Archive for September, 2006
The 25-year-old fashion model and heiress was due to be arraigned on charges of misdemeanour drunk driving at a Los Angeles court today in connection with her arrest earlier this month. Paris Hilton’s attorney, Howard Weitzman, said he had requested and been granted a postponement until December 5. Weitzman said he sought postponement “in order to determine if and how the case will ultimately be resolved.”
The maximum penalty under California law is six months jail and a $1300 fine but officials have indicated it is highly unlikely Hilton would face such stiff punishment for a first offence.
Instead she could be forced to attend an alcohol education program and be stripped of her driver’s licence.
September 30th, 2006
Onetime(?) cocaine queen Kate Moss is at the center of drug rumors after the sexy model was snapped with mystery white blobs up her nose during a wild gig with rocker Pete Doherty reports the Sun UK
The 32-year-old model showed off the globules while watching lover Pete perform to a sell-out crowd with his band Babyshambles in Ireland.
Fans were asking what the odd-looking substance could be — with some suggesting talc, others toothpaste, and some even ZIT CREAM, after The Sun revealed blonde Kate’s crop of spots yesterday.
Kate, sporting a black sweater mini-dress, and Pete belted out the track ‘La Belle et La Bete’ - which translates as ‘Beauty and The Beast’. One fan said: “It was a fantastic moment. Everyone went wild. Kate looked sensational - and she sounded great.” Pete, 27, had only checked out of London’s The Priory clinic for cocaine and heroin addiction earlier that day. The Babyshambles frontman was seen sipping water while Kate enjoyed a bottle of lager. Kate, who exited the stage after one song to take photographs of the band, left the crowd screaming for more at Carlow’s Music Factory, Ireland.
The 32-year-old model also ignored Ireland’s strict smoking ban in public places by chain smoking throughout the show. Babyshambles were scheduled to play another sell-out concert at Dublin’s Ambassador last night (26.09.06). Kate reportedly ditched her luxury five star hotel suite to stay with Pete and the band on the tour bus. When asked about the possibility of the pair marrying in Ireland, Pete blushed and said: “No comment.”
In other news, Kate Moss faces prosecution for puffing on a cigarette. She was caught on camera flouting Ireland’s strict smoking ban at a concert where her boyfriend Pete Doherty was performing with his band Babyshambles.
The supermodel, took conspicuous puffs on a cigarette which was dangling in her hand reports Daily Mail UK.
September 29th, 2006
Supermodel Linda Evangelista is under fire from activists after appearing in adverts for controversial diamond company De Beers. British film stars Colin Firth and Julie Christie are among those backing the campaign by Kalahari bushmen in Botswana, Africa, who are trying to prevent De Beers from forcing them from their land to make way for a new diamond mine. And models including Erin O’Connor, Lily Cole and Iman have already stopped promotional work for De Beers following pressure from the tribes. Survival International tell Evangelista, “We hope you agree that, until the Bushmen are allowed back, and De Beers confirms that it will not mine until that happens, De Beers is not a company right-thinking people would want to be associated with.”
September 28th, 2006
Top teen model Lily Cole is continuing to wow the crowds at London Fashion Week before she takes her place at Cambridge University.
The 18-year-old, who is believed to have already earned more than ?10 million from modelling, is due to take up a place at King’s College, Cambridge, in 2007.
She will be studying social and political sciences after getting three A grades in her A Levels earlier this year. Lily, who wore clothes by designers Allegra Hicks and Biba in her latest outing on the catwalk, was first spotted by model talent scouts aged 15.
London Fashion Week is a five-day event which takes place twice a year, in February and September, at the Natural History Museum, in London.
This week more than 200 designers have been showing collections, including several “ethical” designers, whose creations using organic or recycled materials have been showcased in a special section of the show.
September 27th, 2006
Kate Moss‘ earnings have rocketed to ?30 million since her cocaine scandal last year. Speculation was rife the catwalk queen’s career could be finished after pictures of her snorting the Class A drug were published last September.
The supermodel was immediately dropped by a number of top fashion houses, including H+M and Roberto Cavalli, in the wake of the scandal.
However, Kate has managed to bounce back from the incident with vigour, tripling her salary to ?30 million. She is now the face of 14 brands, including Versace, Calvin Klein and Stella McCartney, and has even set a new record for having the highest number of advertising deals at one time of any celebrity.
Advertising expert Francesca Newland said: “I can’t think of any other celebrity who has been the face of so many campaigns at once.”
The 32-year-old beauty - who is currently dating wild rocker Pete Doherty - has also renewed her contract with Burberry and signed new deals with Nikon cameras, Virgin Mobile, Agent Provocateur, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior.
Marina Marzotto, of marketing firm Propaganda GEM, said: “Good or bad, the scandal reinforced Kate’s notoriety. She’s come out of it stronger than ever.”
September 26th, 2006
Fashion model Crystal Renn is top fashion house Dolce & Gabbana’s newest modelling sensation… and she’s a curvy Size 16 who weighs 11st 7lb. She has appeared in Vogue, is the current darling of designer Jean-Paul Gaultier and has stormed the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week. Ironically Crystal has only found fame after gaining weight.
When London Fashion Week starts tomorrow, most of the models will be stick-thin. But pressure is growing for the policy to change. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell yesterday called for a ban on super-thin stars, warning that ordinary girls feel under pressure to starve themselves to get the same look. It comes after Madrid’s Fashion Week banned the skinniest girls and South American model Luisel Ramos, 22, died from heart failure moments after stepping off a catwalk. Crystal is all for the ban. She says: “I’m glad the fashion industry has begun to change and use healthy-sized women. It’s not a moment too soon.”
The industry took a different view three years ago. Crystal, 5ft 9in, had starved and exercised herself down to seven stone and Size 4, losing 4st 6lb after a modelling scout said she needed to shrink if she was to make it big. But despite her stick-insect size, she still struggled to find fame, and developed worrying health problems. Her hair thinned and began to fall out, her skin was spotty and dry and her periods stopped. She knew things had to change after she began to gain weight despite almost nothing thing. She says: “My agents would say ‘Maybe you should go on a diet’. I’m going, ‘You must be kidding!’ There was nothing left to cut out.”
Crystal changed agents, joining Ford Models which has represented the likes of Rachel Hunter and now looks after supermodels such as Erin O’Connor and Paris Hilton. They suggested she become a Plus Size model - and she has since featured in spreads in Vogue and Vanity Fair, appeared on the catwalk for Jean-Paul Gaultier in Paris and will be in the November issue of German Vogue. Florida-born Crystal had been told to lose nearly 40 per cent of her body weight by a modelling scout when she was just 14. “The scout told me I had potential, but that I had to lose 10 inches off my hips and about four and a half stones. I just said ’sure’ and so did my mother because we did not really grasp what that meant. I was young and naive. I cut out bread and would eat egg whites instead of yolks and low-fat dressing. In three months I lost 20lb. The scout told me I was doing great and to keep going. That is when it got very extreme. I began counting everything to the last calorie.”
The maximum number of calories a day Crystal would eat was 800. But she would often survive on around 600 (the recommended amount for women is 2,000). She lived on high-fibre cereal, vegetables and lettuce.
She exercised obsessively, working out seven days a week for up to three hours. She says: “I also drank obscene amounts of water and although I never got into laxatives, the cereal had that effect. No sugar, no fat, no protein, nothing. I kept notes of what I ate and put pictures of models on my bedroom wall so I’d see them the minute I woke up. And if I went over my limit of 600 calories, I’d go to the gym immediately.”
It took her two years to lose the weight and at her skinniest she weighed seven stone. “Emaciated as I was, I never thought I had an eating disorder,” she says. “For me, it was more like a marketing plan. My whole philosophy was, ‘Thin is a job requirement… you need to act professional’.”
Between 16 and 17 she stayed super skinny, but then the weight began to creep back on. After working 15-hour days in the studio she was struggling to put in the hours at the gym. She says: “I’d work out past midnight, sleep, and do it again.” Crystal says she will never go back to being skinny - and wants to urge young girls not to do anything as drastic as she did in a bid to make it big in the fashion world.
She says: “I was not happy. Now I am. And if I gain weight, I gain weight. I eat healthily, but I eat what I want. I want. really like turkey burgers and crab cakes. I love pizza and ice cream!” She adds: “The biggest lesson I learned is to be who I am. The happiness I feel inside comes through to the camera now, you can see it. It has made me a more successful model.”
September 25th, 2006
German supermodel Claudia Schiffer feels guilty when she leaves her children in the care of a nanny because she thinks she should spend the whole day with them. Schiffer, who has a three-year-old son, Casper, and a 22-month-old daughter, Clementine, with her British director husband Matthew Vaughn, feels it’s part of her duty as a mother to be there for her children all the time.
She tells German newspaper Die Zeit, “Even if I spend lots of time with the children I always feel guilty when I go to work. I have the feeling inside that I should be with them the whole day.”
The 36-year-old, who lives with her family in the UK, has fixed times she spends with their kids. She adds, “Even if I have a lot of work this is a sacred time. There will be no phone ringing and no assistant coming in.”
September 24th, 2006
Supermodel Karolina Kurkova can sure stick to her talking points. At the launch party for Victoria’s Secret’s Very Sexy makeup in a Chelsea loft the other night, the 22-year-old Czech seemed poised to give Lowdown a huge scoop about how to stay beautiful. But then she said, “My top secret? Use the right makeup. Have fun with makeup.” Makeup - gotcha. Meanwhile, her fellow product-pusher, 25-year-old Brazilian Alessandra Ambrosio, declared: “Top beauty secret? To sleep eight hours. Sleeping.” Zzzzzzzzzzzz.
September 23rd, 2006
Hotel heiress and fashion model Paris Hilton has admitted something the rest of the world already knew - she’s not that bright. The 25-year-old star of The Simple Life made her confession to cops quizzing her about a burglary at the home of Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis. She was hailed as a crime-fighter when she told Francis, who has made a fortune selling raunchy videos of topless college girls partying, she had overheard on the party scene that a Hollywood hanger-on called Darnell Riley had boasted of breaking into his house.
But when she was quizzed by Los Angeles police it emerged she wasn’t a reliable witness as she could not remember what happened. “Like I really, I don’t remember,” she said on police tapes obtained by the television show Dateline. “I’m not, like, that smart. I forget stuff all the time.”
Riley was arrested after Hilton’s tip-off, and earlier this year was sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to residential burglary and attempted extortion. During the raid he took video showing Francis tied up with his trousers pulled down, while Riley taunted him with a sex toy.
Hilton also told police she was the victim of extortion, after ‘private tapes’ were stolen from her home and an anonymous caller offered to sell them back to her, but that she followed her father’s advice and refused to pay up.
“They wanted money,” she said. “They were tryin’ to sell it to like a newspaper or something. So if you pay somebody, then you’re gonna be paying for the rest of your life. My dad always taught me. They’ll keep the tape anyway.” Dateline also obtained video of Francis being humiliated but has no plans to show it.
September 22nd, 2006
Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova has revealed that she was once so desperate to land modeling jobs that she went as far as to down laxatives to loose weight.
Nemcova said that being naturally curvy had hampered her career in the beginning and therefore in an attempt to make it big in the modeling world she not only went on one diet after the other, but also took laxatives.
“I went through so many diets in my life. I’ve been very, very skinny. I’ve been a size zero but I’m naturally more curvy,” Contactmusic quoted her, as saying.
“I just ate vegetables, carrots, tomatoes. I went from a just-protein diet to just eating apples to eating no carbs. I took laxatives. I went through all of it just to be able to model,” she added.
Nemcova would not have faced that problem at this year’s Madrid Fashion Week, where models deemed too skinny were banned from the runways.
The Association of Fashion Designers of Spain said it wanted models to project “an image of beauty and health” and shun a gaunt, emaciated look.
Nemcova appeared on the cover of the 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. She has appeared in magazines including Vogue and Marie Claire, and has modeled for Victoria’s Secret.
She was vacationing in Thailand with her boyfriend Simon Atlee in December 2004 when waves from a deadly tsunami swept through their beach hut. Atlee, a 33-year-old British fashion photographer, was killed. Nemcova suffered a broken pelvis.
Nemcova recounted her story in an autobiography, “Love Always, Petra,” co-authored with Jane Scovell.
September 22nd, 2006
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