Tag: London Fashion Week

Assange becomes a fashion model

Posted on July 1, 2014 by - News

Julian AssangeAussie fugitive Julian Assange is so desperate for media attention that he is prepared to take a shot at fashion modelling.

Assange, who is holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy trying to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex charges is expected to make his London Fashion Week debut this September.

Apparently the WikiLeaks founder will model for Vivienne Westwood’s son, Ben Westwood, at a fashion show staged at the Ecuadorean Embassy.

Westwood hopes that the event will draw the nation’s media and not allow Assange to be forgotten.
“I want to highlight Julian Assange’s plight. What happened to him is totally unfair,” he told the Independent.

Assange – who will be joined by six models during his catwalk outing – has also inspired some of the clothes.

Westwood said his collection was influenced by costumes worn by Clint Eastwood’s western films and also Assange’s combat-beret look.

The show’s soundtrack will come by way of music from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, no prices for who Assange is coming as. Westward has also designed a garment with a Julian Assange print.
It is starting to look like Assange is managing to force the limelight back on himself.

Recently he met with Lady Gaga and opening rapper MIA’s New York concert with a 10-minute Skype chat, in which he addressed the audience. Last week, he hosted a Reddit ask-me-anything session, in which he offered life advice. We didn’t see it, but we should have expected that “ask someone first if they want to have sex with you and always use a condom” should have been given at some point.

Tourists flock to UK high streets

Posted on February 27, 2013 by - News

highWhile Brits are clutching tightly onto their purse strings, their foreign counterparts seem to be happy to splash the cash on the UK high street.

In a survey, VisitBritain found that overseas visitors had splurged a record £18.5 billion during their visits to the UK,  up seven percent year-on-year from 2010.

The organisation said that this amounted to 25 percent of all expenditure by overseas visitors on the UK’s high streets.

The figure was a refreshing change from the doom and gloom spelled out in recent retail surveys, which continue to show Brits are reluctant to splash their cash on shopping.

Most recently a survey from CBI suggested that seven percent of retailers saw an increase in their volume of sales in the year to February and 29 percent reported a reduction.

However, it doesn’t seem dismal weather and high inflation are putting holidaymakers off.

According to VisitBritain, the majority of the shopping spend was on clothes, with an estimated £2.3 billion generated by fashion-conscious foreign tourists. Many visitors also bought souvenirs, gifts and household goods, accounting for around £1.6 billion.

Of the 18 million visitors, the French were the  most prolific shoppers with over two million trips, followed closely by 1.63 million Germans, 1.63 million Americans, 1.3 million Irish and 1.1 million Spanish.