Thursday, January 6, 2011
Justin Timberlake
Sean Kingston Dumb Love
Anderson moved back to Miami to pursue a music career. Sean Kingston was discovered through MySpace by Tommy Rotem at Beluga Heights, and signed to the label in a partnership deal with Sony. Beluga is a label notable for its focus on discovering and developing artists. In an interview with HitQuarters label head and producer J.R. Rotem described this process with regards to Kingston: "Sean Kingston was a rapper when we found him and it was a development process to get him more melodic. At Beluga we essentially refine the talent so that it's more of a marketable product." In a venture between Epic Records and Koch Records, Kingston recorded and released the single "Beautiful Girls" in May 2007. The single, based on the bass line and lyrical "association" of the 1961 hit "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King, reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks and topped the UK Singles Chart along with many other international charts. Similarly, the song "Me Love" samples the main hook out Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er", from their 1973 album Houses of the Holy. The song also debuted at number one in Australia, where it knocked off Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry", which had been at number one for nine weeks. The song stayed on the Canadian Hot 100 number one spot for over six weeks before getting knocked down to third place by the Plain White T's. "Beautiful Girls" remained at number one in Canada longer than any other song in 2007. In 2007, Kingston was the opening act for Gwen Stefani's The Sweet Escape Tour and for select dates on Beyoncé's The Beyoncé Experience Tour.
According to Sean Kingston, he is already working on his next album. The lead single was confirmed to be "Dumb Love" featuring Lil Wayne by Kingston himself, but Lil Wayne is serving a prison sentence and a music video has not been filmed. It is still possibly a future single to be released with a music video shot after Lil Wayne is released from prison. The song is also featured in a episode of The Suite Life on Deck which Kingston guest starred on. The album will also feature T-Pain, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, Wyclef Jean, Akon and Dr. Dre. The first single from the album is "Eenie Meenie" featuring Justin Bieber, released on March 23, 2010, which is also included on Bieber's My World 2.0 album. This collaboration with the young star has been the source of much disapproval from the rap community. The second single from the album "Letting Go (Dutty Love)", which features a verse from Nicki Minaj. It was released on iTunes August 3, while the third is "Dumb Love" and was released on iTunes September 8, the song does not features Lil Wayne. Sean Kingston's new song "She Moves" samples Irena Cara's "What a Feeling" from the film Flashdance. A fourth single "Party All Night (Sleep All Day)" was released on December 21, 2010. The song leaked online in December of 2010. The music video has already been shot. The video was released on December 23, 2010. Sean said this would be the song of the new year. Kingston represented the continent of America to sing the Official Theme Song of the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games, Everyone. He collaborated with four other international artists representing their continent, South African Jody Williams representing Africa, Singaporean Tabitha Nauser (Asia), British Steve Appleton (Europe), and Australian Jessica Mauboy representing (Oceania). However, Kingston was unable to attend, the Singapore Youth Olympics 2010 opening ceremony, due to passport mix ups. He also released a single called "Letting Go (Dutty Love)" with Young Money's Nicki Minaj. Plus, near the end of July 2010, he was invited and featured on Cash Money Records/former So So Def member Bow Wow on his single "For My Hood". He performed it with him along with DJ Khaled on BET's television program 106 & Park the day after release. Sean Kingston will release a mixtape with pop star Justin Bieber, called Our World. It will feature about 12-14 songs and includes their versions of songs like Pretty Boy Swag and Billionaire. The mixtape is finished and Sean showed his fans a preview on ustream on August, 19, 2010.Pamela Anderson
GET THE LOOK: Katy Perry's Cutie-Pie Curls At The 2011 People's Choice Awards

One of my favorite beauty and fashion looks from last night's People's Choice Awards goes to none other than the glamazing Katy Perry. Decked out in a fun 1980ish looking strapless tutu-like Betsey Johnson dress, Perry's hair was styled by one of my all-time fave hair stylists, Danilo. Much like her style at the American Music Awards, Danilo left her hair down this time around as well and gave her these "sophisticated, cutie-pie curls." Here's how you can get the look:
GET THE LOOK: Mila Kunis' Sexy Smokey Eye At The 2011 People's Choice Awards

Hey Glamazons! If there's one thing in life that I love more than a relaxing mani/pedi sesh, it's a sexy smokey eye. Although I wasn't moved when spotting the usual celebrity culprits rocking the look on the red carpet of last night's People's Choice Awards (ahem Kim Kardashian...yawn...) I gasped when I noticed Mila Kunis' eye makeup looking like this.
Fashion Projects: Collecting Fashion
In the future, I want to avoid re-posting articles that have already been published on the web, but this article on collecting fashion in Fashion Projects is just too important to miss. It also features commentary from some fashion heavy-hitters I truly admire (Valerie Steele, Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, and Amy de la Haye). Read and enjoy!
Collecting Fashion
By Marco Pecorari
Fashion as ephemeral artwork is daily narrated in temporary exhibitions. As hosting institutions, museums have started questioning the way they react to this new dimension within the museum. Collecting dress is already a duty of ethnographic and decorative arts museums. But at the same time, these institutions are conceiving dress as social testimony, or serial object. In these museological contexts, the dress is hardly ever contextualized in its visual process of creation that coincides with a representation of contemporary fashion. In order to explore this topic more in depth, we talked to the curator Amy de la Haye, the Director of the Museum at FIT Valerie Steele, the director of the Galleria del Costume, Caterina Chiarelli and with fashion designers, Agatha Ruiz de la Prada and Antonio Marras.
Marco Pecorari: First of all, thanks for participating. Let’s start with an ‘easy’ issue: what’s the difference between fashion and costume? fashion museum and costume museum?
Agatha Ruiz de la Prada: We had to face this issue with Madrid’s costume museum when we propose to call it ‘Costume Museum’ but I guess, a fashion museum should cover more than mechanics and elements of fashion, such as representing fashion’s relation to society.
Antonio Marras: In my opinion, the gap is huge. Costume is identified as obsolete, retro and not contemporary. Fashion is escaping from this. Wrongly. Personally I love visiting costume museums.
Caterina Chiarelli: I love costume museums, too. But I think we should delimit costume museum to an ethnographic field, based more on the study of dress as a tradition than on its changing nature.
Amy de la Haye: Traditionally collections of dress and fashion were generically described as ‘costume’, a term that could embrace different kind of dress. It was inclusive. Fashion and the museum were not paired explicitly until the early 1970s when the V&A (London) and the Costume Institute at the Met (New York) started to actively embrace contemporary fashion. However, the terminology of museum collections and institutions has only started to change very recently to more accurately reflect the type of garments housed/exhibited and, where appropriate, to reflect growing interests in fashion and attract wider audiences.
Agatha Ruiz de la Prada and Amy de la Hay
MP: so that’s also a commercial side…
Valerie Steele: Yes. But I use the word “fashion” rather than “costume” because I want to emphasize that even in the past, people wore fashion – not fancy-dress costumes. The word “costume” should be restricted to theatrical/film costume or folk costume. The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is a fashion museum – meaning that we look at fashion, not as “art” (like in an art museum, where they tend to focus just on haute couture) or “history” (like a history museum, where clothing is used to document or illustrate other aspects of the past) but as a legitimate type of design that has both artistic and historical elements – and that has its own history.
CC: Very true. In my opinion, a fashion museum should exhibit the changing of this type of design, with more freedom.
MP: What kind of restrictions could a fashion museum have?
VS: There are restrictions on conservation and exposition of dress, and also from fashion designers and the fashion system in general….
MP: What kind of links should we have between fashion museums and the fashion system?
ARP: A museum is a place for exhibiting art, creativity, whereas the fashion commercial machine has to deal with money and productions…
VS: I don’t agree… I think that a fashion museum is a part of the fashion system. Fashion designers know that the museum is a medium (like runway, the fashion magazine and the department store) that presents fashion to the public. Therefore, designers seek to control exhibitions of their work: here’s one restriction which doesn’t have to be accepted by curators.
MP: An example is the one with Lagerfeld and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which case Lagerfeld’s interference caused the exhibition to be cancelled
AM: I’m a fashion designer and I would never dare to interfere in the interpretation of my work. I would put my self in the curator’s hands. I would consider it an honour.
dlH: It’s understandable. Designers in turn recognize that having their work represented in a museum collection provides cultural cachet today and will ensure their place in history in the future. But it’s not only that. Sometimes there are amazing connections made. When he had just launched his own label in London, John Galliano studied an 18th century man’s coat in the collection and presented his interpretation to the Collection as a gift. When fashion looks to history, the Museum can become especially relevant.
AM: Definitely. “fashion people” have very little memory and they don’t look at the past as much as they should, and museums could help close this gap, if they could provide an easy access…
MP: Many museums are starting to catalogue on line their collections, which would make for a lot easier access and would also be helpful in terms of conservation.
AM: Great. I think it would also be important to create a close relation between fashion designers factories and museums, in order to catalogue the most significant clothes, which are being produced. Just think about what we could have done in Italy: from Albino or Capucci to the first Max Mara and Romeo Gigli…
CC: Sure, we should promote this collaboration but we need also to be careful to not get too involved. The museum could end up becoming a company’s archive.
MP: Could fashion museums represent the new step in museology or influence it? A new form of museum?
dlH: We have to say two things about this. First, as we have trends in fashion there are also trends in fashion curation and in curation in general. Fashion curation has to be analyzed because it can be seen as an important step for the role of curators in museum. Second, we have to underline that fashion is one of the most immediately accessible of all museum collections. When I worked at the V&A I used to say that you could find your way to the Dress Gallery (which at the time showed a chronology of western fashion) blindfolded as it was the noisiest – everyone, all ages and both genders, had something to say and felt confident to express an opinion.
Clothing of all types is inextricably entwined with our biographies and we leave imprints on the clothes we wear.
VS: It’s true, but I also think that it’s too soon to know what fashion museums will ultimately contribute to museology as a whole. But we must strive to move beyond designer hagiography and crowd-pleasing displays of “pretty” dresses worn by celebrities.
CC: I do believe that a fashion museum is inherently different and has great potentials for the future of museums. It is a dynamic museum.
Amy de la Haye is reader in Fashion Curation and Material Culture London College of Fashion.Joint Course Director (with Judith Clark) M.A. Fashion Curation, London College of Fashion. Formerly Curator of 20th Century Dress at the Victoria & Albert Museum (1991-1999). She will publish a book (co-curated with Judith Clark) on Curating Fashion for Yale University Press.
Valerie Steele Ph.D., (Yale University) is Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)
Caterina Chiarelli is Director of the Galleria del Costume – Palazzo Pitti di Firenze.
Antonio Marras is the designer of his own brand Antonio Marras and Artistic Director of Maison Kenzo
Agatha Ruiz de la Prada is a Madrid-base fashion designer
Marco Pecorari is completing his Phd in Contemporary Fashion Theory at the Centre for Fashion Studies – Stockholm University – with a thesis entitled “The Show is not Enough: new trajectories for reading contemporary fashion”. He writes for several fashion, arts and cultural independent magazines.
(**content and photo from fashionprojects.org**)
Ballet Beautiful
Much like the rest of the world, I have resolved to exercise and/ or eat well in the new year. Making the resolution to hit the gym was easy, but actually going is quite another thing. I, like 99% of the population, rather abhor working out and exercising. In order to keep my resolution (for whatever it's worth), I am going to turn to that most sophisticated and chic sport that was recently made popular again by Natalie Portman's stand-out performance in "Black Swan." Yes, I am referring to ballet.





