FASHION

The Measure

What's hot. And what's not

Kristen Stewart: Anyone know anyone who doesn't think she's awesome? 

Going up
Going down

The Topshop teacup fascinator It would be beyond brilliant if Kate M wore this £28 beauty tomorrow.

Palm Beach-ifying your look Who needs sun when the Trina Turk capsule collection for Banana Republic lands on Monday? Our unanimous tip: the tropical shorts.

Grown-up Kristen Stewart crushes Anyone know anyone who doesn't think she's awesome?

Shotgun wedding chic You think we're joking? You've not seenRichard Nicoll's new bridalwear collection for Topshop. One dress has ample room for a swollen tummy.

Surrealist jewellery Peace signs, horseshoes, initials are a bit obvious. Channel the Schiaparelli spirit of 2012 with Alex Monroe's insects or Nora Kogan's lip cuffs.

Studded cut-offs Just no.

The approaching swimwear crisis Stick to a black bikini, or go for that cutout crazy number you saw in Grazia? This will end in tears.

St Tropez's shopping centre pop-ups We're suckers for a good fake tan, it's true, but not in a mall.

The Mozart A short ponytail at the nape tied with a ribbon. Karl Lagerfeld's own Amadeus-esque style, seen on the Versailles catwalk for Chanel Cruise.

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Trainer Hugo Palmer recorded a first Newmarket success when Tipping Over made all of the running to take the Fly London Southend To Belfast EBF Maiden Stakes.The Aussie Rules filly had an experience advantage over several of her unraced rivals and made it pay in the hands of jockey Michael Hills.Kalicamix tried to mix it with her early on, while the well-supported newcomer Ask Dad threw down a late challenge, but 9-1 chance Tipping Over had all the answers and bagged the six-furlong contest by two lengths from Ask Dad.Palmer said: "I thought she would have to go some to beat the colts and she did."We could go to the Albany Stakes next, but we are more likely to come back here at the end of the month for the Empress Stakes."It's my first winner at Newmarket, which is a thrill. I've always come here hoping they would run well and normally they've run badly, so it's a big relief to get one right."

The Swiss luxury watch brand Tag Heuer announced Cameron Diaz as the newest brand ambassador at a press conference on the Rhine river banks. The event was held a night before the opening of Baselworld, a trade show which is considered to be the most important display of the international watch and jewellery industry organised in Basel, Switzerland, according to the press release.

Diaz, who is the face of the brand’s new collection Link Lady, says, “Throughout my career I have been very selective about aligning myself with brands. I love the fact that Tag Heuer challenges the rules and thinks outside the box.” The actor has joined the league of other Tag Heuer ambassadors: tennis player Maria Sharapova, actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Formula 1 world champions Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, actor Chen Daoming and actor Shahrukh Khan.

Tag Heuer’s brand image is very Steve McQueen-like; someone who has the ability to defy rules and to fight for a cause and challenge their own values and assumptions in the process. Therefore, with Diaz’s versatile body of work and her own rebellious attitude, the partnership seemed a logical move. “I have been a fan of this brand since many years. When they showed me the design for the Link Lady, I thought it was the perfect evolution of timeless watch making and iconic designs, all reinterpreted with glamour and elegance for a modern woman,” the actor said at the press statement.

The design, Diaz would be endorsing, is a bracelet watch inspired by the link bracelets and has S-shaped links. The dials come in several colours and the edges of the dials feature a light undulating concentric guilloche. As Diaz pointed out, Link Lady is more of a jewellery item than a watch.

Kara Laricks, winner of NBC’s Fashion Star, is living every fashion designer’s dream – her clothing is on the racks of Macy's, one of the country's largest retailers. The achievement comes after weeks of going before judges and mentors including Jessica Simpson and Nicole Richie to learn whether her small collection would be picked up by a buyer from Macy’s, H&M or Saks Fifth Avenue. Each week as the 14 contestants dwindled down Laricks was left standing.

 

“I don’t know how to describe life right now. It’s been thrilling,” Laricks says. “It’s been a thrill to see my designs Macy’s Saks Fifth Avenue and H&M. It’s a designer’s dream come true.”

Episode after episode Laricks had designs chosen by one of three judges to have her looks on shelves the day after programming aired. Caprice Willard, Macy’s buyer on Fashion Star, says Laricks' looks always stood out and she was impressed with how the deisgner translated her designs to the masses.
 

There is hardly a shortage of books about depression. Far from being the illness that dare not speak its name, it is actually quite hard to get it to shut up. William Styron's Darkness Visible, Lewis Wolpert on hisMalignant Sadness, Elizabeth Wurtzel's citizenship of Prozac Nation are just the stand-out titles in a crowded if somewhat subdued genre. And that's before you start casting back through bits of the Iliad, most ofHamlet and all of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

1. Underneath the Lemon Tree: A Memoir of Depression and Recovery
2. by Mark Rice-Oxley
3. 
4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop

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1. Tell us what you think:Star-rate and review this book

It is, though, in the nature of depression that the sufferer believes that no one has ever felt quite like this before, that there is nothing to read that quite matches up to their own experience. It's for this reason that Mark Rice-Oxley decided to write a book about his own experience of what, in an earlier age, might have been called a nervous breakdown. Under the Lemon Tree could be subtitled "ordinary bloke goes nearly mad in middle age". Rice-Oxley (pictured) was a dad of three with a good marriage and an interesting job as a news editor on this paper when he started to feel peculiar. So peculiar, in fact, that on a Thames river boat party to celebrate his 40th he begged his mother to stand as close to him as she did on his first day at school. If she strayed out of his eyeline for a moment, there was no telling what might happen next.

As these peculiar feelings dig in over the following weeks, Rice-Oxley finds himself sitting on the floor of his three-year-old daughter's bedroom, unable to complete one of her ABC puzzles. And this is where his book is particularly strong, on the way the physical world warps as you sink deeper into depression: station platforms seem like death traps, walls rear up from nowhere and everyday objects slip through your fat, stupid fingers. And then there's the cold ringing in your ears and the wavy lines in front of your eyes that make everything look like a knock-off Picasso. All of which is made worse by the sort of bone-tiredness that comes from never getting more than a few hours' sleep at a time. Rice-Oxley catches exactly the persecution of pre-dawn wakefulness, that jittery alertness that can be assuaged only by taking a pill that plunges you into a thick coma from which you struggle to emerge, as if swimming up from the bottom of the sea.

Slightly less persuasive is his attempt to stitch his particular experience into a broader inquiry about what depression is, where it comes from and where – if you're lucky – it eventually goes. He starts with an account of his childhood, which sounds picture-book perfect, although a psychoanalytically inclined therapist might want to press a bit harder on all those sunshiny memories of rural Hampshire in the 1970s. Rice-Oxley then – for reasons that aren't quite clear – gives us episodes from his time as a freelancer in eastern Europe during the chaotic early days of perestroika. At one point when he is in the depths of darkness someone helpfully suggests that perhaps it is the "terrible things" that he witnessed in Bosnia in the 1990s that lie at the heart of his present despair. But he has to admit that he hasn't seen any. In fact, he has always worked hard at making sure that he stays safe, a working practice that usually results in "half a story but all of my life". Which in turn, of course, only engenders an extra feeling of bogusness: here is a man who has no reason not to be counting his lucky stars.

But maybe not entirely. Where Rice-Oxley gets close to a workable explanation for his sudden unravelling is in his description of what life is like for a modern middle-class man. Committed to being an involved parent, loving husband and competent professional, he stretches himself to transparency. His schedule sounds dizzying, a frantic programme of night shifts, school runs, and shopping in bulk. And then, because he's a bit of a perfectionist and deeply competitive too, there's also the intensive physical training, the 15-mile cycle ride home from work. In short, Rice-Oxley suggests, he is suffering from the sort of "having it all" culture that sends working mothers into a slither, but to which men have always been assumed to be bullishly immune.

Hands on: Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan attended the 2012 MTV Movie Awards over the weekend

Taking the plunge: The actress wore a revealing Lublu dress

On stage, Channing teasingly began taking his shirt off while introducing the best on-screen transformation category with Magic Mike co-star Matthew McConaughey.

'Not you, not here, not right now,' McConaughey told the actor.

They were both upstaged by shirtless Joe Manganiello, who goes by Big Dick Richie in Magic Mike, after he arrived on stage in a chest baring fireman costume. (They eventually gave the category gong to The Hunger Game's Elizabeth Banks)

Magic Mike is a comedy partly based on Channing's early days as a male stripper. 

Wife of Magic Mike star Channing Tatum conjures up a sexy look for MTV Movie Awards after fun day at the beach

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

PUBLISHED: 15:56 GMT, 4 June 2012 | UPDATED: 07:16 GMT, 5 June 2012

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Magic Mike star Channing Tatum and wife Jenna Dewan made quite the beguiling couple at the MTV Movie Awards last night.

The actor, whose films The Vow and 21 Jump Street were both nominated, looked effortlessly cool in a casual white tee, grey shirt, jacket and jean. 

And his 31-year-old companion looked a knock-out in a plunging Lublu dress and Sergio Rossi shoes.

 

Turning tricks: Channing was discouraged from stripping off by Magic Mike co-star Matthew McConaughey

The actor warmed up for the awards weekend with a day at the beach with his wife on Friday.

He spent the day playing football in the sand with friends while Jenna Dewan looked on.

The Step Up actress, who wore a skimpy white beach dress, kept her face hidden under a large hat as she enjoyed a beer.

Upstaged: Magic Mike's Joe Manganiello put on a shirtless show while category winner Elizabeth Banks watched on

The honeymoon period is clearly not over for the couple, who married in 2009 after meeting on the set of Step Up and the pair, who have matching tattoos, kissed and cuddled on the beach in between plays.

Jenna recently organised a surprise birthday party for her husband,with a all-day bar crawl in New York City and a Dirty Dancing-themed flash mob.

For the final sequence, Channing grabbed Jenna, 31, and hopped on the makeshift dance floor to mimic Patrick Swayze’s infamous dance move, lifting his petite wife right over his head.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/usshowbiz/article-2154437/Channing-Tatums-wife-Jenna-Dewan-conjures-sexy-look-MTV-Movie-Awards-fun-day-beach.html#ixzz1xJMhDHBG

It was nice to see girls from the modelling fraternity at a cozy dinner over some scrumptious food and wine that flowed freely.

Narendra Kumar, former model Svetlana Casper and Alison Kanuga were present too. Guests enjoyed barbecue spare ribs, popcorn shrimps and stir fried tofu. Hosts Shamita Singha and Nikhil Chib saw to it that everyone had their plates full.

Model and TV host Shamita Singha, sommelier in the making, owner of a bar, manager of event company tells HARSHINI VAKKALANKA it's only natural that all these facets of her lifestyle-based career come together

Only in her thirties and Shamita Singha is leading the life she wants. Having started out as a semi-finalist in the fist Miss Earth Pageant in 2001, Shamita now selectively models for designers like Vikram Phadnis, Tarun Tahiliani, Manish Malhotra and Rohit Bal.

She runs an event management company, has just opened up a bar, and hosts events (including TV shows). Holding it all together is her passion for wine, which Shamita feels, blends really well with her profession.

“It's all very simple to balance because modelling gives you enough free time to do the other things you want to pursue. Wine, fashion and lifestyle and hosting events all come under one umbrella,” says Shamita, who was in the city to conduct a wine appreciation session with Four Seasons at UB City's City Bar.

“I was 18 when my father offered me my first glass of wine and I fell in love with it instantly. It had a dry, robust, grape flavour. I decided that I wanted to know more.” So she went abroad and studied at the Saint Emilion wine tasting school in Bordeaux, France and the Beaune School of Wine in Burgundy, and attended workshops in Spain, London and the U.S.A. “I started studying wine as a hobby and then it turned into a profession because very few people in India are studying the subject. Word went out and wine companies started approaching me, asking me to conduct tasting and training sessions.”

And now she is waiting to get her degree that will earn her the qualification to be a sommelier. “I learnt about everything in the wine-making process from grape to glass, from what happens in the vineyard and how the grapes are grown to which varieties are used for which vine. I also learnt about the tasting notes of the wine, how wine is identified, apart from the various flavours and aromas of wine. It's a massive study and I'm still studying.”

Shamita believes that wine is still in its nascent stage in India, since it is not really a part of Indian culture. “Unlike in Europe, wine tasting has not been around in India forever. Lots of people are scared to drink wine; they are intimidated by it. There are also a lot of myths and misconceptions about it. The awareness is growing, slowly but surely.”

She has a few pointers for those who want to venture into the art of wine tasting. But for those who want to study it, she recommends going abroad, since there aren't that many courses in India. She also points out that there's plenty of information available online. “Even if you know the basics, it is good enough. Then you can actually choose the right wines and help recommend the right wines for gifting,” she quips. “I want people to know they shouldn't be scared of or intimidated by wine. It's something that you will enjoy if you keep tasting and trying different wines, different styles, and different varieties. Try everything that's out there so your palate starts developing, and starts enjoying the taste. Then you can start discovering more.”

Keywords: Model and TV host Shamita Singha, designer