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Paris, France |
Dior went back to the feisty Teddy Girls of 1950s Britain for its vision of a feminist future in its Paris fashion week show Tuesday.
With black leather jackets, long nipped-waist Dior "New Look" skirts with leather cumberbunds and tartan a-go-go, designer Maria Grazia Chiuri raided the wardrobes of the rebel girls of the early days of rock 'n' roll.
The original royal rebel Princess Margaret -- a Dior addict -- and the proudly proletarian Teddy Girls who were the "queens of the ravaged landscape" of postwar Britain were the two pillars of the Italian creator's autumn winter collection.
She took some of the most feminine clothes of the epoch -- kitten heels with black socks, shiny bucket hats and tight woollen sweaters -- and mixed them with a more masculine and sportswear silhouette.
Chiuri has been on something of a crusade during her time at the most feminine of French labels to make its famously chic clothes simple and adaptable enough for everyday wear.
And you could easily imagine women wearing trainers under even the most intricate of dresses in this collection.
The Teddy Girls were the punks of their time, "impertinent characters with wild quiffs who wore Edwardian-style men's jackets with ample skirts, jeans and black leather jackets," the designer said.
"London always represents tradition and at the same time the breaking with tradition," Chiuri told AFP.
- 'Fashion is a political act' -
The show was a long love letter to the iconoclasm of British style, and comes as a exhibition about Dior at the V&A museum in London has become a sold-out hit.
"I tried to create pieces in this collection in which everyone can express themselves in their own way by using different combinations while respecting the codes of the brand," Chiuri said.
Since her debut collection in 2017 -- when she made headlines with a "We Should All Be Feminists" T-shirt -- Dior's first female designer has put down a ladder to women artists and writers.
This time she lionised the veteran Italian artist Tomaso Binga, who took on a man's name to satirise male privilege.
One of her most iconic works, an alphabet formed from the naked body of a middle-aged woman, was the backdrop for the show in a huge pavilion in the grounds of the Rodin Museum in Paris.
With Hollywood star and #MeToo activist Jennifer Lawrence in the front row, the 87-year-old artist (whose real name is Bianca Menna) dressed up like a kind of cardinal to read a stirring declaration urging female solidarity before Chiuri sent out her models.
- Saint Laurent's killer vamps -
In another feminist nod, three wore T-shirts bearing the titles of books by the American feminist thinker Robin Morgan -- "Sisterhood is Powerful", "Sisterhood is Global" and "Sisterhood is Forever".
"Today fashion and the act of buying is a political act," Chiuri told AFP.
"Apart from clothes, bags and shoes, people want to know that behind objects there are values in which they believe," she said.
It is safe to say that Saint Laurent's Anthony Vaccarello is less up to speed with latest feminist theory.
Shortly after he took over the label he found himself in the firing line of outrage over a "hypersexualised" 2017 ad campaign for the label that put painfully thin models in "degrading" poses.
The young Belgian designer has not backed down from his sexed-up vision for the brand, and his Paris show was a procession of leggy models in black micro dresses and hotpants.
Vaccarello's women are night owl vamps and his only concession to winter was to drape some in big overcoats with exaggerated shoulders -- all the better to show that every one was a man-eater, wearing her sexiness like a weapon.
These were clothes to sin in, to turn heads at glitzy cocktails and nightclubs, with a line of flourescent looks literally lighting up in the dark.
His co-ed show under the Eiffel Tower also made a game bid to steal a march on his Saint Laurent predecessor Hedi Slimane, who has created a male line for the first time at Celine.
Vaccarello's response has been to go toe-to-patent-Chelsea-boot-toe, out-Slimane-ing the man they call the "sultan of skinny" at his own lux-grunge rock god game.
Milan, Italy | British designers presented fashion collections for two Italian houses at Milan fashion week, with one inspired by shoes as key items, and the other by tiger motifs.
Paul Andrew presented Italian fashion label Salvatore Ferragamo's latest collection, just days after being announced as the group's creative director.
And Paul Surridge, creative director at another Florence-based fashion house, presented the Roberto Cavalli collection.
Andrew, who joined the group in 2016 and previously headed up the women's wear division, told AFP he had been inspired by plunging into the group's archives.
"Everything I do in Ferragamo is dressing from toe to head: the shoe dictates everything," he said.
"I started from this particular shoe made with patchwork of colour and material from 1942 and it inspired the colour palette," he added.
"Given that it's a shoe from 1942 but it looks much more modern than that, Salvatore was so ahead of his time," said Andrew, referring to the founder of the brand.
"I thought, 'How would he be designing now?"
The full range of the Florence-based fashion house was on display, presenting a simple, unpretentious luxury range: suede leather, nappa, lizard or snake on trousers, jackets, coats and shirts.
Monochrome trousers were zipped around the body, while cashmere blankets and handmade wool sweaters conveyed a sense of simple and spontaneous luxury.
It was only on Thursday that Andrew was appointed creative director. Under his direction, French designer Guillaume Meilland will continue to run the creative output of the men's collection.
The Ferragamo autumn/winter collection was presented in the Rotonda della Besana, a desanctified church from late Baroque period.
- Surridge presents Cavalli -
Another British designer, Paul Surridge, presented the Roberto Cavalli collection.
Surridge, who has been creative director at the Florence-based fashion house since 2017, told AFP his inspiration had been "instinctive".
"I started to look at the idea of status in general and the memory of status of the idea of refinement, of beauty to make something exquisite."
He went back to print and underline print, "not just on silk dresses but on coats with jacquards" to "maximise the pattern" without making it feel heavy, he added.
"I wanted to define a new modern beauty," Surridge added.
Surridge carries on the style started by Cavalli in the 1970s combining eccentricity and glamour.
Surridge made the tiger motif in various permutations a recurring theme in this collection, reinterpreting it in a variety of contexts: midnight blue, bougainvillea, mustard on one side and in a variant of pastel colours on the other.
The same pallette informed the whole collection, including coats, jackets and trousers.
The python motif, another element dear to the Cavalli brand, appeared as jacquard hand-painted or embroidered in sequin.
Evening dresses, with their ultra-feminine and fluid silhouettes, evoked the 1920s.
Jakarta, Indonesia |
Armed with crowbars and wearing protective gear, three women assembled at a Jakarta stress clinic survey the cluster of bottles they're about to smash to pieces.
"I feel relieved. It's like something I have been holding inside is finally released when I smashed those bottles," Genta Kalbu Tanjung, a 20-year-old university student, told AFP as blaring rock music pulsated in the background.
Tanjung and her two friends paid 125,000 rupiah ($8.85) each to unleash their pent-up rage at the Temper Clinic, which also lets clients bust up old televisions and printers for a slightly higher price.
Inside a bare smash room, one wall is covered with a written reminder: "Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."
Aliya Dewayanti Senoajie wanted to use the students' half-hour session to channel her frustrations as a school holiday quickly comes to an end.
"The break is over -- it was too short and I'm not ready to go back to school," Senoajie said, declaring her bust-it-up session a success.
"It was really fun. My adrenaline was pumping."
The clinic opened last summer in a posh Jakarta neighbourhood after co-owner Masagus Yusuf Albar returned from an overseas holiday where he saw similar businesses sprouting up.
The first dedicated space for such destruction therapy opened in Japan in 2008, with a view to helping stressed salarymen relieve their pent up frustrations.
It has spread in popularity and temper clinics, also known as rage rooms, can be found in most key US and European cities.
The trend has taken off in Asia in the past two years with similar ventures opening in China, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
But the service might not immediately make sense for a place like Indonesia -- its citizens regularly rank high among the world's least-stressed people.
That wasn't lost on Albar, who conceded that life in places like Bali or jungle-clad Sumatra was pretty relaxed.
But not so in Jakarta, a city of 10 million plus with hours-long traffic jams that can drive the most patient mad and where school and work are becoming increasingly competitive.
A 2017 survey done by dry cleaning firm Zipjet found Jakarta was one of the world's most stressful cities based on criteria including traffic, air and noise pollution and unemployment.
"Try to go anywhere on Friday night and it's very annoying. My friend once got caught in the traffic and she ended up crying. That's how bad it was," Albar told AFP.
"Customers find this cathartic," he said.
But smashing things up to let off steam is not necessarily risk free, warned Jakarta-based psychologist Liza Marielly Djaprie.
She suggested that regularly using such rooms could simply condition the body to need an aggressive release whenever tensions rise.
Djaprie explained: "I don't usually encourage patients to destroy things just so it won't become a habit. We need to learn about our anger -- and anger management."
El Paso, United States Anyone who doubts that some seconds last a lot longer than others should try riding a bull at the Tuff Hedeman Bull Riding Tour in El Paso.
As in all great rodeo classics, the rider has to hang on with just one hand as the bull bucks and kicks.
Some 25 contestants tried their luck and skill Saturday night in El Paso: the challenge was to ride a bull for at least eight seconds without getting thrown and without touching it with their free hand.
The Tuff Hedeman Bull Riding Tour is named after a four time world bull riding champion, who today is retired.
The competition carries a $30,000 prize and cowboys come from far and wide to participate.
For instance, Ben Jones, who injured his face during the event, is originally from Australia.
- Inseparable from the American West -
Juan Alonzo, a Texan, can also testify to the dangers of rodeo. He served in the US army for five years, and while on a tour of duty in Iraq, he trained on a wooden barrel.
The rider grips a leather handle attached to a flat braided rope cinched around the bull. The bulls can weigh a ton.
Inseparable from the American West and the myth of the cowboy, but in reality owing much to Spanish and Mexican vaqueros, rodeo celebrates balance and resistance to pain.
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Frankfurt am Main, Germany | German high-end car giants BMW and Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler are banding together to catch up with American and Chinese competitors, with new cooperation on multiple fronts including electric cars and self-driving technology.
Munich-based BMW and Stuttgart's Daimler have been locked for years in a near neck-and-neck race to top sales charts in the global luxury car market.
But on Thursday the latest building block of a structure of collaboration fell into place, as the groups said they would work together to develop automated driving and driver assistance systems.
The plan is first to focus on so-called level three and four systems on an internationally-recognised scale for automated driving.
They will for now stop short of targeting level five -- which would see the on-board computer take over completely from the human driver under all circumstances.
Rather, the hoped-for technology will at first offer driving and parking assistance and limited autonomy on motorways.
"Instead of individual, stand-alone solutions, we want to develop a reliable overall system," said Daimler board member Ola Kallenius, who is set to take over from departing chief executive Dieter Zetsche in May.
Only a week before, the groups announced a one-billion-euro ($1.1 billion) investment in combining their carsharing and other apps into a joint scheme.
Some 60 million users of 14 separate apps will in future be able to book short-term rentals, parking spots and electric charging points, taxi and chauffeur hailing and journey planning via the joint suite of services.
- Ecosystem future -
Such unprecedented partnerships "shows how even one-time rivals see a pressing problem" in amassing the mammoth investments and precious expertise needed to meet future challenges in the car industry, expert Stefan Bratzel of Germany's Center for Automotive Management told AFP.
"Different universes" are meeting as traditional carmakers find high-tech firms like Google or Alibaba, mobility services firms like Uber and Didi and even telecoms firms racing to set industry-wide standards.
In the new environment, companies "are forced to cooperate," Bratzel said.
"Otherwise you just can't tackle certain questions, networking, building up ecosystems" that bind together different technologies, he added.
BMW already works with Intel and Fiat on self-driving cars, while Daimler has linked up with components supplier Bosch, aiming to test highly autonomous vehicles this year in the US.
"Being open to alliances to share the burden of investments is an economic necessity," said Bosch chief executive Volkmar Denner last month.
On Thursday, BMW and Daimler said "other technology companies and automotive manufacturers" could be invited aboard their self-driving scheme in future, while existing schemes would not be affected.
- International competition -
Germany's biggest carmaker Volkswagen has been notable by its absence from the flurry of alliances on new technology within the country's car industry.
Rumours of a far broader partnership taking in VW, BMW, Daimler, Bosch and components builder Continental have yet to materialise.
And this week, the Wall Street Journal reported Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen was close to a deal on autonomous driving with Ford, after the two groups agreed in January to build vans together.
For now the Wolfsburg-based behemoth has partnered with Aurora, a startup manned by former Google, Tesla and Uber executives which has also secured financing from Amazon.
The names of Silicon Valley tech titans are tied closely to autonomous driving as they look to challenge historic incumbents on their own turf.
Google subsidiary Waymo -- seen as one of the most advanced projects -- is working with Fiat Chrysler and Jaguar Land Rover, while Tesla, Uber and Apple as well as China's Baidu is each pursuing the technology.
The newcomers are also treading on established manufacturers' toes with their offerings in areas like carsharing or electric mobility -- although alliances are possible, as in Volkswagen's development of an "automotive cloud" digital platform.
Meanwhile the French and German governments are looking to strengthen the car industry and others by encouraging the emergence of European "champions", with a homegrown battery manufacturer for electric cars first on Paris and Berlin's wishlist.
Rawalpindi, Pakistan | A Pakistani waiter Rozi Khan had never heard of the Game of Thrones -- or its hugely popular character Tyrion Lannister -- until his striking resemblance to the dwarf anti-hero got heads turning at home.
The 25-year-old so resembles actor Peter Dinklage -- who has played the witty and wily nobleman since the hit series' first season in 2010 -- that he gets regularly stopped by strangers desperate for a picture.
"I don't mind. A lot of my pictures have been taken, that's why I have become very famous everywhere," he said.
Not only are Khan and Dinklage's faces strikingly similar, they are also the same height at around 135 cms (4 ft 5in).
Photographs of the pair have unsurprisingly made their way onto social media showing the doppelgangers side-by-side.
"Wherever I go, someone says to me: 'Sir, who is this man with you on Facebook', I say that he is my friend. 'He looks like you'. I tell them he is my brother. It's not a bad thing," said Khan.
The television series has won 47 Emmys -- more than any other fictional show in history -- along with a Golden Globe for Dinklage, 49, for best supporting actor in 2012.
A much anticipated final series is set to premiere on April 17.
Khan works at a small Kashmiri restaurant down a narrow line in Rawalpindi, serving customers hearty dishes such as mutton and spinach curries.
Owner Malik Aslam Pervez described him as a hard-worker -- and also a drawcard for the eatery.
"When he takes a day off or gets sick, people look for him and ask where did he go? They get upset. They love him. There is always a crowd here but it has boomed because of him," he said.
Born in Mansehra in northern Pakistan, Khan says he would love to meet Dinklage, describing him as a friend and brother.
"I love him very much, he is my friend... he is my height so I like him a lot," said Khan.
For customers, seeing Tyrion Lannister in the flesh is also a thrill.
"When I saw him, I'm happy, I feel that I met with Lannister in real [life]," said Zain Hadri, 20.
"Game of Thrones" tells the story of noble families vying for control of the Iron Throne, all the while keeping one eye on the "White Walkers" leading hordes of the undead toward an invasion from the North.
