Lifestyle
The Most Size-Inclusive Brand at Fashion Week
There’s rather a lot to see at style week. Blink (or scroll too quick) and also you’ll miss the small print: feathered luggage, futuristic sun shades, fork jewellery. All month lengthy, we’ll highlight the issues we noticed that shocked or delighted us.
PARIS — For a few years, the style trade has been criticized for its lack of variety within the sorts of our bodies proven on runways.
Some progress has been made, and a few seasons are higher than others. However for essentially the most half, on the most distinguished style exhibits of New York, London, Milan and Paris, the panorama in the course of the season that simply ended appeared like this: one plus-size mannequin and one mid-size mannequin was solid amongst a sea of size-zero (or thereabouts) fashions.
So it was refreshing, towards the top of this Paris Trend Week, to see these ratios completely flipped — even when solely at one present — by a younger model referred to as Ester Manas, designed by the Brussels-based duo Ester Manas and Balthazar Delepierre.
It was solely Ms. Manas and Mr. Delepierre’s second runway present. In 2020, the label was a semifinalist for the LVMH Prize, a prestigious contest for rising designers, during which the duo set themselves aside technically: About 90 p.c of their assortment is available in one dimension that matches a number of — from about 34 to 50 in French sizing, or 2 to 18 in American sizing.
So, of the 29 seems introduced at their runway present on Saturday, lower than one-third had been worn by conventionally skinny fashions.
But as a substitute of feeling like some extraordinary, yassified act of body-positive rebel, the designers pulled off a extra spectacular feat: It simply felt regular. The fashions — like girls who purchase garments in the true world, just like the viewers watching the present — represented a variety of sizes.
Nonetheless, these weren’t essentially on a regular basis garments for each girls, although that’s true on most runways. These designs had been ruched (which permits the broad dimension vary), sheer, brightly coloured and attractive, however securely constructed, exposing midriffs in a means that by no means appeared too exposing.
Backstage, after the present, just a few fashions teared up, Mr. Delepierre stated, as a result of “they couldn’t think about they may stroll on the catwalk in Paris.”
However the designers emphasised that their casting wasn’t meant as an moral stance, or by eager to create some body-confident utopia. It was sensible. They wanted to indicate the garments this method to promote the garments. (Their largest stockist is Ssense.)
“Now we have to indicate how the items transfer,” Mr. Delepierre stated.
“It’s about actuality,” Ms. Manas added. “It’s not about goals.”
Lifestyle
Britt Allcroft, who brought Thomas the Tank Engine to television, dies at 81
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Britt Allcroft, creator of the beloved Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends children’s TV series, has died.
The British-born producer died last week in Santa Monica, Calif., at 81.
The death was confirmed by Brannon Carty, the creator of a documentary about Thomas fandom and a friend of the TV producer’s. No cause of death was given.
Thomas started out as a character in a series of books dating back to the 1940s by Rev. Wilbert Awdry, an English Anglican minister and train enthusiast. Awdry’s The Railway Series revolved around a cast of anthropomorphic trains, including Thomas and his friends Gordon, James and Percy, all chuffing along on the imaginary island of Sodor.
But Allcroft made Thomas an international sensation, starting in the mid-1980s with her TV adaptation narrated by Ringo Starr.
The series, which was later renamed Thomas & Friends, ran for more than three decades and featured other famous narrators such as George Carlin and Alec Baldwin. It has spawned TV spin-offs, movies, stage productions and a ton of merch.
And the appeal goes beyond kids. The 2023 documentary An Unlikely Fandom is about grownups’ passion for the little blue locomotive.
Filmmaker Brannon Carty — a lifelong Thomas fan — said he got to know Allcroft in her final years.
“She was just an incredible woman who was still a child at heart,” Carty said in an interview with NPR. “But she was a businesswoman at the same time. So, she understood what children wanted, and also knew how to sell it.”
Allcroft was born in 1943 in Worthing, a town on England’s south coast.
Beyond Thomas, her 1990s animated series Magic Adventures of Mumfie, about a sweet little gray elephant and his friends, was a particular hit.
“I wanted to do something very different from Thomas that would be very magical and epic and hopefully have lots of music in it, and would, in the same way as Thomas, help give children love, and security, and inspiration, and comfort, and fun,” Allcroft told NPR in a 2013 interview.
Allcroft also said she aimed to create shows that gave children an antidote to hectic modern life.
“Children, they’re multidimensional,” she said. “And they still like that time where they can be with their stories, be with their characters, and feel that they’re not being pushed.”
Lifestyle
Waymo Driverless Car Drives Passenger Around In Circles — VIDEO
Here’s a new way to miss a flight … a Waymo passenger says his driverless ride to the airport wouldn’t stop taking him around in circles … and he documented his travel nightmare on video.
Footage shows a man named Mike Johns sitting in the back of his Waymo ride, which won’t stop circling a parking lot.
Mike calls Waymo customer service to report the issue, telling them he’s in danger of missing his flight … but the rep is unable to stop the car in its tracks … and Mike keeps being driven in a circle.
It’s funny … Mike wonders if he’s being pranked, and he says it feels like he’s in a science fiction thriller.
Ultimately, Mike says his Waymo drove him around in 8 circles … and he ended up missing his flight.
Mike claims he’s yet to be reimbursed for the missed flight, ripping Waymo for having no empathy and ignoring him with a customer service division that’s fully automated and run by artificial intelligence.
Sounds like the experience is souring Waymo for Mike … next time he needs a ride, he says he’s going to keep it old-fashioned with a Lyft or Uber.
Waymo — run by Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. — is still pretty new to the taxi biz … and it’s clear there are still some hiccups to iron out.
Lifestyle
Do You Believe in Life After Death? These Scientists Study It.
Upon arrival at the family’s home, the team was shown into the kitchen. A child, who was three, the youngest of four home-schooled siblings, peeked from behind her mother’s legs, looking up shyly. She wore a baggy Minnie Mouse shirt and went to perch between her grandparents on a banquette, watching everyone take their seats around the dining table.
“Let’s start from the very beginning,” Dr. Tucker said after the paperwork had been signed by Misty, the child’s 28-year-old mother. “It all began with the puzzle piece?”
A few months earlier, mother and child had been looking at a wooden puzzle of the United States, with each state represented by a cartoon of a person or object. Misty’s daughter pointed excitedly at the jagged piece representing Illinois, which had an abstract illustration of Abraham Lincoln.
“That’s Pom,” her daughter exclaimed. “He doesn’t have his hat on.”
This was indeed a drawing of Abraham Lincoln without his hat, but more important, there was no name under the image indicating who he was. Following weeks of endless talk about “Pom” bleeding out after being hurt and being carried to a too-small bed — which the family had started to think could be related to Lincoln’s assassination — they began to consider that their daughter had been present for the historical moment. This was despite the family having no prior belief in reincarnation, nor any particular interest in Lincoln.
On the drive to Amherst, Dr. Tucker confessed his hesitation in taking on this particular case — or any case connected to a famous individual. “If you say your child was Babe Ruth, for example, there would be lots of information online,” he said. “When we get those cases, usually it’s that the parents are into it. Still, it’s all a little strange to be coming out of a three-year-old’s mouth. Now if she had said her daughter was Lincoln, I probably wouldn’t have made the trip.”
Lately, Dr. Tucker has been giving the children picture tests. “Where we think we know the person they’re talking about, we’ll show them a picture from that life, and then show them another picture — a dummy picture — from somewhere else, to see if they can pick out the right one,” he said. “You have to have a few pictures for it to mean anything. I had one where the kid remembered dying in Vietnam. I showed him eight pairs of pictures and a couple of them he didn’t make any choice on, but the others he was six out of six. So, you know, that makes you think. But this girl is so young, that I don’t think we can do that.”
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