Madonna’s Dancer Boyfriend Is Now a Fashion Designer

Madonna's 25-year-old French boyfriend, model-dancer Brahim Zaibat, has officially become a fashion designer, the Telegraph reports. His new line of all-black hoodies, crewnecks, sweatpants, tanks, beanies, and tees featuring emblems such as a masked face, a raised fist, and an AK-47 rifle is called Defend Paris and has already been worn by celebrities (of course) including Madge, Rihanna, Steve Aoki, Zachary Quinto, and Chris Brown. According to the brand's philosophy,  "DEFEND is fashion with a cause." Currently, the brand's three causes include Paris, children's rights, and human rights, and all proceeds from sales will be donated to charities. And, thanks to his high-profile girlfriend, he's already rubbed shoulders with Riccardo Tisci.

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What Prada’s New Black Model Means for Fashion

Modeling newcomer Malaika Firth made news this week when she booked her first campaign as the face of Prada fall/winter 2013. As Jezebel pointed out, the Kenyan-born 19-year-old, who also walked in Prada’s menswear 2014 show, is the first black model featured in Prada ads since Naomi Campbell in 1994 (19 years ago). The casting is a huge get for the model, whose sophisticated and stunning beauty, with those enviable cheekbones, and, yes, resemblance to young Naomi Campbell make her a natural fit for the campaign. But the announcement also adds a new dimension to an ongoing conversation about race in high fashion. 

On the heels of last Friday's Firth news, Raf Simons also cast six black models to walk in his noticeably diverse couture show yesterday. It was the first time since joining Dior that he used any non-white models on the runway. You might take that as criticism, but he's also being lauded for finally including non-white women. Taken along with Prada, does this mean there is finally major progress when it comes to fashion race relations?

The new ad.

There are two things to note. First, given that the entire continent of Africa was part of Simons' inspiration for Dior's fall 2013 Couture, it would have been tough (and offensive) if he hadn't cast black models to model the clothes. Also, in a Buzzfeed article earlier this year, casting agent James Scully criticized Dior, saying, “I feel the Dior cast is just so pointedly white that it feels deliberate. I watch that show and it bothers me — I almost can’t even concentrate on the clothes because of the cast.” Was Simons's decision to think both multiculturally and then cast black models a direct response? Does it even matter? In my opinion, no. It's not the most subtle answer to a valid call out, but it's encouraging to think that Simons was listening. And the resulting action meant that Joan Smalls, Alek Wek, Maria Borges, Grace Mohary, Yasmin Warsaw, and Kelly Moreira were all present on a runway that hasn't seen a black — or any other minority —  model for the past seven collections.

According to Styleminutes, 90 percent of the models who walked at the 2013 fall/winter shows were white. And instead of using black models, certain designers have resorted to applying black arm. Jourdan Dunn bravely commented on the lack of other black models earlier this year: "I do a show and I look around and it's just me," she told the U.K.'s The Jonathan Ross Show. And even today, when she tweeted about being cut from Dior's runway show thanks to her bra size, she mentioned she normally gets cut for being non-white. To point out fashion's lack of diversity is really not a new argument, but it is getting to be a pretty tired one. 

In other words, Dunn's rejection for reasons other than race shouldn't be a happy surprise for the model. Casting non-white models shouldn't be so rare, it's immediately headline-making news. While Prada and Dior are being noticed for changing their game, there's very little evidence of this being anything other than another exception. It's not a movement toward permanent change, yet.

Let's hope that Firth's career does explode, Simons only casts six white models next season, and that we, someday, can focus on all models — black, white, or otherwise — for their beauty, their cheekbones, or their walk, and not because they're simply minorities. To do that, it'll obviously take more diverse models than these lucky seven.

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Surveillance-Proof Fashion Now Worth Considering

Over the weekend, the New York Times discussed a boom in the newest branch of counter surveillance technology: Ready-to-wear fashion that protects wearers from government drone spying and other forms of privacy-invading tracking.  And, sure, while dressing for drone evasion suggests a wardrobe for conspiracy theorists and preppers, the latest in Stealth Wear goes beyond  brainwave-blocking tinfoil hats. Adam Harvey — the pioneer of these designs — obviously thinks he's onto something. But considering the rise of aerial surveillance systems, Facebook's face-detecting software, and that one friend who's testing Google Glass, the threat is imminent. We need protection. right?

Harvey's designs include rave-kid chic hoodies made of a reflective fabric that make the wearer invisible to heat-imaging cameras and cost about $500, or an LED purse that's activated when a flash goes off and distorts the photo with a glare of white light; we can imagine this is going to be a bestseller with paparazzi-hounded celebs. He's also developed a series of hair and makeup tutorials called CV Dazzle, a way of employing geometric facepaint designs and hairstyles to break up the face shape in a way that makes it impossible for machines to detect it. He's mostly inspired by tribal paint and "high-fashion aesthetics from the club scene London," which combined gives the impression of a Juggalo from the future moonlighting in a Flock of Seagulls cover band, this time the photos are totally Facebook-tag proof.

“These pieces are designed to live with [surveillance], to cope with it – to live in a world where surveillance is happening all the time,” Davis notes on his website. And despite the trend's recent attention online and the story in the Times, Stealth Wear is still fairly niche; drone-proof clothing is for the person with a reason to be stalked by drones in the first place. Which means one thing: Harvey should nab Edward Snowden as the face of Stealth Wear's fall campaign.

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Twin Children Closed DSquared2’s Fashion Show

DSquared2's twin designers, Dan and Dean Caten, can always be relied on for hunky, hairless male models and gratuitous shirtlessness. They supplied all of the above in their spring 2014 show, held yesterday in Milan at a club called Alcatraz. The theme, or so one Caten told WWD, was “James Dean crashes his plane on a tropical island and adapts." Well! It was all good until the designers took their bow with unidentified twin boys dressed like miniature versions of themselves, which is ... just bizarre, even for fashion.

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Kanye West Wrote ‘I Am a God’ After Fashion Week Dis

"I Am a God" is one of the most talked-about songs on Kanye West's Yeezus, for its meme-worthy lyrics and its insight into West's evolving theology. Turns out it also works as a fashion blind item. This, from W's profile of West, which WWD reports will go live on the magazine's freshly redesigned site any minute now:

"In the interview, West recalls an invitation from an unnamed designer last fall to attend a runway show with the condition that West would not attend anyone else’s. West, upset, wrote a song with Daft Punk about the incident, 'I Am a God.' 'Cause it’s like, Yo! Nobody can tell me where I can and can’t go. Man, I’m the number-one living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix. You can’t say that you love music and then say that Kanye West can’t come to your show,' West said."

It's safe to say he wasn't the only person in Paris stress-eating croissants over his fashion week invites.

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Losing Fashion, Finding God: The Ex-Models Who Go Evangelical

Nicole Weider never did make it big as model. She hated schlepping all over Los Angeles, where she moved from her hometown of Salem, Oregon. Her Elite Model Management agent made her quit the high-school team because her legs were too muscular. The other aspiring models seemed catty and rude, and she wasn’t landing many jobs. The work she did get made her miserable: A shoot for Maxim as one of its “hometown hotties” made her feel “humiliated.” A dream job as a stand-in for Adriana Lima at a Victoria’s Secret shoot was disillusioning: The women, Weider’s idols, were shockingly skinny, and yet the photographer’s assistant bragged to her about retouching Gisele Bündchen’s thighs on site. “I just thought, ‘Wow, this is so false,’” she recalled recently. “After that I was like, ‘Wow, I have to share this news with everyone!”

And share she has. A large, devoted audience of young evangelical women now visit her popular site Project Inspired, where she describes herself as a successful model and actress who “ditched her former life.” Though she wasn’t raised in a religious home, she found God at 23 when a friend brought her to a talk by former Miss USA contestant Sheri Rose Shepherd, a popular evangelical speaker and author, and gave her a copy of The Purpose Driven Life. She went to community college and then launched a career similar to Shepherd’s, as a writer and inspirational figure. She got a PR boost last year by launching a campaign against Cosmopolitan magazine that was enthusiastically covered by the Christian press: “This magazine has the devil written all over it,” she wrote online. “He wants to kill and destroy young girls' hearts and minds and Cosmopolitan is just a vessel for that.” Her site now earns about 100,000 visits a month and she just sold a book to a “well-known Christian publisher.”

Weider is just one of a runway’s worth of women who are making a second career for themselves in religious communities by speaking out against the evils of the fashion industry. These women boast different levels of industry success, but many describe a crystallizing moment of abject horror at the fashion world’s vices, which they may or may not have dabbled in. Most of them struggled with eating disorders or depression, and now preach a message of modesty and self-esteem. And they do so while keeping a traditionally feminine look: They’re all slim, almost all of them have long hair, they wear plenty of makeup and jewelry, and they choose stylish, if not fashion-forward, clothing. As a slice of Christian culture’s much-discussed “modesty movement,” they represent modesty at its sexiest and most successful. Many of them are getting far more attention as ex-models than they ever got as professional posers.

There’s cycle three America’s Next Top Model contestant Leah Darrow, who was raised Catholic but drifted away from religion until experiencing a dramatic vision of God during a lingerie photo shoot; she now speaks to Catholic audiences on topics like “how to live out your faith with your everyday fashions.” There’s Jennifer Strickland, who walked the runway for Armani in Milan in the mid-nineties; after a suicide attempt at the height of her success, she met people handing out Bibles in a Munich park. She currently lectures to tens of thousands of women and girls each year at conferences and churches all over the country, with her next book Beautiful Lies warning women not to let “men, mirrors, and magazines” define them. (“You had to be anorexic to be an Armani runway model,” she told me. “I don’t see any other option.”) Pat Robertson’s talk show The 700 Club has featured at least six models and ex-models in recent years, including Britt Koth, who appeared on MTV’s Miami-based modeling reality show 8th & Ocean.

Most famous, at least in recent months, is 23-year-old Kylie Bisutti, who made headlines with her decision to give up lingerie modeling and move to a small town in Montana with her new husband. Bisutti wore a cross necklace on the Today show last month, where she told Savannah Guthrie, “I’m just thankful that God changed my heart earlier on, rather than being five or ten years down the road.” Victoria’s Secret accused Bisutti of exaggerating her affiliation with the brand, pointing out that she won an online amateur contest and only worked with the brand twice. Her book title, I’m No Angel: From Victoria's Secret Model to Role Model, suggests otherwise.

Rachel Lee Carter, now 38, stands out from this group because she still works regularly as a model. Carter is represented by Wilhelmina in New York, and has appeared in print ads for Revlon, Tommy Hilfiger, W hotels, and Reebok. After moving to New York in the mid-nineties, her new job nearly crushed her faith. She moved upstate to attend a Bible college, lost weight “naturally,” and felt called back to modeling. “The Lord was saying, ‘Go back, but go on my terms,’” she recalls. “Unbelievably, I worked more than I could have ever imagined.” But she declines plenty of work, too: “No alcohol advertisements, no cigarettes, nothing provocative, no lingerie or anything see-through, or anything homosexual in nature,” she told me. “In the book of Daniel, it says in the first chapter that Daniel ‘purposed in his heart’ not to defile his body. That’s the cornerstone of my work in this industry.” Detailed standards may make modeling tougher, but they don’t rule out success: Devout Jehovah’s Witness Coco Rocha, who told DuJour last year that “faith is everything,” won’t do nudity or lingerie, or hold a cigarette for a shoot.

Carter has continued to work steadily ever since, picking up a Mrs. North Carolina sash along the way. (Her “platform” was modesty, and she wore a one-piece in the swimsuit competition.) She maintains the website Modeling-Christ.com, wrote a 2011 book aimed at teen girls, and frequently speaks to large groups of women and young people, with fees around $3,000 per appearance. She says she would like to see the industry aggressively combat eating disorders, employ more plus-size models, and label photos that have been retouched, “so people would know no one’s perfect.”

If those ideas sound familiar, that’s because there’s real overlap between these Christian models’ causes and the kind of body-positive pop feminism prevalent in the broader culture. Weider’s site features a Jane-worthy “Me Without Makeup” section, and Carter’s anti-Photoshop crusade sounds like something you could find praised on Jezebel. Strickland emphasizes the Dove-like message that “real beauty has imperfections and flaws.”

“The language they use is really a feminist language, a straight-up feminist ‘my body, my choice’ language,” says Christine J. Gardner, an associate professor of communications at evangelical Wheaton College, who wrote a 2011 book about the rhetoric of evangelical abstinence campaigns. Not that modesty advocates use the f-word, of course. But Gardner sees power as the essential message of these movements: In a sex-saturated society, withholding sex and sexiness preserves that control instead of relinquishing it to men. As she puts it, “Modesty is the new sex.”

Why the profusion of ex-models on the modesty circuit? Gardner sees it as a classic conversion narrative, akin to the best-selling sixties memoir The Cross and the Switchblade, about a New York City gang member turned evangelical Christian: “For those stories to ring true, to be both coherent and dramatic, you have to have the storyteller be able to say, ‘I was part of this other life, but now I found Christ,’” Gardner says. A gorgeous woman who claims to have given up the charm, fame, and riches of the fashion industry for her faith is a more powerful spokesperson than a dumpy hausfrau badgering you to put a sweater over that skimpy sundress.

In spreading this message, many of these former models have found their greatest prestige as outsiders speaking truth to glamour. If they’ve found the thing modeling may have failed to provide them — an audience — why go back to the world of catty agents and degrading casting calls, not to mention risk violating their own values? Weider dipped her toe back in the industry again last year, but after going to ten commercial auditions and not getting any jobs, she decided that was the end. “As soon as I left the audition, I felt bad about myself,” she said. “This is not inspiring at all.”

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Rebel Wilson Gets Her First Fashion Cover

Continuing the well-established tradition of photographing plus-size women with no clothes on, British Glamour put Rebel Wilson in lots of sex kitten makeup, diamonds, and a bubble bath for their July issue. And clichés aside, what a fun cover! It's her first of any women's magazines, if you can believe it. And don't worry, she got to wear a dress (and touch a hunky man) in the accompanying spread. Let the #GiveRebelMoreCovers campaign start ... now.

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Street Style: Young and Bold at London’s Grad Fashion Week

Graduate Fashion Week 2013 ended its four-day run in London yesterday, and in addition to rolling out the top looks by fashion's most talented graduates from all over the globe, it also attracted over 20,000 incredibly stylish guests to the British capital. The Cut sent photographer Victoria Adamson to snap some of the boldest looks from the attendees. Among the top trends spotted: turquoise hair, overalls, nose rings, chunky silver rings, and giant leather bags. And as for men, you'll still be wanting to slick your hair back this summer, Michael Pitt–style. Click through the slideshow to pick up some summer-style inspiration from the diverse crowd overseas.

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The Promising Young Designers From Graduate Fashion Week

London’s Graduate Fashion Week came to a close last night, culminating in the Gala Show and Awards to honor the best graduate designers of the week.

The model David Gandy, looking as superhumanly handsome as ever, presented the Menswear Award to Edinburgh College of Art’s Shaun Douglas and Olivia Creber. They had their photos taken with Gandy, but they weren’t the first; preshow, an actual line of women formed while he patiently posed for snaps.

Todd Lynn presented the Womenswear Award to Hannah Williams of UCA Epsom, whose collection suggested serious potential. Designs that appeared to be made of rubber were embossed with trompe l’oeil details; one cream dress featured the outline of a coat, lapels, pockets, and jewelry in the same color. The effect was eerie and intriguing, but could also lend itself to a more accessible retail version. As Suzy Menkes said of the graduates, “What we’re seeing here is controlled creativity.”

The George Gold Award for best collection, along with a £20,000 (about $31,000) prize and the opportunity to design a collection for George at Asda, went to Lauren Smith of Edinburgh College of Art. Roland Mouret, who was on the judging panel, described her collection as “emotional” — it included a nipped-in boiler suit in a dreamy, delicate bubble print and abstract, embroidered separates. Previous winners of the Gold Award include Burberry’s Christopher Bailey, so Smith should be one to watch.

There was also a Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by Hilary Alexander, who carried it onto the stage and announced, “You don’t get bingo wings with one of these. It weighs a ton,” before handing it to “my friend, long-term sparring partner, and fellow front-row veteran Suzy Menkes.” Menkes, collecting her award dressed in a Dries Van Noten jacket, was quick to point out that “I’ve got lots of life to go yet.”

The rest of the evening was dedicated to re-showing the best collections of the week. Jennifer Lowther of Northumbria University displayed a Henry Holland–esque sense of humor by emblazoning her men’s streetwear collection of scarves, pants, and sweaters with the slogan "Have some balls." Chen-Yu Wang of Ravensbourne presented whimsical womenswear that seemed destined for Susie Bubble — including a rompersuit covered in knitted eyeballs and a pinafore printed with little houses. One model carried a knitted horse.

The gala tied up what has been four days of graduate shows and presentations. The hope is that some of the designers showcased will become the NEWGEN winners, Vogue Designer Fashion Fund recipients, and ultimately major talents of the British industry. The awards have been distributed, triumphant photos have been taken, and contact details have been exchanged; the rest is up to the graduates.

Click below to view the best of street style from Graduate Fashion Week.

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Video: How Proenza Schouler, Phillip Lim, Rachel Roy, and Other Fashion Greats Would Dress Hillary Clinton

Although Hillary Clinton didn't walk the red carpet at last night's CFDA Awards, she was still everyone's favorite guest. (Also, props to her for not exactly wearing a pantsuit but not quite wearing a dress either.) Before Oscar de la Renta issued his official plug for her 2016 presidential run, we asked the evening's biggest designers — including Zac Posen, Pamela Love, Alexis Bittar, and Proenza Schouler's Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez — about what they'd like to dress her in. See their answers as well as more red-carpet stars like Hailee Steinfeld, Vera Wang, and Rooney Mara in our video.

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A Queen Within: Fashion Collides With Chess

This fall, "the Queen" from the centuries-old game of chess will be getting an entire fashion exhibition dedicated to her crowned wooden (stone or plastic) self. The exhibit, titled A Queen Within: Adorned Archetypes, Fashion, and Chess, will be held at the World Chess Hall of Fame in Saint Louis, Missouri, starting on October 19. The space's entire 3,000 square feet will be filled with fashion items, photographs, film, and artwork that grapple with the matronly archetype's evolving roles of power and femininity in both the game and in society.

To make this exhibit a reality, an international team of chess players, fashion insiders, and curators brainstormed together. It will include nine different sections devoted to various traits of the queen, such as "Sage," "Magician," "Enchantress," "Ruler," and "Mother Earth." Works from designers including Alexander McQueen, Gucci, Viktor & Rolf, Maison Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan, and Gianfranco Ferré will be featured, as well as select photographs from Anne Deniau's book Love Looks Not With the Eye, which includes over 400 never-before-seen photographs of Alexander McQueen at work. Click through the slideshow for a first, small peek at the artwork and gowns that will be on display.

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All the Looks from Parsons' Annual Fashion Show

On Wednesday at Chelsea Piers, 46 of Parsons' top graduating fashion design students convened to present their final collections at the annual Parsons Fashion Show — the same runway where designers like Marc Jacobs, Proenza Schouler, and Cushnie et Ochs were first spotted. In addition to showing off their hard-earned collections, many of the young designers were also in the running for the "Designer of the Year" titles. At a benefit following the runway show, Harim Jung and Kaye Applewaite were named womenswear designers of the year; Yunxiang Sharon Zhou was named menswear designer of the year; and Diana Woodside was named childrenswear designer of the year. Parsons alumnus Patrick Robinson hosted the event. Click through the slideshow for a sneak peek at the next wave of creative talent entering the real world. Included: zany prints for children; translucent high collars for women; and a bounty of sheer tops, structured jackets, and tailored suits for men.

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