'Project Runway' winner shatters the fashion industry's status quo

On Sept. 11, six Project Runway finalists showed collections at Skylight at Moynihan Station for the reality series' annual New York Fashion Week show. The designs of one contestant — whose identity was kept secret at the time to avoid spoilers — made a particular splash.



And on Thursday night, the designer behind that line — Ashley Nell Tipton — was crowned the winner of Season 14. Tipton was the first Project Runway contestant to show a completely plus-size collection at fashion week; now she's the first winner to specialize in full-figure fashion.

Even before participating in the series, Tipton created and sold clothing that went against the plus-size industry status quo. Her garments were full of bright colors and patterns.

"My mission is to represent for full-figured women and to enable them to have options to express their style and individuality through fashion as women who wear 'standard' sizes," Tipton states on her website.

Tipton, who has a store launching soon, hopes to set an example for future plus-size designers.

"I feel happier than I have ever felt in my life — not just to have won Project Runway, but more so that the world will get to see my voice and my heart through my designs," Tipton tells Mashable. "I can wait to shine a light in the fashion world for plus-sized women everywhere."

H & M’s Ongoing High-Fashion Experiment

H& M launched its first-ever designer collaboration, with the Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld, eleven years ago, in November of 2004. My wife, a fashion illustrator, was sure something historic was in the offing, and she convinced me to go with her to check it out. We arrived at H & M’s flagship store, on Fifth Avenue, shortly before the doors opened, at 9 A.M. A line of men and women, ranging from twentysomethings to senior citizens, and dressed in everything from jeans to luxury labels, snaked down Fifth and around the block. Inside, they fought their way through the crowds, garments heaped over their arms; they stripped to their underwear in the aisles to try things on. In the melee, I managed to grab and try on a black military-style wool-and-cashmere overcoat. Cut long and slim, it elongated my frame, narrowed it, lent it a subtle drama that touched off fantasies of myself as a windswept Byronic wanderer (as opposed to a middle-aged deskbound writer). The price: a hundred and forty-nine dollars. A Lagerfeld original would have cost a thousand dollars. I bought two. I still wear that coat, and strangers still stop me in the street to ask where I got it. The backup, tags intact, is stuffed at the back of my closet, ready to be called into service when the original starts to look shabby.



Donald Schneider, who is now the creative director of H & M, came up with the idea of that first collaboration with Lagerfeld. At the time, Schneider ran a fashion-consulting firm hired by H & M to review its advertising campaigns, and he had worked for eight years as the art director of Vogue Paris. A soft-spoken German now in his mid-fifties, with glinting gray stubble and a bald head, he continues to dream up, and oversee, the collaborations today. When I met with him in June, at a photo shoot for the Balmain launch, I admitted that I had been among the hoards who lined up for the Lagerfeld début, and that I scored the black military-style overcoat. He nodded vigorously and said, “a fantastic piece,” adding that he is still wearing the suit jacket from that collection, and still gets compliments on it. Up to that point, he said, anyone who mentioned an H & M ad campaign would talk primarily about the models. “I wondered, could we do a campaign where people talked about the fashion?”

Short Wedding Dresses We Fell For During Bridal Fashion Week

Don't get us wrong, we love traditional wedding gowns with their sweeping ground-grazing skirts. Yet, there's something so irresistibly charming about a shorter dress. Case in point: When Keira Knightley tied the knot with her beau James Righton, she wore an airy tulle Chanel dress that she accented with a tweed jacket, delicate floral crown, and ballet flats.



And now that the trend in bridal is skewing more casual, with a rise in City Hall ceremonies followed by a reception, wearing knee-length or shin-grazing wedding dresses is no longer seen as unconventional.



"My friend got married in City Hall last year, and she wore a short Marchesa cocktail dress with a little veil, and it was adorable," Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman told us at the brand's bridal fall 2016 presentation. "I say, whatever works for you, go for it."


Below, we rounded up fall 2016 short wedding dresses from Bridal Fashion Week that we'd happily say 'I do' to.

Jeremy Scott at New York fashion week: 60s pop culture through an 80s prism

The designer proves ‘plastic is fantastic’ as he melded his signature pop-art aesthetic with bright, outrageous prints and dresses made with acrylic panels
“Plastic is fantastic” was Jeremy’s Scott’s summation of the mood of his spring/summer 2016 show at New York fashion week on Monday afternoon.



Alexander Wang at New York fashion week: a return to urban roots

Looking at the collection, this wasn’t just a pithy sound bite for the crowds of press backstage. It was a pretty neat description of clothes that combined bright colours, vibrant prints and, yes, plastic in shiny jewellery and dresses made from panels of Perspex. It was all worn by models in wigs that unapologetically resembled cartoon hair like that last seen in the 60s futuristic cartoon series, The Jetsons.

Since he launched his label in the late 90s, Scott has excelled at anything with a pop-art bent – and his references for this are seemingly endless. The designer, who has also worked as creative director for Moschino since 2013, has previously drawn inspiration from fast food to Barbie, telephone wires and the Flintstones.

This time around, it was “the cool girls in the Lower East Side in the 80s, and how they loved John Waters movies, Russ Meyer movies, as well as Startrek. It was about future babes”.

The feeling of mismatched things coming together – 60s pop culture seen through the prism of the 80s – was there from the start of this show. The B-52’s Planet Claire kicked off the soundtrack, and there were nods to Deee-Lite’s Lady Miss Kier (with daisy patterns and op-art) and Tim Burton’s sci-fi spoof, Mars Attacks!

Teen Mom OG Stars Catelynn Lowell en Tyler Baltierra Wo: Zie haar jurk!

Het is een bruiloft, dat is al een decennium in de maak! Teen Mom OG sterren Catelynn Lowell en Tyler Baltierra, die zijn dating, omdat zij in de zevende klas waren, eindelijk getrouwd op zaterdag 22 augustus, in Charlevoix, Mich., En Us Weekly heeft de exclusieve blik op hun bruiloft foto's in de nieuwste probleem.

Het echtpaar, beiden 23, zei dat hun "I do's" voor 154 gasten op het prachtige terrein van Castle Farms, dat een Franse renaissance-stijl kasteel beschikt. Lowell droeg een hoofd-tot-teen kanten bruidsjurk met bandjes en Baltierra was gekleed in een klassieke smoking voor hun formeel, niet-confessionele bruiloft.
Maar misschien wel de belangrijkste gast van alles was hun eerste dochter, Carly, 6, die het jonge paar geplaatst voor adoptie onmiddellijk na haar geboorte in 2009. adoptieouders Het kleine meisje, Brandon en Teresa Davis, die zijn verschenen op Teen Mom OG, waren ook bij de hand voor de viering.

Hoewel Carly was een deel van de festiviteiten, van hun tweede dochter, 8-maanden oude Nova Reign, had de eer om de bloem meisje, en werd getrokken door het gangpad in een witte wagen.

Met beide van hun dochters presenteren, het was echt een onvergetelijke bruiloft en mooie start van Lowell en Baltierra nieuwe leven als een getrouwd stel.
"Er is niemand anders zou ik liever dan [Lowell's] man en de vader van haar kinderen," vertelt Baltierra Us. "Ik ben zo vereerd en gezegend om in staat om oud te worden met haar."

Voor meer exclusieve details over hun bruiloft en foto's van de ceremonie - met inbegrip van haar trouwjurk, de torenhoge cake, ringen en nog veel meer - pick-up van de laatste uitgave van Us Weekly, op kiosken woensdag!

The Fashion East Three

FIFTEEN years goes fast and even more so in fashion. This September marks the 15th anniversary of Fashion East, the non-profit designer support scheme launched by Lulu Kennedy in 2000 to nurture emerging talent, and once again it will put the spotlight on three fresh fashion names: Caitlin Price, Richard Malone and This Is The Uniform.
               
Price, a graduate of Central Saint Martins' MA, returns to the showcase, having made her debut in February with a collection that riffed on luxe duchesse-satin tracksuits.
                 
Malone, meanwhile, is a new name to the line-up who graduated from the Central Saint Martins BA in 2014, scooping the LVMH Grand Prix scholarship at the same time.

And This Is The Uniform comes from the mind of Jenna Young, who launched the label in 2013 after completing a fine art textile degree at Goldsmiths University. This will be her LFW debut.

Topshop continues to be the headline sponsor of the initiative, having been so since 2003.
"All three designers are strong-minded. I'm delighted to be working with them," said Kennedy, whose fashion eye has plucked out the likes of Jonathan Saunders, Marques' Almeida, Meadham Kirchhoff and Simone Rocha to name just a handful.

Why Gel Manicures May Actually Be Worse For Your Nails

Are gel manicures better for your nails?
          
No. If anything, they can be worse. First, it’s worth noting that if you never miss a mani appointment, whether for gel or regular polish, it’s time to give your nails a break. All the filing, buffing and painting (without time for nails to “breathe” in between) causes dehydration and thinning of the nail, which can lead to peeling, even painful nails.

All this doesn’t mean you need to skip gel manicures completely. But to make them healthier, give your nails a few weeks’ break between applications, apply sunscreen to your hands before you go and don’t pick when you get home!

Health‘s medical editor, Roshini Rajapaksa, MD, is assistant professor of medicine at the NYU School of Medicine and co-founder of Tula Skincare.
Gel manicures in particular can increase the chances of damage because the removal process requires a very long soak in acetone, which further dries out nails. And if you tend to pick (especially if there’s no base coat), peeling off a gel polish can remove the top layer of your nail. This can weaken the nail and make it more prone to infection. Finally, you’ve probably heard about the skin risks of the drying process, which exposes your hands to cancer-causing UV rays.