last century.
Among all manner of odd items throughout the museum are a saboteur's exploding lump of coal, pills that CIA operatives entering Cuba could use to sedate barking dogs and the sketchbook of a KGB agent operating undercover in New York in the 1950s.
"The objectives of spies have not changed over the centuries," said Keith Melton, whose massive collection of espionage gear is the core of the museum.
"The only thing that has changed is the technology, and how they accomplish the objectives."
- Could you be an agent? -
The museum's coverage is global, and mostly without judgement. China's theft of US secrets and technology is on display; so is the theft, centuries ago, of China's silkworm and tea cultivation know-how by Westerners.
Woven in between are engaging, well-designed interactive exhibits and challenges that press the question: what would the visitor do?
One tests a person's lock-picking ability, while another takes visitors through a series of tests of memory, judgment and observation in a simulated spy operation.
In yet another, visitors take the role of CIA analysts in the 2011 situation room where, holding deeply imperfect intelligence, they must decide whether to advise President Barack Obama to approve a raid on the Abbottabad, Pakistan compound possibly housing Osama Bin Laden.
Complex issues are engaged and not whitewashed. The museum puts on show the spying world's failures, including a display of the actual intelligence that, if it had drawn more attention, might have helped prevent Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attack.
And, with a waterboard on display and a video discussion of actual participants, there is a disquieting debate on the CIA's use of torture after 9/11.
- 'The essence of espionage' -
The museum has its roots in the 7,000-piece collection of Melton, a navy veteran and engineer who, beginning in the 1960s traveled the world to amass.
He advertised that he was a buyer of any spy technology, and he sought out and befriended agents and officials from all sides of the Cold War game.
"As the wall fell in Berlin, I was there," he said, and the collection's extensive spyware from East Germany's Stasi service is the result.
Weeks after the Soviet Union crumbled in December 1991, he traveled to Moscow.
"I went and knocked on the door of KGB headquarters and said I'm here to buy spy equipment," Melton said.
While he raised some suspicions, many realized he was a genuine collector who didn't talk about politics.
"I like gadgets, they like gadgets," he said.
"Cameras, microdots, coding machines, short range transmitters: that's the essence of espionage."
The pride of his collection is gruesome, but he spent four decades seeking it: the ice axe that Joseph Stalin's assassins used to murder Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940, in the climax of an intense three-year intelligence operation.
Melton is hugely proud of the new museum, but somewhat wistful about the new digital age, in which computer technology has replaced many espionage tools.
"I think we are past the golden era of spy devices. This is now the most powerful spy device in the world," he said, pointing to his smartphone.
Paris, France |
Lanvin is back. After going through four designers in four years, the oldest Paris couture house stormed back in style with the debut show from new young French creator Bruno Sialelli.
The little-known 31-year-old, whose appointment last month surprised many, lit up the third day of Paris fashion week with an impressive and eclectic collection.
With Hollywood stars Uma Thurman and Asia Argento in the front row alongside Chinese-Korean singer Meng Meiqi, and supermodels Kaia Gerber -- the 17-year-old daughter of Cindy Crawford -- and Gigi Hadid on the runway, the brand's new Chinese owners, Fosun, clearly wanted to make a splash.
Sialelli obliged by sending out Hadid braless in a sheer top under a pearl pink coat that sent social media and the tabloids into a whirl.
But his debut amid the medieval and Roman artefacts of the French capital's newly renovated Cluny Museum was much more about clothes than clickbait.
There was poetry aplenty in his dreamy co-ed mix of folkloric fishermen's tops tied with leather straps, duffle coats and silk scarf dresses.
The former costume maker at the Marseille Opera threaded a child-like wonder into his clothes with prints of Saint George and the dragon and Babar the Elephant taken from a children's storybooks.
Text from fairytales also made an appearance on boots and bags, with Sialelli, who previously work for Balenciaga and Loewe, festooning a series of sheer tops and dresses with a pack of embroidering foxes.
Vogue's Suzy Menkes, the doyenne of fashion critics, was instantly won over.
- 'Fabulous start' -
"What a fabulous start!" she told her followers on Instagram.
"Fresh from Loewe menswear, Bruno Sialelli makes an instant mark at Lanvin," she said. "Colours, mediaeval inspirations for an imaginative but wearable Lanvin show... with colourful coats galore."
Godfrey Deeny of Fashion Network was also won over, calling it a "sensational debut".
"The more I think about it, the more I like it," he told AFP.
"After several false starts (for Lanvin), this collection, and show, was a significant fashion statement," he later wrote.
"Whoever said the Chinese couldn't manage a great luxury brand now should be quiet. Fosun chose a savvy senior executive who had the guts to select an unknown young designer and the result was a great debut in Paris' most famous ruin," Deeny added, referring to the fact that the museum was once a Roman baths.
But another heavyweight critic, the New York Times' Vanessa Friedman, was far less convinced.
"There were so many plotlines going on, it was a little hard to follow," she said, bemoaning Sialelli's lack of clarity.
"There were lots of influences from other brands you might or might not recognise -- though not so many that seemed connected to Lanvin's own history, which is too bad," she added.
- Flemish master Van Noten -
Fosun, a conglomerate which also owns French resorts operator Club Med, snapped up Lanvin, the oldest continuously operated French label, last year when it had lost direction and was leaking money.
The turmoil at the house began in 2015 with the departure of star designer Alber Elbaz after a 14-year run during which time the brand became a favourite of the fashion set.
The next year the company recorded its first loss in a decade.
Sialelli told reporters backstage that he had gone back into the house's archives and discovered that its founder Jeanne Lanvin was something of an explorer.
Which is why he called the show "Mystic Pilgrims" and why he ranged so wide in his influences from the British Pre-Raphaelite painters to the Aztecs and Breton fishermen.
For a house in desperate need of a big hug, he said he chose the Babar prints because "for every French person who has grown up with Babar, he is hugely reassuring".
Nothing short of genius is what is routinely expected of the Belgium designer Dries Van Noten and that is what he delivered yet again Wednesday.
The "king of prints" took a quote from a Gertrude Stein poem -- "a rose is a rose is a rose" -- as the starting point of his autumn winter women's collection, which began with a line of grey, faintly pinstriped suits inspired by men's tailoring from 1950s, before bursting into his rich trademark colours.
Van Noten photographed flowers in his own garden for the dazzling prints in duck egg blue, powdery mauve, fawn, neon orange, oxblood and imperial yellow.