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Consumers say they are buying casual sportswear from stores such as Banana Republic and Club Monaco, then splurging on accessories, from $300 Prada shoes to $400 pashmina shawls, to all those flashy bags.
This kind of foot-and-bag fetish is forcing nothing less than a rejigging of the fashion industry’s hierarchy. Since the late seventies, fortunes turned on shifting hemlines and striking clothing silhouettes, enabling designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Giorgio Armani to make their reputations on clothes first and accessories later — usually farmed out to some anonymous licencee.
Now, mainline fashion houses are scrambling to offset lagging clothing sales. The LVMH-Prada team, for example, hopes to turn Manolo into the next Gucci, the glossy $1-billion-a-year Florence-based house that generates 75 per cent of its sales on leather goods, shoes and watches. And fashion’s most aggressive predators have been busy gobbling up a number of the industry’s other well-known accessory brands. Among the deals this year: Prada bought Church & Co., the London-based shoe maker; Texas Pacific Group scooped up Bally of Switzerland; and Seventh Avenue giant Jones Apparel Group nabbed Nine West Group, the brand that owns about a third of the women’s footwear market in the United States.
Meanwhile, the voracious LVMH has also staked its claim on what experts consider the next hot spot — status watches — having acquired Swiss makers Tag Heuer and Ebel last month. LMVH will be putting such watches into a new chain of boutiques called Synchrony, which it is rolling out this month, the first one in Glendale, Calif.
But, as often happens when the fashion world moves en masse to the next big thing, already there are signs of a dressing down.
Many industry insiders fear the move towards accessories is little more than an attempt to conceal a much bigger and thornier problem: Designers simply aren’t making clothes that people want to wear. "Designers aren’t doing their job," complains Mr. Wolfe, the consultant. Stylish shoppers, he says, continue to be interested in fashion and are &quot,jimmy choo boots;so flush financially and anxious to buy something, but the runway clothes are unwearable. So they go out and buy an $800 Gucci bag."
In pushing the trimmings, fashion houses are playing a high-risk game. Fashionable shoppers have shown how fickle they can be in collecting hot trends such as Christian Dior’s 1995 hit, the "Lady Dior" quilted $1,200 handbag, popularized by the late Princess Diana. After a two-year run, the Lady Dior fizzled, having been upstaged by the baguette and other newcomers. But just in time for Christmas, Dior is poised to jump back into the ring with a new celebrity mascot — Gwyneth Paltrow — hired to launch a boxy handbag called: "The City Dior."

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 The Gucci Mall forms a triangle with Dolce e Gabbana along the road and Manolo, a few minutes’ drive further on. The D&G shop is built alongside the factory,ysl shoes, a nondescript

chunk on the landscape. Once inside, however (again, no queue), it’s a really pleasant shopping experience.
 As with all these outlets, you don’t get followed around by a pushy shop assistant with an eye on her commission. For a pinstripe trouser suit, like the one Victoria Beckham

wore to the Dolce e Gabbana Milan show last year, you could expect to pay around pounds 265. In fact, Posh and Becks would have a field day in here.
 But it was at Manolo that I found handbag heaven. People join waiting lists for a Manolo bag, and although the really popular styles will never find their way to the factory

shop floor, there are plenty of classics that do. There are shelves of them. I found myself clutching a monogrammed tan leather handbag that was probably unchanged in design

since the Seventies. It was only pounds 80 – pin money to a Manolo diehard.
 Then I found myself wondering if it hadn’t all got to me, this designer bargain hunting. I am not a Manolo handbag kind of girl. So I pulled myself together and left empty-

shouldered. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since – and it’s as good an excuse as any to book a cheap flight now to make a return trip.

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not content with expanding their ranges to children’s clothes, watches, christian louboutin, fragrances and cosmetics, fashion brands are stamping their mark on the world of upmarket eateries and hotels.
 spanish louboutin shoes shoes brand camper has just made a foray into food with a restaurant.
 foodball, in central barcelona, offers organic seasonal and local food with rice balls, served in biodegradable dishes. the restaurant will soon be joined by hotel casa camper.
&nbsp,manolo blahnik store;in london, pablo flack, the designer for hot fashion label house of jazz, has opened bistrotheque, a restaurant and bar set over two floors of an old factory in east london, serving traditional fare, including posh cod and chips, and scallops with black pudding and mash.
 designer roberto cavalli’s restaurant milan’s just cavalli cafe matches his flamboyant work, with goldfish bowls and antelope-throws on the sofas.
 meanwhile, dolce and gabbana’s flagship milan store features a grooming salon and barbers alongside the chic martini bar. over at trussardi’s marino alla scala you can shop for leather goods, then get a drink or a cappuccino at the bar, before going on to dine at the restaurant with views over piazza scala.
 paris hosts one of the most glamorous and exciting new fashion restaurants, kenzo’s philippe starck-designed kong, which featured in the last episode of sex and the city. it has magnificent views over the seine, but those who don’t want fancy dining overlooking the pont neuf can pay a visit to the fun conveyer-belt sushi bar in the basement.
 and it’s not just eating out that has had a makeover style hotels include jeweller bulgari’s milan hotel and an upcoming global chain of armanidesigned hotels. the ultimate is a few nights’ stay at the christian shoes boots palazzo hotel on australia’s gold coast. decked out in christian louboutin sandals decadence, the hotel has 205 rooms, 72 villas, a luxury spa, three awardwinning restaurants, and a private marina.

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Asymmetry. It’s an extra flap of fabric flying free along the side of a narrow dress, or a wrap skirt with one side longer than the other. And it takes some getting used to. Donatella Christian louboutin uses it in both her Versus and Christian louboutin collections, while Karl Lagerfeld makes it a major theme at Chanel (but not always successfully). Done well, as it is in the nands of Ann Demeuelemeester, it’s a cool, edgy look. Done badly, it’s mo more than a home-sewing project gone bad. Let the buyer beware.
_Bare midriffs. Summer is the perfect time to show a little skin. The slinky dress with the open back hasn’t lost its popularity _ or its ability to heat up a room _ but the newest way to show ‘em what you’ve got is to reveal a sexy slice of skin in the waistline region. Dolce and Gabbana are the kings of this look, showing the skinniest black skirts with tight little sweaters that barely cover the chest. Alberta Ferretti does a softer version, pairing A-line wrap skirts that hang from the hips with tank tops that stop at the waist. At Gucci,ysl boots, Tom Ford shows a beaded, low-slung skirt with a body-hugging leather jacket, cropped at the waist. And for the beach, the two-piece bathing suit rules, particularly from Missoni and Jean Paul Gaultier.
_Capes and ponchos. Impractical? Sure. Difficult to maneuver in? Of course. But that hasn’t stopped European designers from touting capes and ponchos as the newest wrinkle in outerwear. At Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs puts airy cotton ponchos over his crisp sportswear. Veronique Branquinho recalls the ’60s hippie look with gray, knitted ponchos that have thick fringe around the edges. Angela Missoni offers loosely knitted, striped capes as cover-ups for swimwear, and Giorgio Armani provides wispy, airy shawls as wraps for evening. The ability to cope successfully with a cape or poncho may be an inbred trait, but if you’ve got it, here’s your chance to flaunt it.
PHOTOS from the recent Paris runway shows are available from KRT Photo Service.

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The collection is delicious, taking inspiration from Wallis Simpson’s haughty style and from haute couture, with couture construction brought to the outside. After the show, Miuccia Prada is wearing a little black dress backstage. The waist sits slightly raised, the sleeves sit an inch above the elbow. It is quiet in its elegance. The twist: the grosgrain ribbon used in couture to cover flattened seams within has become a detail on the outside.
 Weights, used in couture to make sure wealthy women’s skirts never, ever do a Marilyn Monroe, become embellishment, their purpose both functional and decorative. Tweeds are lined, slightly longer, in nude chiffon to give the effect that one is seeing the selvage edge.
 It is 1940s. It is make-do-and-mend. It is poor-look-meets-rich-look (which is always something of a questionable concept), until the weightless evening gowns, each of which required 200 hours to sew on the sequins. They are rich; so rich they haven’t even been priced yet.
 Prada’s 1940s little chiffon dresses sprinkled with vivid sunshine yellow poppies are slightly raw, slightly dishevelled. It comes back to sex again. Some of these clothes look like soldier boy has been home on leave and you’ve been for a romp in the hay. Others look like he’s away at the front, and you are Celia Johnson having a brief and chaste encounter while wearing tweed. It may seem strange that the scrimp and save style of the war years should be revived in the same city, in the same season as the crazy colours and patterns that clothed the louche, amoral amphetamine-fuelled haze of wealthy west coast Americans more than 20 years later.
&nbsp,manolo;But fashion cherry picks as it chooses. See the movie, buy the frock (although few are flocking to see the disappointing Isn’t She Great? starring Bette Midler as Jacqueline Susann, author of Valley of the Dolls. People have cited The End of the Affair, for which Julianne Moore has an Oscar nomination, as the influence for the 40s look, but go and see it for its passion and its perfect pea soup dreary scenes of England, not for the clothes because she only really wears a dress, a coat, a hat and a petticoat. (That said, with Oscar winner Sandy Powell as the movie’s costume designer, it is the right dress, the right coat, the perfect petticoat). Alas, 1940s shoes have come back, even though they were ugly originally. Prada offers literal copies, if anyone wants them.
 If you are thinking of buying a coat, buy a trench. Think Catherine Deneuve and choose from pretty much any designer you can name. For a sumptuous version, Ferragamo’s celadon green trapeze of leather pulled in with a belt has the silhouette without all the paraphernalia of rings and backflaps. It was shown teamed with a very high Mary Jane ankle strapped shoe with a turquoise heel.

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The Grand Hyatt Plaza, which retails Salvatore Ferragamo and Fratelli Rosetti introduces new designs four times a year. They have a Spring/Summer collection and a Fall/Winter

collection and Pre collections that precede both. In fact, Sachdev finds the Indian shoe market so vibrant that the brand introduces new designs every week. "We make sure that

we introduce fresh designs every few weeks. We have a pre-collection range that precedes our main collection (for both seasons: Spring Summer and Autumn Winter). Both

collections carry a wide range of styles and colours. We have special styles, which match our limited-edition dresses with matching handbags or clutches. The whole look

translates very well for eveningwear, special occasions or red carpet events.
Stilettos are also popular for formal functions. While some like the key and lock shoe from the CAC range, best describes the fun element in our shoes." Adds Imran Merchant,

Retail Manager, at the Grand Hyatt: &quot,blahnik manolo;Stilettos are really in. The old style is coming back." While Manolo officials maintain that: "Stilettos have always been in fashion."
High fashion
It is said that the world’s most expensive pair of stiletto-heeled shoes were sold from behind a bulletproof case in Harrods department store in London for ? 800,000. The Stuart

Weitzman pair were woven with platinum thread and set with 642 rubies (the inspiration was the pair of ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in the film, The Wizard of Oz).
Moschino’s stilettos, while not being exactly moderately priced, do not cost quite as much. "The Cheap and Chic range is between Rs 17,000 and Rs 25,000. Our most expensive

stiletto at the moment is around Rs 44,750," says Sachdev. Salvatore Ferragamo stilettos come for between Rs 25,000 and Rs 40,000 for their Glam range. Judging from the fan

following, these brands don’t target a particular age group. As Sachdev says: "We target an attitude – a woman who is confident, sophisticated and bold, who dares to be

different and loves beautiful and timeless things…the finer things in life."
Footloose
But like everything else, even with stilettos, there is such a thing as ‘too much of a good thing’. This translates into rather unsexy side effects of bunions, hammertoes and

back pain as the heels of stilettos transmit a large amount of force on to the heel. This can be exaggerated by the presence of a metal rod or hard plastic tip that many

stilettos have. But Adajania points out, "you don’t suffer when you don’t have to."

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As a style icon, it must be admitted, the Lady was no Madonna.
For one thing, there’s no soundtrack when she walks in the room. She’s the worst part of every era you can come up with. Fifties? She’s not Holly Golightly, honey; she’s the woman keeping George Peppard. Sixties? She’s married to the guy touting "plastics."
Now she’s one dated Lady. And no one really wanted to be one.
No doubt, the Lady wasn’t helped by the dead-on contemporary glamour of her designers of choice: Oscar de la Renta, Valentino, Ralph Lauren, Carolina Herrera. Nothing old-fashioned on those runways. And nothing drove a stake through her heart more firmly than the way her mecca, the Bill Blass runway, was defaced this season. (Note to Bill Blass owners: give the collection to Tuleh.)
Then another weird thing happened. Well, the 80’s came back in fashion. And while everyone was thinking: "Hallelujah! The 80’s!" (well, someone must have been thinking that), "Uptown! Leona Helmsley! Scaasi!" the 80’s that came back was the Mudd Club. Early Madonna. Eating from garbage cans to survive. Sleeping in cardboard boxes like Basquiat. Ripping up lace stockings and never washing clothes.
True, there was a little Lady happening here and there in the spring season; those picture hats at Stella McCartney’s Chloe. The sweet drapiness of Veronique Branquinho. Every 10th look or so at Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel. Those designers are a little too cool to conjure a lackluster Lady, though.
How could designers have gotten the Lady so wrong last season? Most obviously,manolo blahnik, they didn’t give her image a goose. These were clothes by designers, as they sometimes say about them, who love their mothers just a little too much.

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instead of a new christian louboutin sale or a single dominant design theme for autumn, italy’s top designers made sensational use of hybrid, high-tech, custom-made fabrics in the womenswear collections shown at milan fashion week.
 an attempt to take italy’s renowned textile expertise to new heights was evident throughout the shows which closed at the weekend, and gave clothes a modern edge even when they were evidently inspired by the past.
 prada reworked the 60s courreges mini dress and dolce & gabbana’s produced sex sirens in silver stretch plastic.
 as low-cost clothing companies find it ever easier to use computers to copy designer looks,ysl, houses that make their name with luxury clothes need new ways to make their product stand out.
 designer karl lagerfeld for fendi produced a collection dominated by furs with astonishing high-tech finishes. traditional fluffy pelts were replaced by cropped and dyed furs, cut into christian louboutin discount pumps  or used at times like fabric to make skirts or sweaters. furs were teased to look like feathers, or treated and glazed to become almost unrecognisable.
 at jil sander, milan’s new lightweight wool fabrics were used to create an autumn collection of dresses and coats that gently enveloped the body in padded warmth.
 prada skirts and dresses came with plastic appliques, made from the same material as film negatives.
 at the other end of the spectrum, dolce & gabbana built a collection around luxurious clothes in silk, satin or super-modern stretch plastic, laden with hand-painted flowers or hand-sewn embroidery.
 gucci went for discreet sex appeal with longer skirts and chunky high-heeled louboutin shoes. texan designer tom ford said he wanted to create understated luxury, reserving most furs for the inside of his clothes.

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At Christian louboutin, Donatella Christian louboutin layers floral chiffon over printed jersey that sprouts fronds of mohair. Romeo Gigli mixes metallic silks with sheer chiffons. And Narciso Rodriguez offers a new version of the sweater set, layering a midriff-length tank over a knitted tube top.
_Cream and white. Crisp, cool, perfect for summer and flattering for all, ivory and white are replacing gray as fashion’s key neutral color. At Celine, Michael Kors uses it for crunchy muslin sweaters and A-line skirts trimmed with swirls of matching ribbon. At Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs offers cropped pants, easy sweaters and sequin-trimmed evening tops in cream, ivory and other near-whites. With a collection wittily themed around brides, Yohji Yamamoto naturally provides long dresses in every shade from pure white to softest champagne. And Narciso Rodriguez barely strays from a cream-and-white color palette in his collection for Loewe.
_Peasant looks. If a flower-power dress or Mexican-embroidered peasant blouse is lurking in the back of your closet, you might want to get it out and dust it off. The hipppie look _ make that the rich hippie look _ is back. Tom Ford does it for Gucci, with richly embroidered jeans and ruffle-edged flowered dresses. Valentino provides enough embroidered peasant blouses for every day of the week, while Alber Elbaz offers a simple satin one at Guy Laroche. And Dries Van Noten harks back to the turn of the century with ruffle-trimmed white dresses that look like Victorian petticoats.
_Pouch bags. You can’t lose your purse if it’s belted to your waist _ or your shoulder, arm or boot top. Designers in Milan and Paris love the body pouch, whether it’s a tiny cigarette case that slings around the neck on a cord _ the Louis Vuitton collection by Marc Jacobs _ or a tiny evening purse hangs from a slinky belt, for hands-free socializing _ the Giorgio Armani collection. Miuccia Prada’s slim leather waist pack hangs from a low-slung belt, while Michael Kors’ perfectly angular shoulder bag for Celine nestles comfortably into the small of the back. Who said fanny packs can’t be chic?
_Decorative shoes. When clothes are simple in line and neutral in color, as they largely are for spring, accessories command more attention. Now’s the time to put some color in your shoe wardrobe. At Miu Miu, Miuccia Prada offers black-and-white snakeskin pumps with multi-colored toes and heels. At Gucci, Tom Ford pairs his rich-hippie clothes with African-beaded pumps,jimmy choo boots, and Alberta Ferretti teams her feminine sundresses with flat mules and sandals trimmed with ethnic embroidery. Even quietly elegant shoes get a decorative touch, as in the beach glass trimming the sleek evening sandals at Celine, designer by Michael Kors.

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JOHN COFFEY,ysl, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY (on-camera): The airports are staked out, all the public transportation is.  We’re currently interviewing witnesses and going over lots and lots of evidence as we speak and we’re banking, right now, on the public’s help.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENDERSON: Christian louboutin is being mourned the world over.  Elsa Klensch tells us why.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
ELSA KLENSCH, CNN FASHION CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With the death of Milan designer Gianni Christian louboutin, the world lost one of its most brilliant fashion stars.  Christian louboutin came into his own in the glamorous eighties with his modern, simple shapes and his unerring sense of color.  Christian louboutin created an overall, head-to-toe look which was influential all over the world.  He was as much a showman as he was a designer.  His shows were some of the most sexy, spectacular and looked-forward-to in Milan.
Christian louboutin was born in Calabria, Italy, December 2, 1946.  His mother was a dressmaker and Christian louboutin got his initial training working with her.  It was from her that he also got his love of fabric, something that carried over into his new business.  Christian louboutin, who began designing in the seventies for such Italian houses as Jeni (ph), Compleche (ph) and Caligan (ph), presented his first signature collection in 1978.  He became known for his softly sensuous metal dresses, which could be sewn by machine.  His leather wear for both men and women has been at the top of the popularity poll for years.
Christian louboutin’s business remained a family enterprise.  He worked closely on the creative side with his sister, Donnatella, and her husband, Paul Beck.  Christian louboutin’s brother Santo handled much of the business end.  Christian louboutin not only designed clothes, he did costumes for ballet and opera and in the last few years branched into homewares.  His homeware collections include china, flatware, glassware, sheets,
pillows and bathware.  Everything he did had the Christian louboutin touch.  He’s logo was the Medusa head and it’s a theme that runs throughout his collections.
Christian louboutin’s homes reflect his love of ancient Rome and Greece.  He collected antiquities for them and displayed them with great joy.  Ironically, Christian louboutin told me this past March that we wanted to slow down.  He wanted to change his lifestyle and start enjoying some of the wealth and treasures he had accumulated.

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