Godly

(Ditto, kid.)

Gothy

Black doesn't seem like a very spring-like color. Yet the Spring 2010 runways didn't seem to care.

Black lacquered lips stole the show at the Jason Wu, Rodarte and Dennis Basso collections, among several other shows.

(I think I want to try this. Thoughts?)

Black/Green (Done Right)

You Said It, Not Me

“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal:


“PowerPoint makes us stupid.” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander

No (More) Excuses

Strides, Often Painful, but Always, Always Forward



Hicksville, N.Y.

Amy Palmiero-Winters has an arsenal of left legs — one for getting around, one for flip-flops, one for cycling, one very attractive leg with a four-inch high heel for going out and three for running prodigious distances.

She runs so far, so long, that she is excelling in world endurance races, earning her the Sullivan Award on April 14 as the outstanding amateur athlete in the United States. (Wilma Rudolph, Greg Louganis, Bill Bradley and Michelle Kwan are a few previous winners of this big-deal award.)

All of that is amazing for a woman who was wiped out on her motorcycle by an automobile driver blasting out of a stop sign. But there’s another amazing thing about Palmiero-Winters: she ran a marathon as a farewell tribute to her original left leg, while it was still attached to her.

(Time to get back into shape.)

Good Eats

In conjunction with the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Ben & Jerry's unveiled their newest ice cream flavor last night: "Bonnaroo Buzz."

Reminiscent of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, Bonnaroo Buzz's flavor is billed as, "Light coffee & malt ice cream with whiskey caramel swirls & english toffee pieces."

The flavor will be available at the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tennessee, this June 10-13, and in Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shops across the country. Per Ben & Jerry's usual procedure, it will not be available in pints for now, the production of which will be dictated by consumer demand (so eat up).

Happy Birthday, LB

"Live as long as you may. The first twenty years are the longest half of your life."
- Robert Southey

Get Your Nails Did

Top, a Shellac manicure after 12 days.


MANICURES aren’t known for being everlasting. They chip. They smudge. Sometimes a nail is ruined even before you get home from the salon.

Shellac, a soak-off hybrid between a gel and polish that will make its debut on May 1 in 2,000 salons nationwide.

Soak-off gels look like polish but last much longer, in part because they are cured onto the nail with an ultraviolet lamp. The gel must be applied and removed by a professional, and the procedures cost more than the standard ones.

A manicurist paints on a base coat, two color coats and top coat, just as she would with regular nail lacquer. But after each coat, the soak-off gel is cured briefly under an ultraviolet light box, so the client leaves with impeccably dry nails. Goodbye to flip-flops in the snow postpedicure.

Removal takes longer, though, and may be tricky to do at home. Pads moist with acetone or a specially made remover are placed on the fingernail or toenail and worn for 10 to 25 minutes, depending on the brand. Shellac uses wraparound sleeves, which its manufacturer says trap heat so the gel is easily loosened. Sometimes, a manicurist has to scrape off crumbs of gel.

A predecessor product, hard gels, took too long to remove and involved filing, which damaged nails. But soak-off gels, now available in about half the country’s nail salons, are considered an improvement. “This year has been a huge boom in these soak-off gels,” said Hannah Lee, the editor of Nails magazine, an industry publication. “Everyone is coming out with them.”

The downside may be the cost. A Bella Forma manicure costs $30 to $100. Shellac will retail for 50 percent more than a basic manicure. I paid $40 to have an eggplant hue applied and $30 for it to be removed and replaced by a regular manicure. Shellac’s removal entailed wearing acetone-soaked sleeves — which took 10 minutes, as advertised — and notably little sprucing up.

Orange

(Done Right)


(Gone Wrong)

(Not bad, but too Halloween-y.)

Eat Less, Stand More

Weighing the Evidence on Exercise


How exercise affects body weight is one of the more intriguing and vexing issues in physiology. Exercise burns calories, no one doubts that, and so it should, in theory, produce weight loss, a fact that has prompted countless people to undertake exercise programs to shed pounds. Without significantly changing their diets, few succeed. “Anecdotally, all of us have been cornered by people claiming to have spent hours each week walking, running, stair-stepping, etc., and are displeased with the results on the scale or in the mirror,” wrote Barry Braun, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in the American College of Sports Medicine’s February newsletter.

But a growing body of science suggests that exercise does have an important role in weight loss. That role, however, is different from what many people expect and probably wish. The newest science suggests that exercise alone will not make you thin, but it may determine whether you stay thin, if you can achieve that state. Until recently, the bodily mechanisms involved were mysterious. But scientists are slowly teasing out exercise’s impact on metabolism, appetite and body composition, though the consequences of exercise can vary. Women’s bodies, for instance, seem to react differently than men’s bodies to the metabolic effects of exercise. None of which is a reason to abandon exercise as a weight-loss tool. You just have to understand what exercise can and cannot do.

“In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss,” says Eric Ravussin, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and an expert on weight loss. It’s especially useless because people often end up consuming more calories when they exercise. The mathematics of weight loss is, in fact, quite simple, involving only subtraction. “Take in fewer calories than you burn, put yourself in negative energy balance, lose weight,” says Braun, who has been studying exercise and weight loss for years. The deficit in calories can result from cutting back your food intake or from increasing your energy output — the amount of exercise you complete — or both.

In a completed but unpublished study conducted in his energy-metabolism lab, Braun and his colleagues had a group of volunteers spend an entire day sitting. If they needed to visit the bathroom or any other location, they spun over in a wheelchair. Meanwhile, in a second session, the same volunteers stood all day, “not doing anything in particular,” Braun says, “just standing.” The difference in energy expenditure was remarkable, representing “hundreds of calories,” Braun says, but with no increase among the upright in their blood levels of ghrelin or other appetite hormones. Standing, for both men and women, burned multiple calories but did not ignite hunger. One thing is going to become clear in the coming years, Braun says: if you want to lose weight, you don’t necessarily have to go for a long run. “Just get rid of your chair.”

Nude

(Done Right)


(Gone Wrong)

We Get It.

(You're "back".)

Gold

(Done Right)

(Gorge.)

(I like this, but she resembles the statue behind her a TAD too much, don't you think?)

(This would be ugly on anyone else.)


(Eh.)



(Gone Wrong)
(Ugh. Go away, Mom.)

Ms. v. Mr.

The woman in me: Am I supposed to believe that this is "fashion"?

The man in me: Am I supposed to believe that there are two "Bigfoot"s?

Paris Fashion Week (Fall 2010)

Looking back on Milan Fashion Week, I recognized that I went a little overboard and tried to restrain myself for Paris.

My (clear) favorites are: Stella, Giambattista, and Louis.

There is a lot of Chanel because I think it is a little crazy and not well-styled, but if you isolate the actual clothing, some of it is gorgeous.

Paris is the highlight of Fashion Week . . . who are your faves? Enjoy!






Alexander McQueen (R.I.P.)



Andrew Gn






Balenciaga



Balmain



(How pissed would you be if you were this model?)





(How pissed would you be if you were this guy?)










Chanel


Chloe






Christian Dior





Comme des Garçons




Costume National








Elie Saab












Giambattista Valli







Givenchy




Hermes






Issey Miyake






Jean Paul Gaultier


Karl Lagerfeld









Lanvin





















(Excuse me, is that Elle Macpherson? And does she still look smokin' or what?)

Louis Vuitton



Miu Miu







Nina Ricci











Stella McCartney




Thierry Mugler




Valentino



Viktor & Rolf






Vivienne Westwood





Yohji Yamamoto





Yves Saint Laurent