Kevin Wiltz, Don Hood and Daniel Rohanna brought attitude of classic, glamour, flamboyant and masculine into the Falcon Crest Collection. My Falcon Crest collection, I created a classic look of brocade blazers with matching black pants, vest and the long turkey crest brooches and I brought along James Murray Jewrly lines along with the project. He lended me his gorgeous necklace to go with the designs.With the British Photographer Joseph Sinclair flew in from London to work with me and I had a big male model casting and choose three beautiful and amazing looking men with various background. Kevin Wiltz had no problem striking the flamboyant pose with a classic attitude. With his Ballet background, he brought sophiscation and style in front of Sinclair's lens....
The handsome striking young male model seen in numerous fashion magzine from Teen Vogue to GQ, he brought such striking feature into his poses and Jospeh Sinclair had no problem snapping photographs at the New York male model. The photoshoot was taken a the studio across from FIT, and it was an amazing shoot and yes, I brought Jewrel back as my makeup artist who I have worked with him for several projects.
Daniel Rohanna, tall, handsome and a gorgeous hockey player! Yes he is actually a big name hockey player for the hockey leagues. I met him on the street near Parsons, he caught my attention and I asked him and we spoke while having coffee and wanted him to bring the masculine looks into my Falcon Crest Collection....
And yes, I dedicated my designs to one of my favorite show from the 80's, the theme song was what I love and brought those and created those turkey crest and the florial into exclusive brooches into my very flamboyant Falcon Crest Collection!
Happy Birthday to you MADONNA! I have followed Madonna Music since High School in 1984...I fall for her and her Lucky Star, Holiday, Like A Virgin, Material Girl, Pappa Don't Preach, Like A Prayer, and most of all my all time favorite Madonna Music will be in 1990 when Rock star, Lenny Kravitz wrote the song and MADONNA made history! I live for her Vogue dance and the Old Hollywood video.......
Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the world's top-selling female recording artist of all time by the Guinness World Records. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second top-selling female artist in the United States, behind Barbra Streisand, with 64 million certified albums.
In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked Madonna at number two, behind only The Beatles, on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making her the most successful solo artist in the history of the Billboard chart. She was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same year. Considered to be one of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century" by Time for being an influential figure in contemporary music, Madonna is known for continuously reinventing both her music and image, and for retaining a standard of autonomy within the recording industry.
Madonna starred as "Breathless" Mahoney in the film Dick Tracy (1990), with Warren Beatty playing the title role To accompany the film, she released the soundtrack album I'm Breathless, which included songs inspired by the film's 1930s setting. It also featured the U.S. number one hit, "Vogue", and "Sooner or Later", which earned songwriter Stephen Sondheim an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1991
Rolling Stone called it an "elaborately choreographed, sexually provocative extravaganza" and proclaimed it "the best tour of 1990" The tour was met with strong reaction from religious groups for her performance of "Like a Virgin", during which two male dancers caressed her body before she simulated masturbation.
The Immaculate Collection, Madonna's first greatest-hits compilation album, was released in November 1990. It included two new songs, "Justify My Love" and "Rescue Me". The album was certified diamond by RIAA and sold over 30 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling compilation album by a solo artist in history. "Justify My Love" reached number one in the U.S. and top ten worldwide. Its music video featured scenes of sadomasochism, bondage, same-sex kissing and brief nudity. The second single, "Rescue Me", became the highest-debuting single by a female artist in Hot 100 chart history at that time, entering at number 15 and peaking at number nine.
late 1990 to early 1991, Madonna dated Tony Ward, a model and pornography performer who appeared in her music videos for "Cherish" and "Justify My Love". She also had an eight-month relationship with rapper Vanilla Ice. Her first documentary film Truth or Dare (known as In Bed with Madonna outside North America) was released in mid-1991. The documentary chronicled her Blond Ambition World Tour and provided glimpses into her personal life.
Madonna's portrayal of Eva Perón in the film Evita garnered her critical acclaim. In 1992, Madonna had a role in A League of Their Own as Mae Mordabito, a baseball player on an all-women's team. She recorded the film's theme song, "This Used to Be My Playground", which became a Hot 100 number one hit.
The first release from the venture was Madonna's book, entitled Sex. It consisted of sexually provocative and explicit images, photographed by Steven Meisel.
The book caused strong negative reaction from the media and the general public, but sold 1.5 million copies at $50 each in a matter of days At the same time she released her fifth studio album, Erotica, which debuted at number two on the Billboard 200.
Its title track peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100.
"This is the role I was born to play. I put everything of me into this because it was much more than a role in a movie. It was exhilarating and intimidating at the same time. And it was the farthest I've ever had to push myself creatively. At every level, I had a great education. And I am prouder of Evita than anything else I have done."
—Madonna talking about Evita and her role as Eva Perón.The following year saw the release of Evita in which she played the title role of Eva Perón. For a long time, Madonna had desired to play Perón and even wrote to director Alan Parker, explaining how she would be perfect for the part. After securing it, she underwent vocal training and learned about the history of Argentina and Perón. During shooting she fell sick many times, commenting that "The intensity of the scenes we have been shooting and the amount of emotional work and concentration needed to get through the day are so mentally and physically exhausting that I'm sure I will need to be institutionalized when its over."
Evita was a period drama and almost 6,000 costumes were needed for the scenes. Madonna herself wore 370 different costumes, earning her a Guinness World Record for the most costume changes in a film.After its release, the film garnered critical appreciation. Zach Conner from Time magazine commented "It's a relief to say that Evita is pretty damn fine, well cast and handsomely visualized. Madonna once again confounds our expectations. She plays Evita with a poignant weariness and has more than just a bit of star quality.
Madonna won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for the role.She released three singles from the Evita soundtrack album including "You Must Love Me" (which won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1997) and "Don't Cry for Me Argentina ".
Madonna's music has been the subject of much analysis and scrutiny of critics. Robert M. Grant, author of Contemporary Strategy Analysis (2005), commented that what has brought Madonna success is "certainly not outstanding natural talent. As a vocalist, musician, dancer, songwriter, or actress, Madonna's talents seem modest."He asserts Madonna's success is in relying on the talents of others, and that her personal relationships have served as cornerstones to the numerous reinventions in the longevity of her career. Madonna's approach was far from the music industry wisdom of "Find a winning formula and stick to it." Her musical career has been a continuous experimentation with new musical ideas and and new images and a constant quest for new heights of fame and acclaim. Grant concluded that "having established herself as the queen of popular music, Madonna did not stop there, but continued re-inventing."
Conversely, Rolling Stone has named Madonna "an exemplary songwriter with a gift for hooks and indelible lyrics, and a better studio singer than her live spectacles attest." Mark Bego, author of Madonna: Blonde Ambition, called her "the perfect vocalist for lighter-than-air songs", despite not being a "heavyweight talent." Madonna has always been self-conscious about her voice, especially in comparison to her vocal idols such as Ella Fitzgerald, Prince and Chaka Khan.
Throughout her career, Madonna has written and co-written most of her own materials, as well as songs of other artists such as Nick Kamen's "Each Time You Break My Heart" and Gary Barlow's "Love Won't Wait." According to Freya Jarman-Ivens, Madonna's talent for developing "incredible" hooks for her songs allows the lyrics to capture the attention of the audience, even without the influence of the music. As an example, Jarman-Ivens cites the 1985 single "Into the Groove" and its line "Live out your fantasy here with me, just let the music set you free; Touch my body, and move in time, now I know you're mine." From 1983 to 1986, Madonna's musical productions were often girlish and naïve in nature, focusing primarily on love, romance, passion and boy-meets-girl relationships.
This changed with the album Like a Prayer, when the lyrics became much more personal, such as in "Promise to Try", which references Madonna's lingering pain at the loss of her mother. Madonna's lyrics often suggest an identification with the gay community. Fouz believes that when Madonna sings "Come on girls, do you believe in love?" in "Express Yourself", she is addressing both the gay audience and the heterosexual female.
Even in the Erotica era, with its often adult-oriented lyrics, the songs appear free-flowing and gullible ("So won't you go down, where it's warm inside" — "Where Life Begins" from Erotica). Madonna's songwriting ability has been criticized, with Rolling Stone's Maria Raha calling her lyrics "flighty and not sophisticated. Madonna can only bring a trunk full of trite lyrics on the long standing tradition of pop music, love; when she wasn't singing about love, she was singing about partying and dancing." Her lyrics were considered banal, and her songwriting capability was largely ignored by critics until the release of Ray of Light and Music. According to Jarman-Ivens, lyrics such as "You're frozen, when your heart's not open" ("Frozen", 1998) and "I can't remember, when I was young, I can't express if it was wrong" ("Paradise (Not for Me)", 2000) reflected an artistic palette, "encompassing diverse musical, textual and visual styles in its lyrics."
Marilyn Monroe had a profound influence on Madonna.According to Taraborrelli, "Almost certainly, the defining moment of Madonna's childhood—the one that would have the most influence in shaping her into the woman she would become—was the tragic and untimely death of her beloved mother." Psychiatrist Keith Ablow suggests that her mother's death would have had an immeasurable impact on the young Madonna at a time when her personality was still forming.
the death of her mother: "It's not so much grief at her mother's death that drives her, as the sense of abandonment that left her unprotected. She encountered her own worst possible scenario, becoming a victim of male violence, and thereafter turned that full-tilt into her work, reversing the equation at every opportunity."
During her childhood, Madonna was inspired by actors, later saying, "I loved Carole Lombard and Judy Holliday and Marilyn Monroe. They were all incredibly funny ... and I saw myself in them ... my girlishness, my knowingness and my innocence>"Her "Material Girl" music video recreated Monroe's look in the song "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She studied the screwball comedies of the 1930s, particularly those of Lombard, in preparation for the film Who's That Girl. The video for "Express Yourself" .... was inspired by Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis (1927). The video for "Vogue" recreated the style of Hollywood glamour photographs, in particular those by Horst P. Horst, and imitated the poses of Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard and Rita Hayworth, while the lyrics referred to many of the stars who had inspired her, including Bette Davis, described by Madonna as an idol.Influences also came to her from the art world, most notably through the works of artist Frida Kahlo.
Madonna performing at her Sticky & Sweet Tour, the highest-grossing tour of all time by a solo artist Madonna has achieved multiple Guinness World Records, including world's top-selling female recording artist and the most successful female recording artist of all time.On March 10, 2008, Madonna was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in her first year of eligibility.[171] Billboard magazine ranked her as the most successful solo artist (second overall, behind only The Beatles) on the "Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists." Madonna has also scored many hits on major international charts, including 13 number one singles in the United Kingdom, 11 in Australia, and 23 in Canada—more than any other female artist.[. Madonna is featured in the book 100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century, published by Ladies' Home Journal in 1998.In July 2003, she ranked seventh on VH1 and People magazine's list of the "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons of All Time. She also placed as the number one artist on VH1's "50 Greatest Women of the Video Era."
Don Shewey from Rolling Stone wrote that "Madonna is the most media-savvy American pop star since Bob Dylan and, until she toned down her press-baiting behavior in the nineties, she was the most consistently controversial one since Elvis Presley." According to him, her self-celebrating dance music and outré videos provided feminism with a makeover. Throughout the eighties Madonna broke down sexual boundaries, making eroticism a crucial pop-song element, and challenging social and religious mores. Shewey fel that one fact was rarely disputed: "At nearly every turn, Madonna has maintained firm control over her career and image."
PARIS (AP) — Coco Chanel: A fashion icon whose name has become shorthand for timeless French chic, a shrewd businesswoman who overcame a childhood of poverty to build a luxury supernova and ...
a Nazi spy?
A new book by a Paris-based American historian suggests Chanel not only had a wartime affair with a German aristocrat and spy, but that she herself was also an agent of Germany's Abwehr military intelligence organization and a rabid anti-Semite. Doubts about Chanel's loyalties during World War II have long festered, but "Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War" goes well beyond those previous allegations, citing as evidence documents culled from archives around the world. The book, published in the U.S. on Tuesday by Knopf, has ruffled feathers in France, where the luxury industry is a pillar of the economy and Chanel is widely regarded as the crowning jewel. The House of Chanel was quick to react, saying in a statement that "more than 57 books have been written about Gabrielle Chanel. ... We would encourage you to consult some of the more serious ones." Hal Vaughan, an 84-year-old World War II veteran and longtime journalist who previously wrote two other history books, insists that he is serious. "Sleeping with the Enemy" is the fruit of more than four years of intense labor born out of an accidental find in France's national police archive, he said.
"I was looking for something else and I come across this document saying 'Chanel is a Nazi agent, her number is blah, blah, blah and her pseudonym is Westminster,'" Vaughan told The Associated Press. "I look at this again and I say, 'What the hell is this?' I couldn't believe my eyes! "Then I really started hunting through all of the archives, in the United States, in London, in Berlin and in Rome and I come across not one, but 20, 30, 40 absolutely solid archival materials on Chanel and her lover, Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage, who was a professional Abwehr spy," Vaughan said.
Born in 1883 in a hospice for the poor in France's western Pays de la Loire region, Gabrielle Chanel had remade herself into the famed couturiere and proudly independent Coco Chanel by the outbreak of World War II. During the conflict, she holed up with von Dincklage — a dashing German officer 12 years her junior who was one in her long string of lovers — in Paris' Ritz Hotel, which was then under Nazi control. The book alleges that in 1940, Chanel was recruited into the Abwehr — her nom de guerre borrowed from another of her lovers, the Duke of Westminster. A year later, she traveled to Spain on a spy mission — on condition that the Nazis release her nephew from a military internment camp — and later went to Berlin on the orders of a top SS general, the book says.
It also suggests that Chanel's alleged anti-Semitism pushed her to try to capitalize on laws allowing for the expropriation of Jewish property to wrest control of the Chanel perfume lines from the Wertheimer brothers, a Jewish family who'd helped make her Chanel No. 5 a worldwide best-seller. The Chanel statement refuted the claim, although it added that company officials have yet to read the book and had only seen media excerpts. "She would hardly have formed a relationship with the family" — which currently owns the entire Chanel brand empire — "or counted Jewish people among her close friends and professional partners," it says. A US-based organization of Holocaust survivors said it was "shocked" by the book's allegations and called on Chanel to launch an independent investigation into the book's claims. "The documents on Ms. Chanel's past are too serious and historically important to be cavalierly dismissed by the fashion house without any effort to confirm their veracity through objective research," said Elan Steinberg, vice-president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants. After the war, Chanel was arrested and released hours later, saved by "the intervention of her old friend Winston Churchill," the press release for the book said. She fled to Switzerland. Asked why the book, which is chock-a-block with allegations of Chanel's shady dealings before, during and after the war, had turned up so much more dirt than the scores of previous biographies about the fashion icon, Vaughan had two explanations. Firstly, many of the documents he cited had only recently been declassified.
Secondly, he said, many people have a vested interest in protecting Chanel's aura of unsullied chic. "A lot of people in this world don't want the iconic figure of Gabrielle Coco Chanel, one of France's great cultural idols, destroyed," said Vaughan. "This is definitely something that a lot of people would have preferred to put aside, to forget, to just go on selling Chanel scarves and jewelry."
Despite the doubts that have long lingered over Chanel's wartime doings, the multi-billion-dollar fashion brand that bears her name has sought to spotlight its founder. For the set of its last runway show — the fall-winter 2011 haute couture collection in July — the brand recreated a life-sized version of Paris' tony Place Vendome, swapping the towering Napoleon statue for a sculpture of Coco Chanel in her iconic tweeds. Asked whether he thought "Sleeping with the Enemy" would tarnish the brand's reputation or adversely affect sales, Vaughan snickered.
"There's an expression in French, which translates as 'the dogs bark and the caravans pass,' and that's exactly what's going to happen here with this book," he predicted. Karl Lagerfeld — the brand's current designer whose ponytailed silhouette is almost as iconic as Chanel herself — "is not going to let this thing drift off anywhere, and Chanel will be a name for the next, I don't know, hundred years."
I love watching the Italian version of America's Dancing with The Stars.
In Italy the show is calls, Strictly Come Dancing...Samatha Togni, Italian super star have performed in numerous Italian productions and her with Raz Degan is amazingly magic! I love this Italian song of Tango and love that Italian dancer Samanta Togni. Raz DeRaz Degan (born 25 August 1968). is an Israeli male model, and actor of the cinema, television, and theatre, who resides in Italy.
In 2009, he co-starred in Barbarossa, an Italian film based on the life of Frederick I Barbarossa. In 2004 he played the role of Darius III in Oliver Stone's film Alexander. He has starred in many Italian television commercials, and beginning in April 2010 hosted the weekly television programme Mistero broadcast by Mediaset's Italia 1.
Samanta Togni perform during the final of ''Strictly Come Dancing'' (Ballando con le stelle) tv show on in Rome, Italy. Italian Superstar who have performed numerous Italian production danced with Raz Degan is amazingly magic..I noticed that DOLCE & GABBANA always inspirated Italian and Tango, and Italian street life into their collection.! Enjoy the fabulous Tango number!
