STEALING BEAUTY: While in their new movie “Bride Wars,” Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway play former best friends who scheme to steal each other’s “bridal thunder,” in real life the actresses are happy to complement one another. At the film’s premiere on Monday in New York, Hudson and Hathaway channeled a bride and groom in their red-carpet garb. Hudson wore a beaded and embroidered white Oscar de la Renta column along with mounds of Tiffany & Co. diamond jewelry, while Hathaway wore a modified black tuxedo from Band of Outsiders. “Kate had this idea in her head. She wanted to play off the whole bridal theme of the movie and do full-on and do something over the top. It had the drama of a bridal gown but it wasn’t totally bridal,” said Rachel Zoe, who styled both Hudson and Hathaway. “It was Annie’s idea to do a tuxedo and my initial reaction was that they were going to look like a bride and groom…and she liked that.”
Related Galleries
MADOFF’S GRAY AREA: One of the countless luxuries Bernard Madoff will have to renounce — if and when he goes to jail — will be his Savile Row threads. For the past 30 years, the disgraced financier, whose home away from home in London was the luxurious Lanesborough Hotel, has turned to Kilgour for his suits. Madoff always chose gray — no surprise, considering his penchant for gray and black interiors — although he opted for a variety of fabrics. A spokesman from Kilgour declined to comment on Madoff, except to confirm he was a client. A source close to the company, however, confirmed he always paid his bills on time.
Meanwhile, London’s Evening Standard newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, reported Tuesday that Valentino may be another of Madoff’s victims. Tuesday was a national holiday in Italy. A spokeswoman for Valentino’s fashion house in London declined to comment on the personal life of the designer, who retired last year.
SALE AWAY: French actress-cum-model Lou Doillon is donning an ambassador cap for the third run of the “Soldes by Paris” (“Sales by Paris”) sales initiative that today kicks off the nation’s five-week-long sales period. The three-day event, organized by Paris’ Chamber of Commerce, and copromoted by retailers including Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, promotes themed shopping circuits, from “chic” to “offbeat,” for foreign visitors to the city, with some 3,000 retailers participating. The percentage of clothing sales made during France’s sales periods has risen steadily over the past decade, according to the French Fashion Institute, representing 17.1 percent of total sales last year compared with 10.9 percent in 1998. Several brands, including Renaud Pellegrino and the troubled mail-order giant La Redoute, are expected to discount stock by 70 percent during the sales, while Printemps, whose holiday sales were reportedly hampered by a bomb scare mid-December, is expected to reduce certain articles by up to 80 percent.
Meanwhile, amidst anemic clothing sales in France (down 4.6 percent in November, according to the French Fashion Institute), politicians are engulfed in a polemic over Sunday shopping. While opinion polls show a majority of the French population is in favor, France’s National Assembly has postponed indefinitely the examining of the bill proposing to extend the number of Sunday openings.