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Forget satin, silk and cashmere. Denim took center stage at this year's Los Angeles Fashion Week in a reminder to fashion watchers that premium jeans mean big business.
"Why is it we should have runway shows for denim?" asked 30-year jeans veteran Paul Guez rhetorically.
"They do more business than most other brands, than most (apparel) companies in Europe... This is the new generation of runway businesses that are alive and well, profitable -- and very cute."
Guez is chief executive of Blue Holdings Inc., whose brands Antik Denim, Taverniti and Yanuk all took center stage at the shows.
Black denim was prevalent on the runway, with accents including military styling and distressed fabrics.
Guez described his portfolio and other rival premium jeans brands such as 7 For All Mankind and Citizens of Humanity as "high fashion, high-end denim that are not just denim."
Fern Mallis, vice president of IMG Fashion, which produces the week of fashion shows, said denim's spot on the runway is deserved.
"People come to L.A. and want to see the denim lines," said Mallis, "We could turn this into denim week."
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Comprising some three hundred objects, the collection of Asian textiles in the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas has remained a hidden treasure since its inception nearly a century ago.
This small but important collection, which includes textiles from East, South, and Central Asia dating from the fifteenth through twentieth centuries, displays remarkable geographical breadth, great diversity of technique, and a broad range of functions.
With highlights including late Persian textiles, Indian embroideries, Kashmir shawls, Chinese court costume, and Japanese folk garments, the Spencer's Asian textiles are rich in history and design, offering a wealth of information and beauty.
The Spencer's South Asian textiles represent both the consummate skill of professional craftsmen and the vivacity of folk designs.
The latter may be seen in profusion on the embroideries of Northwest India and Pakistan, while the former is embodied in the Kashmir shawl, the fine garment of meticulous workmanship that swept Europe by storm in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Chinese textiles, with nearly 140 pieces, form the single largest group of Asian textiles in the collection.
The court robes and rank badges, women's garments, sleeve bands and other objects also share a profound visual language
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Flowers, Dragons and Pine Trees: Asian Textiles
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Cranbrook Art Museum will present an exhibition of the extraordinary hats that the Irish designer Philip Treacy made for his friend and muse, Isabella Blow.
The exhibition, When Philip Met Isabella -- Philip Treacy's Hats for Isabella Blow, draws on work from the private collections of both Treacy and Blow, and opens on June 4, 2006.
Since their first meeting on a fashion shoot in 1989 when Treacy was a student at the Royal College of Art, Blow has been his staunchest supporter and a constant source of inspiration.
After leaving the RCA, he lived and worked from the basement of her London house for three years.
Many of his most surreal and sculptural hats have been made for her.
"Issy never says: 'You've gone too far," says Treacy.
"She always says: 'You haven't gone far enough."
When Philip Met Isabella will explore their collaboration through twenty of the hats he has made for her.
Exhibits will include the Ship, an astonishingly realistic replica of an 18th century French ship with full rigging made from miniature buttons, and the rose pink damask Pope modelled on the papal hat.
Also featured will be the Castle inspired by Blow's ancestral home at Doddington, Cheshire and Ludwig of Bavaria's magnificent palace.
Gilbert and George is a fantastical concoction of pink and green lacquered
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When Philip Met Isabella
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The University's Macleay Museum has provided both the inspiration and the venue for a new exhibition of jewellery by four Sydney-based contemporary artists.
On invitation, Diane Appleby, Keith Lo Bue, Susanna Strati and Alice Whish have made works specifically in response to the museum's rich collections.
All incorporate visual references from the museum as well as interpretations of nineteenth century philosophical and scientific ideas - and this is highlighted by showing the works in juxtaposition with specimens from the collections.
There's much diversity of style and approach.
Coloured sculptural pieces, made of metal, wax and found objects, themselves look like anatomical specimens which surrealistically cross boundaries of classification.
All segmented objects, they explore the processes of dissection which museums use to examine and store specimens.
Diane Appleby and Alice Whish took inspiration from the Museum's ethnographic collections.
Appleby's vibrant pieces made from aluminium, silver and silk are a contemporary response to the elaborate ceremonial combs made in Papua New Guinea, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Solomon Islands.
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Sighting the Past
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It was more avant-garde art happening than fashion fest as models clad in dazzlingly structured designs, sporting oversized fringes and crimson-stained lips held a series of static poses at Martin Grant's autumn-winter ready-to-wear show in Paris.
The Melbourne-born designer was the only Australian to put on a show in the French capital after Collette Dinnigan opted to take a break from the catwalk circuit and present her collection at a low-key soiree.
Grant's models at the Friday show stood against a white wall in an array of balloon-shaped cropped jackets, puffed sleeved-dresses and seductively demure cocktail dresses, all in a muted palette of cream, petrol blue and lashings of this season's must-have colour, black. A perfect wardrobe for a modern-day Jackie O.
Amongst the hottest items was a draped chiffon, strapless, blue, gown fit for an sultry screen siren and an achingly-sexy, tightly-belted, trench coat in cream leather.
The designer's signature tailored chic coincided perfectly with the trend towards pared-back elegance seen on Parisian runways this season.
Grant, whose fans include actor Cate Blanchett, said the show's art-house flavour reflected the collection's inspiration.
"I love the work of French painter, Corneille de Lyon, who painted French court life in the 16th century, in a very
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