Photo: Courtesy of Tome

Some lessons are learned the hard way. In the 1980s, Tom Bernard and Michael Barker, co-presidents of Sony Pictures Classics, were invited to a yacht party during Cannes. It was being thrown by the Young Millionaire Club, and several theater owners attending the soiree were eager to see the duo. Barker and Bernard agreed to go and took a tender to the yacht — where they later found themselves stuck and missed an important acquisition screening of a movie that was quickly snapped up by a rival. (Bernard won't say which film it was but admits it became famous after the rival bought it immediately following the screening.) "Since then, we never go on boats that aren't parked," he says.

“With my boys, two of the most talented American designers in Paris—Simon Spurr and Prabal Gurung. Simon’s suits make almost any man look handsome and Prabal’s prints are stunning.”

“With Hannah Bronfman (in Monique Péan fine jewelry) at a lounge in Place Vendome.”

“At Alber’s ten-year anniversary party! Love Lanvin and the cake made of books!”

“Midnight in Paris with Mickey Boardman.”

“At Ikram’s biannual party in Paris. Ikram is a purveyor of jewels and was the first store to discover my fossilized creations. It’s amazing to see how many Fashion Funders she’s discovered!”
—Monique Péan

Photos: Courtesy of Monique Péan

For the year to March 31, profit was up 33 percent at 2 billion pounds and revenue fell 6 percent to 18.9 billion pounds.

In the three months to March 31, BT also reported a net profit of 632 million pounds ($1.02 billion), up 34 percent from a year earlier. Revenue was down 4 percent, however, at 4.88 billion pounds.

LONDON (AP) — BT PLC, Britain’s largest fixed-line communications company, has reported profits up by a third in the recent quarter as cost-cutting compensated for lower income.

The company said Thursday it was raising the full-year dividend by 12 percent to 8.3 pence per share, and said payouts would grow at least 10 percent in each of the next three years.

I always marvel at her street clothes and want to buy them off her back because somewhere in my fantasy mind, I will look like her. Reality check! I may not be as fab and tall and blonde but I can find something that’s equally posh and polished for less and still feel special.

Cameron Diaz certainly has a knack for finding amazing accessories.

Aldo really brings it. The color is lovely, the size, shape, price. It feels both classic and very luxe, And at $34.98…what’s not to love?

Buy it here.

By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To read more of the Recessionista blog, click here.

“I played really solid today and holed the right putts at the right times,” Poulter said. “I feel like I’m back to normal, and I feel like I’m out there playing the golf I feel I should be playing.”

Adams ran off five straight birdies early in his round and kept the mistakes to a minimum. Na shot 30 on the back nine.

He opened with a bogey and was never under par in a round of 74. Coming off a rare missed cut at Quail Hollow, Woods was in jeopardy of missing consecutive cuts for the first time in his career, and leaving before The Players Championship was over for the third straight year.

Laird, playing in tougher conditions in the afternoon, was the only player without a bogey in the opening round. He made birdie on his final hole to catch Poulter, although his focus was more on his scorecard than the leaderboard.

A new house, perhaps?

That’s not easy to do at Sawgrass — Tiger Woods can certainly attest to that — yet it helped Poulter that he had nine straight one-putt greens, a streak that ended with a long two-putt for par on the 18th.

Na opened with a 30 on the back nine was feeling good until his ball got stuck in a tree and never came down on the first hole, leading to a double bogey.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Ian Poulter is enjoying his new digs — his newly built home and his spot atop the leaderboard Thursday in The Players Championship.

“I just didn’t score,” Woods said. “It was frustrating in the sense that my good shots ended up in bad spots, and obviously, my bad shots ended up in worse spots.”

Adams is playing this event for only the second time — he missed the cut last year with rounds of 72-76 — and hasn’t been getting much out of his game this year. He told his caddie and coach that it was time to stop trying to hit the perfect shots and enjoy himself, and a 66 left him thrilled.

Sunghoon Kang made a quadruple-bogey 8 on the opening hole and still played the front nine in even par. He made 3 on his next three holes — eagle, par, birdie. Trouble was, he finished with four straight 5s for a 75.

With that out of the way, his mind was free for golf, on a course that seems to suit him well. He was runner-up three years ago, four shots behind Henrik Stenson. But Poulter found the right recipe on a sunny, warm day at Sawgrass. His birdie putts on the par 5s were all within about 5 feet. When he started missing greens on the back nine, he chipped close for par.

It’s dangerous to look ahead on this golf course. Poulter was tempted — not so much for the crystal trophy, but what he could do with the $1.71 million winner’s check.

Sawgrass took its share of victims, as usual.

Poulter’s new home looks more like a hotel, and it took about as long to build. It became such a headache for him that when asked to go over the problems he had with contractors, Poulter looked at his watch and said, “How long you got?”

He hit 9-iron to a front pin on the island-green 17th to about 10 feet for birdie, then made it through the 18th without drama.

“I knew I hadn’t made a 5 all day, and that was kind of a little goal I had,” said Laird, who finished on the par-5 ninth. “Nothing to do with getting to 7 under. It was, ‘I don’t want to make a 5 all day.’”

Sawgrass, though, punishes even the slightest mistakes.

“I’ll buy another car, for sure,” he said. “Ferrari Enzo. Been looking for one of them for a while.”

“I could write a book,” he said.

“I was just trying to make every putt,” he said of his run of birdies.

Woods was not among them. Not even close.

Poulter, finally finished with a house at Lake Nona that took nearly three years to build, ran off four birdies around the turn and birdied all the par 5s at TPC Sawgrass for a 7-under 65 and a share of the lead with Martin Laird.

Rory McIlroy, the world No. 1, was 2 under for his round until coming up just short of the island-green 17th and making double bogey. He wound up with a 72, while Phil Mickelson had a 71 in his first round after being inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Lee Westwood had a 71, irritated only because of seven birdies on his card.

“It’s no surprise to me to be fresh in the mind this week, to know that I’m finally in the house and I’m relaxed and the family is happy, and all of the hassle and stress is over and I can just go out and play golf,” he said. “And I have felt relaxed this week.”

“I made the turn at 30 and I’m thinking, ‘A few more on this side to have a chance for a course record. I don’t know what the course record is — 63?” he said. “I figured if I got two or three more … it was very doable. But right off the bat, I made double, so that was a pipe dream.”

They were a shot ahead of Blake Adams, with Ben Crane and Kevin Na another shot behind. The 11 players at 68 included Adam Scott, Matt Kuchar, Ben Curtis and FedEx champion Bill Haas. There were 27 players who shot in the 60s, and more than half the field broke par.

The star group of the morning was Woods, Rickie Fowler and Hunter Mahan, the only player with two wins this year. None of them were particularly impressive. Fowler, the winner Sunday at Quail Hollow, failed to save par when missing greens that killed his momentum and shot 72, while Mahan hit two shots into the water on his way to a 74.

The conditions were ideal for scoring for those hitting it where they were aiming, and making their share of putts.

Poulter finally had his mind at ease after getting moved into his new home, which left him little time to practice. If nothing else, it was good to think only about golf.

By Sasha Charnin Morrison for UsMagazine.com. To read more of the Recessionista blog, click here.

The American Eagle Outfitters Moto Jacket — a complete steal at $39.95, marked down from $69.50 — is the perfect companion to florals, shorts, leggings or whatever is your speed. Plus, it’s not super-cropped and doesn’t have any studs reminiscent of the Fall/Winter 2009 take on the trend.

Buy it here.

This motorcycle jacket trend is still alive and hot as we speak. I don’t think this ever really goes completely out of style but here, the jacket that designer Alexander Wang made us all crazy with gets reinvented in a nice chambray denim.

PRODUCT DETAILS
- Soft cotton chambray denim
- Motorcycle jacket-inspired fit
- Asymmetrical zip-up front
- Wide snap-detail lapels
- Zipper-close pockets
- Cute cropped cut
- Wrap-around buckle belt
- Imported

Earlier in the week, knit line Sibling’s carnival-referencing women’s collection, Sister, had been presented, alongside a few looks from the men’s—it made their best outing yet. But for the full men’s presentation on MAN Day, the party was over: Designers Joe Bates, Sid Bryan, and Cozette McCreery created an installation (pictured, above) in the form of a prison visiting room with a clever film by Sam Renwick and Thomas Bryant. It was in the shape of a triptych echoing the visiting booths, complete with telephone connections to the sound. “It’s where a matriarch might visit a son. Or vice versa,” Bates said. Yet the clothes were still their bright, excessive selves even behind bars. Called Marked Man, with designs based partly on prison tattoos, there was as much of the matriarch in the collection as there was the jailbird. An institutional bright orange was combined with pink ocelot spots in a men’s twinset. Their signature Fair Isle knits were further warped with the seamless addition of a skull with pompom ears blended into the traditional patterns. (It reflected the pompom-decorated full face masks and beanies also on view.) At once sinister and sweet, carnivalesque and penitential, there was something quite Leigh Bowery and Trojan in these proceedings that felt very true to the spirit of London. At the same time, Sibling’s output is so accomplished as to hold a global audience with ease.

Christopher Shannon’s catwalk was the first thing you noticed at his show. The brilliant backdrop was by the all-round creative and too-many-credits-to-mention Julie Verhoeven. “Creatively, I trust her implicitly,” said Shannon backstage. “I did want that inside of a Hoover bag vibe.” That’s certainly what he got. The set featured old tires, strewn pink net curtains with bricks caught in them, abandoned foil balloons in the shape of love hearts, and the bottom half of a female shop dummy, among other violent after-party detritus. At their best, the clothes and accessories had something of this random perversity, too; a broderie anglaise shirt with a ruffled back, a jacket covered in the designer’s swing tags, and a rucksack decorated with innumerable key rings. “We started excessive and pared back,” said the designer, yet there was maybe a bit too much paring back or, ultimately, the simple color palette of navy, white, sand, and black was a little too conservative or too flat to really help make some of the interesting points he was driving at.

On the other hand, the standout clothes in the MAN show reveled in a particular kind of vulgarity. Shaun Samson also had a restrained color palette and used stock conservative menswear fabrics perversely, such as a coat-length, gray flannel bomber jacket with cropped flannel dungarees. The big silhouette of this Californian’s background helped; big just seems better in menswear shapes at the moment, and the stock slouch of American-style clothes works. As did the play of artificial and real in fur and hair on the garments: “That’s real hair weave on fake fur,” Samson announced proudly. Shaved into the garments were also Mexican tribal-style patterns of faces with protruding tongues, another cheekily vulgar aside that seemed fitting.

Astrid Andersen, too, used a play on bad taste in sportswear to make her point in her show. A vivid fuchsia pink puffa with dark brown fur sleeves, inset with baby pink fur stripes? Quite purposefully horrible clothes—in a good way—such as these might provide a get-out clause from all the trite “gentleman’s wardrobe” fodder that has been dominating menswear. But they do have to toe the line lest they fall into the category of “scally drag,” that other great horror in London menswear.

Finally, to Topman Design (pictured, left). On first sight, this collection might have looked like the most sackcloth and ashes of the lot—dominated as it was by black, black, and more black—and yet underneath was one of the most decadent reference points of all: the life and work of Robert Mapplethorpe. Topman didn’t go as far as men exposing themselves in nylon suits or using strategically placed whips, but this was a quietly perverse collection and very in keeping with the mood now. Mapplethorpe flower print shirts protruded and westernwear boots had that hint of degeneracy. Mohair overcoats added a sensuous feel to the tone-on-tone proceedings and were belted with studded leather. It all added up to an unrepentant Ash Wednesday.
—Jo-Ann Furniss

Jo-Ann Furniss reports on the highs and lows of London fashion week’s dedicated menswear day.

Photos: Courtesy of Sibling; Samir Hussein / Getty Images (Topman)