G All Star

The Times has noticed it, and if you’ve been racing around the city, you’ve likely noticed it, too: Bikes—and bike chic—are proliferating in New York lately, especially among stylish girls, thanks in part to the city’s many new bike lanes. (The same movement is happening in London, too, which recently introduced a bike-share program.) During fashion week in September, bikes were actually one of the best ways to get around, from Alexander Wang at Pier 94 to Band of Outsiders’ presentation on West 22nd Street, from MAC & Milk to Lincoln Center and back. (Good luck finding those cabs, especially circa 4 p.m.)

But here’s the rub: If you want to avoid grievous injury, you need a helmet, and that’s still the weak link in the stylish gal’s cycling ensemble. If you’re a skillful enough cyclist, you can bike in most heels, and if you’re willing to endure catcalls from truckers, a floaty skirt works just fine. But the helmet, oy. Leave aside the insult to the daily hairdo—the options currently on the market in and of themselves are, for the most part, ugly. Fashion ought to rise to the challenge of making the bike helmet a sought-after accessory, much in the way it has risen to the challenge of creating desirable laptop bags and iPad cases. It’s good business, for one thing.

Over fashion week, as I was cycling back and forth to shows, I threw this challenge out to the jewelry designers Wade Jensen and Moire Conroy, of Jensen-Conroy. I dropped off a matte black helmet at their studio, and they returned a helmet knit over in silvery-blue, in the vein of the knit-wrapped jewelry they create. I’m so pleased with the results, I’m tempted to drop off more helmets with other designers, so I can coordinate with various outfits. Unless, of course, labels begin to get the hint and start doing it for me. Designers everywhere, please: Get on board with the non-bogus bike trend and make some cool helmets. Collaborate with a helmet-maker, like Bell. To you street-style bloggers who love to photograph girls on bikes: For crying out loud, starting photographing them in helmets, before you initiate a trend of major brain injuries. Truckers: Shut up. And everyone else: Stay out of my lane.

—Maya Singer

Photo: Steven Torres

Wear it with a simple top, pencil skirt, black opaque tights and mid heel pump or high heel bootie.

It’s the perfect piece to get through a grey winter. I like the loose fit, the shortened sleeves (all the more reason to wear long leather gloves) and the $163.78 price tag.

By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To read more of the Recessionista blog, click here.

It’s been hard catching up with always-on-the-go Kourtney Kardashian. But it seems like every time she walks out the door, she wears something I want to emulate.

For a more affordable version, I went on a long search for something that was as voluminous and not cropped. Lo and behold, I found this amazing Faux Fur Leopard Coat from Lipsy.

This must-have coat of the season hits the spot.

I really love her Funktional Predator Coat. It’s the perfect thing to make you smile. I like the cut, the look and the fit. At $840, it’s an investment piece that will never go out of style.

Patrick Schwarzenegger and Jade Iovine are classmates at Los Angeles’ Brentwood School and also best friends. 11:51 AM PDT 5/2/2012 by Shirley Halperin

Photo: Gianni Pucci / GoRunway.com

—Marina Larroude

Sure, Marni had color-block furs and some of the most unique embroidered pieces I’ve seen yet in Milan. But what really wowed me at yesterday’s show were the earrings. Consuelo Castiglioni has always had a way with a statement accessory, and this season was no exception. The enameled pieces were big, bold, and beautiful—enough to make me rethink my recent less-is-more stance where earrings are concerned. The styling clued us in to the secret to not looking overdone: Wear them with loose, natural hair. I will be.

The two-time Academy Award winner hit China’s big screens this past weekend in the off-beat dramedy “Inseparable,” directed by Beijing-based Dayyan Eng.  

BEIJING — Christian Bale did it in “The Flowers of War.” Hugh Jackman did it in “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.” Now it’s Kevin Spacey’s turn to appear in a Chinese movie featuring dialogue in Mandarin and English.

“Inseparable” starts with an attempted suicide by a depressed man named Li Yue (played by the Hong Kong-American heartthrob Daniel Wu in his first major English-speaking role). Every day Li dons a suit and tie and heads to his suffocating office job at a prosthetic-limb company in an unnamed Chinese city. (The movie was filmed in Guangzhou.) 

Li’s boss is corrupt, his wife, Pang (an investigative television reporter played by Gong Beibi), is always away, and he is recovering from a past trauma. But just as Li is about to hang himself from his living room ceiling, he is interrupted by his brash American neighbor Chuck (Kevin Spacey).

Together, they head out into the city in homemade superhero outfits to right the wrongs in a country suffering from widespread fraud and corruption, a vast wealth gap and a frustrated, angry populace. The wise-cracking expat Chuck proves to be both Li’s savior and nemesis. 

—Meenal Mistry

Photos: Alessandro Viero / GoRunway.com (Kane and Holland); Yannis Vlamos / GoRunway.com (Gray)

You had to reconsider your notions about the crotchety and crocheted Afghan throw after it showed up in both printed and actual knitted form on the runways of vastly different British designers Christopher Kane (above left) and Henry Holland (above center). That’s just one example of the subverted Anglican heritage thread running through the London shows. Holland, whose inspiration was actually All Things Granny, also made use of bona fide Harris tweed, made special for him in candy brights. Then there’s Louise Gray, a designer to whom the word traditional very rarely applies, who both subverted and celebrated her Scottish heritage blowing up and pixellating tartan prints on mohair coats and deconstructing color-blocked Aran pullovers (above right).

It was definitely a moment for the Scots. Julien Macdonald danced a dark-edged Highland fling for his fall collection. And at Pringle of Scotland, the 195 year-old company where the H-word (that’s heritage, not Highland) is always a part of the recipe in varying amounts, designer Clare Waight Keller (who announced her resignation last week) blew up tweeds and remixed the good old Fair Isle into something fringed and bohemian. Perhaps she took a cue from the Pringle Archive Project, also shown during London Fashion Week, where Central Saint Martins MA students were asked to create new knitwear inspired by the company’s recently amassed collection of pieces dating back to the 1930s. The best results were refreshingly simple in execution. “The funniest thing to me is that when they got the whole archive together, what they chose to be inspired by,” said Professor Louise Wilson, the school’s legendary MA course director who headed up the project. “If you look at their portfolios, it’s quite obscure. But I would have been very disappointed if they’d started doing beading and bows.”

The royal couple plan to celebrate privately, the palace reports. 5:24 PM PDT 4/28/2012 by Merle Ginsberg

Photos: Tommy Ton (street style); Gianni Pucci/GoRunway.com (Gucci details)

The European shows are just getting fully underway, but coming off London and heading into Milan, a color story is already emerging: green. The girls of London—as snapped by Tommy Ton, top—have delved deep into verdant tones, from dark blue-greens to lighter, brighter spring hues (including those paraded on the runway by master colorist Jonathan Saunders). Take it for what you will, then, that Gucci, Milan’s first show, opened today with a blast of teal: one that carried throughout the show, and appeared on bags, shoes, and the new must-have, colored furs, too.

For several seasons now, the espadrille has been enjoying a revival, and there are plenty of reasons to be thankful for that. (A brief relief from stiletto-induced foot pain is just one we could mention.) We’ve been especially taken with the options from Mymu, Gabriela Lanardonne’s line, inspired by the Argentine alpargatas she saw as a child in her father’s native Buenos Aires. But woman cannot live on flats alone—just ask any of the editors and stylists at the shows, where anything shorter than 6″ is almost unheard of. Problem, meet solution. For Spring ‘11, Lanardonne is introducing wedges, in many of the same styles she’s already offered as flats. Soon you’ll be able to tower away—and if you do feel like staying a bit closer to the ground, you’ll be glad to know the classic flats aren’t going anywhere for Spring ‘11. They’ll even be offered in a few bold color-block versions, like hot pink and orange. Sound like anything you’ve seen recently?

Photo: Courtesy of Mymu

Olympia Le-Tan, girl-about-Paris and the originator of those clever needlepoint “book” bags you’ve been seeing on street-style blogs for the last couple of years, launched her ready-to-wear collection on Saturday night—in the kitchen of Paris’ Musée Nissim de Camondo, a sumptuous early-twentieth-century private home modeled after Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon. The location wasn’t the only thing unconventional about the presentation. Instead of parading around in their outfits, the models performed a raucous striptease, peeling down to black satin bras, briefs, and hosiery. Before the clothes came off, one dancer wore a T-shirt that spelled out “clever girl” above a supertight pencil skirt. Another had on a fit-and-flare striped dress. Le-Tan herself had donned a long-sleeve number with a white Peter Pan collar that was as sweet as the form-fitting silhouette below it was sexy. In other words, the clothes are just as cheeky as her cross-stitched clutches, which were arrayed artfully on the eighteenth-century settees and under glass vitrines upstairs.
—Nicole Phelps

Photos: Bruno Werzinski