Mad About Celebrity

Lee McQueen, the founder of fashion house Alexander McQueen, was found dead at his flat today, aged just 40 years old. Paramedics called to his home pronounced him dead at the scene. Police said his death was not being treated as suspicious.

A statement said his family were “devastated” at the “tragic news”, and said that they shared “a sense of shock and grief”.

A former British Designer of the Year winner, Mr McQueen started his career as an apprentice in Savile Row, where he learned how to make jackets at Gieves and Hawkes.

In 1996, the man nicknamed “the hooligan of English fashion”, with his close-cropped hair and Doc Martens, was named head designer at the Paris couture house of Givenchy.

He will be sadly missed by all who knew him and by many who didn’t. He was a huge talent and cited by some as a genius in the fashion world.
Source www.telegraph.co.uk

Lee McQueen

Fans of Strictly Come Dancing will have seen 13-year old soul sensation Dionne Bromfield singing her debut single Mama Said on the programme a couple of weeks ago.

Dionne, the god-daughter of singer Amy Winehouse, is a big fan of Yumi and can be seen wearing the Dolly Dress in her video of the single.

Other fans of Uttam and Yumi include Strictly judge Alesha Dixon, Fearne Cotton, Myleene Klass and Amanda Holden.

(Uttam Direct includes Uttam, Yumi, Yumi Girls, Jin-ja and Uttam Kids.)

To help you capture their celebrity style, Uttam have a great offer on this weekend. They are giving away a FREE Yumi bag with EVERY order.

You’ll need to hurry though as the offer closes at midnight on Sunday. Click on the link or banner on the right to visit the site and get your FREE bag with every order.

In case you missed it, X Factor finalist Lucie Jones was wearing the Motel Rocks Linda vertical rose blue dress on Saturday night, while getting singing tips from mentor Michael Buble. Funny, because I thought she might wear the Zoe dress (see my article on the right), but in actual fact I think this dress was a far better choice. Rachel was also wearing a Motel dress but you can’t see it so well in the pictures.

You can get Lucie and Rachel’s celebrity style and 10% off Motel using the discount code Autumn – just click here or on the Motel banner on the right.

Lucie Jones with Michael Buble

myshake dress design

Have you ever wanted to get that celebrity look but felt that everything on the racks is the same as everything else? Nothing is unique unless you spend a fortune?

Maybe this is the answer. www.styleshake.com is a site where you can design and wear your own fashion. Each item is based on a theme but you can mix and match your own neckline, sleeves, dress length, etc and there is even a made to measure service, really useful if you are say a 12 top and 14 bottom or vice versa. You can also add your own accessories like a corsege or a shawl or a matching tie belt (which you can position on the waist or hips or under the bust). There is a huge variety of fabrics and colours and of course the price varies accordingly.

Left is an example of one of the designs.

I particularly like the eco-jersey, an ever so soft and breathable fabric which is the latest development in textile engineering. Lyocell is made of plants cells and is eco friendly, stretchy yet durable, as it retains its shape and colour despite numerous washes. The site has a gallery of their favourite outfits. Average cost of a dress is around £45 depending on fabric. Eco-jersey may be as little as £34 while silk is nearer £60.

So why have I included these three things together in one post you may ask. Well, let me explain.

Story number one – Peter Andre, it appears, is getting over his loss/divorce by replacing sex with chocolate. His fans apparently, keep sending him shedloads of the stuff. He told OK! magazine: “I’ve replaced it, I’ve got my chocolate, which the fans keep on bringing me. I’m living on it!” The biggest surprize is that he still has so many fans.

Story number two – some viewers (who are you, please reveal yourselves – see the pun?) have been ‘outraged’ by the skimpy costumes being worn by the professional dancers on Strictly Come Dancing and even by some of the contestants.

So where am I going with this? Well, I hope that none of the professional dancers will get over their loss (ie being ousted from the competition) by replacing dance with chocolate or we’ll all be needing wide screen TV next year.

But for now I think they look gorgeous and maybe we are all just a little jealous. Though to be fair, us girlies have Ricky and Rav and James Jordan (always my favourite – doing THAT rumba with footballers’ wife Zoe), all flashing their chests.

And the funniest moment this week? Not Len as usual, but Tess asking Anton if he was going to wax his chest to which he mumbled a reply similar to ‘Not ruddy likely’ under his breath. Good on you Anton! Just stay off the chocolates though if you want to keep flashing.

What  a week at Strictly it’s been. Poor Alesha has been hammered in the press with calls for her to leave the judging panel. She’s been called useless and semi-literate and just there as decoration. Every now and then she laughs like a drain and says something silly – isn’t that why we loved her two years ago? – but most of the time she sounds as though she understands what it’s like to be a competitor. Personally I think she’s OK. She made some valid comments tonight. And if she learns to crack jokes like Len comb-over Goodman and say SEVEERRN, she should be fine.

Poor Jo on the other hand. I had great hopes for her, who like Lynda Bellingham, is a woman of my generation and a real Rock Chick to boot. She looks so good for her age – I apologise for the cliche – and has had to put up with wrinkly Ronnie going off with a Russian girl called Ekaterina, a slip of a thing young enough to be his grand-daughter and 13 years younger than his step-son. I just don’t understand what she sees in the millionaire Ronnie Wood (as Mrs Merton once said to Debbie McGee about her husband Paul Daniels). It’s obviously not his looks. Perhaps she found him attractive when his response to an argument was apparently: ‘F*** off home, you s***.’ Beautifully put Ronnie. Such class.

Anyway that’s not what I meant about hitting rock bottom (though Ronnie’s old rock bottom deserves a slap or two). No, poor Jo came bottom of the leader board on Strictly tonight after she and partner Brendan Cole’s tango was marked down as being sloppy and weak. Never mind, there’s still the Latin tomorow night and anyway her mum loved it.

As for who is going to go out tomorrow. I haven’t a clue. We’ll have to leave that to the great British public to decide, but whoever it is, it won’t be Alesha.

I love dogs, particularly Jack Russells and it appears I am not alone. Lots of celebrities regard a small dressed-up pooch as the latest must-have fashion accessory. Small dogs look better in clothes than big dogs – a pink tutu looks a bit odd on a Rottweiler – though my friend’s daughter bought one for her Staffie, though I have never seen her (the dog that is) wearing it.

Paris Hilton, it is rumoured, has 17 small dogs in her menagerie, while ex-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell is often seen accompanying Harry, who is a Shitzu I believe. Even sophisticated Demi Moore has been seen carrying her coat-wearing pooch around New York, maybe she is filming a new series of Pets and the City.

Not wishing to be outdone, songbird Mariah Carey takes her Jack Jack shopping in Beverly Hills. Jack is quite happy to be carried close to Mariah’s chest (what boy wouldn’t be), Gucci lead dangling from his no doubt Gucci collar.

But the most ridicluous must be Kelly Osbourne’s poor bulldog, not only having to suffer the ignominy of being dubbed Piglet, but having to sport a pink dress to go with its pink dyed fur. Let’s hope Piglet isn’t allowed to pee on the carpets of Mummy and Daddy’s house.

To be honest, I don’t really mind people dressing up their dogs, so long as the dogs are happy to let them do it. I’m quite partial to a Santa’s Little Helper Puchi Designer Petwear T-shirt or a pink diamond-studded collar, but my favourite was a ‘necklace’ made of velvet and pearls which I once saw in Accessorize. Unfortunately my dogs would probably have eaten it. They obviously have good taste.

Well are you? I have this theory that everyone is (just slightly) interested in the lives of celebrities. Of course they don’t necessarily admit it, but have you noticed that when you ask them about Katie and Peter’s divorce or Kerry Katona’s latest drug/alcohol/dieting binge, they always seem to know.

‘Not that I take any interest,’ they say nonchalantly, ‘but, well, you can’t really miss it can you?’

If you say so….

Anyway. One thing is for certain, celebrity and fashion are inextricably linked. The question is though – does celebrity drive fashion or do they just follow what’s on trend? How the heck should I know? But I bet I know what will be next.

It will be the eighties. But no it won’t be, as I predicted recently, a throwback to the Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran inspired New Romantics era following BBC2′s over-sexed, six-part series Desperate Romantics. A little tale of love and lust, long hair, long coats and lots of bare bosoms and bobbing bottoms and well you get the picture. Actually they got the pictures, after all they were the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Almost forgot that bit.

As I was saying before I got so easily distracted… it will be leotards and leg warmers all over again in the shape of the kids from Fame. The new film has arrived, at a cinema near you any day now.

But will the new cast members be as exciting as the first lot? I hope so. Back in the 1980s I was glued to every episode. I coveted those leg warmers. Eventually I gave in. I bought three pairs ( well four actually, but the last pair never arrived having sent off my cheque to a PO Box Number in the days before Martin Lewis appeared on GMTV to warn us against these things. He is my hero, my financial saviour, but not back then. I expect he was still at school).  Anyway, I still have them. They are all in the drawer, consigned to fashion heaven, lovingly wrapped in pink tissue paper – OK I lied about the tissue paper - waiting to be ressurected like the Phoenix rising from Dumbledore’s fire. My time has come. Fame at last. Oh yes.