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LI Roller Rebels and Town of Brookhaven team up to collect prom dresses for those in need.

All Long Islanders know that these are difficult economic times and sometimes people need just a little assistance. To that end, the Long Island Roller Rebels Women’s Roller Derby Team in conjunction with the Town of Brookhaven is collecting donations of slightly used prom dresses to help make the dreams come true for some young girls who desperately want to go to their high school prom, but are not able to afford an acceptable outfit and accessories with which to attend the party.

“I am so gratified that we are able to reach out to help these young ladies, who otherwise would not be able to go out and afford a dress and shoes and jewelry and makeup, etc. for such a big event in their young lives, that they so deserve to attend,” said Captain Morgan, one of the Roller Rebels who vividly remembers her prom with amazing detail and gusto. “Getting through high school is such hard work for four years. The prom is the party at the end that signifies the culmination of all that effort. I remember having my hair done in a new style and my wonderful nails and pedicure, I was like Cinderella and Snow White and sleeping beauty all rolled into one Disney Princess.”

“I think every girl dreams of wearing that beautiful dress to one of the biggest nights in their young lives and all the women (and men) at the Long Island Roller Rebels hope in their hearts that we can help make that same dream come true for each and every student. We’d hate to think of some not attending their prom , just because they could not afford the outfit. That would be truly heartbreaking,” said Hardcory of the Roller Rebels who is a key coordinator of this particular prom dress donation collection.

The Town of Brookhaven is very discreet with the ladies that benefit from this. And what the Roller Rebels are asking Long Island residents to do is not so hard. All they are asking that everyone in Nassau and Suffolk counties take a couple of minutes out of one day, to search their closets for prom/affair/party dresses that they’ve worn or their kids or family members have worn and are now just sitting there collecting dust.

Any dress shoes or heels that are buried in the back of that walk-in, or costume jewelry that is cluttering up that old jewelry box. Even look at that “worn only once for Cousin Carol’s wedding party” bridesmaid dress that now hangs forlornly in your closet taking up space.

What is one girl’s strapless aqua taffeta mermaid nightmare could be another girl’s dream prom dress. So take a moment and help the Long Island Roller Rebels in conjunction with the Town of Brookhaven, spread a little fairy dust, share the magic and donate your gently used dresses and accessories .

The Long Island Roller Rebels will be accepting donations now through the middle of May (at their 4/14 and 5/12 derby bouts actually). For more information email info@longislandrollerrebels.com, visit their website at http://www.longislandrollerrebels.com/roller-derby-events.php.

(view original article here)

Fashion Campus NYC, organized by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and Parsons The New School for Design, provides next-generation fashion and retail management talent with exposure to opportunities on the business side of the industry. The event will feature a keynote address by the acclaimed fashion designer Rachel Roy.

“By exposing hundreds of students from around the world to the range of career options in the fashion industry, Fashion Campus NYC has already proven itself to be a great success,” said New York City Economic Development Corporation President Seth W. Pinsky. “In this way, this program, along with our other fashion programs, will help cultivate the next generation of New York City-based fashion stars, ensuring that we remain the global leader in this important industry.”

Fashion Campus NYC offers professional education and networking opportunities to some of the most promising and ambitious summer interns in New York City. Its aim is to educate these young professionals about the variety of business-focused career paths available to them and to introduce them to influential figures in the City’s fashion industry. In so doing, the program seeks to inspire talented students to pursue post-college careers in New York’s fashion industry, thereby maintaining and enhancing the City’s position as a global fashion leader.

“Fashion Campus NYC has demonstrated the strong interest among young professionals for more opportunities to network and explore the business side of the fashion industry,” said Parsons Executive Dean Joel Towers. “Through our work with the NYCEDC, Parsons is extending one of its core values- providing students with the means to pursue successful careers in design, and supporting those industries through a strong talent pipeline.”

The first annual event in July 2011 was an overwhelming success, with nearly 200 students from more than 90 universities and 150 companies attending the event, as well as fashion industry representation from more than 25 New York-based companies.

The 2012 Fashion Campus NYC includes “Backstage Pass,” a panel discussion with young fashion business professionals working in finance, sales, product development, merchandising, marketing and buying; “Ready-to-Work,” a networking breakfast that will provide students with unparalleled access to industry leaders and hiring managers; and “A Tailored Approach,” breakout sessions by career path with career services and industry professionals . The weekend will conclude with a keynote address by Rachel Roy, a talented American designer who launched Rachel Roy New York in 2005 to create clothes for the modern woman.

Fashion Campus NYC is an initiative that resulted from Mayor Bloomberg’s FashionNYC2020, a strategic study to examine the challenges facing the fashion industry and designed to help the City build on its competitive advantages to maintain its status as a global fashion capital. The industry chairs for FashionNYC2020 are Richard Darling, CEO of LF USA; Diane von Furstenberg, Chairman and Founder, Diane von Furstenberg Studio L.P., and President, Council of Fashion Designers of America; Terry Lundgren, Chairman, President and CEO of Macy’s, Inc.; Andrew Rosen, CEO of Theory; and Kevin Ryan, CEO of Gilt.

New York City’s fashion industry employs 173,000 people, accounting for 5.7 percent of the City’s workforce, and generates nearly $2 billion in tax revenue annually. In addition, the City is home to one of the world’s largest wholesale fashion markets, which attracts more than 500,000 visitors a year to its trade shows, showrooms and retail stores. Fashion Campus NYC is one of six initiatives resulting from FashionNYC2020. These initiatives address the industry’s challenges in two ways: by further positioning the City as a hub of innovation for emerging designers as well as specialty and multi-channel retail, and by attracting the next generation of design, management and merchant talent. Following the successful launch of Fashion Campus NYC in 2011, Parsons and NYCEDC also launched Fashion Draft NYC in February of this year, bringing 25 top college seniors from universities across the country to network and interview for management-track positions with some of New York’s leading fashion companies.

Students interested in attending this free program are encouraged to register online at Fashion Campus NYC website, starting on April 16th.

Pity the bridal party that has to carry this train: A Romanian wedding salon has designed a dress that has the world’s longest train, as designated by the Guinness World Book of Records. The Andree Salon designed a 1.85-mile long ivory train, which stretched across the city center of Bucharest.

The train and dress required approximately three miles of taffeta and 18 feet of lace. According to the Telegraph, 1,857 sewing needles and 150 spools of thread were used in its creation, which took 100 days. The previous record for a wedding dress train, held by a Dutch designer, was approximately 1.5 miles.

The dress was modeled by 17-year-old Ema Dumitrescu, who demonstrated its length in a hot air balloon, which the Telegraph reports, despite being a central event in the city’s biannual wedding fair, was mostly ignored by unimpressed bystanders. Want a copy for your own wedding? The Andree Salon can make your Bridezilla dreams come true…

Call it style with a cause. Prom Boutique, a hip long island charity, is in full collection mode. The program, which started almost 20 years ago, collects gently worn formal wear and donates it to girls on Long Island who cannot easily afford a new prom dress.

“They are thrilled to be giving their dresses new legs,” said Lola Intagliata of Clear Skin Salon. “They enjoyed wearing it at their prom, now they’re looking forward to having another girl have the experience they had.”

Collection sites are located all over the island, including at a West Hempstead salon. The dresses are then gathered and brought to a larger space at the end of April where the girls can shop ’til they drop. Each girl receives a free dress with accessories and on the spot alterations. The charity collects about 3,000 dresses per year.

“They’re allowed to shop for dresses, they find their sizes, it’s all color coordinated,” said Anne Sprotte, Prom Boutique coordinator. “And they go into the fitting room and they come out and their eyes are sparkling, their moms are crying.”

Donors are happy to make those moments possible. They say have no reservations about letting go of their fine threads.

“I got such great use out of the dress when I got to use it myself and I know what the dress meant to me,” one donor said. “I hope someone would get the same enjoyment out of it.”

You can donate your formal wear before April 22.

www.longislandvolunteercenter.org

(by Ashley Mastronardi – original source here)

Designer is First to Launch L-Side Bus Advertisements

NEW YORK, March 15, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — CBS Outdoor unveiled today its first-ever L-side New York City bus advertisements, featuring design house Calvin Klein, whose men’s and women’s jeans are being featured on sides of 75 MTA buses. The uniquely-sized bus ads, made popular in the United Kingdom, feature male and female models from Calvin Klein displayed on alternate sides of buses driving through Manhattan. This is the first time CBS Outdoor has featured the special-sized creative, which merge standard king-sized bus posters with traditional shelter-sized advertisements.

(view original source here)

After months of preparation, the rock is ready to roll. A 340-ton chunk of granite that acclaimed earth artist Michael Heizer selected to be the centerpiece of his latest creation is scheduled to leave a dusty rock quarry in Riverside late Tuesday night. From there it will make a circuitous, 105-mile journey to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s backyard, where it is to become the focal point of Heizer’s “Levitated Mass.”

The artist plans to have the rock placed over a 456-foot-long trench in such a way that when museum visitors walk underneath it will appear to be floating in the air above them. But first it has to get to LA from Riverside’s rural Jurupa Valley, where Heizer came across it six years ago and, as the story goes, said, “That’s the one.”

Museum officials say the reclusive artist, who has spent much of the past 40 years building “City,” a Mount Rushmore-sized project near his home in the central Nevada desert, envisioned “Levitated Mass” even before that. But he couldn’t really proceed until he found the right rock. What he found was two stories high, teardrop-shaped and so heavy and bulky it took a specially built flatbed trailer the length of three football fields to transport it.

The trailer, equipped with 44 axels, built to hold at least a million pounds and powered by 550- to 650-horsepower engines in the front and back, will be accompanied by as many as 60 people who will clear a path for the rock and make sure it doesn’t smash into anything going around turns. It will travel no faster than 5 to 8 miles per hour and only late at night and in the early morning.

The trip is expected to take 11 days, with the rock scheduled to roll up to the museum’s back door sometime before dawn on March 10. The curious can follow the rock’s progress on Twitter or through the museum’s website and blog. “We’re going to keep everybody updated as to where it’s parked each day,” said museum spokeswoman Miranda Carroll.

It is a journey that has been delayed repeatedly over the past six months as 22 cities, from Riverside to Long Beach, have had to agree to let it roll through their communities. Many were wary, especially given that officials say it is likely the largest rock to be moved from Point A to Point B since the days when the ancient Egyptians were building the pyramids. The museum finally worked out a route that went around freeway overpasses, stayed away from bridges and avoided narrow streets to enough of a degree that everybody was satisfied. The total project is costing $5 million to $10 million.

“It’s funny, the Egyptians didn’t have rubber wheels and diesel trucks to move things. But they also didn’t have 22 cities through which they had to move their stones,” museum director Michael Govan noted recently.

“And in California,” he added, “everybody has a say.”

Online: http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/levitated-mass

Megalith slated to become part of Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass

Levitated Mass by artist Michael Heizer is composed of a 456-foot-long slot constructed on LACMA’s campus, over which is placed a 340-ton granite megalith. As with other works by the artist, such as Double Negative (1969), the monumental negative form is key to the experience of the artwork. Heizer conceived of the artwork in 1968, but discovered an appropriate boulder only decades later, in Riverside County, California. At 340 tons, the boulder is one of the largest megaliths moved since ancient times. Taken whole, Levitated Mass speaks to the expanse of art history, from ancient traditions of creating artworks from megalithic stone, to modern forms of abstract geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering.

(view original article source here)

Lillian Bassman, a magazine art director and fashion photographer who achieved renown in the 1940s and ’50s with high-contrast, dreamy portraits of sylphlike models, then re-emerged in the ’90s as a fine art photographer after a cache of lost negatives resurfaced, died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 94. Her son, Eric Himmel, confirmed the death.

Ms. Bassman entered the world of magazine editing and fashion photography as a protégé of Alexey Brodovitch, the renowned art director of Harper’s Bazaar. In late 1945, when the magazine generated a spinoff called Junior Bazaar, aimed at teenage girls, she was asked to be its art director, a title she shared with Mr. Brodovitch, at his insistence.

In addition to providing innovative graphic design, Ms. Bassman gave prominent display to future photographic stars like Richard Avedon, Robert Frank and Louis Faurer, whose work whetted her appetite to become a photographer herself.

Already, at Harper’s Bazaar, she had begun frequenting the darkroom on her lunch hours to develop images by the great fashion photographer George Hoyningen-Huene, using tissues and gauzes to bring selected areas of a picture into focus and applying bleach to manipulate tone.

“I was interested in developing a method of printing on my own, even before I took photographs,” Ms. Bassman told B&W magazine in 1994. “I wanted everything soft edges and cropped.” She was interested, she said, in “creating a new kind of vision aside from what the camera saw.”

When Avedon went off to photograph fashion collections in Paris in 1947, he lent her his studio and an assistant. She continued her self-education and in short order landed an important account with a lingerie company. In its last issue, in May 1948, Junior Bazaar ran a seven-page portfolio of wedding photographs she had taken, titled “Happily Ever After.”

Ms. Bassman became highly sought after for her expressive portraits of slender, long-necked models advertising lingerie, cosmetics and fabrics. Her lingerie work in particular brought lightness and glamour to an arena previously known for heavy, middle-aged women posing in industrial-strength corsets.

“I had a terrific commercial life,” Ms. Bassman told The New York Times in 1997. “I did everything that could be photographed: children, food, liquor, cigarettes, lingerie, beauty products.”

Lillian Violet Bassman was born on June 15, 1917, in Brooklyn and grew up in the Bronx. Her parents, Jewish émigrés from Russia, allowed her a bohemian style of life, even letting her move in, at 15, with the man she would later marry, the documentary photographer Paul Himmel.

Ms. Bassman studied fabric design at Textile High School, a vocational school in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. After modeling for artists employed by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project and working as a muralist’s assistant, she took a night course in fashion illustration at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

She soon showed her work to Brodovitch, who was impressed. Waiving tuition, he accepted her into his Design Laboratory at the New School for Social Research, where she changed her emphasis from fashion illustration to graphic design.

Brodovitch took her on as his unpaid apprentice at Harper’s Bazaar in 1941, but desperate to earn money she left to become an assistant to the art director at Elizabeth Arden, whereupon Brodovitch anointed her his first paid assistant. Like her mentor, she was artistically daring. At Junior Bazaar, she experimented with abandon, treating fashion in a bold, graphic style and floating images in space.

“One week we decided that we were going to do all green vegetables, so we had the designers make all green clothing, green lipstick, green hair, green everything,” she told Print magazine in 2006.

Her nonadvertising work appeared frequently in Harper’s Bazaar, and she developed close relationships with a long list of the era’s top models, including Barbara Mullen (her muse), Dovima and Suzy Parker.

The stylistic changes of the 1960s, however, left her cold. The models, too. “I got sick of them,” she told The Times in 2009. “They were becoming superstars. They were not my kind of models. They were dictating rather than taking direction.”

In 1969, disappointed with the photographic profession and her prospects, she destroyed most of her commercial negatives. She put more than 100 editorial negatives in trash bags, putting them aside in her converted carriage house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She soon forgot all about them.

By the mid-1970s, she was out of the fashion world entirely and had begun focusing on her own work, taking large-format Cibachrome photographs of glistening fruits, vegetables and flowers, pictures of cracks in the city streets and distorted male torsos based on photographs in bodybuilding magazines.

It was not until the early 1990s that Martin Harrison, a fashion curator and historian who was staying at her house, found the long-forgotten negatives. He encouraged her to revisit them.

Ms. Bassman took a fresh look at the earlier work. She began reprinting the negatives, applying some of the bleaching techniques and other toning agents with which she had first experimented in the 1940s, creating more abstract, mysterious prints.

“In looking at them I got a little intrigued, and I took them into the darkroom, and I started to do my own thing on them,” she told The Times. “I was able to make my own choices, other than what Brodovitch or the editors had made.”

Her reinterpretations, as she called them, found a new generation of admirers. A full-fledged revival of her career ensued, with gallery shows and international exhibitions, including a joint retrospective at the Deichtorhallen museum in Hamburg with her husband and a series of monographs devoted to her photography.

A one-woman show at the Hamiltons Gallery in London, organized by Mr. Harrison in 1993, was followed by exhibitions at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris and an assignment from The New York Times Magazine to cover the haute couture collections in Paris in 1996. She completed her last fashion assignment for German Vogue in 2004.

Mr. Himmel died in 2009, having abandoned photography in his late 50s to become a psychiatric caregiver in the city’s hospitals and later a psychotherapist in private practice. Besides her son, the editor in chief of Abrams Books, she is survived by a daughter, Liza Himmel, known as Lizzie; two grandchildren; and a step-grandchild.

Ms. Bassman’s work has been published in “Lillian Bassman” (1997) and “Lillian Bassman: Women” (2009). A new book, “Lillian Bassman: Lingerie,” is to be published by on April 1.

(see original article here)

Millions of Americans oppose SOPA and PIPA because these bills would censor the Internet and slow economic growth in the U.S.

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA. The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel.

Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

Michael Kors brought some glamour — and a big initial public offering — to the New York Stock Exchange Thursday morning.

A Michael Kors billboard was draped across the Corinthian columns on the exchange building’s facade.

Outside, Mr. Kors and his mother, Joan Kors, posed for pictures, both sporting December tans, trendy sunglasses and huge smiles. And inside, at 9:30 a.m., high above the trading floor, Mr. Kors rang the opening bell, high-fiving and hugging his chief executive, John Idol, and two backers and fashion tycoons, Lawrence S. Stroll and Silas K. F. Chou.

Mr. Kors, the American fashion designer, had good reason to celebrate. In the face of a tepid stock market, his company had a successful initial public offering. Its shares opened at $25, up 25 percent from their $20 offering price, and closed at $24.20. The I.P.O. raised $944 million.

All of the I.P.O. proceeds went to Mr. Kors and other selling shareholders. The company itself did not raise any money in the offering.

Mr. Kors, 52, perhaps best known for his role as a judge on the fashion reality show “Project Runway,” sold about $117 million worth of stock on the deal, and maintains an 8.6 percent stake that is worth some $400 million.

The biggest winners are Mr. Stroll and Mr. Chou, who cashed in about $520 million worth of their holding company’s shares and still own about 35 percent of the business, a position worth about $1.7 billion.

At its current stock price, Kors, the business, is worth about $4.6 billion.

The company, which was founded in 1981 and is based in Hong Kong, is one of the world’s fastest-growing retailers. Its profits nearly doubled in its most recent fiscal year, which ended April 2, over the previous one, and its sales increased by about 60 percent.

Though Mr. Kors continues to design his signature couture collection, most of the company’s growth has come from an “affordable luxury” line that sells less expensive purses and clothes at department stores like Dillard’s and Macy’s.

Industry analysts have questioned whether Kors can continue to expand without weakening its brand. In that regard, Kors hopes to replicate how the designer Ralph Lauren has brought his designs down market without tarnishing his label’s prestige.

Though Internet businesses like Groupon and Zynga have been the primary focus of the I.P.O. market in the last year, several high-profile apparel companies have also sold shares to the public. The Kors offering follows stock sales over the summer by the European fashion houses Prada and Salvatore Ferragamo.

(view original source)

“In my opinion, we’re going to look back at this and question why we didn’t do this earlier,” Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said to her fellow council members.

Throne-Holst was speaking at a town board work session last Friday, December 9 in reference to a proposed ban on single-use plastic bags throughout the town of Southampton.

“I think the entire world is moving in this direction,” added Throne-Holst, a stanch proponent of the measure.

The proposal to ban plastic bags in the town of Southampton comes nearly six months after the first work session was held on the matter. In that time, the town’s sustainability committee chairman Tip Brolin sought more information from the town’s business community and consumers, specifically addressing concerns many businesses initially expressed regarding the high price of replacing plastic with recyclable paper.

The town’s proposed plastic ban initially would effectively ban single-use plastic bags less than two mils thick, and less than 28 inches by 36 inches in size. Smaller plastic bags — like those used to hold fish and produce — would not be affected by the ban.

The legislation also originally included provisions that would have allowed stores to carry paper bags made of 40 percent recyclable materials, a stipulation that essentially mirrors similar legislation already enacted in Westport, Conn. (Most grocery stores use paper bags that are made of 30 percent recyclable materials.)

“I do generally agree with the fact that we need to get greener,” said Debbie Longnecker of Cromer’s Market on Noyac Road.

However, she expressed some concern with the added price tag associated with purchasing reusable bags and paper bags.

At one point, she explained, “We gave reusable bags away. However, not everyone brings them back.”

She said the store’s winter clientele is more inclined to get into the habit of consistently bringing reusable bags when they shop. But she said it’s a different story with the summer people who are in the area for a short period of time and less inclined to bring their own bags when they shop.

“I think a lot more planning has to be done before [this law is enacted],” she added. “There needs to be a cost-effective alternative before you say to people: You can’t do this anymore.”

Partially quelling Longnecker’s concern, Brolin explained last week that the proposed legislation will in fact allow stores to use the less expensive paper bags made of 30 percent recyclable materials. Plus, he added that follow-up surveys with nearly 1,700 shoppers in Westport, Conn. revealed that 53 percent were consistently using reusable bags after the plastic ban went into effect. Brolin compared this number to the nearby Norwalk/Wilton area — which has not implemented a plastic bag ban — where the number is closer to 10 percent.

Should Southampton Town decide to implement legislation that bans single-use plastic bags, it would follow in the footsteps of both Southampton Village, which banned plastic last spring, and East Hampton Village, which adopted similar legislation last month. The legislation proposed for the town would essentially be the same as that adopted in the Village of Southampton, except that paper bags would only have to be made with 30 percent recyclable materials as opposed to 40 percent.

Before adopting the legislation, Brolin reported that the town initially discussed promoting the use of reusable shopping bags by educating the community on the harms of single-use plastic bags — the fact that most of the bags are not recycled and are piling up in landfills and littering the oceans, thereby potentially harming at least 260 different sea species. However, Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said that after a lackluster response from the business community, she feels the best tactic at this point is to adopt the legislation and spend six months before the policy is enacted making residents aware of this change.

According to Liz Plouff, the town’s sustainability coordinator, education will come in the way of press releases and conferences, as well as a partnership with SeaTV, the town government television channel. In addition, Plouff has suggested the town hand-out reusable bags to town residents at no charge. She said the town could finance this measure by getting local stores and businesses to pay a small fee in exchange for getting their logos printed on the bags.

The town board will hold its first official public hearing on the proposed plastic bag legislation on Thursday, December 22.

(by Claire Walla – The Sag Harbor Express)

The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology presents Impact: Fifty Years of the CFDA, the first museum exhibition to celebrate the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the leading fashion trade organization in the United States. Approximately 100 garments and accessories designed by the CFDA’s most impactful creators of the last 50 years will be on view from February 10 through April 20, 2012.

Also included in the exhibition will be visual images and acknowledgement of the nearly 600 designers who have been members over the last five decades. Each living designer selected to participate in the exhibition will select a single object or ensemble that best represents his or her impact on the fashion world. Work by historical CFDA members will be selected by exhibition curators Patricia Mears, deputy director of The Museum at FIT, and Fred Dennis, the museum’s senior curator. Impact: Fifty Years of the CFDA is a collaborative partnership between The Museum at FIT and the CFDA.

Conceived by CFDA President Diane von Furstenberg, Impact will be an ode to the illustrious designs of the CFDA’s many members and will mark the organization’s 50th anniversary in 2012.

Among the designers included in the exhibition will be Halston, Norman Norell, Pauline Trigère, Geoffrey Beene, Bill Blass, Rudi Gernreich, Bob Mackie, James Galanos, Diane von Furstenberg, Oscar de la Renta, Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Tom Ford, Michael Kors, Isabel Toledo, Rodarte, and Proenza Schouler. The exhibition will be organized thematically to illuminate the broad spectrum of American creativity, from functional sportswear to couture-quality evening wear.

Founded in 1962 by publicist Eleanor Lambert and 50 of America’s leading fashion designers, the CFDA’s primary mandate was the recognition and promotion of fashion design talent based in the United States. Over the next five decades, as CFDA membership swelled to more than 400, its professional and philanthropic activities, outreach, and influence expanded exponentially. Today, in an era dominated by the designer label, it is perhaps difficult to comprehend how seminal a role the CFDA played in creating the platform for the recognition of individual creative talents in New York City, the nexus of global fashion.

“American designers have always had impact on how people dress,” said von Furstenberg. “In honor of that creativity and in celebration of the CFDA’s 50th anniversary, we are proud to present, in partnership with The Museum at FIT, an exhibit that represents the tremendous work of our members for the last five decades. ‘Impact’ was the one word that came to mind immediately—it is so strong and defining of our individual and collective influence that we knew right away that our exhibit would be called Impact: 50 Years of the CFDA.”

“The Museum at FIT is extremely pleased to be collaborating with Diane von Furstenberg and the CFDA on the exhibition Impact,” said Valerie Steele, museum director. “Exhibition curator Patricia Mears is an authority on American fashion both past and present, and I’m sure our visitors will love to see which creations today’s designers have selected.”

A publication also entitled Impact, produced by the CFDA and published by Abrams, will be the visually rich companion book to the exhibition. With more than 500 photographs, the book will document the evolution of the CFDA, from its birth in 1962, its early promotional efforts, and its strong ties to the arts, to the growth of its educational programs, its support of worthy causes, its own awards ceremony, its stewardship of fashion week, and its support of designers. Contributors include Diane von Furstenberg; Cathy Horyn, fashion journalist for the New York Times; and Patricia Mears.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America, Inc, (CFDA) is a not-for-profit trade association founded in 1962 that leads industry-wide initiatives and whose membership consists of more than 400 of America’s foremost women’s wear, menswear, jewelry, and accessory designers.

The Museum at FIT is the only museum in New York City dedicated solely to the art of fashion. Best known for its innovative and award-winning exhibitions, which the New York Times has described as “ravishing,” the museum has a collection of more than 50,000 garments and accessories dating from the 18th century to the present.

The museum is part of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), a college of art and design, business and technology that educates more than 10,000 students annually. FIT is a college of the State University of New York (SUNY) and offers more than 46 majors leading to the AAS, BFA, BS, MA, MFA, and MPS degrees. Visit www.fitnyc.edu.

The Couture Council is a membership group of fashion enthusiasts that helps support the exhibitions and programs of The Museum at FIT. The Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion is given to a selected designer at a benefit luncheon held every September.

The color of 2012 is a citrus-red hue that will give your weary eyes a break from all of those neutrals. Tangerine Tango, Pantone’s 2012 color of the year, was selected because, “there’s the element of encouragement with orange, it’s building on the ideas of courage and action, that we want to move on to better things. I think it would be a disservice to go with a relaxed, soothing color now,” Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, told the Associated Press.

The Pantone color of the year — which, last year, was a bright pink shade called Honeysuckle — is an annual influence on fashion and design. Tangerine Tango has already begun to pop up in fashion and cosmetics, with a strong showing in New York’s fashion week this fall. The bright orange is not an especially tricky color to wear, but it’s also not universally flattering — especially when it comes to cosmetics. Can you picture Tangerine Tango-hued eyeshadow? Pantone can.

By Maura Judkis

When world-renowned fashion designer Donna Karan’s husband, Stephan Weiss, was dying of lung cancer in 2001, she was distressed that there was no place in the New York hospital that offered yoga and other meditative therapies to ease his suffering. The experience galvanized her into action.

“Much was missing from Stephan’s care,” Karan said. “He needed the knowledge of traditional Western medicine. But he also needed healing that can only be accessed from the heart and through the spirit. Out of my frustrations with the treatment at even the best medical facilities, a commitment was born. I am determined to do what I can to create a new model for wellness and patient care in hospitals and to address the needs of patients’ loved ones and the staff who are on the journey with them.”

Karan took a combination of Eastern healing techniques that she found effective and developed them into an actual program that has expanded to hospitals across the country. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, part of the UCLA Health System, is the first hospital on the West Coast to adopt the program.

In partnership with Karan’s Urban Zen Foundation, the UCLA Health System will be offering a unique Eastern healing program designed to enhance the care of patients. The program will include:

• Training of doctors, nurses and other hospital staff members in holistic practices to encourage optimal healing.
• Introduction of Eastern healing modalities to patients, including yoga therapy (breath awareness, in-bed movement and guided meditation); Reiki (a Japanese vibrational energy therapy facilitated by light touch, on or slightly off the body, that balances the human biofield); essential oil therapy; nutrition; and contemplative care.

“UCLA Health System has a long tradition of integrating holistic health care techniques with traditional medical care,” said Dr. David Feinberg, president of the UCLA Health System, CEO of the UCLA Hospital System and associate vice chancellor for health sciences. “We are grateful to Ms. Karan for bringing her vision of holistic healing to our patients at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. It fits in perfectly with our mission of treating the whole patient rather than just a particular illness. We feel fortunate to partner with Donna on her vision of combining the very best in Western medicine with Eastern healing therapy techniques that enhance the patient’s health and well-being.”

“While traditional science has made miraculous strides in controlling and eradicating disease,” Karan said, “the key recuperative role played by promoting the emotional and spiritual well-being of the patient, along with the medical professionals and loved ones who care for them, has often been neglected. The objective of the Urban Zen Integrative Therapy program is to train and then to provide integrative therapists in hospitals, outpatient care, support groups and private practices who can blend the best of Eastern and Western healing techniques.”

The UCLA Center for East-West Medicine currently offers traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture, acupressure and herbal medicine, on an outpatient basis. UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center teaches the practice of mindfulness — the moment-by-moment process of actively and openly observing one’s physical, mental and emotional experiences.

The Urban Zen Integrative Therapy Program at the UCLA Health System is designed to take these advances to the next level.

“During this curriculum, medical professionals from the UCLA Health System will be trained in five modalities of treatment: yoga therapy, Reiki, essential oil therapy, nutrition and contemplative care,” said Gillian Cilibrasi, Urban Zen’s program director. “Each modality is introduced separately, and then students are taught how to integrate the modalities to address whatever symptoms the patient or client is experiencing, such as pain, anxiety, nausea, insomnia, constipation and exhaustion. Once integration has been learned, students begin their practical experience during their clinical rotation hours, working with patients, loved ones and caregivers.”

“This program of ‘integrative medicine’ addresses issues such as pain control, nausea, relaxation and sleep,” said Ellen Wilson, director of therapy services at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. “There is essentially a menu of approaches, including yoga, aromatherapy, Reiki and meditation. The concept is that existing employees are trained in the techniques by the Urban Zen facilitators and then can provide these services to patients upon request or if recommended by the patients’ caregivers.”

Training for the first group of 30 professionals at UCLA, including doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers and other care providers, began in September, Wilson said, and the program will be ready to provide these services to patients this December.

“UCLA will then train new teams of 50 employees at a time, with the goal of eventually having trained 250 to 300 personnel available throughout the health system in both inpatient and outpatient areas,” Wilson said.

“Cancer patients are likely to be the first group to receive these holistic healing offerings at UCLA,” Feinberg said. “With more than 1.5 million Americans diagnosed with cancer annually, there are many people and families who could benefit from an approach that involves treating the whole patient and his or her loved ones — and not just the disease.”

The UCLA Health System has committed to supporting Urban Zen at UCLA but also seeks philanthropic donations to augment the program’s reach.

“Such additional support will expedite UCLA’s ability to expand the program to hospitalized patients at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA and Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital,” Feinberg said.

For more information, visit www.rehab.ucla.edu.

The Urban Zen Foundation, founded in 2007 by fashion designer and humanitarian Donna Karan, seeks to raise awareness and inspire change in three initiatives: preservation of culture; empowering children in mind, body and spirit; and integrating Eastern healing techniques with Western medicine. Urban Zen designs forums, partners with and provides funding for like-minded organizations, and brings together experts to define solutions, implement action, and create programs and meaningful events to develop a community of like-minded people.

The UCLA Health System has for more than half a century provided the best in health care and the latest in medical technology to the people of Los Angeles and the world. Comprised of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA and the UCLA Medical Group, with its wide-reaching system of primary care and specialty care offices throughout the region, the UCLA Health System is among the most comprehensive and advanced health care systems in the world. For information about clinical programs or help in choosing a personal physician, call 800-UCLA-MD1 or visit www.uclahealth.org.