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Actors Stuart Townsend (L) and Charlize Theron attend the Rag & Bone Spring 2009 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Pier 94 on September 5, 2008 in New York City.  Are the runway lights really that bright or is this mass donning of sunglasses a celebrity distancing move?  Here are some other Fashion Week being too cool for school.

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Kelly Osbourne,  strikingly graphic as usual, waits patiently with her always behatted boyfriend Luke Worrall for the Patrik Rzepski Spring 2009 show at The Caledonia for New Yorks MBFW.  Below is Alice Burdeu from Australia’s Next Top Model getting finishing touches for her walk down the Patrik Rzepski runway.  She made it to MBFW NYC!

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Today marks the first day of New York’s Mercedes Benz Fashion Week.  Preparations for the Michael Angel runway show are underway and we get a peek at the models pre-styling.  With the popularity of shows such as Top Model, we are paying more attention to the lives of models, even those on the lower rungs.   Juergen Teller’s Go-sees and Kathy Lo’s Kathyisyourfriend.com have peaked interest glamour’s back door.  Various blogs and sites are dedicated to following model’s careers.  Alice Burdeu, winner of Australia’ Next Top Model is the first model to begin a successful editorial and runway career from the reality show franchise.  Will we see Alice on the catwalk in New York this week?  Stay tuned for backstage scenes from Bryant Park.

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Another cool styling execution swept runways at Japan’s fashion week for Spring/Summer 2009 collections. Everlasting Sprout, a line designed by Keiichi Muramatsu and Noriko Seki, showed silhouettes reminiscent of ballerinas, but in hooped crochet, over flimsy slips. Wabi-sabi was at play here: relaxed, over sized separates with baggy pockets in a bleached out palette had a resort meets hippie-mom quality.  white-grey wigs cloned the models and gave the collection a courtly look.  Earlier in the week, Mikio Sakabe’s collection used blond mop top wigs to unite models into an army of uniformity.  Have a look at the wigged out runway.

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Japanese designers distinguished themselves with a firm hand in Tokyo as Japan Fashion Week Spring 2009 begins at Laforet Museum Harajuku. The collection designed by Ritsuko Shirahama (top) plays with transparency and unstructured volume. The models were presented with a dollish, delicate take on a slightly trashy teenybop aesthetic: synthetic with fun bobbles and brights with a loose, improvised looking flair.  In contrast to Shirahama’s playful plastic parade, Fur Fur’s (bottom) inspiration was straight from the forest.  Unassuming neutrals, dusty florals, comfortable flats and slouchy shapes were organic and unpretentious.  Models looked like bohemian tumbleweed fairies under bouquets of dried flowers.  The masses of dry vegetation hid much of the collection, but the overall effect was enchanting.  Check out both collections here.

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Rodney Bingenheimer aka Mayor Of The Sunset Strip has kept the same basic aesthetic for over 40 years, pairing jackets with slim pants and never without a shaggy fringe. Those who carry a subcultural torch are usually the ones who invent and then adhere to a specific unique look. Bingenheimer has maintained a tweaked British Mod look from his days running English Disco until today. His adhesion to a strict style code tends to make him somewhat ageless. Do you think there should be a point at which subcultural dressing is no longer appropriate?  See Rodney shift his looks here.

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Fittingly, fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has maintained a strong expression of style through his life in the spotlight. The main elements to Lagerfeld’s look are comprised of a ponytail, shades, a jacket, trousers, pointed shoes, some form of tie and a decorative pin (though he has gone without one). He wears almost exclusively black and white, though he wore a silver jacket at the Met’s Costume Institute Gala. Lately he has been wearing gloves, either open fingered or closed. He is pictured here on the left in 2008 and on the right in 1984.

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Star Jones attended the Impact Film Festival and MySpace Impact DNC party this week wearing the same dress Victoria ‘Posh’ Beckham wore to the Marc Jacobs fashion show in September of 2007.  While Star Jones is hot to show off her tighter frame and perkier chest after undergoing gastric bypass surgery (2003) and a breast lift, I advise anyone thinking of wearing the same outfit as Victoria to forget it.  Even down to the shoes she got it right.   To avoid any future fashion faux Posh, all outfits debuted by Victoria should have a warning label that clearly states “Worn by Victoria Beckham.”

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Trends are overrated. Those who find a “look” and stick to it are few and far between. One who has picked an aesthetic as bold and uncompromising as 1960s model, Peggy Moffitt, for example, is most likely self-assured and committed. Self-imposed limitations on wardrobe or hairstyle can be liberating. It frees us up for other trains of thought. The style-stickers do run the risk becoming cartoons of themselves. Over the next few posts we will be focusing on people who have maintained a strong, unwavering sense of style throughout their life in the public eye.

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All of the girls who showed up to the premiere of The House Bunny in New York City on Monday looked cute, but Emma Stone was exceptionally so wearing a colorful marbleized satiny dress and electric blue patent leather heels. This vivid look has been around the block, but it still has the staying power of true eye candy. Stone’s punchy heels are in stark contrast to the neutral pair of Louboutin’s that Hayden Panettiere wore to the Whaleman Foundation Benefit last week. Though Panettiere’s Barbie flesh patent leather pumps elicited an attraction/repulsion response, my lasting impression is positive. Will extreme neutrality rein for next season?

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