Life and Style wRap: Desigual at NY fashion week, sold-out onions

Full-figured women had their day on the catwalks of New York on Friday, September 6, when hometown designer Eden Miller unveiled her plus-sized collection – a fashion week first.

Spanish brand Desigual took the New York fashion crowd to the Mediterranean on Thursday, offering up a colorful spring collection that clearly bore the stamp of collaborator Christian Lacroix.

The lively catwalk show came on the first day of fashion week in the Big Apple – a frenetic 7 days of presentations for spring-summer 2014, before the style parade moves over to London, Milan, and Paris.

Lacroix, who made his couture comeback in July in Paris with a one-off collection for the revived house of Schiaparelli, has worked with Desigual since 2011, and his Mediterranean roots were clearly on display.

The fast-growing Spanish brand offered up a more chic and subtle version of its trademark look: intense prints, vibrant colors, and flamboyant graffiti art.

Typically stony-faced models pranced, laughed, and at one point even skipped down the runway to upbeat music in the brand’s debut show.

Sold out: onions fly off Indian shelves in Groupon deal

A US-based website offering onions at heavily discounted prices in India has seen an “overwhelming” response as consumers there reeled from skyrocketing prices of the vegetable.

 

Groupon, which offers cut-price deals on everything from restaurant meals to shoes and watches, offered onions at 9 rupees (14 cents) a kilogram on Thursday, September 5. 

By Friday, 8,057 Indian customers had bought the onions, used extensively in Indian cooking. 5,000 kilos of the vegetable had sold and the website had a temporary crash.

“The driver behind this is obviously fun. It was meant to generate excitement by selling onions at a knock-down price,” Ankur Warikoo, chief executive of Groupon India, told AFP.

The website advertised the deal in a tongue-in-cheek manner, claiming that “people haven’t experienced onions in a long, long time” and comparing them to caviar and diamonds.

It was the first time ever the company had put onions on sale and the response, Warikoo said, was “overwhelming.”

Men rip geese’ heads off in Spain festival

Young men ripped the heads off dead geese in an ancient folk festival in northern Spain on Thursday, September 5, clutching onto them as they dangled from a high wire until the birds’ necks went snap.

 

On the annual Day of the Geese in the small Basque town of Lekeitio, about 20 participants took turns launching themselves from boats to grab hold of a goose hooked to a cable, which in turn was shaken up and down by those on shore.

Watched by thousands of revelers, they hung on until they either lost their grip or the bird lost its head, sending both plunging into the water.

Whoever managed to cling for the most up-and-down shakes of the cable was declared the winner.

Glare from London ‘fryscraper’ blamed for melting cars

A British property developer said Tuesday, September 3, it was investigating claims that sun rays reflected from its half-finished London skyscraper melted parts of several cars, including a luxury Jaguar.

Londoners have been shielding their eyes from the blinding glare bouncing off 20 Fenchurch Street – nicknamed the “Walkie Talkie” because of its flared shape – while several drivers have complained that the beams have melted parts of their vehicles.

Local businessman Martin Lindsay said he was distraught when he returned to his parked Jaguar XJ near the glassy tower in London’s financial district to find the car’s panels had warped along one side, while the wing mirror and Jaguar emblem on the front of the car had melted.

“On the windscreen, there was a note from the construction company saying ‘your car’s buckled, could you give us a call?'” Lindsay told the BBC.

Located in London’s financial district, the tower has now been unofficially renamed the “Walkie Scorchie,” while others are dubbing it a “fryscraper.”

As a crowd of sweating journalists and photographers gathered outside the skyscraper on Tuesday, a reporter even managed to cook an egg simply by placing the frying pan in direct sunlight.

Developers Land Securities and Canary Wharf Group have apologized to Lindsay and paid for the damage to his Jaguar, while 3 car-parking spaces near the tower have been taken out of use.

–Rappler.com with reports from Agence France-Presse

Carousel image from AFP

Onion image and ‘fryscraper’ photo from Shutterstock