Birkenstock Sandals Do Not Qualify As Art

Birkenstocks were once-upon-a-time deemed uncool but in recent years have become hugely popular, and gained more attention after actress Margot Robbie wore a pink pair in the final scene of the 2023 hit Barbie movie. 

And according to reports, searches for these sandals soared 110 percent after the movie was released. 

So much so that the company had claimed their footwear could be classified as art and so was protected by copyright laws in a case they put forward to stop rivals selling copycat versions of the cork-soled sandals.

But a German judge dismissed the claim, saying the shoes were practical design items – a decision Birkenstock called a "missed opportunity for the protection of intellectual property".

The sandals, which feature a moulded footbed, have been praised for being comfortable and sturdy, and many colour options and strap styles have evolved since the original leather-strapped version in the 1960s. Even though it was initially rejected from the catwalks, it soon became a fashionable item, scoring a seal of approval from supermodel Kate Moss in the 1990s, and even appeared on celebrity feet at the Academy Awards. 

The company eventually listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2023 and were valued at about $8.6 billion – double their worth in 2021. Birkenstocks' popularity means rivals often sell knock-off versions, prompting the firm to make the claim to protect what it called its "iconic design". 

In this case, Birkenstock took three manufacturers and retailers to court, seeking to protect four of their sandal designs. 

German law distinguishes between design and art when it comes to a product. Design serves a practical purpose, whereas works of art need to show a certain amount of individual creativity. 

Art is covered by copyright protection, which lasts for 70 years after the creator's death, whereas design protection lasts for 25 years from when the filing was made. 

Shoemaker Karl Birkenstock, born in the 1930s, is still alive. Since some of his sandals no longer enjoy design protection, the firm attempted to gain copyright protection by seeking to classify their footwear as art.

But the claim was "unfounded", presiding judge Thomas Koch said. His ruling added that for copyright protection, "a degree of design must be achieved that shows individuality". 

This verdict by the Federal Court of Justice, Germany's top civil court, is the final judgement which comes after two lower courts had heard the case and disagreed on the issue. FYI, the first ruled in favour of Birkenstock, while the second overturned that decision.

Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show Returns

Some of modeling’s biggest names, from Tyra Banks to the Hadid sisters, donned signature wings – this year, faux feather versions were PETA-approved – again on Tuesday when the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show returned to the runway in New York City, USA after a six-year hiatus.

 

The lingerie company’s promotional event – featuring their star roster of models under contract, known as “angels” – was largely considered primetime viewing during its heyday from 1995 to 2018. But it got canceled in 2019, after its 2018 edition drew low ratings as well as criticism that it was sexist, outdated and lacked diversity. During that time, the fashion industry was grappling with a backlash amid the body positivity, transgender rights and #MeToo movements. 

 

Cut to May 2024, when Victoria’s Secret announced the show would make its return in the fall. The company claimed their values have shifted and promised the updated event would “reflect who we are today, plus everything you know and love – the glamour, runway, wings, musical entertainment, and more!” 

 

The 45-minute show, which was streamed on Amazon’s Prime Video and on the Victoria's Secret YouTube, TikTok and Instagram accounts, touted its first-ever all-women musical talent lineup. It featured performances by Blackpink alum Lisa, South African singer Tyla and pop legend Cher, who closed out the show with “Strong Enough” and “Believe”. 

 

And it brought back many of its best-known angels, including Gigi and Bella Hadid, Jasmine Tookes, Behati Prinsloo, Barbara Palvin, Taylor Hill, Candice Swanepoel and Adriana Lima, who retired from the brand in 2018. Claudia Schiffer participated for the second time, after last walking in the 1997 show. 

 

The show was also a debut for a number of iconic models who hadn’t walked the Victoria’s Secret runway before, including supermodel Kate Moss, who turned 50 in January, and former first lady of France, 56-year-old Carla Bruni. It was also the first Victoria’s Secret show for plus-size model and body activist Ashley Graham, who as a woman in her late 30s and mother of three kids, represented "curvy" women. The final model to take the stage was former angel Tyra Banks, Victoria’s Secret's first Black contract and cover model who walked in nine of its shows before she retired in 2005 to focus on television. 

 

The past several years have been tough financially for Victoria’s Secret as competition in the mid-range lingerie market has grown and the brand name lost some of its luster among younger shoppers – but let's see if Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2024 can prompt a revival in the company's fortunes.

 

Critics were quick to pan what was once the sexiest and most outrageous night in fashion, branding it "boring" and lacklustre, even accusing it of going woke. The occasion marked the first walk down the Victoria’s Secret runway for Brazilian model Valentina Sampaio, who had been the first transgender model to represent the brand in 2019. Fellow transgender model Alex Consani also took to the catwalk as the lingerie brand expanded on its efforts to be more inclusive. 

 

Malaysian badminton's Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan got off to a winning start at the Denmark Open yesterday. 

 

The world No. 7 women's pair overcame India's Treesa Jolly-Pullela Gayathri 19-21, 21-17, 21-15 in the opening hurdle in Odense. 

 

Pearly-Thinaah will play Lee Yu-lim-Shin Seung-chan of South Korea next in the last 16 today.

Met Gala 2022 Red Carpet

It seems that social media has killed good taste at the Met Gala! 

It was once touted as the epitome of chic, but celebrities attending New York’s premier fashion event are now more likely to be playing it for laughs – and Likes! 

If you don’t know, the Met Gala is fashion’s biggest night of the year. Returning to the traditional first-Monday-in-May slot on the social calendar for the first time in three years, i.e. May 02, this year’s party made it abundantly clear that the fashion world is not remotely chastened, dimmed or otherwise humbled by the pandemic. 

From Katy Perry as a hamburger to Rihanna as the pope, the party has given us the most unforgettable celebrity looks of the past decade, and this year’s event showed no sign of slowing down. 

Modern party dressing, trailblazed by the Met, is dressing up as fancy dress rather than dressing up as an aspiration to elegance. Fashion’s biggest night of the year is now entirely about looking spectacular, rather than stylish. 

Much is made of the ultra-exclusive invite list of the Met Gala where individual tickets are reported to cost over $30,000, but what happens inside the party is entirely beside the point. 

Actually, the real party happens on Instagram, and everyone is invited. Kim Kardashian’s 300 million followers saw her in the very dress Marilyn Monroe wore to sing Happy Birthday to JFK in 1962 before her table mates did!

Kim Kardashian in Marilyn Monroe’s ‘happy birthday’ dress. Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue 

The cartoonish wackiness is so prevalent. Jessie Buckley, in a Schiaparelli suit, wore a fake moustache. Gigi Hadid wore a burgundy latex bodysuit under a vast puffer jacket. Dakota Johnson and Jared Leto came as identical twins, down to their red satin bow ties and crystal hair barrettes. 

And beneath all that irreverent silliness, the pursuit of impossible levels of physical perfection is a deadly serious business. Kim Kardashian revealed that because Monroe’s dress was a historical artefact and could not be altered, she lost 16lbs in three weeks to fit into it. 

Cara Delevingne, taking the dress code of Gilded Glamour literally, removed the top half of her Dior morning suit on the red carpet to reveal nothing but gold body paint with matching nipple covers. Emily Ratajkowski, similarly, chose vintage Versace – it was last worn by model Yasmeen Ghauri on a 1992 Versace runway and making its Met Gala reappearance a moment around three decades in the making – made entirely of beads and chains above the waist, without even a wisp of fabric. The approval of the arbiters of good taste has been replaced by social media’s rapacious appetite for bare flesh.

Cara Delevingne: Literally gilded. Photo: Matt Baron/Rex/Shutterstock

Emily Ratajkowski: Vintage Versace. Photo: Neville Marriner/ANL/Shutterstock

Jessie Buckley goes all out in pinstriped Schiaparelli with a fake moustache. Photo: Matt Baron/Rex/Shutterstock

Dakota Johnson with a twinning Jared Leto and Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele. Photo: John Shearer/Getty Images

Bella Hadid in a Burberry corset dress. Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue 

Amber Valletta shines. Photo: David Fisher/Rex/Shutterstock

Ariana DeBose celebrates her Oscar win in Moschino. Photo: David Fisher/Rex/Shutterstock

I’m glad Kate Moss didn’t follow the crowd! The supermodel’s attire was a floor-length black gown by Burberry, accessorised with old-school understatement, with sheer black tights, heeled sandals and a red lip. That's my kind of beauty! 

Kate Moss: Back to black. Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue

Covid Couture

The fashion industry is always pretty quick to capitalise on the latest trends. 

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, face masks have become the most sought after fashion accessory of 2020. 

The latest fashion statement to fly off the racks is a functional two-in-one dress that comes with a built-in face mask. 

All thanks to the sister of ‘90s supermodel Kate Moss, 22-year-old half-sister Lottie Moss who was spotted in a black figure-hugging number by UK-based retailer Pretty Little Thing.

Lottie (left), a model with over 300,000 Instagram followers, was spotted on the streets of London on September 24, 2020 donning the long-sleeved bodycon jersey dress with a neckline that goes all the way up to cover the nose and mouth using ear straps.

The dress which retails for £15 (RM80) was sold out shortly after the model wore it but has since been restocked with limited supply, The Independent reported. 

Not the first of its kind, the mask-dress combination has also been adopted by designers in the US. Tribes of Kin launched a similar design Covid Turtle Mask Dress in black and royal blue, but unlike Pretty Little Thing’s affordable price tag, the Brooklyn-based lifestyle label’s creation retails for $199 (RM827). 

Note: If any bae is looking to incorporate this little black dress to fit the new normal, it’s important to keep in mind that jersey material, which is known for its stretchy quality isn’t the best protection barrier against Covid-19, compared to tightly-woven fabrics.

Kate Moss and Giorgio Armani

Kate Moss has been out of the limelight for awhile – but now she's back!

Italian luxury fashion house Giorgio Armani have chosen the British supermodel and style icon to front their Autumn/Winter ‘19/’20 campaign. 

This is the first time 45-year-old Moss (left) is representing the brand, and with their fresh collection, Giorgio Armani seek to combine the model’s bold, bohemian spirit with their own signature clean-cut minimalism. 

The 1990s icon appears more elegant and alluring than ever, sporting a new bob-with-bangs hairstyle. 

On Thursday afternoon, I was at the IJM Toastmasters meeting in Jalan Yong Shook Lin in Petaling Jaya, Selangor. 

I presented an Advanced speech from the Special Occasion Speeches manual – it being assignment #2 Speaking in Praise and the speech title was I Salute IJM Toastmasters. 

Indeed, a fine speech befitting the praiseworthy IJM Toastmasters. 

Additionally, I was a speech evaluator for one of their members.

Atria's Wishing Notes

 

 

 

  

Image credit: http://hype.my/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Atria-CNY.jpg

On January 14, 2016, Atria Shopping Gallery in PJ's Damansara Jaya launched a Lunar New Year campaign in which they invited shoppers to join in on some in-mall activities to stand a chance at winning prizes. One was “The Tree of Dreams” aka the “CNY Wishing Tree”. [Actually, there was no tree but never mind!]
 

To participate, shoppers are required to purchase RM50 and above in a single receipt from any store in the said mall and make a CNY (i.e. Chinese New Year) wish at the wishing “tree” located at the mall’s public concourse. Lucky participants would then stand a chance at winning RM28,888 worth of shopping vouchers and gift sets.

 

This promo was supposed to run until February 22, 2016 but midway through, they decided to take down not just the wishes but the entire “tree” altogether. All because they discovered some shoppers (Atria claimed “a few persons” only) had wished for PM Najib Razak to “leave office”!
 

The make-a-wish stand in Atria Shopping Gallery, before it was removed by the management. Pic: Curi-curi Wang Malaysia Facebook page

To poorly-informed Atria, these "misguided" persons had “penned politically sensitive and possibly, defamatory statements on the Wishing Cards”

 

In a posting on Facebook at 04:42 PM on February 02, the Atria management said that the content in the said “wishing cards” were “the personal opinions of the persons who penned the note(s)” and that the Atria Shopping Gallery and their Management did not “endorse nor encourage the posting of such statements”.

 

How stupid can Atria management be? How can asking a public elected official to step down be considered defamatory? Is democracy on holiday?

 

Naturally, photos of the “wishes” in question have since been posted elsewhere on Facebook.

I wonder from which crevice did the Atria management crawl out from. Obviously, they don’t seem able to fathom the true wishes of the majority of Malaysians. If, as they say, it was only the work of a few people, why worry? I wonder also why they could be so chickenshit and yet still had the balls to censor the public’s wish list.

 

Atria has shown they are very out of touch with the sentiments of the Malaysian public. For sure, Atria is definitely not on my list of malls to chill out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kate Moss (1992). Image credit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/photography/what-to-see/beautiful-inspiring-photographs/sante-dorazio/

 

In the pre-digital age, many photographers would use a Polaroid camera to take a test image before getting down to serious shooting. The casual, throwaway nature of the medium often produced images that feel more relaxed than the final print, it is said.

 

A collection of those photos by the Italian American photographer Sante d'Orazio featured among others, Kate Moss. Picture perfect!

Left Breast of Kate Moss Immortalized

Image credit: http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/kate-moss-left-breast-moulded-4090924

Legend has it that the original champagne coupe, the ‘Bol Sein’ was modeled after the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette’s left breast – before she lost her head – in the 18th century.

 

That is of course not true because it was actually created in England. But now, the ‘Queen of Fashion’ Kate Moss’s left breast has been immortalized in a champagne coupe.

 

To fete the stunning supermodel’s 25 years in the fashion industry, London restaurant 34 commissioned British artist Jane McAdam Freud to create a mold of her left breast that would serve as the shape of champagne coupes. [Freud is the daughter of Lucien Freud, who likewise used Moss as a muse and painted a portrait of her nude during her pregnancy].

 

The coupe features an elongated stem, while the well of the bowl is etched with an Art Deco-inspired pattern, meant to evoke the curve of Moss’s breast when held at angle. And the base of the glass is engraved with Moss’s signature.

 

Moss will officially launch the glassware October 08 at the restaurant’s Emin Room and fill the coupes with Dom Perignon’s latest vintage, P2-1998.

 

The coupe will also be used at 34′s sister restaurants in London – The Ivy, Daphne’s, Scott’s and The Club at the Ivy – for guests who order a glass of bubbly as of October 9.

 

[Moss is a fan of the Mayfair restaurant, and she celebrated her 40th birthday at the luxury dining destination in January].

 

If only somebody in the UK can be so kind as to get me that champagne glass!

 

On Thursday evening, the Sunway University Toastmasters' fifty-third meeting was in session. As expected, a good round of speeches and evaluations. We even started and ended on time. But we failed in a couple of areas – one glaring oversight was that we didn't produce an Agenda. Sigh, we must learn to be meticulous in our meeting preparation. And we could kick up the energy level too.

 

Let's remember that we take pride in organizing and conducting quality meetings. I would give this meeting a 3.5 score over 10.