But fashion became her calling and after a lifetime of design, winning awards and providing red carpet looks for stars ranging from Oscar winner Renee Zellweger to Grammy winner Lady Gaga, industry watchers know that family is the thread that runs through Herrera’s personal and professional success.

“Maybe fashion was sleeping in me and suddenly it woke up,” Herrera, 73, told Reuters. “Because when I was growing up, my great interest was my horses, tennis and that’s it, and dogs and normal life, not about fashion.”

A huge portrait of the designer by Andy Warhol, a memento of her night-clubbing years in the 1970s with superstar peers such as Mick Jagger, hung in her showroom behind her as she spoke with Reuters in an interview ahead of the February 13 debut of her latest collection at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York.

Her office is filled with art books and framed family photos, and two silver statuettes from the Council of Fashion Designers of America — the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award she received in 2008 and the Womenswear Designer of the Year Award in 2004 — take a prominent place.

With her Fall 2012 runway show set for Monday, Herrera talked about her 30 years in fashion and how she built her New York-based company, the privately held Carolina Herrera Ltd., into a global billion-dollar brand.

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Her mother, who was “a very romantic, poetic, cultivated woman,” her grandmother and the other women in her family loved haute couture, prizing “the craftsmanship that made them as beautiful on the inside as on the outside,” she said.

Herrera saw her first fashion show at age 13 when her grandmother took her to see the Balenciaga collection. When she was almost 16, she began to wear stylish clothes to dances and parties. She married young and her first marriage ended in divorce. A second marriage, to childhood friend Reinaldo Herrera who has ties to Spanish nobility, has lasted.

As a young mother who belonged to the jet set, Herrera caught the eye of photographers with her regal beauty and exquisite taste in clothes. She became a fixture on the best-dressed List in the 1970s and wound up in its Hall of Fame.

But by 1980, Herrera wanted something more and she credits Diana Vreeland, the formidable editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, with giving her the nod to become a fashion designer.

“I said, you know, ‘I think I want to be a designer for material, for fabrics.’ And she looked at me straight in the eyes and said, ‘Oh my dear, how boring that is. You can’t. You have to do something else. Why don’t you try to have a collection, or a whole collection from daytime to evening and try to do something like that, which you will like much better.’ She gave me the idea,” Herrera said.

She showed her first collection in 1981, and said she felt “lucky” to get her start in New York because “the Americans were very generous.” Her friend, the late Bill Blass, who was a favorite designer of Nancy Reagan, helped her, coaching her on how to stage a runway show.

Herrera’s couture line of women’s clothes and her Carolina Herrera collection are sold in boutiques and stores from New York to Moscow, Hong Kong and Dubai.

The trendiest part of her business is CH Carolina Herrera, a more casual line that offers menswear, children’s wear, women’s wear, handbags, shoes and other accessories, eyewear, fragrances and products for the home.

THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

Not to be left out are her fragrances – 11, in all – which she says are a designers’ passport to the world.

When a designer is asked to do a fragrance, she said, “you should do it immediately because that’s what gets your name everywhere.” Her daughter Carolina is in charge of the fragrance business — “she’s sort of the face,” as her mother put it.

She respects her daughters’ taste and their honesty, which help her understand what younger customers want. Patricia’s feedback is prized because “she does not lie.”

For Herrera herself, the greatest compliment comes from customers, but it’s not expressed in words.

“Every time I see someone wearing something from Carolina Herrera, it’s a great compliment for me. It doesn’t matter if it looks bad – it’s better that she looks beautiful. But it’s a great compliment because it says that I’m doing something right, and so they’re buying it because they like it.”

But that sort of statement betrays the business success she has achieved in more than three decades.

“I believe that if you would have asked me 30 years ago, I would have never been able to imagine that we would have gotten to where we are today,” she said.

Asked to describe the best and worst parts of her job, she said her favorite functions were being creative – ” now I am really in heaven because I’m working in the new collection” – and the worst part were the media interviews. “It scares me so much … but it’s part of the business.”

She advises young designers to keep the creative side of the business separate from the numbers, And on the topic of becoming a creative success, Herrera said it is “all about your eye.”

“It’s about talent, of course. You have to have talent to design and to dress thousands of women or millions of women around the world. And you know very well, the only thing they want is to look more beautiful.”

In conversation, most topics seem safe, except retirement. “Why do people ask that question? Is it because of the age?” she asks.

As timeless as her designs seem to be – her self-described “uniform” of a tailored white shirt and slim gray wool dress is always fashionable – Herrera never tires of going to work.

“When you do something that you like and you think you can keep doing it, you don’t think about retiring. And this is a private company, so I don’t have to retire.”

(Reporting by Alicia Powell and Jan Paschal; Writing by Jan Paschal; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

“Project Accessory,” the latest spinoff of the long-running hit reality show “Project Runway,” pits 12 unknown designers against each other for a shot at becoming the next big name in fashion.

It debuts on Thursday on the Lifetime television network.

“This is the biggest money maker in fashion,” executive producer Rich Bye told Reuters of the accessories business.

“When they came to me with this idea,” he added, “my first thought was: ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this before?’ It seemed like a ‘no brainer.’”

Bags, belts, jewelry and shoes are among the mainstays of the accessories business, which rakes in an estimated $30 billion a year in the United States alone, according to the Accessories Council. The New York-based nonprofit group represents designers, retailers, publications and suppliers in the accessories, eyewear and footwear industries.

“Project Accessory” gives TV audiences a close-up glimpse of what goes into making those items that “can make or break a look,” said Ariel Foxman, editor-in-chief of InStyle magazine and a judge on the show.

The winner of “Project Accessory” will get an InStyle feature spread and $100,000 from eBay Fashion for startup.

Bye contends that the prospects all add up to even more exciting television than designing clothes.

“In terms of the creative process, it’s much more visceral, more workmanlike, kind of gritty,” he said. “There’s drills, saws, soldering irons and hammers — all these machines just to make the stuff. It’s like going to the back room of Tiffany or Saks to see how they set the stones” for jewelry.

THAT’S SHOE BIZ

Actress and model Molly Sims, who hosts “Project Accessory,” said the show “gives an insider look at how designers create their whole look — the bags, the shoes, the jewelry.”

The competition is so “hands on,” she said, adding: “Imagine making a pair of shoes in two days.”

Sims, who launched her own jewelry line, Grayce, last year so she knows something about the business, said the competition forced the aspiring designers out of their comfort zones.

“They learned very quickly to ask questions, to get help.”

Eva Lorenzotti, the CEO of jewelry, fashion and gifts company Vivre, who mentors the contestants, noted that “accessories require amazing know-how.”

“If it’s well made, it will last forever. It’s iconic. Fashion is no different than great architecture. When it’s really good, it stands tall. It stands apart,” she said.

Even before the cameras rolled, Bye and the “Project Accessory” team logged marathon sessions with artisans and other industry experts in New York, where the show was filmed.

“Shoes, oh my God, we spent a couple of months just talking to cobblers and getting the right kind of last,” (a key shoe component) said Bye, who also was the executive producer of “Project Runway” for its first five seasons on Bravo.

Designer Kenneth Cole, a “Project Accessory” judge, told Reuters that “shoes are absolutely the most difficult accessory to bring to market. There’s more than 100 operations that go into bringing shoes,” from initial sketch to retail.

Most important, shoes, more than any other accessory, affect how a person feels, not just how they look, Cole added.

Asked about the show’s appeal at a time of economic turmoil, Cole said “Accessories are critical. In a difficult economy, no one looks to start from scratch.”

So when times are hard, people look to accessorize what they already own — whether “last year’s dress, a different pair of shoes, or last year’s suit, a different tie.”

CLOSE CALL

Timing, and an act of nature, also played a role as the show wrapped its eight-episode shoot, Bye recalled.

On what was supposed to have been the last weekend of filming in New York, Hurricane Irene bore down on New York and “the mayor’s film production office pulled all the permits.”

But Irene mostly gave Manhattan the slip, and “Project Accessory” wrapped without incident.

Sims said she became emotional while filming the final episode, when the winner was chosen.

“We found someone we think is fantastically talented … who can oversee an accessory line.”

And perhaps, she added, give some competition to fashion’s leading lights — maybe the next “Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors or Rachel Roy.”

(Reporting by Jan Paschal; editing by Chris Michaud and Bob Tourtellotte)

Hayley Taylor, 43, a former hairdresser turned career coach, stars as a tart-tongued Mary Poppins with a clipboard who visits the home of one unemployed family per episode to help them get control of their personal lives and find jobs.

“Nobody likes to be told the truth,” Taylor said in an interview with Reuters. “But it’s tempered with compassion … if a house is totally out of control, then it follows that the person feels out of control.”

In her role as “Fairy Jobmother,” which debuts Thursday on Lifetime Television, Taylor tells one young, unemployed couple with two kids that they must clean up their home, which means getting rid of dog feces on a carpet pad in the bedroom.

Executive producer Stephen Lambert calls Taylor’s advice “classic tough love” but adds that “she cares about them a great deal.”

“It’s that combination of push and warmth,” Lambert said, that endeared Taylor to British TV audiences and, in his opinion, will strike a chord with American viewers as well.

The hit British import makes its U.S. debut at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate is 9.6 percent and the economy is struggling to emerge from the deepest recession since the Great Depression. In the UK, the jobless rate is 7.8 percent.

“The timing is absolutely perfect,” Taylor said, regarding the show’s debut in America.

Lambert, 51, also created “Undercover Boss,” another British hit adapted for U.S. audiences that follows corporate CEOs as they take low-level jobs in their own companies to learn what it’s like to be an average company worker.

The two shows are among a growing list of programs about people struggling to make ends meet, including the upcoming series “Downsized” on the WEtv cable network. It debuts on November 6 and follows a family of nine whose home is foreclosure and who grow their own food and make their clothes.

‘THUNDERBOLT MOMENT’

Lambert said he dreamed up “The Fairy Jobmother” after filming Taylor, “a television natural” as he put it, for a documentary about government-funded training programs.

Taylor recalled that by October 2009, two months after the documentary aired, she had an offer for the show and after only a few months of shooting, she was on a plane to the United States to make an American version.

Taylor’s “tough love” experience came naturally. She was raised in the plain-speaking, northern England county of Yorkshire that once had a large mining community.

At 16, she trained to become a hairdresser. Years later, while working in a large salon which had a training center, she was called upon to substitute for a teacher who was absent.

“I was looking at 16-year-old girls all wanting to be the next Vidal Sassoon. So I used humor. We worked on telephone skills, interviewing.”

While there, she experienced a “thunderbolt moment” where she discovered she had a “passion” for helping others find work. Years later, she landed a job with a government-funded training program where Lambert discovered her.

But her new career path didn’t come without some hard times along the way. At one point, her husband lost his job and left the couple scraping to get by with a one-year-old daughter. Taylor also found it difficult to finally reenter the workforce after being a stay-at-home mom.

“I know the psychological difficulty of being unemployed and the lack of confidence,” she said.

Her recipe for job-hunting success includes helping people “find skills they didn’t know they have” to go after jobs that now exist, and not necessarily one they once had.

Lambert said Taylor’s new moniker, “Fairy Jobmother’ was meant to convey “a sense of optimism.”

“It’s a difficult notion to make a program about the challenges unemployed people face,” Lambert said.

Then again, that’s what fairies are for.

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Riley is appearing on Broadway in “Lombardi,” a new play about Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach. The actor talked about football and fitness while he waited on line in New York City on Saturday morning to enter the Hot Body Model Search contest sponsored by the Wilhelmina modeling agency. (One man and one woman will be chosen winners of prizes that include a five-year Wilhelmina fitness modeling contract and a magazine spread in either “Shape” or “Men’s Fitness” magazine.)

“I play Dave Robinson, an outside linebacker,” Riley told Reuters, talking about his new Broadway gig. “He’s a Lombardi guy — he’s smart, he’s really articulate and he understands what it takes to win.”

The role is a natural for Riley, who played football in high school and for Lehigh University. “My high school coach was a lot like Lombardi. He had that fire and passion to get you to give the best of yourself.” Riley, who said he has “just turned 30,” stands 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 190 pounds. He gave the women contestants a little eye candy when he pulled off his shirt — all the better to show off his chiseled abs and his 31-inch waist. His career so far has included some TV work and “a little bit of modeling.”

To stay in shape, “I work out four times a week. I do a lot of weights, a little cardio, some muscle definition. I watch what I eat.”

After a few more poses for the photographers, Riley had to wrap up the interview and head for midtown Manhattan. “I’ve got two shows to do,” he added, referring to the Saturday matinee and 8 p.m. performances.

Not everyone would be able to pull it off – pairing bunny ears with bridal gowns that evoked the Hollywood glamour of iconic movie stars. But Lebanese fashion designer Reem Acra did just that at her Fall 2011 bridal show on Sunday. 

“I loved the ears,” said buyer Dorothy Kelly, who together with her daughter owns  J.J. Kelly Bridal & Formal Wear in Oklahoma City.

After the show, the designer said her chosen headpieces were meant to add some levity to an often-stressful day.

“It sends a message that we need to have fun,” Acra told Reuters. “You can be beautiful on your wedding day and still have your personality show — and have fun!”

Footnote: Hugh Hefner was nowhere in sight. But Reem Acra’s Fifth Avenue showroom in New York City is in the same building as Playboy Enterprises.

Next Stop: Beirut

Acra will return to her roots in Lebanon in early November with the opening of her first Reem Acra franchise boutique in downtown Beirut, where she was born.

“Beirut has become one of the high-end capitals of the Middle East,” she said. “It is ‘the Paris of the East.’ And I am the high-end queen of fashion in Beirut. I had the opportunity to franchise. So it seemed like the right time to do it.”

Reem Acra with her dog, Lulu

(Photos by Jan Paschal)

But actress Nikki Blonsky — famous for her 2007 star turn in “Hairspray” and more recently as a rebel teen at fat camp in the TV drama “Huge” — made a big splash on the red carpet at New York Fashion Week on Wednesday.

The occasion was a plus-size fashion show featuring styles sold online by OneStopPlus.com, which caters to women who wear size 12 and up. A capacity crowd watched styles in colors like mauve, aqua, cream, citrus green, blue, peach and coral.

About 62 percent of American women are in the plus-size camp, experts say.

As a blitz of cameras flashed, special guest Blonsky posed on the pre-show red carpet in a black jacket with sequined tank top and tight jeans.

She was joined later by leading plus-size model Emme and actress Gabourey Sidibe, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role as an obese teenager with an abusive mother in the 2009 movie “Precious: Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”.

Blonsky, 21, looked as comfortable as if she were still a teenager back in her own bedroom at home on Long Island, where she grew up belting out show tunes and dreaming of an acting career.

“I was going through so many outfits in getting ready for today,” Blonsky told Reuters. “Finally, I decided to just go with black. It’s my favorite color. It’s sexy. It makes me feel good.”

Earlier this year, she posed in a swimsuit for billboards to promote her new TV show, “Huge,” which follows seven teens and the staff at a weight loss camp.

“It was amazing. I was a kid who was always afraid of going to the beach because of being in a bathing suit. And I thought, ‘Well, if they want me to be in a bathing suit on a billboard for the show, there’s no time like the present and no place like Times Square in New York” where the billboard went up.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant)

NEW YORK, Sept 13 (Reuters Life!) – Fashion may be for
followers but style is original is the message of a new exhibit
which gives a glimpse into the closets of 81 women who made
their mark on Manhattan.

“Notorious & Notable: 20th Century Women of Style,” which
opens on Tuesday during New York Fashion Week, includes
fashions and jewels worn by glamorous newsmakers such as
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

“We’re not saying who is notorious and who is notable,”
said Judith Price, president of the National Jewelry Institute,
which collaborated on the exhibit. “We’re leaving that up to
the beholder.”

But she added that the exhibit at the Museum of the City of
New York honors “women who put their thumbprint on New York
fashion.”

In addition to fashion icons, the exhibit also pays homage
to women who were prominent in society, politics, business and
the arts and who represent New York’s history and cultural
diversity.

A turn-of-the-century black silk gown worn by the wife of
J.P. Morgan Jr. is shown across the runway from Congresswoman
Bella Abzug’s floppy hat and early 1970s maxi coat.

“Style is simple. You wear it. It doesn’t wear you,”
explained New York designer Jackie Rogers, whose clients
included Kennedy Onassis.

Designer Norman Norell’s sundress for 1960s consumer
advocate Betty Furness and singer Marian Anderson’s 1941 gold
concert gown with feathers are also featured in the show.

“These are the show stoppers,” Price said. “Here’s the gold
handbag that Haile Selassie gave to Jackie, which she should
have given back,” she added, referring the gift from the former
emperor of Ethiopia to the then first lady.

Jewelry is also featured prominently with designer Carolina
Herrera’s blue topaz earrings and legendary Vogue editor Diana
Vreeland’s jeweled gold Tiffany pin on display.

Art collector Corice Canton Arman explained the story
behind her 18-karat gold cuff bracelet with violins and horns
done in rubies made by her late husband, the French-born artist
Armand Pierre Fernandez.

“Arman used string instruments,” she said. “For him, they
were reminiscent of the female body.”

Phyllis Magidson, the museum’s curator of costumes and
textiles, said there was an art to wearing clothes such as
model Betsy Pickering’s 1970s black Halston gown with plunging
V neckline.

“You had to have extremely good posture. If you rounded
your shoulders, everything would pop out.”
(Reporting by Jan Paschal; Editing by Patricia Reaney

Samantha

The bold PR exec Samantha, portrayed by actress Kim Cattrall, is shown multitasking in ther Times Square office — on the phone with a client and working on her Hewlett-Packard computer with one hand, and applying a hormonal cream to her menopausal self with the other.

Judging from the audience’s laughter at the world premiere in Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, this will be one of the sequel’s most memorable scenes, especially for “Sex and the City” fans of a certain demographic.

 Another HP product, designer Vivienne Tam’s “Butterfly Lovers” laptop, gets a nanosecond of screen time with Samantha in another scene. Blink — and you might miss it.
Cast members in the Radio City audience on premiere night included Chris Noth (Mr. Big), John Corbett (Aidan) and Liza Minnelli (herself).

Director Michael Patrick King told the audience that the movie had made one of his dreams come true: “To write the words, ‘enter Liza Minnelli,’ and she does!”

After asking Minnelli to stand so the audience could spot her, he added: “And I have to say that Liza Minnelli is a very good ‘Sex’ partner.” He went on to thank a long list of VIPs, including the writer Candace Bushnell, whose column about the lives of single New York women became the basis for the hit HBO TV series and the first movie that came out in 2008.

At a party in Lincoln Center, the new home of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York, an HP exec was asked how the Silicon Valley company, known for its PCs and printers, happened to get involved with “Sex and the City.”
Satjiv Chahil, who was HP’s senior vice president of strategy and marketing for the personal systems group until his retirement this month, says the movie partnership and product placement evolved through its collaboration with Tam.

“It’s the connection with women,” Chahil told Reuters. “It’s the whole fashionista thing with Vivienne Tam.”

That connection is now playing on the sidewalks of New York in the windows of the Fifth Avenue department store Bergdorf Goodman. Four windows along West 58th Street feature movie costumes styled by Patricia Field and some HP laptops in glittering cases — prompting this “fashion tip” from Chahil: “Be sure to check out our bling!”

“Anyone could design their own fabric” with HP’s new TouchSmart notebooks and PCs, said Emilio Sosa, an independent designer and contestant on Lifetime television’s reality show ”Project Runway”. Sosa won Thursday night’s episode, in which the designers were challenged to design their own textiles using the computers, and then use it to design an outfit.

“To me, branding is so important,” Sosa said at a champagne brunch on Friday morning. ”That’s why I went with my initials and a heart on a bright blue background.” He used a cotton sateen to make his printed fabric, which he used for a slim halter dress, paired with a black jacket.

“In just 24 hours, I went from concept to printed fabric,” added Sosa, who plans to make his debut with a collection at New York Fashion Week in September. “With sketches, you have to FedEx them to a factory in the Orient.”

The HP TouchSmart tm2 notebook ranges in price from $699 to $899, while the desktop version — which can also be used as a television — goes for $1,599 and up.

The scene: A preview show mobbed by photographers and beautiful people.

“Louis Vuitton was an artisan,” Dutreil told Reuters, referring to the French company’s founder. “He worked with his hands. It’s important to transmit this value proposition to the next generation. They are the Web generation.”

On the runway: Some of the most whimsical styles shown during the Fall 2010 season of M.A.C. & Milk Fashion Week, the downtown cousin of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. Both wrapped up late Thursday night.

Paper dress anyone? (That “cone bra” bodice reminiscent of Jean-Paul Gaultier is you.) These clothes won’t be sold at the mall. They’re the work of local master artisans, who were matched with 23 teams of students at Parsons The New School For Design in a student competition. LVMH and Parsons sponsored the contest.

Check out this video of Mr. Dutreil keeping an eye on the runway and some of the most inventive styles:

The idea? The master artisans worked with the design students to show them the intricacies of their crafts. A leather worker, a bespoke suitmaker and a custom metalworker were among those who gave their time and talent to this project. The students created clothes and documentary films inspired by the artisans’ craft and “the world of LVMH,” which includes luxury handbags and luggage sold in Louis Vuitton stores and the company’s boutiques inside such high-end stores as Saks Fifth Avenue .

Simon Collins , dean of fashion at Parsons, said the contest’s winners will be announced in the spring. And yes, Virginia, there is prize money involved! The school’s relationship with LVMH, which goes back for years, has often led to LVMH internships for Parsons students, Collins says. But the luxury goods maker’s commitment to this contest is “a first,” the dean notes, adding that it’s “huge” for design students to have the chance to learn craftsmanship from master artisans.

Stopping by to check out the students’ work: stylist Robert Verdi and Parsons alum, the designer Ashleigh Verrier, who incidentally got her start after selling her Parsons thesis collection to Saks. After posing for the red-carpet photographers, Verrier told Reuters: “It’s so important that the craftsmanship isn’t lost and that creativity is supported. It’s amazing what’s being done here.”

In the luxury industry, “craftsmanship” is a watchword. After all, craftsmanship is what sets, say, a Louis Vuitton bag, an Hermes scarf or a Dior gown apart from leather goods or apparel produced for wider distribution and sold at prices with fewer zeroes at the end.