Tilda Swinton’s Latest Role? Fashion Muse for Chanel

In 1992′s Orlando, Tilda Swinton portrayed a cross-dressing nobleman. In 2005′s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, she transformed into the White Witch. Apparently Karl Lagerfeld appreciates her versatility. Today French fashion house Chanel announced that, for her latest role, Swinton will be playing the part of Lagerfeld’s muse.

Swinton will front the campaign for Chanel’s Paris-Edimbourg collection—a pre-fall, ready-to-wear range that Lagerfeld unveiled last December at Scotland’s Linlithgow Palace. Given that Lagerfeld drew inspiration from the Scottish Highlands, dreaming up kilt-pleated coats and other garments with tweed and tartan accents, it makes sense that he chose Swinton. She can trace her lineage back to medieval Scotland, and currently lives in Nairn, in the Highland region, with her partner and their twin sons. ”Tilda perfectly embodies the Paris-Edimbourg collection,” he said. “She is of course Scottish, but more than that she is a modern woman, a timeless icon of elegance.”

She’s also something of a fashion buzz word. During Fashion Week she’s a front-row fixture at Lanvin, Pringle of Scotland and Haider Ackermann. Elsewhere, Lagerfeld recently photographed her for Chanel’s “The Little Black Jacket” book and exhibition, which opens at Milan’s Rotonda di via Besana on April 6. And last October TWELV Magazine had an ice sculptor create a 533-lb. ice dress inspired by Swinton’s turn as the White Witch.

But Swinton does much more than pose. Last fall, during Paris Fashion Week, she starred in a live performance piece at the Musée Galliera, a museum of fashion. Entitled ”The Impossible Dream”, the performance required her to walk down a runway carrying various garments from the museum’s collection, as if she were engaged in dialogue with the women who once wore them.  ”She’s like a pedestal for our collection,” the museum’s curator said at the time. Others feel the same way. She’s previously been a muse for Viktor & Rolf.

The actress—who made a name for herself in art house movies before going blockbuster and mainstream—has always had a flair for the avant-garde. She embraces her own androgyny and was an early adopter of Haider Ackermann’s fashionable pantsuits. ”She’s got such a great sense of self,” burlesque star Dita von Teese once told Grazia, ”and knows herself and has a great style that doesn’t look affected or like it’s trying too hard to gain acceptance.”

Swinton attributes her fashion status to the people she’s surrounded herself with. Speaking to W magazine in 2011, she explained that her foray into couture began after filming The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio. The success of the movie meant that red carpets loomed, so she turned to a good friend for advice, and he introduced her to fashion A-listers like Albert Elbaz of Lanvin and Phoebe Philo of Céline. “For someone to know what you need to make you comfortable, they need to know who you are,” she said. “Having them make clothes for me is like being cooked for by someone who knows what you like to eat.”

Express Joins NBC's Search For The Next "Fashion Star"

Express, Inc. (EXPR), the specialty retail apparel chain, has joined NBC's ground-breaking fashion reality competition "Fashion Star" as a buyer for the program's second season. Hosted by international fashion icon Louise Roe, "Fashion Star" premieres on Friday, March 8, 2013, at 8PM ET featuring celebrity mentors Jessica Simpson, Nicole Richie and John Varvatos.

The program aims to discover the next big name in fashion with contestants competing in a weekly challenge designed to further develop and expand their brands. Express joins the series as a buyer with fellow retailers Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue continuing from the first season.

Buying for Express is Erika De Salvatore, Director of Visual Merchandising for the dual-gender brand. Known for her critical eye and passion for understanding the importance of customer experience, she ensures consistent execution of visual presentation and merchandising.

"We came to Fashion Star with a different lens than the other brands," said De Salvatore. "As a retailer with a singular edit point rather than a department store serving a more varied customer base, we had to be extremely targeted in what we decided to purchase in order to meet the specific needs of the Express customer."

During each episode, product selected by De Salvatore can be purchased immediately at express.com/fs, giving fans of the brand immediate access to the exclusive collection. Following the season finale on Friday, May 10, a select number of stores will carry the line bought by Express, licensed through NBCUniversal Television Consumer Products.

"Everyone who came into the competition was a legitimate designer; no one was thrown in for ratings or TV drama," said De Salvatore. "This was a real design competition and I can't wait for our customers to see what we bought for them!"

Paris Fashion Week: a sneak peek at the show venues

On Tuesday, February 26, Paris Fashion Week kicks off and the venues where the Autumn/ Winter 2013-2014 shows will be held are already being transformed to showcase the new pieces created by the world's fashion giants. As well as being a week about fashion, this week is also very much about Parisian culture. It's time to discover Fashion Week in another way.

Paris Fashion Week is an opportunity for journalists and celebrities from all over the world to discover upcoming new prêt-à-porter collections in quirky, prestigious and historical venues. Whether these venues are used as they are or are completely transformed for the event, they become ideal spots for designer pieces to be seen in all their glory.

Designers and fashion houses make it very clear: light and dimensions are key when it comes to choosing a venue. However, the venue's history, which is often linked to some form of cachet within the fashion world elite, is also very important.

Historical venues
From the Oratoire du Louvre to the Grand Palais: some designers prefer to showcase their new ready-to-wear collections in historically rich venues. This season, designers such as Guy Laroche, Vanessa Bruno and Akris as well as Chanel will be showing at the Grand Palais on Paris's Right Bank.

The Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild in the city's 8th arrondissement, which is also a listed historical building, will play host to prêt-à-porter shows by Anthony Vaccarello, Aganovich and Gareth Pugh.

From museums to luxury hotels: world-renowned venues
Models and fashion professionals from all over the world flock to the French capital for Paris Fashion Week. This explains why luxury houses choose to stage their shows in prestigious renowned venues.

Designer Steffie Christiaens will show her new Autumn/ Winter 2013-2014 at the Hôtel Shangri-La with views of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. This luxury hotel used to be the residence of Napoleon Bonaparte's grand-nephew, Prince Roland Bonaparte. The atmosphere of such a renowned refined venue is sure to bring something unique to the show.

Spanish luxury fashion house Loewe has also chosen to showcase its new designs in a prestigious venue known all over the world: the Galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie du Musée d'Histoire naturelle (Paris's mineral and geology gallery at the Left Bank's Natural History Museum).

Transforming seemingly simple venues
Some couture houses have chosen to completely transform less prestigious Parisian venues. Spanish designer Amaya Arzuaga's show, for example, will be held at the Spanish embassy.

Designer Jacquemus has also chosen another highly unusual venue, the Cour des Lions pool.

Meanwhile Nina Ricci, Issey Miyake, Viktor & Rolf, Chloé and Elie Saab will show their collections in ephemeral spaces that will be set up along the Jardin des Tuileries during Fashion Week.

Fashion royalty: Donatella Versace gives career advice to the next generation of designers at London Fashion Week

It's understandable that the six finalists competing for the International Woolmark Prize during London Fashion week felt a mixture of nerves and apprehension before they presented their work to the esteemed judging panel. And when judge Donatella Versace said she knew how they felt, she really did mean it.

"I have a show on Friday and I'm really freaking out," she confided before the catwalk event that was the culmination of a global search for outstanding emerging talent. "I understand that the rule of fashion is to change, even as a successful designer – you do not want to be stuck in the same rut."

Following the rules of fashion has never come easily to Donatella Versace, nor to her older brother Gianni, who built up the empire that bears the family name before his untimely death in 1997. But of course Donatella had more than a helping hand in moulding Versace into an iconically glamorous label while her brother was alive thanks to her role as his "muse" and, more tangibly, her work supervising advertising campaigns shot by Richard Avedon and Bruce Weber and starring the biggest models of the Nineties. Versace also gave his little sister first an accessories line to design, then a children's line, Versace Young, before in 1994 she became the head designer of Versus, her very own brand aimed at younger fans of the main-line collections.

Purely judging by appearances, Versace comes across as something of a blond bombshell – a role she certainly seems happy to play up to. But she is by no means a bimbo – misjudge her at your peril, there is an immense talent underneath that façade. Immersed in music, culture and fashion, Versace has manoeuvred herself into a position from which she is able to quench her thirst for the new. "I'm always excited for young talent, I'm always looking for it," she says. And her track record speaks for itself. Having chaired London's Fashion Fringe initiative for two years, judging the Woolmark Prize is a continuation of a broader search.

"I already have some background," she says of the competing designers' work. "I could see a difference in them, could see that some have commercial points, other ones are totally trying to find something new, pushing forward and using wool in an amazing way."

Although her involvement in the project this time around came about through fellow judge and Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani, Versace has been familiar with the prize for a lot longer than that. "More than 20 years ago, Gianni did something in Australia for Woolmark – he went there to do this show with clothes made only from merino wool. And it was very different from normal Versace, but for Gianni it was amazing." A special event was held to honour the Australian wool industry, but Woolmark, or as it was then known, the International Wool Secretariat competition, first entered fashion folklore long before that. In 1954, a 21-year-old Karl Lagerfeld won the award in the coat category and Yves Saint Laurent, then just 18, took home the dress-design award, both having impressed a judging panel that included Hubert de Givenchy and Pierre Balmain. A year later, Saint Laurent was installed at Dior and Lagerfeld was working for Pierre Balmain.

Back to the present, however, and alongside Versace, this year's judging committee included Franca Sozzani, Diane von Furstenberg, Tim Blanks and Victoria Beckham. "It's a wonderful initiative," Versace says. "It is designed to help the next generation of designers." Indeed, Christian Wijnants, the winner of the prize, was awarded a fund of $105,000 (£70,000) and a chance to gain international stockists' and industry attention for his merino-wool hand-dyed creations.

"I have worked with wool all my life as a designer," Versace says. "There's so much more to it than knitwear – it's an amazingly versatile material and can be used in so many different ways from chic to rustic. It can be so light now, you can drape wool, pleat it and create a cocktail dress, which is of course important to Versace."

As well as welcoming talented London graduates in to the ateliers of her labels, Versace has forged a close relationship with young designers from the capital. In 2009, she appointed Christopher Kane to head Versus, passing on the baton that had been handed to her by her brother. "From just one sketch of Christopher's while he was still at Central Saint Martins, I knew he was something special," she says fondly of the Scottish designer. "Somebody gave me the sketch and I was mesmerised. There were so many ideas. But he was so shy. He asked us [the label] for some mesh, a little mesh for his collection. So I called him and said yeah, of course I'll give you whatever mesh you want.

"That's how I started our conversation and he was so happy. The minute I met him I thought he had a very fresh way of looking at fashion. He's very feminine, but he is also cool – his is not an old-fashioned femininity."

Kane's spring/summer collection for Versus would be his last for the brand. In November, in the midst of speculation that Kane would be headhunted for the then-vacant position at Balenciaga, Versace suddenly revealed that Kane and Versus would be parting ways professionally, though it was underscored that the split was amicable. Indeed, when Kane showed his latest collection in London last week – a greatest hits of sorts – Versace was on the front row to support her protégé.

"I look for people with ability, of course," she says. "But I am also looking for people with a particular spirit that fits with Versace – a rock'n'roll rebelliousness, with lots of energy. They need to have their own vision. That is really the most important thing for any fashion designer – you need your own voice. When I find someone with potential, I always follow their careers closely, and see if I can help. Apart from anything I benefit personally from exchanges of ideas with young people. But more importantly, the next generation of designers is the future of fashion – so these people should be nurtured."

Instead of taking up its usual slot on the Milan schedule, Versace is planning to do something altogether new with Versus, having installed JW Anderson as the first of a series of guest designers creating limited-edition collections. Versace's new vision for the line sees it becoming a seasonless concept, with a strong focus on its digital offering.

"After the H&M collection [a series of collaborations with the high-street brand began in 2011] was very successful, we realised how much young people know the history of Versace. We thought young people who know fashion through the internet wouldn't know anything before 2000, but the reaction was inspiring."

It is fitting that the history of the brand is playing a part in pushing it forward; after all, Gianni Versace was a revolutionary in his time. Inevitably in the middle of the awards season a conversation with the head of one of the most glamorous, red-carpet-ready labels turns to the Oscars. "Red-carpet dressing came very naturally to Gianni," Versace says. "He was a very good friend of Jane Fonda, and she asked him to dress her for the Oscars. It was one of the first times that glamour was celebrated on the red carpet – at that time, Hollywood thought that being glamorous was not a good thing. You had to look intellectual and arrogant and that is totally wrong, in fact. Image is everything now."

HSN Is Your Authority For Spring Fashion, Debuting The Hottest Looks From Fashion Icons Christian Siriano, June Ambrose, Iris Apfel And Padma Lakshmi

Multi-channel retailer HSN is the destination for everything Spring Fashion, identifying the hottest looks and how to make them work for you. From February 21 through March 23, HSN brings together the best in fashion, accessories, jewelry and beauty, to share their latest collections and most sought after looks for the season.

Anchoring HSN's Spring Fashion series are six key trends that include print mixing, jackets, color blocking, neons & neutrals, maxi's and finishing touches. The multi-platform event will feature celebrity stylist, Robert Verdi as he shares the insider tips, tricks and tools to pull these looks together the perfect Spring wardrobe.

"Our Spring Fashion series makes it so easy for customers to update their wardrobe with the latest styles for the season," said Anne Martin-Vachon, Chief Merchandising Officer for HSN. "By identifying and integrating these key Spring themes and giving our customers access to authorities like Robert Verdi, Christian Siriano and June Ambrose, we are enabling our customers to evolve their personal style and create the looks they will love."

On the heels of his 10th show at New York Fashion Week, designer Christian Siriano will debut his HSN exclusive collection on February 22.  Striking by Christian Siriano includes sophisticated pieces inspired by the runway and combines modern, chic silhouettes with everyday glamour. The collection ranges from $79.90 - $169.90 with a soft but powerful color palette.

Celebrity stylist turned footwear designer, June Ambrose launches her first ever collection with HSN on March 22. Ranging from $59.00-$119.90, the June Ambrose collection includes a mix of sandals and pumps with unique textures and fabrics including animal prints, suede, lace and neon, all fresh and on-trend with a timeless feel.  The esthetic of the collection is inspired by Studio 54 in the late 70's where icons like Donna Summer, Bianca Jagger, Grace Jones, Tina Turner were center stage.

Known for her eclectic sense of style and impeccable taste, Padma Lakshmi launches her first ever jewelry collection for HSN on March 22. PL by Padma Lakshmi bridges the gap between East and West with influences from her heritage and travels during her time as a fashion model and contributing editor to Harper's Bazaar Magazine. Ranging from $16.00 -$90.00, the collection includes fashion forward pieces with a hint of bohemian gypsy luxe and red carpet glamour.

Style icon Iris Apfel returns to HSN with her first ever shoe collection under the same name as her fashion jewelry, Rara Avis by Iris Apfel.  The collection consists of five styles and ranges in price from $59.90 to $99.90.  It's effortless and comfortable footwear infused with her notable flair for fashion.

The HSN Spring Fashion series also features the debut of collections from luxury handbag brands Foley + Corinna and Isabella Fiore as well as the launch of the trendsetting cosmetic brand Too Faced with guest celebrity spokesperson Jillian Barberie Reynolds.

HSN's Spring Fashion Series highlights the season's newest trends in fashion, footwear and accessories from designers including Giuliana Rancic, Badgley Mischka, Sam Edelman, Queen Latifah, Vicky Tiel, Carlos Falchi, Vince Camuto, IMAN, Serena Williams, Donald Pliner and Stefani Greenfield, as well as new on-trend jewelry from designers R.J. Graziano, Iris Apfel, Fern Mallis, Randy Jackson and Ranjana Khan and finally, fresh new beauty assortments from Deborah Lippmann and Trish McEvoy.

HSN is a leading interactive multi-channel retailer, offering a curated assortment of exclusive products and top brand names to its customers.  HSN incorporates entertainment, inspiration, personalities and industry experts to provide an entirely unique shopping experience.  At HSN, customers find exceptional selections in Health & Beauty, Jewelry, Home/Lifestyle, Fashion/Accessories, and Electronics. 

Milan fashion week opens with hopes of economic comeback

Designers kicked off Milan fashion
week on Wednesday with bold collections to persuade Italian
shoppers that the worst of the economic crisis is over and it is
time to hit the stores again.

Fashion houses including PPR's Gucci, Giorgio
Armani and Prada are among the top names showing their
womenswear 2013-14 autumn-winter collections, taking up the
baton from catwalk shows in London.

"I have great hopes for this country after the political and
economic debacle of the last months," cashmere goods maker
Brunello Cucinelli told Reuters at his showroom.

The colourful crowd of fashion critics and bloggers
descending on Milan will mix this year with Italian voters
heading to the ballot box on Feb. 24-25 to choose a new
government and decide the country's future economic path.
Italy came close to a major debt crisis in November 2011
before Silvio Berlusconi stood down as prime minister and was
replaced by technocrat Mario Monti.

"There is a need to clean up politics and give small
businesses the incentives to hire people," Maurizio Modica,
co-designer at Italy's brand Frankie Morello, told Reuters.
Sales of Italian fashion goods are forecast to drop 3.5
percent to around 58 billion euros ($77 billion) this year,
after falling 5.4 percent in 2012, according to preliminary data
by textile and fashion body Sistema Moda Italia (SMI).

Gucci, the first big name brand to show, proposed a fetish
aesthetic for its sensual collection, with sculpted dresses in
materials such as python skin.

Creative head Frida Giannini, who is expecting her first
baby in a couple of weeks, was inspired by the idea of a "femme
fatale" for her show, which also featured evening gowns with
colourful feathers stitched on black lace.

For the morning, Giannini showed sporty jackets embroidered
with three-dimensional leaves.

Fashion house Frankie Morello presented a "dark lady" for
its youthful collection, which featured black blouses covered
with mirror shards and stiff fabrics in geometric patterns.
"I am confident that this edition of the Milan womenswear
week will confirm the positive signs of recovery that we saw in
January during the menswear shows," Mario Boselli, chairman of
Italy's fashion national chamber, said in a statement.

He said he expected orders for the autumn-winter collections
would improve as the recession eases in 2013.

Foreign markets will make up the mainstay of the revenue,
with exports expected to reach record levels in terms of value,
surpassing the previous record in 2000. Non-EU countries such as
China will outpace EU members for the first time, SMI said.
"These forecasts are based on a scenario that there will be
no fiscal shocks in 2013 and the government to be named after
the election will couple fiscal austerity with measures to boost
spending in the second half of the year," SMI said.

The fashion week, which ends on Tuesday, will also include
shows from Versace, Dolce & Gabbana and Roberto Cavalli.

Rihanna's Fashion Line: A 'Slutty' Disaster or Triumph?

Rihanna debuted her first-ever fashion collection as part of London Fashion Week, and depending on who you believe, it was an unmitigated disaster or a triumph of young, streetwise style.

The presentation of the collection, a joint venture with the British brand River Island, was presented Saturday night in a decommissioned post office on London's New Oxford Street, and lasted just nine minutes, according to the British paper The Sun, which said that the show got underway 50 minutes late because Rihanna was tardy.

The Daily Beast called the 120-piece collection "hideous," lacking either "panache or style." The website's critic also labeled Rihanna's clothes "unsurprisingly slutty and yet tiresomely predictable," and suggested that if a guy were to meet a girl in a bar wearing one of the looks, he might think she was a prostitute. Furthermore, the critic slammed Rihanna's latest project as a "cynical marketing exercise entirely devoid of inspiration or authenticity." Ouch.

PHOTOS: Rihanna: Through The Years
However, Elle UK praised the collection, saying it was "an ode to all things high fashion," describing it as "Eighties Norma Kamali meets Alexander Wang luxe sportswear." Among the standout pieces, according to Elle: a black jersey column evening dress, a bra top, a navy cropped sweatshirt, a denim jumpsuit and a jersey skirt with a silk shirt attached.

"Rihanna really does have a great eye for fashion and the attention to details and styling elevated the collection to proper collector's item status," concluded the magazine.

While the British paper The Observer predicted that Rihanna's designs were "sure to be a hit with River Island customers," and said it would be "a winner" when it hits stores in March, ultimately, the paper said the collection "undoubtedly fell short" for those fashion fans who look to London for innovative ideas.

SEE MORE: Celebrity Clothing Lines
But MTV.com was a big fan, describing the collection as a mix of "girly 90s grunge and streetwear," praising a two-piece denim ensemble, a two-piece black bodysuit with an oversized parka and thigh-high boots, a tie-dye off-the-shoulder cropped top and flirty skirt and the "very '90s floral pattern" she put on blouses, shorts and dresses.

Rihanna's co-designer, Adam Selman, told Vogue UK that the singer was "heavily involved" in all the designs.

"This collection is very based upon Ri's style and her mood - so it's evolved a lot," he said. "This all comes from her - it's very personal. She's at the top of her game right now in terms of her career and in herself. She's in a really good place."

He added that the collection was "urban-inspired, unfussy with a hint of uptown" and is targeted at "cool hip girls who aren't super thin".

The collection of clothing and accessories will launch internationally at River Island stores online on March 5. Since River Island is a U.K. brand with no stores in the U.S., you'll be able to buy it in the U.S. and in Japan at Opening Ceremony, an online and retail fashion destination.

London Fashion Week celebrates plus-sized models

It's a skinny girl's world, particularly in fashion where the thin, androgynous look always wins out. But this weekend, an alternative to London Fashion Week celebrated the larger lady and all her curves.
"Thank you all for being who you are", declared one of the organisers at the first Official British Plus-Size Fashion Weekend in Shoreditch, an edgy district in the east of the capital beloved of young hipsters and music fans.

Here, elegantly-dressed women browse racks of clothes designed for European size 40 (UK size 12, US size 8 or 10) and upwards, snacking intermittently from plates of crisps and cupcakes spread around the venue -- food here is not taboo.

The two-day event featured discussions, tutorials by bloggers and a final catwalk show featuring established and first-time models.

Wearing skirts, shorts or bikinis, the women were greeted with enthusiastic applause as they walked out on the runway, with the audience encouraging every display of confidence.

While many of the models could only be described as voluptuous, some of the clothes on offer were not what many people think of as plus-sized.

Hayley, a 24-year-old model who wears European size 42, berated the industry for the way it categorised women. "I think even some agencies these days call girls that are UK size 10 plus size. That's just crazy.
"I think that plus size is the wrong word. I think a curvy model would be a better word to describe me and plus size is not necessarily the nicest expression."

Thirteen designers attended the fashion weekend, but the number was dwarfed by the almost 80 labels showing across town at the official London Fashion Week, where skinny girls still reign supreme.

"At the end, I hope there won't be two segregated shows. But for now, we want to give curvy women an option," said Rianne Ward, one of the organisers of the event and the creator of online magazine Evolve.
She plans to run the plus-sized event again next year, hoping to emulate the success of New York's Full-Figured Fashion Week which is in its fifth year.

A plus-size model wearing clothes from Simply Be walks down the catwalk during Official British Plus-Size Fashion Weekend in east London on February 16, 2013. This weekend, an alternative to London Fashion Week celebrated the larger lady and all her curves.

A plus-size model wears clothes from Carolyn de la Drapiere at Shoreditch Town Hall, East London today. "Thank you all for being who you are", declared one of the organisers at the first Official British Plus-Size Fashion Weekend in Shoreditch, an edgy district in the east of the capital beloved of young hipsters and music fans.

A plus-size model on the catwalk at Shoreditch Town Hall, east London, today. Here, elegantly-dressed women browse racks of clothes designed for European size 40 (UK size 12, US size 8 or 10) and upwards, snacking intermittently from plates of crisps and cupcakes spread around the venue -- food here is not taboo.

Europe's Fashion History, Just a Click Away

An ambitious fashion archive is being readied for its debut May 2, when Europeana Fashion will go online with about 100,000 digital elements from 22 European museums and institutions — a gallery ranging from a 1921 embroidered dress by Madeleine Vionnet to a Diana Vreeland letter to the designer Emilio Pucci.

The project’s goal is to have a total of 700,000 fashion-related elements in digital form and online by March 2015, helping to preserve European fashion history for future generations.

“This is the first attempt to assemble such an important collection of fashion content from both private and public archives and museums,” said Alessandra Arezzi Boza, a freelance fashion curator based in Florence who oversees the site’s content and communications. “And it is surely one of the great challenges of the project as, until now, fashion content was scattered online and not easily searchable.”

The project is an offshoot of Europeana, the five-year-old online digital library that showcases images of about 24 million cultural artifacts, including the Mona Lisa and the Gutenberg Bible.

For now, those who go to www.europeanafashion.eu will find details about the project, a blog about its development, a social corner with Twitter feed and Facebook posts, and a list of fashion-related events around Europe.

Once the site is fully ready, organizers say, users will be able to search the archives by date, designer, item or keyword. A click on a particular image will bring up a detailed view and more information, as well as more images, if available.

Items will include images from fashion shows, catwalks, museum exhibitions and installations in fashion fairs; videos; biographies; blogs; documentation like show invitations, which might be considered works of art in themselves; and articles from newspapers and magazines dating from the 18th century.

Beyond the Web, Europeana Fashion is planning a series of conferences, beginning with “Fashion Industry and the GLAM Community” on April 17 and 18 in Florence, and organizers are considering virtual exhibitions, showcases and a cooperative arrangement with Wikimedia events.

Mrs. Arezzi Boza and Marco Rendina, a researcher and new-media expert at Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale, a Italian nonprofit organization, came up with the idea for Europeana Fashion a couple of years ago when they realized the limits of the original site.

“If you search for ‘fashion’ on Europeana, you can find 5,935 digital items, which is nothing compared to the 24 million digital objects” that eventually will be on Europeana Fashion, Mrs. Arezzi Boza said.

It turned out that ModeMuseum in Antwerp, Belgium, was working on a similar idea, so the two groups joined forces.

Museums in Asia and the United States have begun similar efforts to preserve their fashion collections online, but not in such a comprehensive way, Mrs. Arezzi Boza said.

The Fondazione, located in Florence, is coordinating the project. Its secretary, Marco Rufino, is Europeana Fashion’s general coordinator while Mr. Rendina is serving as its technical director.

The European Commission provided 80 percent of the total €3.3 million, or $4.4 million, budget through 2015, with the partners’ providing the remainder. The partners have agreed to create a Europeana Fashion Foundation to administer the site and update content after 2015.

Participants come from 12 European countries and include institutions like Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris; ModeMuseum Antwerp, which will provide 100,000 elements; and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The Victoria & Albert Museum intends to contribute about 8,000 catalog records and images, including pictures of a corset constructed of red sateen, yellow leather and whalebone from 1883 and a silk day dress made around 1873 that was donated by the Marchioness of Bristol. The intense purple color of the dress illustrates the kind of vivid dyes popular at the time.

“Europeana will create a portal which fashion designers, along with anyone else who is interested in fashion, can use as a ‘one-stop shop,”’ said Heather Caven, head of collections management and resource planning at the Victoria & Albert Museum, which also is helping to develop a multilingual Fashion Thesaurus for the site.

Other partners include small museums like the RossiModa Shoe Museum near Venice, which is providing 12,000 images of shoes; photo agencies like Catwalk Pictures of Brussels; fashion schools; and fashion houses including Missoni and Emilio Pucci.

“Fashion is today part of a general collective system and part of Europe’s cultural profile,” said Laudomia Pucci di Barsento, vice president and image director of Emilio Pucci and owner of the Fondazione Archivio Emilio Pucci, which began digitizing its archive 10 years ago.

“A serious reflection on fashion culture and history on a specialized portal has become a must.”

On N.Y. Fashion Runways, White Models Remain The Norm

You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. This week was Fashion Week in New York City. That's when the big designers show off their new lines in runway shows. And one thing that hasn't changed this year is that most of the models were white. Reporter Arun Venugopal of member station WNYC looks at why the runways have so few models of color.

ARUN VENUGOPAL, BYLINE: A couple days ago, Shawn Grain Carter was teaching a class at the Fashion Institute of Technology when she decided to make a point on racial diversity at New York Fashion Week or the lack thereof.

SHAWN GRAIN CARTER: The first thing I said was take a look at the picture and tell me what you see and tell me what you don't see.

VENUGOPAL: As she tells it, she showed her students a page from The New York Times, a Fashion Week review with a bunch of runway shots.

CARTER: Beautiful-looking models but they're all Caucasian. You don't see an Asian model. You don't see a Latina. You don't see a black model.

VENUGOPAL: New York Fashion Week has celebrated designers of color like Jason Wu and Tracy Reese, and the crowds are quite mixed, but the runways are pretty homogenous. About four out of five of the runway models are white, according to journalist Jenna Sauers, who's done a regular analysis for the website Jezebel. Sauers says white models are the norm wherever you encounter images of luxury.

JENNA SAUERS: So when on the runway you have mostly white faces, the flow-on effect is that you have mostly white magazines and mostly white advertising.

VENUGOPAL: Ashley Mears is a sociologist and former model who wrote "Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model." She says high fashion is looking for something edgy.

ASHLEY MEARS: Edgy meaning something off, something distinctive, something different, and it's always meant to be distinctive in just the right way so that it's read as higher class.

VENUGOPAL: Meaning light-skinned, youthful and possessing a sort of sexual purity, she says. Black models in particular feel affected. Marcia Mitchell has been repeatedly told she should get a nose job to have a more aquiline appearance. And her hair, she says, stylists can't deal with it. In some ways, she says, the business is completely frank about race.

MARCIA MITCHELL: They just sort of said: We're not doing black girls this season. I'm sorry.

VENUGOPAL: Some designers, like Diane von Furstenberg, have called for more diversity, and China's growing appetite for high fashion has resulted in more Asian models being cast for shows. But some also see this as a kind of art form and don't think it should be subject to some sort of quota system. Backstage after designer Nicole Miller's show, her 20 or so models were standing around, celebrating with Miller. A quarter of them were models of color.

NICOLE MILLER: I had five diversified girls, plus a redhead, which is the most diversity because they're very - the lowest percentage of the population is redheads.

VENUGOPAL: Afterward, I met celebrity stylist Shalik Harford, who wore a pretty audacious ensemble of sequins, stripes and furs. People were taking his picture because he's the kind of eye-popping character that makes Fashion Week so much fun. He said the absence of models of color was frustrating for the black community.

SHALIK HARFORD: We want to flip through the pages of Vogue and Cosmopolitan and Glamour and all these amazing editorials and see our people there. And so when our people look into the magazines, it's like, well, where are we?

VENUGOPAL: But some says fashion is simply responding to consumers and their tastes. Preston Chunsaumlit is a casting director for models. He's also Asian.

PRESTON CHUNSAUMLIT: For me, personally, it's beyond my control. I'm not the client. I just facilitate. And is it the client's responsibility or the magazine's? You know, it's just - we can't fight racism. Fashion is not here to fight discrimination.

VENUGOPAL: If change is to come to fashion, he says, consumers will have to demand it. For NPR News, I'm Arun Venugopal in New York.

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The Fashion World Has a Serious Discussion About John Galliano and Anti-Semitism

Yesterday everyone was in a tizzy about the fashion designer John Galliano, who may or may not have worn a Hasid-mocking outfit to a recent Fashion Week event. Galliano has said some not so great things about Jewish people in the past, so people were quick to condemn. And by "people" we mean the New York Post. Though other outlets have since said that Galliano's outfit was nothing new, the Post is still pursuing the story. Yesterday they interviewed some true fashion luminaries about the ginned-up scandal, and what those fine people had to say is a treasury of silliness.

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"I thought it was really disrespectful. You don’t mess with people’s religion."  — former Real Housewives of New York day player Kelly Bensimon, who ought to know from disrespectful

"You would think that [when] one of the world’s most famous fashion designers invites you into a city that was built by Jews, that you would be sensitive to that. I don’t understand why he couldn’t create a new hairstyle that said, ‘More Jews in Israel.'" — Kelly Cutrone, that lady who organizes fashion shows and who had a Bravo reality show for a hot second. We're not really sure what she's even trying to say. How would a hairstyle say that? Could a hairstyle say that? Should it say that? All mysteries.

"When you work in fashion, it’s like a language, right? So in many ways, it’s like embracing the idea, it’s nodding to them and respecting them." — Robert Verdi. Aha, OK. Whatever you say, Verdi.

“It’s not meant to mock Hasidic Jews and the religion. I think it’s meant to sort of respectfully say, ‘Truce. See, look. Some of my best friends are Jewish.’ That type of thing.”  — Robert Verdi again! Bringin' the hits. How on earth would the outfit ever say "some of my best friends are Jewish"? In a related story, some of my best friends are Robert Verdi.

"The last thing I would think of when I see that photo is ‘Hasidic.'" — Patricia Field, costume doyenne of Sex and the City, bringing some reason.

"Look at the curls in the back . . . he’s got the same curls in the back as he does the front." — Patricia Field still, speaking truth to power.

"A Hasidic hat has got a wide brim, it’s got a smaller crown." — Go on, Patricia Field...
"The coat he’s wearing is just a contemporary coat with skinny lapels, and it’s navy." — And there you have it. Case closed. You have a fashion mystery that needs solving? You call Patricia Field. She will tell you what's what.

So it would seem that perhaps Galliano's look was just an unfortunate coincidence. Or maybe it wasn't! Who knows. There's really no way to tell. The real lesson here is that if you want a good, solid quote about whether something is or is not anti-Semitic you go straight to fashion people. They'll nail it every time.

British Fashion Gets a Web Dynamo

This month Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter and Internet guru to the fashion world, will throw her might behind London Fashion Week.
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The British Fashion Council

Natalie Massenet, left, with Prime Minister David Cameron and Caroline Rush at a 10 Downing Street reception to celebrate the London men’s collections last month.

As the newly appointed chairman of the British Fashion Council, she will use her power to promote designers not in their traditional role as funky and cool, but as major players in a global arena.

“I haven’t given up on my day job!” says Ms. Massenet, who is executive chairman of Net-a-Porter, explaining how she was persuaded to take up the role after working on a four-year business strategy with Caroline Rush, the chief executive of the British Fashion Council (BFC).

The pro bono appointment shows Ms. Massenet’s astonishing virtuosity. This month the executive, who built her online shopping empire over 13 years, will launch Net-a-Porter in French and German and in Mandarin, for the ever-growing number of Asian online shoppers, who now make up one third of Net-a-Porter’s clients.

Ms. Massenet, a pioneering force behind online luxury shopping will also unveil a newsstand version of the on-line magazine concept that has helped build the success of Net-a-Porter, because it invested in editorial content to attract more than five million monthly visitors to read, browse and shop the latest offerings.

This magazine maneuver takes Ms. Massenet back to her earliest days at the British magazine Tatler in the 1990s — before she built the e-tail business from a £880,000, or $1.4 million, start-up put together by her former husband, an investment banker. She then sold the brand in 2010 to the luxury group Richemont, which valued the company at £350 million, netting her a supposed £50 million.

Ms. Massenet, 47, sits on a couch in the glass box of an office that offers an aerial view of London. With the fitful sun shimmering through wisps of mist and on the space-age construction of the Westfield shopping complex, she is literally, as well as metaphorically with her online business, in the “cloud.”

She calls it “a cathedral-like feeling of light” and announces that the huge space is no longer enough: Westfield has promised to build a new rooftop wing by next year.

Ironically, the Net-a-Porter organization with its 2,500 global employees sits above a shopping mall that has bricks-and-mortar stores for luxury brands from Burberry to Prada to Louis Vuitton. Although Prada is one of the few brands that has resisted her blandishments. Ms. Massenet’s slim mouth, set in a perfect-oval-shaped face, puckers at such a refusal.

Her connection since Jan. 1 to the BFC is significant in reinforcing the changed image of British fashion from quirky but erratic to inventive but well-organized.

Working with Ms. Rush, she has encouraged Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife, Samantha, to support the fashion industry, which is worth more than £20 billion to the British economy, according to the BFC.

The two women have come up with five “pillars.” Ms. Rush cites these as first the designer perspective: getting the right deals, support and global reach; then the business of regulating investment possibilities; and teaching cash-flow management with an effective business strategy via terrestrial or on-line seminars.

The final categories are education and reputation: What Ms. Rush sees as expanding teaching beyond the well-known British art and design colleges; and building strong partnerships across Europe, in China, Japan and emerging markets.

“And if more people wanted to join the industry, they don’t have to be a designer — for an amazing life and career, you don’t have to be a creative,” says Ms. Massenet, referring to potential management and online strategic positions outside of the 700 fashion companies that the BFC has already listed.

Both Ms. Rush and Ms. Massenet applaud the fact that the Scottish designer Christopher Kane, 30, has been backed by the French luxury conglomerate PPR, which is already behind the Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney brands.

Mr. Kane says of Ms. Massenet: “She is my biggest client,” proving how online sales can be a gift to young designers.

 Ms. Massenet is seen from various perspectives within the industry. She remembers clearly her starting point at Tatler magazine after being brought up in Los Angeles and Paris (hence the grand double doors to the airy interior of the Net-a -Porter offices).

But the British Vogue publisher Stephen Quinn recalls little of her in that Tatler role and is more interested in her persuading big-brand British designers like Ms. McCartney and Mr. McQueen to show in London rather than Paris.

Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast International, regards Ms. Massenet both as a dynamic force within the industry and as an important advertiser. (Net-a-Porter covers increasingly the same farflung territories marked out by Condé Nast.)

Christopher Bailey, chief creative officer of Burberry, who stages his women’s (but not men’s) shows in London and is wedded to high technology, is enthusiastic about Ms. Massenet’s new role.

“I have so much admiration for Natalie and everything she has achieved through her incredible drive and singular vision,” the designer says. “I can’t think of a better person to champion our creative talent at home and around the world.”

British fashion needed a rebranding to keep a focus on eccentricity (defined at the Olympics last summer by the Danny Boyle opening ceremony), but also to be perceived as a serious business player in a wired world. Ms. Rush’s dynamism has also included Internet promotion and live-steaming shows.

Back home at Westfield, Ms. Massenet has a picture of herself dancing with Roland Mouret, the London designer whom she persuaded to sell his first collection on the fledgling Net-a-Porter in 2001. The speed with which she developed the business to embrace 300 A-list designers and to express-ship their goods to 170 countries has stunned the fashion industry, but few have successfully imitated it.

The executive also seems to have an impressive ability to juggle her work with another important part of her life: her pre-teenage daughters, who are already wired to Twitter and Instagram.

“I am pretty good about turning off — I am binary and when I am home I love being there,” Ms. Massenet says.

The business however, does not switch off, and she is scathing about chief executives who are “experts in old ideas” and whose stores still follow the rhythm of a working day.

“We try not to follow rules — we make our own rules,” she says, adding that Net-a-Porter works 24/7 — as witnessed by the digital screens on the wall documenting every sale, its cost and its place of origin. The figure on Wednesday, at midday, after a £1,250 purchase from Germany, stood at £639,325.

Thirty percent of those sales are from cellphones, changing even further the concept of modern shopping.

Who is the real Ms. Massenet and what makes her tick?

An employee, who asked not to be quoted, described his mentor as “very American” in a demand for super-tidy desks and that the forest of curving Artemis lamps are set at the same angle across the entire work floor. That sense of streamlined order continues along to the Mr. Porter male fashion site (started in 2011) and the Outnet site for marked-down pieces.

Colorful Post-its with baffling messages such as “cucumber” and “Java” are stuck on walls where clusters of staff congregate in stand-up discussions. (No time to be wasted by sitting down comfortably.)

There have been some grumbles in the industry that Mr. Porter’s visual style was too obviously modeled on Fantastic Man magazine, and that the U.K.-based Net-a-Porter does not seem to promote British designers in particular.

But the Net-a-Porter staff express a fierce loyalty. Lucy Yeomans, who originally worked at Tatler with Ms. Massenet, was persuaded to leave her editor’s role at Harper’s Bazaar after 11 years and is now handling the online/kiosk magazine. Jeremy Langmead, who heads up Mr. Porter, also comes from a Hearst magazines background as editor of Esquire.

“It’s very different from magazines in that there are so many platforms,” Mr. Langmead said. “But as Natalie always says ‘yes,’ it puts a spring in your step.”

Is Ms. Massenet really as shiny perfect as her glossy light brown hair and purple nails? She has a sophisticated and refined personal taste. Yet for all her digital savvy (she often speaks at technology conferences) her speech at last week’s BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund award was read from paper, not from a digital tablet. She admits to being fazed by the office telephones, which she finds complex to navigate for conference calls.

Then there is her hearty dislike of getting on a plane — despite her role at this global empire.

But Ms. Massenet’s enthusiasm and energy have an uplifting effect. The number of people applying for jobs puts Net-a-Porter on the almost Messianic level of Google.

“And we have to deal with how we handle the applicants and the 99 percent rejects,” said Ms Massenet, who has hired 40 people in Human Resources.

At last week’s design awards, her speech was a model of encouragement and compassion for finalists who did not win. And her dress code was impeccably British: a lace patterned dress by Erdem Moralioglu and shoes by the fashion fund winner, Nicholas Kirkwood.

From the black ballerina flats (with black jeans) for walking the length of her Westfield empire, through the high-heeled black pointy-toe court shoes for cocktails at the prime minister’s residence last month, it is rare, indeed, for the new chairwoman of British fashion to put a foot wrong.

Stockholm Fashion Week: is Swedish style having its own Ikea moment?

As the snow melts and re-freezes and Stockholm turns its eyes to the autumn 2013 catwalk shows, it's easy to forget there'll be a spring and a summer before then. This of-the-moment feel is one of the Swedish fashion scene's main strengths: more and more pieces from homegrown brands have, in recent years, strolled straight off the runways and into the shops. Reasonably priced, well made and commercial without being too obvious, is Swedish fashion having its own Ikea moment?

“There's a certain pragmatic aspect,” says Melissa Drier, the Berlin correspondent for Women's Wear Daily and in town for the shows. “Sometimes they're just good clothes that you want to buy. It's not necessarily directional, but there's a gentility to them, and then at the same time, a little bit of rock and roll too. ”For anyone who's in the contemporary part of the market, Sweden is a real base,“ she adds.

This is the sector that most brands showing in Stockholm fit into: everyday pieces at mid-range prices, not so high flown as the designer bracket proper but more considered, design-wise, than the upper echelons of the high street. And it's a niche that is doing well despite the downturn, as shoppers of every type converge on it, from above and below according to either aspiration or thrift.

“Many of the brands are quite small, and they're struggling” says Susanne Ljung, host of Stil, a weekly public radio fashion show. “But there's an optimistic vibe – you can trace influences from 'Swedish Modern', a term introduced in New York at the 1939 World Fair. It's a blend of modernism, craftsmanship, beauty and comfort.”

Labels on the schedule differ vastly, of course, and range from established names such as J. Lindeberg to H&M's indie arm Cheap Monday, with countless up-and-comings in between, and even the odd heritage brand looking to bolster its fashion credentials.

It isn't quite the same melting pot that gave birth to the Belgian designers in the late Eighties, but the current geographical vogue for all things Scandinavian hasn't hurt designers here in terms of international recognition.

The Swedish look – long hair, androgynous tailoring, grunge and an ankle boot – is in right now, not least thanks to l abels such as Acne and high-street brand COS, which have sown the Swede seeds of success abroad already.

“It's important for us to be accessible with our price points,” says Carl Malmgren, denim designer at Cheap Monday after the brand's show. Entitled Artificial Grunge, the collection mixed Nineties references with lace and neons to create a futuristic, punkish look for autumn – one that its young British fans will be only too happy to pick up at the flagship store which opened in Carnaby Street last year.

“It's a challenge for us to do fashion-forward stuff that people can actually buy.” He smirks at the suggestion that this is a particularly Scandinavian notion, but ultimately agrees. “That's fair – it's a socialist ideal.”

Cheap Monday's creative director is Ann-Sofie Back, a Central St Martins graduate, who has run a successful line under her own name for almost a decade, and has collaborated with Fred Perry and Topshop, and shown at London Fashion Week. Her diffusion line, Back, is on the Stockholm schedule and her worldwide sales increased 60 per cent last year. The autumn '13 collection was a riot of hazard tape-coloured workwear-inspired pieces, shown to a soundtrack of rowdy blokes chanting the designer's name.

“I always work with things I don't like,” she explains backstage. “I had to find a way of dealing with fashion that was different to anyone else's.

“My clothes are for someone with a sense of humour; someone who doesn't take fashion too seriously and who dresses for herself, rather than for a man.” Back's philosophy resounds through many other Swedish labels, even though few of them share so extreme an aesthetic.

Whether because of their national taste for functionality and asceticism or not, many womenswear designers here play with male and female tropes to create a new version of femininity that is far from girlish or traditional, but is in no way cumbersome or intimidating.

“We wanted to bring in parts of menswear, such as suits and military coats, and match them with a more poetic style,” explains Karin Soderlind of Dagmar, a knitwear brand run by three sisters and named after their grandmother. This they did in teal tailoring, marble prints, lace and sharp coats softened with cape sleeves. “We call it 'the awakening' – to a new lifestyle and a new feminine style.”

Carin Wester, whose clothes have been picked up by Urban Outfitters and ASOS, also looked to that mix, with unstructured and oversized greatcoats and duffels in blush tones, nude double-breasted suits – even a pinstripe crop-top worn with pinstripe hipster slacks. At Whyred, too, tailoring was mannish and boxy – inspired by Peter Saville's artwork for New Order's “Power, Corruption and Lies” – while archetypally couture-era feminine blanket coats came in utilitarian olive and khaki.

“I love sensual silhouettes and the female body,” agrees designer Elin Nystrom after her Stylein show, which saw silk tunics and fluid gowns cut geometrically to make them less soft and more severe. “But you also need the straight lines, the more masculine feel. When the two meet, that's when the magic happens.”

Apparently so: such is the interest in Swedish – and Scandinavian – designers that the largest ever showcase of their wares will be unveiled at Somerset House during London Fashion Week later this month.

More than 40 labels will exhibit there, nine of which are Swedish, and emerging talents will be given the opportunity to show their collections – to an audience far bigger and far more influential than one they might command in their native capital.

Great Swedish export H&M is also keen to promote young talent, and one draw of the Stockholm shows was its Design Award, the culmination of a talent search across Europe's best design schools. The winner, Minju Kim of Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Arts, will see parts of her collection produced and sold by the chain.

Kim's flair for fit, proportion and texture – all the while referencing bold and bright Japanese manga comics –was a colourful addition to a schedule where a modern and litotic take on good taste was primarily the order of the day.

But there were homegrown newcomers showing in Stockholm, too, and ones that promise to join the Nordic invasion of our boutiques and wardrobes.

The much-hyped duo behind Altewaisaome offered minimal but glamorous sports couture: iridescent, petrol blue shift dresses and wide-leg trousers with zip, drawstring and bugle bead detailing provided opulence in among expertly cut trapeze-line coats in felt and boiled wool, cut deliberately flat and boxy.

At the Mes Dames show, too, classic elegance was undermined by way of paint-spattered maxi-skirts and oxblood silk jumpsuits, even a dirndl skirt made from shiny green PVC.

While the trend for pigeonholing these names according to their origins may help with recognition for the time being, the aim for these designers is to break free of such associations and emerge on to the global market in their own right. For labels as commercially viable as many on the Stockholm roster, this shouldn't be too difficult at all – but the next stage for them may well be the shopfloor rather than the international catwalks: Swedish designers make clothes you want to wear rather than watch.

Art Van Furniture Donates Furnishings To Detroit Veteran Sgt. Davin Dumar As Part Of Operation FINALLY HOME With The Kid Rock Foundation And Pulte Homes

Art Van Furniture is donating the furnishings for the new home of Michigan war veteran Sergeant Davin Dumar. Kid Rock and his foundation, partnered with Pulte Homes, as part of Operation FINALLY HOME, to present the new mortgage-free 2,600 square foot property to Sgt. Dumar and his wife Dana. The Dumars will move into the Macomb home on Friday, February 1, 2013. Deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 with the Army's 1-25th SBCT, Sgt. Dumar was struck by an IED during an engagement with enemy forces. Dumar's left leg was amputated as a result of the injury he sustained.

"On behalf of the 2,700 associates of Art Van Furniture, we want to personally thank Sgt. Dumar for his service to our country," said Chairman and Founder Art Van Elslander. "His sacrifice has not gone unnoticed by our community. It's an honor for us to help welcome this soldier home."

A longtime supporter of US troops, Kid Rock, through his Kid Rock Foundation, partnered with Operation FINALLY HOME's founder Dan Wallrath to include Michigan veterans as part of the project. The singer, a Michigan native, has performed benefit concerts across the globe in support of the country's armed forces. Pulte Homes, based in Bloomfield Hills, donated the construction costs for the home.

In addition, The Somerset Collection retailers donated bedding and housewares, and Meijer is helping with groceries and other household items. Paul's TV inside Art Van also helped with a donation.

Art Van Furniture is Michigan's largest furniture retailer and America's largest independent furniture retailer.  The company operates 36 stores throughout Michigan, a full service e-commerce website, plus six freestanding Art Van PureSleep bedding stores in Canton, Troy, Rochester Hills, Brighton, Ann Arbor and New Hudson, Michigan. Founded in 1959, the company is family-owned and headquartered in Warren, Michigan. Visit www.artvan.com for more information.

Operation FINALLY HOME is an award-winning program created by Bay Area Builders Association Support Our Troops.  A non-partisan/non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, Operation FINALLY HOME'S mission is to provide custom made mortgage-free homes to wounded and disabled veterans and the widows of the fallen in an effort to get their lives back on track and become productive members of their communities.