Fashion Style2 Blog

Photo: Getty Images

Remember how in February everyone was freaking out over how budget the recession would make our Fashion Week feel? Well that’s not going to happen next season, thank God. In September, which is only two months off, so dear God get ready now, Fashion Week will be just as fabulous as it was in September 2008. Whereas leading up to February Fashion Week, many designers were probably sitting around wondering if it would be unwise to just charge their shows on a Visa like vacations and be done with it, this season, designers are already clamoring for time slots. Organizers expect the shows and presentations to be just as abundant as they were a year ago. Also, the number of presentations (as opposed to runway shows) is expected to increase this year. The designers who did presentations last season are doing them again for spring for the most part. This is all very relieving news. It sucks feeling poor when all the Europeans are in town. Some official expert could also probably fashion a theory about how this means we’re out of the weeds, economically speaking.

September N.Y. Fashion Shows Shaping Up

So pretty!Photo: Getty Images

Last week, Sylvana Soto-Ward was promoted from accessories editor to director of special events at Vogue. But naysayers surfaced even before Sylvana’s appointment was announced. For weeks, Fashion Week Daily has been reporting on gossip about downsizing the Met gala (not to mention, keeping the celebrities out of next year’s ball), which Vogue‘s former event planner, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, did a spectacular job of organizing for years. Now poor Sylvana, who has spent the past years taking pictures of baubles, has to make the event just as amazing as it’s always been. But the anonymous sources think Wolkoff was the only one capable of getting the fashion houses to spend thousands on tables and making their celebrity guests look beautiful, all for Anna charity.

"They have put the Met Gala, CFDA, Vogue Fashion Fund and many, many other important events in the hands of a woman who has never done any planning," an insider said. "Sylvana didn’t even plan her own engagement party — Anna Wintour had the in-house events team produce it for her. They’ve even pushed out Stephanie’s assistant and hired a consultant and some other assistants to operate as the real workhorses and pick up the slack."

Vogue insists this is all part of any transition that occurs when someone assumes a new position. Planning the Met gala is a whole different bag than being accessories editor, pun intended, but it seems to us that if Sylvana "didn’t even plan her own engagement party" — OMG, let’s freak out — she must be doing something right. Anna wouldn’t waste the in-house events-planning team on her if all she brought to the table was a sufficiently hoity-toity sounding name and amazingly lustrous hair. Maybe these anonymous sources are other Vogue staffers, jealous as all hell of Sylvana because Anna passed them up for the promotion.

PLAN ON GRIPING AT VOGUE
Earlier: Meet the Lucky Lady Newly in Charge of the Met Gala
Celebrities Might Be Barred From Next Year’s Met Gala

Photo: Patrick McMullan

When Daria Werbowy started modeling, she went through eight months of rejection in New York, Paris, London, and Greece. She was ready to quit, but her dad encouraged her to give it another shot, since she had hoped to raise money for art school. So she returned to New York, landed a Prada exclusive, and fervent demand for her hasn’t stopped since. She pulls in an estimated $1 million from her Lancôme contract alone, which she signed in 2004. That has enabled her to scale back her schedule, which she has no complaints about. She just took three months off to sail across the Atlantic with her family. She tells the Telegraph they saw whales and dolphins and went through storms and it was amazing! Naturally the whales prompted her to think about her life in an existential way.

I’m asking more questions about life in general. It’s like, "Oh my God, there’s a whole world of things to learn about." So I’m just taking it easy.’ She’s considering studying philosophy or psychology and has also been spending a lot of time in her New York flat, painting and sculpting. ‘Whether that’ll ever evolve into anything I don’t know. I’m still trying to search for what will be next.’ Although she won’t say what’s in the pipeline, the work offers keep flooding in. Does she ever ask her agency to back off? ‘I… they just sort of… Yeah, I tell them that a lot, actually,’ she says, laughing. ‘I shouldn’t lie.’

Werbowy also wants kids. And when she has those kids, she wants to take them sailing "for the first three years." So might she give up her fabulous glamorous life for something more normal in the near future? We hope not, but you never know.

Model profile: Daria Werbowy

Supermodel Daria Werbowy is the face you don’t know you know
 

Vivo Barefoot’s practical, lightweight Oak shoes make gucci shoes“barefoot” technology look good ($150 at Terra Plana, 260 Elizabeth St., nr. Prince St.; 212-274-9000). Plus, biodegradable packing foam, new stuff in stores, and watch Tiger play.

Photo: Courtesy of Burberry

So the rumors were true — Emma Watson is the fall 2009 face of burberry cashmere scarf. The campaign, shot by Mario Testino in central London with a view of the River Thames, could not be more British if they used clotted cream as hair gel. A celebrity face represents a shift for the brand, who cast a plethora of models — Lily Donaldson, Eden Clark, Alexina Graham, and Richard Wyndham — for the spring 2009 campaign. For the fall campaign before that, the label cast model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley alongside actor Sam Riley. And Lily Donaldson and Agyness Deyn starred in the spring campaign before that.

This is Emma’s first major campaign, and considering she’s just 19 years old, it’s not a bad start to her modeling career. Indeed, she looks more grown-up than usual (oh, the powers of the hair wisp!). But what’s up with her male friends? Tom Guinness Taylor looks to be about 12 in the shot above. And Emma’s other co-model, Charlie France, looks 14 at best.

Photo: Courtesy of Burberry

But it’s par for the course. Most models haven’t hit puberty yet, anyway. At least Emma has tackled Hogwarts and killed some CGI monsters, or whatever.

Emma Watson as the new face of Burberry scarf
Burberry F/W 09.10 by Mario Testino