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WITH bespoke gowns costing up to $30,000 and suits a mere $15,000, it is hardly surprising that the Paris haute couture week has felt the chill wind of the financial recession. The annual display of fashion's finest has been reduced to a three-day event. But John Galliano's magical, floral-inspired collection for Christian Dior suggested there was still plenty of life in the art of Paris couture.

The Rodin Museum in Paris was transformed into a garden of earthly delights with the scent of hundreds of pink roses. Actresses Blake Lively, Jessica Alba and Lou Doillon added colour as they watched a collection the Gibraltarian-British designer says was inspired by such fashion and flower photographers as Irving Penn and Nick Knight.Models hit the runway with heads wrapped in coloured cellophane headgear created by London milliner Stephen Jones.

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Hot NZ designer Sera Lilly isn't booking models for this year's New Zealand Fashion Week show. Instead, she's to street cast up to 35 models for her solo fashion show at NZFW in September 2010.

Out of the dozens of models Sera will choose from the public, one model will also be selected as the face of Sera Lilly for the autumn/winter 2011 season, and be the lookbook model for Sera Lilly.

The girl chosen as the face of Sera Lilly will also appear in an exclusive ad campaign shot with Sera’s brand partner, Number One Shoes.

The ad will run in a magazine during New Zealand Fashion Week 2010 and the visual will be displayed in Number One Shoes’ 48 windows nationwide.

To learn how to walk the catwalk, Amanda Bransgrove of Catwalk Studios will train the new faces professional catwalk skills.

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If the seat does have to come out of the car, said co-author Lindsay Wilson, parents should make sure their babies are always strapped in. Wilson and Dr. Shital Parikh, both from the orthopedics division of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, reviewed five years worth of data from a national U.S. surveillance system to find records of babies less than one year old that were taken to the ER for car seat injuries.

From 2003-2007, almost 2,000 babies in the sample - so about 43,500 in the entire U.S., the authors estimated - were brought to the ER for a car seat injury. Most of those injuries happened when babies fell out of their car seat or were in the seat when it fell off a table, counter or shopping cart.

Head or neck injuries were most common, especially in the youngest babies, who were also more likely to go to the ER. About half of the injuries happened at home. There were only a few car seat-related deaths recorded in the authors' sample, so they weren't able to calculate a national estimate.

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So far, we’ve seen a lot of great collections and I am definitely spotting the trends. Continuing the fabulous line-up of talented designers at Africa Fashion Week, was  Gloria Wavammunno as she showcased her  collection on Day 3 of the event. In this collection, she uses a lot of African print  in comparison to  most designers we’ve seen so far.

Gloria brings the statement 80’s shoulder pads, exaggerated pockets, harem pants and vibrant prints. And to maintain that feminine glamour embodied in her collections,  we see full skirts, sexy asymmetric sleeves and knee-length dresses accented with  sweet-heart necklines. In addition, we see  lots of deep plunging necklines; a major trend so far with collections showcased at Africa Fashion Week.

African Fashion Week has been a wonderful break to all the football madness although the seats were sadly empty for the first shows of the afternoon. I wish all those who had no football to watch could have been invited to witness our slick fashion teams at work. This first pic is of the David Tlale midnight show which was vintage Tlale glamour with a full orchestra and an opera diva accompanying the collection.

The mob of shopaholics can move online. The boutiques aren’t dead, but fashion websites like 99labels.com, exclusively.

In and  have come up in India, offering the convenience to buy an Armani at 2 am. They offer product-shots from every conceivable angle and luxury at a discount.

Ishita Swarup, 42, along with friends Anchal Jain and Ankur Prakash, set up the online shopping club 99labels last December.

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With former supermodel Viveka Babajee committing suicide, the fashion industry is again in the news for all the wrong reasons. Experts and the fashion fraternity, however, feel that the incident is not a reflection on the industry but on how you personally deal with a situation.

According to psychiatrist Sanjay Chugh depression can hit anyone at any point in time, at any stage in life. "It perhaps gets more noticed amongst certain sections or groups due to one`s social status in society. It has nothing to do with a specific profession," Chugh told reporters.

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A number of leading designers here in Jamaica and in the Caribbean have had very successful debuts of their fashion lines. From the recently concluded Caribbbean Fashionweek, three female designers stood out on the runway. All three had varied looks and feels but one thing was common to them - they were all Jamaican.

Lisa Walton, a Jamaican native who resides in New York; Ashley Martin, the region's first singer/actress/fashion designer; and Keneea Linton, one of Jamaica's premier female fashion designers. The trio who are three of the most promising designers out of Jamaica, the Caribbean's fashion capital, spoke to The Gleaner about what was in store for the fashion industry in Jamaica and what they had to offer as three women in a harshly competitive industry.

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The Alexander McQueen fashion house presented its first menswear collection following the designer's death, drawing on archives and the fashion house's British roots in a bid for continuity.

But not everyone stuck close to familiar territory on the second day of men's fashion week Sunday: Giorgio Armani presented a surprisingly edgy and militaristic/borderline S&M line for next summer.

In a diametrically opposite look for the season, Gianfranco Ferre's young designing pair looked to India, Japan and China for a relaxed, easy-to-wear collection cut largely of linen and silk.

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN Alexander McQueen's spring/summer 2011 collection was the first solo outing for Sarah Burton, who has worked with the fashion house for 16 years and was named creative director last month.

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As the glamazonian model sashayed down the catwalk to the bossa nova beat, she pulled awkwardly at her slashed Lycra mini skirt. The skimpy little thing was barely bigger than an Elastoplast and simply wouldn’t sit still.

For the cluster of international journalists facing the parade of bronzed flesh laced in scraps of stretchy fabric, this was exactly what we had expected from.

Rio Fashion Week: great bodies, microscopic beachwear and sizzle factor. Models wearing designs from Triya and Lenny
Designs from Triya, left, and Lenny.

In only its third outing, Rio is a young fashion capital, one proud of its beach culture and the scorching designer styles it inspires. But beyond the hot Brazilian bodies in hot Brazilian bikinis, there’s also a significant ka-ching factor:

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