CBS) Heidi Klum may just be the hardest working woman in fashion. She's a world famous model, the host and executive producer of the hit reality show "Project Runway," and she's expecting her third child. As if that's not enough, she has signed on to be the spokeswoman of the new Body Bra by Victoria's Secret and face of the campaign in her spare time. Klum visited The Early Show to talk about her new project, which involves a line of bras named after her nickname in the business, "The Body." "This is the new Victoria Secret bra they just came out with and they called it 'The Body,' which was one of my nicknames that I started having when I started work with Victoria's Secret, which was a huge honor for me," says Klum. "Now it's a big honor having a bra named after my nickname that people know in the business, 'The Body.' And this is probably one bra that every woman wants to have because it is so comfortable. It comes eight different colors, it has no seams, no stitches.
It is not the super sexy, lacy bra, but this is something functional that you want to have every day that is super comfortable and just great." Klum also shot a TV ad for the bra. "It was a lot of fun doing that because I got to tell my story a little bit, you know, how people gave me the nickname and everything, it was a lot of fun." The supermodel, who is halfway through her pregnancy, shot the ad while she was already expecting. A prop helped her hide the pregnancy on camera. "I had a chair to work with that I could hide behind a little bit. It all worked out fine," she explains. Asked where the nickname "The Body" came from, Klum says, "I don't know. It just kind of happened. I was one of the first new girls at Victoria's Secret when I started with them about seven years ago. They nicknamed me 'The Body' when I did the first Victoria's Secret fashion show with them. It was an honor for me. They put it in the paper. It was a big thing." It turns out that the nickname "The Body" replaced the nickname "Muffin." "I would eat so many muffins and brownies, but more muffins.
Like every day I would have a muffin, so they'd call me the 'Muffin' because I was always stuffing my face with muffins. I love them because in Germany we have no muffins," she explains. Her show, "Project Runway," is in its third season and Klum is up for an Emmy. Asked how the show is going, Klum says: "Very good. I mean, right now I think four or five weeks into the show. Now we know we filmed it awhile back. Now our designers, our finalists are all home working on their final collection for fashion week in September. "So this is a great thing for them because they all want to be designers and they get seen on television that can show people what their talent is about. It was a lot of fun being there and watching the whole process and seeing what they come up with every week. They are really, really talented people. I think it's fun for people to watch it and that's why they really enjoy the show because they love watching what people can do with their hands in such a short time."
Source:http://www.showbuzz.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/09/people/main1878157.shtml
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
What To Expect After Breast Augmentation Surgery
The results of breast augmentation are quite apparent immediately after surgery. However, you will need time to recover before you can start to fully and comfortably enjoy your new and improved bustline. The healing process is an important consideration when you are thinking about breast augmentation. A well-informed commitment to surgery will include taking account of the post surgical steps to achieving your body goals. Breast augmentation entails the surgical insertion of breast implants, either silicone or saline, beneath your breast tissue and possibly even beneath the muscle tissue of your chest. The surgery is typically an outpatient procedure that lasts from one to two hours.
Depending on what you want for your body and what your physical form can accommodate, breast augmentation can increase your breast size by one or more bra cup sizes. Desiring a fuller bustline and a figure with more pronounced proportions are the primary motivations for women to seek breast augmentation. Reconstruction after breast surgery or injury, rejuvenation after pregnancy and nursing, and correction of breasts that have markedly differing sizes also are appropriate reasons for breast augmentation. Your First Week After Breast Augmentation Initially after your breast augmentation Beverly Hills, you will feel tired and sore for several days, but you should be up and walking after 24 to 48 hours. Pain medication will be prescribed as necessary to help you with post-surgical discomfort. You will have to completely avoid strenuous activity and monitor for any post-surgical problems like extreme swelling or bleeding.
After a few days, your gauze dressings will be removed and your plastic surgeon may direct you to wear a surgical bra. At the end of your first week of recovery you could typically return to your job unless your occupation is physically demanding. Then your plastic surgeon would have to gauge your recovery and advise you on the appropriate time to resume working. Your Second Week After Breast Augmentation At about the 10 day point, your stitches will be removed. If you have been experiencing a burning sensation in your nipples, this can often persist through the second week. Although your fuller breasts are in place, they will remain sore and you should limit physical contact with them as you continue to heal. Your Next Six Weeks After Breast Augmentation Under the supervision of your surgeon, you will begin to resume your regular physical activities in the ensuing weeks. Breast soreness typically lasts for three to four weeks before fading. Swelling should also diminish during this period, except for perhaps minor swelling. The scars from your surgery will be pink and firm for roughly six weeks. It will take months for the scars to soften and lighten. They will never be completely gone, but the scars often will diminish to barely noticeable.
The recovery timelines described above are what you can typically expect after breast augmentation surgery. Individual cases vary depending on physical characteristics, overall health, and how well you follow guidelines for limiting strenuous activity. Although breast augmentation requires a moderate recovery time, many women are immensely pleased with the results and agree that the discomfort was worth the opportunity to fulfill their dreams of an enhanced bust.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Bras and Breast Cancer--Are You Dressed to Kill?
Breast cancer is a cultural phenomenon. The incidence of breast cancer is dramatically increased only in cultures that wear bras.
How could this be?
The authors of the book, Dressed to Kill : The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras 1995 by Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer examined the habits of 4700 American women, nearly half of whom had breast cancer, before writing their book.
They found that wearing a bra more than 12 hours a day dramatically increased the incidence of breast cancer, cystic breasts (also known as tight-bra syndrome), breast pain, breast tenderness and other breast issues. Women who wear bras 18-24 hours/day have over 100 times greater incidence of breast cancer than those who go bra-less. So, basically you are 3-4 times more likely to get breast cancer from wearing a bra, than by smoking cigarettes!
Bras create constant pressure which compresses and constricts the lymphatic movement to the chest area. If you are a woman who wears a bra and you see red marks and lines after taking your bra off, you are at a greater risk for breast cancer.
The role of lymph is to flush out toxins and debris from tissues. If this flow is impaired, like when wearing a bra, tissues get toxic. We also impair toxin release by using underarm deodorants--they plug up and block our pores.
One interesting study done in the UK in the year 2000, followed 100 women with fibrocystic breast disease. These women went bra-free for three months. The results of this study were astounding, showing how effective this one treatment of going bra-less was in overcoming this particular health challenge.
Singer and Grismaijer validated their own study by going to Fiji and studying the incidence of breast cancer in that country. After working with the countrys epidemiologists, they found only a small percentage of the population with breast cancer. When interviewing these women, they found that every one of them had taken jobs in the corporate world and had started wearing bras within a few short years previous.
Eight Things You CAN Do if You MUST Wear a Bra:
1)Make sure the bra has a loose fit. Remove it when it is not necessary to wear it.
2)Choose a bra with no underwires. These wires block the energy meridians from moving freely through their natural cycles.
3)Use a larger size bra around your menstrual time as increased estrogen causes tissues to retain fluids making the breasts larger and the bra tighter.
4)Discontinue use of deodorizer/antiperspirants. Wash your armpits often with soap and water instead.
5)Bathe daily. The body releases 30% of all the toxins it produces through the skin.
6)Use a shower filter that filters out chlorine. Chlorine also causes several forms of cancer. As you shower, your skin and lungs are absorbing huge amounts of chlorine.
7)Occasionally incorporate Poke Root tincture into your diet to help the lymph flow easier (especially if you have little white dots around the outside of your irises. This is known as a Lymphatic Rosary and is a sign of a slow or sludging lymphatic system.)
8)Sleep naked or in a stretchy T-shirt. Women who wear cotton or nylon non-stretchable materials while they sleep who roll over often can cut circulation off as these materials resist stretching.
Are you dressed to kill? If so, take note and DO something for your health and your life.
2005 by Dr. Denice M. Moffat
How could this be?
The authors of the book, Dressed to Kill : The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras 1995 by Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer examined the habits of 4700 American women, nearly half of whom had breast cancer, before writing their book.
They found that wearing a bra more than 12 hours a day dramatically increased the incidence of breast cancer, cystic breasts (also known as tight-bra syndrome), breast pain, breast tenderness and other breast issues. Women who wear bras 18-24 hours/day have over 100 times greater incidence of breast cancer than those who go bra-less. So, basically you are 3-4 times more likely to get breast cancer from wearing a bra, than by smoking cigarettes!
Bras create constant pressure which compresses and constricts the lymphatic movement to the chest area. If you are a woman who wears a bra and you see red marks and lines after taking your bra off, you are at a greater risk for breast cancer.
The role of lymph is to flush out toxins and debris from tissues. If this flow is impaired, like when wearing a bra, tissues get toxic. We also impair toxin release by using underarm deodorants--they plug up and block our pores.
One interesting study done in the UK in the year 2000, followed 100 women with fibrocystic breast disease. These women went bra-free for three months. The results of this study were astounding, showing how effective this one treatment of going bra-less was in overcoming this particular health challenge.
Singer and Grismaijer validated their own study by going to Fiji and studying the incidence of breast cancer in that country. After working with the countrys epidemiologists, they found only a small percentage of the population with breast cancer. When interviewing these women, they found that every one of them had taken jobs in the corporate world and had started wearing bras within a few short years previous.
Eight Things You CAN Do if You MUST Wear a Bra:
1)Make sure the bra has a loose fit. Remove it when it is not necessary to wear it.
2)Choose a bra with no underwires. These wires block the energy meridians from moving freely through their natural cycles.
3)Use a larger size bra around your menstrual time as increased estrogen causes tissues to retain fluids making the breasts larger and the bra tighter.
4)Discontinue use of deodorizer/antiperspirants. Wash your armpits often with soap and water instead.
5)Bathe daily. The body releases 30% of all the toxins it produces through the skin.
6)Use a shower filter that filters out chlorine. Chlorine also causes several forms of cancer. As you shower, your skin and lungs are absorbing huge amounts of chlorine.
7)Occasionally incorporate Poke Root tincture into your diet to help the lymph flow easier (especially if you have little white dots around the outside of your irises. This is known as a Lymphatic Rosary and is a sign of a slow or sludging lymphatic system.)
8)Sleep naked or in a stretchy T-shirt. Women who wear cotton or nylon non-stretchable materials while they sleep who roll over often can cut circulation off as these materials resist stretching.
Are you dressed to kill? If so, take note and DO something for your health and your life.
2005 by Dr. Denice M. Moffat
Sunday, May 06, 2007
How to make millions from bras and pants
Polly VernonSunday September 10, 2006
The Observer
Elle Macpherson has body issues. Not of the 'I hate my arse' variety, you understand. Elle is 42 years old, but her body is as glorious today as it was when she first began regularly gracing the cover of American body-fascist bible Swimwear Illustrated, more than two decades ago. She's a long-legged, lithehipped, muscular approximation of perfection, clad in tight-fitting black denim and leather. She carries her stupendous cleavage like a weapon. No. Elle's body issues are rather more notional.
For 20 years, Elle's body has been known as The Body. In 1986 Time magazine referred to it thus, and the world accepted it unquestioningly. But last month, Heidi Klum - the 5ft 9in, blonde-streaked flibbertigibbet of a 33-year-old German clothes horse, who has carved herself a substantial profile in the swimsuit-modelling market formerly dominated by Elle herself - made a flagrant and unapologetic bid to co-opt The Body moniker. Klum appeared in an advert for a Victoria's Secret bra, which first aired in early August insisting: 'They call me The Body - and now I have a bra named after me.' Elle's public, and her people, were horrified. 'We saw that, and we were like, oh my God!' Elle's spokesperson, Melissa Edwards, responded. 'We were initially flabbergasted ... we have numerous press clippings in the office referring to her as The Body.' Elle - who has produced a skincare range called 'Elle Macpherson The Body' and a fitness video entitled The Body Workout in past years - is tight-lipped on the issue.
It seems, on the face of it, to be the kind of daft row that only a couple of supermodels could ever get embroiled in. But there's maybe more to it than that. Heidi Klum is messing with Elle's brand, and no one can be allowed to do that.
No celebrity, male or female, has ever converted into a business force as successfully as Elle. She has an estimated personal worth of £35 million. Never mind Heidi Klum and her one piffling bra. Or Kate Moss with her endless ad contracts and her ineffable cachet. Or Linda Evangelista, Elle's contemporary on the 1990s supermodel scene and the woman who once boasted: 'I wouldn't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.' Elle blows them all away financially. Her licensing deal with New Zealand lingerie company Bendon, which produces her own-brand underwear, Elle Macpherson Intimates, is worth £40 million in Britain alone (it also sells in Australia, where it's the biggest-selling underwear brand, and the US, where it's increasing both its market share and its profile rapidly, despite the fact that it was only launched last year). The bestselling calendars and fitness video that she produces through Elle Macpherson Inc - the company she formed in 1994 after leaving Ford, her model agency - are worth tens of millions more.
She is officially one of Australia's richest women, and she was the only model to make the top 100 wealthiest women in 2006's Sunday Times Rich List. In July this year, Elle accepted an appointment as executive director on the board of Hot Tuna surfwear, thus guaranteeing herself substantial creative input and an estimated £2.5m in share options. And so it goes on. Elle makes money. Lots of it.
I'm not sure how, though. We're sitting, Elle and me, on an ornate chaise longue in a quiet corner of a vast warehouse located deep in the heart of New York's Long Island. Around us, the advertising shoot that will showcase the latest offerings from Elle Macpherson Intimates crawls along. On set, an improbably nubile young thing dressed in Elle-conceived scraps of washable silk drapes herself over a Halloween-theme fridge (edited highlights of the contents: pickle jars of eyeballs, takeaway cartons of intestines, etcetera) and moves her hips according to instructions delivered by acclaimed fashion photographer Regan Cameron. Elle herself no longer models in the campaigns. She did at first because 'it was cheaper'. Which demonstrates an unquestionably sound business instinct. But it's about the only solid evidence of one that I can find in the first instance.
Before I meet Elle, I am instructed by various powers not to ask about her personal life. About the recent-ish break-up of her nine-year relationship with Arpad 'Arki' Busson, the financier father of her sons Flynn (who is eight) and Aurelius Cy (three); about her brush with postnatal depression; or about the bust-up with Klum. And so instead, we're talking money. Elle is attempting to deconstruct her business style for me, and I am attempting to reconcile what I know about her place in the business world with her flaky, naive manner. 'I consider myself to be an "entrepreneur", you know?' she's saying. Elle has an odd way of talking; it's halting, precious - she speaks as if English is her second language, although she was born and raised in suburban Sydney. Her inflections are French, the legacy of her eight-year marriage to French photographer Gilles Bensimon, and of her relationship with Busson. She gets words wrong, she makes others up - she says she is 'passioned by business', for instance, and also that she has made 'lots of mit-sakes' - and it all lends her a cutesy, girlish, uncertain quality that is at odds with her business profile. She also speaks a clichéd, breathless kind of business rhetoric: 'I think outside the box,' she says with absolute sincerity. 'And I dare to dream, I dare to take risks. I believe that risk is the currency of the gods. You know. I don't like to think I'm a "businesswoman". "Businesswoman" conjures up this image of hard-ass, pencil-skirt-wearing control freak, and I'm not that.'
What is she, then, I ask. 'I am very passioned by what I do. I make decisions according to my heart. Business for me is very heartfelt. I go with my heart and my instincts and my intuition. And my passions and my love and my joy, and then what happens is, because there's a sense of integrity behind what I do, that often translates into dollars and cents. People recognise that, and people buy, I believe, integrity, and people buy honesty.' She thinks, moreover, that her lingerie 'empowers women ...' that it contributes to the universe because ' ...the nurturing power of femininity is extremely important to the universe ...' She thinks she could have been anything she wanted. 'A barrister - which is kind of like a performing lawyer, which is kind of what I do anyway,' or an architect, or a property developer, but what she chose to do - ultimately - was 'help other women!' How? With lingerie? 'Yes!'
Elle, in interview, strikes me as less of a moneymaking machine than an aspiring beauty-pageant winner, or maybe the devoted groupie of a motivational speaker. Elle in action, however, is a different matter. I watch her attack Regan Cameron's shoot. I watch her style and art direct and criticise and rearrange, I watch her admonish some staff members and team-build others; I watch her fire off endless, endless questions at Stuart Cameron, the manager with whom she has worked for more than 20 years; and I remember a recent quote from Mary-Ellen Field, the very senior consultant who advises Elle on her licensing deals, who claimed that Elle 'reads every document. She even sends them back with comments in the margin, and if she doesn't understand anything she asks you. She's extremely disciplined. You don't look like that unless you are.' And I get more of an idea of how she operates, and why it works for her.
'I'm not a control freak,' she tells me - again. But I'm not at all convinced.
Elle's private life is markedly less well managed, however. She's been (allegedly) involved in a series of jolly, gossip-column-worthy entanglements - with everyone from Tim Jeffries (Green Shields Stamp heir and serial romancer of the professionally gorgeous), to footballer Sol Campbell, to Hollywood's naughtiest superstar, Colin Farrell. But she's also endured painful rejection at the hands of Gilles Bensimon - a divorce that devastated her, she has said. 'I felt as if the rug had been pulled from under me.' And in June 2005 came the split from Arki Busson, after a nine-year relationship. She also developed postnatal depression after the 2003 birth of Aurelius Cy, her younger son, and that she spent some time in a clinic in Arizona receiving treatment for it. 'I have zero shame about it,' she has said, in the past. But nothing to say on the subject? 'No.'
She really doesn't want to address her personal life in any fashion. She says she doesn't see why she should, on the grounds that 'I don't seek press unless it's for my business, I don't ever really do self-gratifying or gratuitous press', which isn't actually any grounds at all. She may as well say: 'I don't like answering difficult questions that don't directly promote my commercial interests.' So when I approach the sticky territory of her non-business existence, Elle becomes flagrantly brittle and invokes the logistics of being a mother as a distracting, defensive tactic. 'I work one week and I have one week with my children. And when I'm with my children, I never work. That's just ... my rule. They are absolutely my priority. And then my children go to their father for one week and I work.'
Does she feel like a single mother, I wonder, with all the baggage that entails? She laughs, uncomfortably. She waits a while, in case I move on. I don't. She sighs. 'Ah - hum ...' she says, eventually. 'I'm a ... single parent. With two children. I'm a single parent. Yeah. My, uh ...' [Elle tries, and fails, to say the word 'ex'] ' ...the father of my children is very committed to ... you know ... we're both committed to co-parenting the children ... but ...' She trails off , and we return to the infinitely cosier territory of achieving a decent bra fit. Elle's party trick is a one-glance assessment of a stranger's bra size. I ask her to 'do' me, which she does, correctly.
The rigours of co-parenting and also life as a leading light on the business stage notwithstanding, Elle is shamelessly active on the international party scene. She's a regular fixture in the beach-club capitals of the world: St Tropez, St Barthes, upmarket Ibiza, Costa Smeralda. She knows Tory leader David Cameron. No self-respecting society-mag party page is complete without a pap snap of Elle, a terribly nice frock dangling from her glorious frame. She made number 11 on Tatler magazine's annual Hot 100 most desirable guest list - not as high as Busson, who made the top 10, but still ... Does she consider herself to be jet set? She pauses. 'I think, um, I'm quite open-minded about travel, put it that way.' She laughs. 'Uh. . I consider myself to be. .' Jet set? '. . Incredibly privileged. I have the capacity to travel, and I do. I take advantage of it. Er. And I mix in many different circles, and that's a huge gift in my life, to be able to grow and learn from all different walks of life. But, do I require a fast-paced, rich life? No! Am I happiest when I'm surfing on the beaches in Australia? I just took my sons on a surf safari, you know, camping? That's me at my best. Just a week in Western Australia with my two boys. And we built fires and we slept in tents and we surfed, and it was just ... But yes. I'm incredibly privileged, and I'm the first to say it.'
I wonder if there are limits on riches like Elle's. Does she ever have to reel herself in from a particular extravagance, for example. She responds airily, evasively. 'Oh, I'm not going to go into my finances and the way I run my life. But I try to be responsible. Responsible, and at the same time passionate. So if something moves me, I'll do it. But I don't do things for show. I'm not particularly extravagant for the sake of it. I'm extravagant, yes, in the way that some times I cringe and think, oh gosh, I shouldn't have flown first class here ... but other than that, nothing is for show, I try to be as discreet as I possibly can.' But she is, I imagine, phenomenally wealthy? 'Ha! I wish! I'm incredibly fortunate in that I have a job that I love, and that I'm still working after 25 years in an industry that says, basically, you're only valuable as long as you're young.' Is money important? 'No. Money's a by-product. That's all.'
Elle will not go as far as to admit that she has any regrets. She'll admit to mistakes: 'Lots! Yeah! Every day!' But then she says: 'But I don't believe there are any mik-stakes.' [sic] 'There are learnings. So I make learnings. Along the way. Hah!' She says that she isn't concerned with ageing, even though much of her professional existence has been dependent on her looks. She says she spends hardly any time on her appearance these days. I'm not sure. Her look is studied and high maintenance - the accessories, the hair, the jeans, the artfully scuffed biker boots. She's a smidgen over-tanned in the flesh, a cartoonish boy-pleasing variation on gorgeous that owes at least something to the signature look of Pamela Anderson. But still, she talks a convincing pitch on the not caring. 'Well, you know what, if I didn't age, where would I be? Dead, wouldn't I? I don't care. Fortunately, the people who are around me don't judge me by the way I look, but you know, I am a 42-year-old mother-of-two, so ...'
On which, does she anticipate a midlife crisis of any description? 'Well, I have had some crisises [sic] in my life already, you know!'
More than your fair share? Elle laughs. 'No,' she says. 'Not necessarily. Hah! You know, I'm sure I'll have more ... some more learnings along the way.'
· Elle Macpherson's lingerie starts from £26 for bras and £11 for knickers. For stockists, telephone 020 7478 0280 or go to www.ellemacphersonintimates.com
The Observer
Elle Macpherson has body issues. Not of the 'I hate my arse' variety, you understand. Elle is 42 years old, but her body is as glorious today as it was when she first began regularly gracing the cover of American body-fascist bible Swimwear Illustrated, more than two decades ago. She's a long-legged, lithehipped, muscular approximation of perfection, clad in tight-fitting black denim and leather. She carries her stupendous cleavage like a weapon. No. Elle's body issues are rather more notional.
For 20 years, Elle's body has been known as The Body. In 1986 Time magazine referred to it thus, and the world accepted it unquestioningly. But last month, Heidi Klum - the 5ft 9in, blonde-streaked flibbertigibbet of a 33-year-old German clothes horse, who has carved herself a substantial profile in the swimsuit-modelling market formerly dominated by Elle herself - made a flagrant and unapologetic bid to co-opt The Body moniker. Klum appeared in an advert for a Victoria's Secret bra, which first aired in early August insisting: 'They call me The Body - and now I have a bra named after me.' Elle's public, and her people, were horrified. 'We saw that, and we were like, oh my God!' Elle's spokesperson, Melissa Edwards, responded. 'We were initially flabbergasted ... we have numerous press clippings in the office referring to her as The Body.' Elle - who has produced a skincare range called 'Elle Macpherson The Body' and a fitness video entitled The Body Workout in past years - is tight-lipped on the issue.
It seems, on the face of it, to be the kind of daft row that only a couple of supermodels could ever get embroiled in. But there's maybe more to it than that. Heidi Klum is messing with Elle's brand, and no one can be allowed to do that.
No celebrity, male or female, has ever converted into a business force as successfully as Elle. She has an estimated personal worth of £35 million. Never mind Heidi Klum and her one piffling bra. Or Kate Moss with her endless ad contracts and her ineffable cachet. Or Linda Evangelista, Elle's contemporary on the 1990s supermodel scene and the woman who once boasted: 'I wouldn't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.' Elle blows them all away financially. Her licensing deal with New Zealand lingerie company Bendon, which produces her own-brand underwear, Elle Macpherson Intimates, is worth £40 million in Britain alone (it also sells in Australia, where it's the biggest-selling underwear brand, and the US, where it's increasing both its market share and its profile rapidly, despite the fact that it was only launched last year). The bestselling calendars and fitness video that she produces through Elle Macpherson Inc - the company she formed in 1994 after leaving Ford, her model agency - are worth tens of millions more.
She is officially one of Australia's richest women, and she was the only model to make the top 100 wealthiest women in 2006's Sunday Times Rich List. In July this year, Elle accepted an appointment as executive director on the board of Hot Tuna surfwear, thus guaranteeing herself substantial creative input and an estimated £2.5m in share options. And so it goes on. Elle makes money. Lots of it.
I'm not sure how, though. We're sitting, Elle and me, on an ornate chaise longue in a quiet corner of a vast warehouse located deep in the heart of New York's Long Island. Around us, the advertising shoot that will showcase the latest offerings from Elle Macpherson Intimates crawls along. On set, an improbably nubile young thing dressed in Elle-conceived scraps of washable silk drapes herself over a Halloween-theme fridge (edited highlights of the contents: pickle jars of eyeballs, takeaway cartons of intestines, etcetera) and moves her hips according to instructions delivered by acclaimed fashion photographer Regan Cameron. Elle herself no longer models in the campaigns. She did at first because 'it was cheaper'. Which demonstrates an unquestionably sound business instinct. But it's about the only solid evidence of one that I can find in the first instance.
Before I meet Elle, I am instructed by various powers not to ask about her personal life. About the recent-ish break-up of her nine-year relationship with Arpad 'Arki' Busson, the financier father of her sons Flynn (who is eight) and Aurelius Cy (three); about her brush with postnatal depression; or about the bust-up with Klum. And so instead, we're talking money. Elle is attempting to deconstruct her business style for me, and I am attempting to reconcile what I know about her place in the business world with her flaky, naive manner. 'I consider myself to be an "entrepreneur", you know?' she's saying. Elle has an odd way of talking; it's halting, precious - she speaks as if English is her second language, although she was born and raised in suburban Sydney. Her inflections are French, the legacy of her eight-year marriage to French photographer Gilles Bensimon, and of her relationship with Busson. She gets words wrong, she makes others up - she says she is 'passioned by business', for instance, and also that she has made 'lots of mit-sakes' - and it all lends her a cutesy, girlish, uncertain quality that is at odds with her business profile. She also speaks a clichéd, breathless kind of business rhetoric: 'I think outside the box,' she says with absolute sincerity. 'And I dare to dream, I dare to take risks. I believe that risk is the currency of the gods. You know. I don't like to think I'm a "businesswoman". "Businesswoman" conjures up this image of hard-ass, pencil-skirt-wearing control freak, and I'm not that.'
What is she, then, I ask. 'I am very passioned by what I do. I make decisions according to my heart. Business for me is very heartfelt. I go with my heart and my instincts and my intuition. And my passions and my love and my joy, and then what happens is, because there's a sense of integrity behind what I do, that often translates into dollars and cents. People recognise that, and people buy, I believe, integrity, and people buy honesty.' She thinks, moreover, that her lingerie 'empowers women ...' that it contributes to the universe because ' ...the nurturing power of femininity is extremely important to the universe ...' She thinks she could have been anything she wanted. 'A barrister - which is kind of like a performing lawyer, which is kind of what I do anyway,' or an architect, or a property developer, but what she chose to do - ultimately - was 'help other women!' How? With lingerie? 'Yes!'
Elle, in interview, strikes me as less of a moneymaking machine than an aspiring beauty-pageant winner, or maybe the devoted groupie of a motivational speaker. Elle in action, however, is a different matter. I watch her attack Regan Cameron's shoot. I watch her style and art direct and criticise and rearrange, I watch her admonish some staff members and team-build others; I watch her fire off endless, endless questions at Stuart Cameron, the manager with whom she has worked for more than 20 years; and I remember a recent quote from Mary-Ellen Field, the very senior consultant who advises Elle on her licensing deals, who claimed that Elle 'reads every document. She even sends them back with comments in the margin, and if she doesn't understand anything she asks you. She's extremely disciplined. You don't look like that unless you are.' And I get more of an idea of how she operates, and why it works for her.
'I'm not a control freak,' she tells me - again. But I'm not at all convinced.
Elle's private life is markedly less well managed, however. She's been (allegedly) involved in a series of jolly, gossip-column-worthy entanglements - with everyone from Tim Jeffries (Green Shields Stamp heir and serial romancer of the professionally gorgeous), to footballer Sol Campbell, to Hollywood's naughtiest superstar, Colin Farrell. But she's also endured painful rejection at the hands of Gilles Bensimon - a divorce that devastated her, she has said. 'I felt as if the rug had been pulled from under me.' And in June 2005 came the split from Arki Busson, after a nine-year relationship. She also developed postnatal depression after the 2003 birth of Aurelius Cy, her younger son, and that she spent some time in a clinic in Arizona receiving treatment for it. 'I have zero shame about it,' she has said, in the past. But nothing to say on the subject? 'No.'
She really doesn't want to address her personal life in any fashion. She says she doesn't see why she should, on the grounds that 'I don't seek press unless it's for my business, I don't ever really do self-gratifying or gratuitous press', which isn't actually any grounds at all. She may as well say: 'I don't like answering difficult questions that don't directly promote my commercial interests.' So when I approach the sticky territory of her non-business existence, Elle becomes flagrantly brittle and invokes the logistics of being a mother as a distracting, defensive tactic. 'I work one week and I have one week with my children. And when I'm with my children, I never work. That's just ... my rule. They are absolutely my priority. And then my children go to their father for one week and I work.'
Does she feel like a single mother, I wonder, with all the baggage that entails? She laughs, uncomfortably. She waits a while, in case I move on. I don't. She sighs. 'Ah - hum ...' she says, eventually. 'I'm a ... single parent. With two children. I'm a single parent. Yeah. My, uh ...' [Elle tries, and fails, to say the word 'ex'] ' ...the father of my children is very committed to ... you know ... we're both committed to co-parenting the children ... but ...' She trails off , and we return to the infinitely cosier territory of achieving a decent bra fit. Elle's party trick is a one-glance assessment of a stranger's bra size. I ask her to 'do' me, which she does, correctly.
The rigours of co-parenting and also life as a leading light on the business stage notwithstanding, Elle is shamelessly active on the international party scene. She's a regular fixture in the beach-club capitals of the world: St Tropez, St Barthes, upmarket Ibiza, Costa Smeralda. She knows Tory leader David Cameron. No self-respecting society-mag party page is complete without a pap snap of Elle, a terribly nice frock dangling from her glorious frame. She made number 11 on Tatler magazine's annual Hot 100 most desirable guest list - not as high as Busson, who made the top 10, but still ... Does she consider herself to be jet set? She pauses. 'I think, um, I'm quite open-minded about travel, put it that way.' She laughs. 'Uh. . I consider myself to be. .' Jet set? '. . Incredibly privileged. I have the capacity to travel, and I do. I take advantage of it. Er. And I mix in many different circles, and that's a huge gift in my life, to be able to grow and learn from all different walks of life. But, do I require a fast-paced, rich life? No! Am I happiest when I'm surfing on the beaches in Australia? I just took my sons on a surf safari, you know, camping? That's me at my best. Just a week in Western Australia with my two boys. And we built fires and we slept in tents and we surfed, and it was just ... But yes. I'm incredibly privileged, and I'm the first to say it.'
I wonder if there are limits on riches like Elle's. Does she ever have to reel herself in from a particular extravagance, for example. She responds airily, evasively. 'Oh, I'm not going to go into my finances and the way I run my life. But I try to be responsible. Responsible, and at the same time passionate. So if something moves me, I'll do it. But I don't do things for show. I'm not particularly extravagant for the sake of it. I'm extravagant, yes, in the way that some times I cringe and think, oh gosh, I shouldn't have flown first class here ... but other than that, nothing is for show, I try to be as discreet as I possibly can.' But she is, I imagine, phenomenally wealthy? 'Ha! I wish! I'm incredibly fortunate in that I have a job that I love, and that I'm still working after 25 years in an industry that says, basically, you're only valuable as long as you're young.' Is money important? 'No. Money's a by-product. That's all.'
Elle will not go as far as to admit that she has any regrets. She'll admit to mistakes: 'Lots! Yeah! Every day!' But then she says: 'But I don't believe there are any mik-stakes.' [sic] 'There are learnings. So I make learnings. Along the way. Hah!' She says that she isn't concerned with ageing, even though much of her professional existence has been dependent on her looks. She says she spends hardly any time on her appearance these days. I'm not sure. Her look is studied and high maintenance - the accessories, the hair, the jeans, the artfully scuffed biker boots. She's a smidgen over-tanned in the flesh, a cartoonish boy-pleasing variation on gorgeous that owes at least something to the signature look of Pamela Anderson. But still, she talks a convincing pitch on the not caring. 'Well, you know what, if I didn't age, where would I be? Dead, wouldn't I? I don't care. Fortunately, the people who are around me don't judge me by the way I look, but you know, I am a 42-year-old mother-of-two, so ...'
On which, does she anticipate a midlife crisis of any description? 'Well, I have had some crisises [sic] in my life already, you know!'
More than your fair share? Elle laughs. 'No,' she says. 'Not necessarily. Hah! You know, I'm sure I'll have more ... some more learnings along the way.'
· Elle Macpherson's lingerie starts from £26 for bras and £11 for knickers. For stockists, telephone 020 7478 0280 or go to www.ellemacphersonintimates.com
Saturday, May 05, 2007
What types of bras should you buy?
You may have a favorite bra…but you shouldn't wear it both when you go out and when you work out! Nordstrom's bra expert says one bra style will not work for all fashions and functions. You may not need a strapless bra, a sports bra and a bustier, but you should think about your lifestyle and wardrobe needs before buying a brassiere, Sandra says.
Source:Oprah.com
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