Chanel Iman: Ford: for Ralph Lauren Collection SS08

Red's Tyler Riggs is very coveted for the Milan/Paris Shows FW08

At the women shows I look at the models. At the men's shows, I come with a magnifying glass seriously trained on the clothes. The clock's counting down to the FW08 men's presentations in Milan and Paris and this very specialized market-that of high end designer menswear - is in a very transitional place right this minute. Time was you knew what you would be getting well in advance when it came to "The Shows" . And what entertainment these shows would provide, Tom Ford's flagrant Gucci vs Miuccia Prada's highminded men's line. Raf Simons's art gallery perfect wauldrobe vs Galliano's flamboyant bucaneers. And then the piece de resistance. Hedi Slimane's rock inflected couture level work at Dior Homme. What clear identities they had then.
So what are the shows with the best advance billing right this minute? After being eclipsed by the perverse streamlining at Dior, the Prada suit has a lot of lost ground to cover. Oddly enough Ralph Lauren's return to Milan this season has high expectations building for the glimpse of some kind of spectacle, if not in terms of the looks which are sure to be conservative, then in terms of the show's production values. The revamp of Ferre, as previously mentioned on TI has the label whores (like us) drumming the thumbs in suspense.

IMG=Inevitable Money Girl: A sleek and sexy Hilary Rhoda: Polaroid date 12-5-07

Nancy Cunard:Heiress, Muse, Political Idealist: Lois Gordon: Columbia Press

Yes I confess, TI is a bit of a Nancy Cunard cultist. As much as she would probably have hated the idea, Madame Cunard keeps bobbing up as a reference point in the fashion trade . As recently as two years ago, Ralph Lauren of all people used her as a touchstone in his FW 05 campaign and both Vogue Italia and L'Uomo Vogue have been known to invoke her as an icon. I love her literary biography "These Were The Hours" about her years as a publisher and today I'm locked in the house with Lois Gordon's masterful new biography on NC. Fluid, detailed and a little worshipful (even I have to admit Nancy poetry was NOT the kismet), Gordon's overview of Cunard's life is a must buy nonetheless. Its chockfull of brilliant tid bits (like King George changing the family name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to "Windsor" during the anti-Hun frenzy of WW1) as well as great stories of Nancy's laison with the original Imagist, Ezra Pound, as well as modernist literary icons like T.S Eliot and Wyndham Lewis. The summary at the American Library Review says it all "Scandalous, gifted, and, in her own tormented way, heroic, Cunard blazed brightly at the epicenter of a brutal yet creative epoch." I love this woman. If she had had a great-grandaughter I'd have hunted her down with a marriage proposal. It would have kept the family tradition going no?