Fashion Brands Give a Helping Hand

It’s nice to know that big-name fashion brands have stepped forward to give a helping hand in the fight to contain Covid-19. 

Prada, Gucci, COS, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent are among the many labels which produced face masks. 

Additionally, luxury group Kering purchased and imported masks to supply the French health service. 

Likewise, LVMH brought in surgical masks and FFP2 disposable particulate respirators from China to be distributed to medical workers. They even converted their factories, which usually manufacture perfumes under labels such as Givenchy and Guerlain, to the production of hand sanitizer. 

Moncler gave €10 million (£9.2 million) towards the construction of a 200-25-bed hospital in Milan, Italy. 

Mayhoola, the parent company of Valentino and Balmain, chipped in $2 million to the coronavirus effort. 

Giorgio Armani contributed $1.4 million to four of Italy’s busiest hospitals. 

Donatella Versace doled out more than $200,000 to the intensive care unit of Milan’s San Raffaele hospital. 

And Giorgio Armani donated $1.4 million to four of Italy’s busiest hospitals. 

I thought these are really wonderful gestures. 

As a way of saying thanks to these iconic fashion brands, I would like to share this clever commercial parody for a brilliant, but (hopefully) fictional one-of-a-kind luxury item, the Prada Body Bag:

Fashion that’s to die for! Definitely, the most elegant way to make a final impression! 

FYI, this video is by The Kloons, a threesome comprising Mitch Lewis, Greg Washburn and Nik Kazura, who creates comedy sketches for YouTube.

Smell the Coffee

Coffee lovers, this is for you! 

Yves Saint Laurent's most transgressive fragrance, the spicy oriental "Opium" was reinvented nearly four decades after its initial launch as an addictive, sexy and rock & roll-inspired fragrance marked by the energizing aroma of black coffee. 

Conceived in 2014, "Black Opium," which has since become a fragrance classic, is currently available in eau de toilette, eau de parfum and eau de parfum intense versions. 

And now, there is the new version of this daring fragrance, "Black Opium Neon", which supposedly spotlights a major trend in the worlds of fashion and makeup. Following on from an intense jolt of coffee, Yves Saint Laurent Beauty has come up with a perfume to evoke a surprisingly luminous moment in the evening sky, whatever that means! 

Composed by perfumers Nathalie Lorson, Marie Salamagne, Olivier Cresp, and Honorine Blanc, the new eau de parfum offers notes of dragon fruit, which give the fragrance its vibrant color, combined with mandarin orange, citron, sambac jasmine, and orange blossom, before closing with a distinctive accord of coffee – the fragrance’s signature scent – enveloped musk and vanilla absolute. 

Hmmm, what will they conjure up next? 

I’m thinking durian! 

I have already started to wean myself away from Toastmasters. No more this daily addiction to Toastmastering. In fact, my last meetings were on Thursday, where I participated in two meetings @ IJM and Top Glove.

Yesterday, I was in the KL’s side of Old Klang Road to attend the Money & You Toastmasters meeting. I had a speaking opportunity, thanks to Amy Lim.

And I presented my project speech #876 and which was for my last round of the Competent Communication manual #67! It was a CC#5 Your Body Speaks titled Voices in My Head. 

I was voted Best Speaker too. 

Still, I’m reserving special mention for two earnest speakers – it’s not only about me! – Catherine See and Ng Siew Boon who demonstrated good speaking abilities and if given more focused speech coaching, will, in my opinion, turn out to be remarkable orators.

Photos from Monday's meeting:

Porno Chic Ad Campaign

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: Twitter Screenshot

 

A Yves Saint Laurent campaign featuring "painfully thin models" in "degrading" poses sparked distressing disapproval on Monday, with strident calls to ban the imagery.

 

The poster ads of a reclining woman in a fur coat and fishnet tights opening her legs, and another of a model in a leotard and roller skate stilettos bending over a stool, caused incensed indignation on social media.

 

The Autorité de Régulation Professionnelle de la Publicity, the French advertising authority said most of the complaints they received were from people who saw the images as an “incitement to rape”.

 

Their director, Stephane Martin, told the AFP that the brand appears to have "incontestably breached" the national advertising code, which bars all "degrading and humiliating representations of people".

 

France's leading women's group, Osez le feminisme ("Dare to be Feminist"), called for the campaign to be pulled immediately. 

 

Raphaelle Remy-Leleu, a spokesperson for the group, said: "It ticks all the sexist boxes. The women are objectified, hypersexualised and put in submissive positions".

 

She added: "How do they think they will sell anything today (to women) with that? ,,,But you have to ask if that wasn't intentional, that this was all about creating a scandal so we would talk about them".

 

Anyway, the French fashion house was not available for comment.

 

Celtic and Rangers are drawn to meet in the Scottish Cup semi-final.

 

The former sealed their spot by coming from behind to beat St Mirren 4-1 on Sunday. Their goal scorers were Mikael Lustig (58), Scott Sinclair (59), Moussa Dembele (68) and Leigh Griffiths (78).

 

Last evening, I was in Bangsar, KL to attend the KL Advanced Toastmasters meeting. I presented my third speech ‘A Dramatic Talk’ from The Entertaining Speaker manual titled “An Early Morning Drive”.

 

 And for my ‘drama’, I was voted Best Speaker.