But for fall, the reverse is the case, and at any first sign of a crispness in the air there’s nothing more satisfying than being enveloped in a safe, cocoon-like bundle of an oversized sweater, or redefining summer’s skivvy silhouette with a piece of clothing more pronounced and structurally-driven. At Calvin Klein, a brand that has perfected both the absence and presence of form, the change of seasons from Spring/Summer ‘08 to Pre-Fall is indicated by both a piling on and a stripping away. The collection, shown in New York on Tuesday, Jan.8, both revels in the luxuriousness of wearing mountains of fabric as well as the simplicity of a well-manicured, perfect line of a ski slope. In other words, take your pick: Body out of sight, or body skin-tight.

“It’s very lifestyle driven - easy separates and sportswear,” said Francisco Costa, designer for the Calvin Klein Collection. “Simple and straightforward.”

Costa designed a variety of shapes for this particular collection, inspired by luxury ski resorts like Aspen, as if to acknowledge the transitional nature of Pre-Fall. So there are skinny ski pants and form-fitting jersey knit dresses for those not ready to cover up their summer figures, but on the flip-side, pleated, high-waisted full trousers, cashmere wraps, tartan capes, maxi-length skirts and dresses, chunky, boxy knit sweaters and rounded, sculptural shoulders composed of a single seam all redefine the body’s shape, or obscure it entirely.

Both silhouettes are designed around movement and comfort, and the usual Calvin Klein palette of neutrals - stone, ivory, black, charcoal and earthy browns - give the pieces mix-and-match flexibility that one would expect from a strong American sportswear collection. Citric acid brights punctuated the mood like an Olympic skier whizzing by.

Costa is hard at work putting the finishing touches on the label’s Fall collection, which will be shown in February for New York fashion week, which Costa said will be “very tailored, but also sporty.”

Luxurious touches included sable trims, wool fabrics with an open weave, forming a delicate burnout effect and stingray belts.

Texture was also key, such as boucle wool or a nubby silver acrylic coat lined with silk, or beadwork and embroidery.

The result: Lady-like, but not fussy, the kind of clothes that would appeal to women across zip codes, whether she lives uptown or downtown – what Luca Luca does best.

JOHANNESBURG — Paul Smith has finally come to South Africa.

A franchised Paul Smith store quietly opened its doors in October in a gracious 1,900-square-foot, two-story Cape Dutch-style house in the laid-back but fashionable Johannesburg suburb of Parkhurst. Less than a month later, the designer opened a franchised Cape Town store, this time in the new prestige wing of the V&A Waterfront known as the Millionaire Mile. The shop is alongside such labels as Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Burberry.

Two British brands, Burberry and Ballantyne, have increased their presences in Tokyo.

Burberry has opened its third Tokyo unit in Marunouchi, a growing luxury retail area in the city’s central business district. The new store is 11,030 square feet over one floor. The store boasts a central accessories hall and a shoe room and sells all of the Burberry London lines in addition to eyewear and fragrances.

Burberry opened its first freestanding store in Japan in Ginza in 2000, and the second in Omotesando in 2004.

Meanwhile, Ballantyne has opened its first freestanding Tokyo store, in Ginza. The boutique is 648 square feet over two floors and stocks the full knitwear range. The store is part of a new generation of Ballantyne units, already unveiled in Milan and London.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to open a flagship that combines the best of British character and Italian creativity,” said Matteo di Montezemolo, a member of Ballantyne’s board and one of the main investors in the company.

“We also took the opportunity to launch the limited edition Diamond Bag — which is really important for the brand’s development,” he added, referring to a leather handbag based on a Sixties model from the company’s archives.

The store’s interior features pinstripe carpets, soft lighting, a muted color palette and dark brown ebony shelves.

Ballantyne openings in the near future will be in Italy, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Portofino and Florence.

The mayor of the City of Light is to award Valentino with the Grand Medaille de Vermeil de la Ville de Paris, the equivalent of making him an honorary citizen of the French capital.

Paris’ socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe will pin the Grand Medaille on to the great couturier during the upcoming haute couture season in January, when Valentino will stage his final runway show.

Among previous winners are the great fashion illustrator Erte, designer Gianni Versace, who was awarded the medal by then mayor Jacques Chirac in 1986, actors Maggie Cheung and Jackie Chang and Nobel Prize winning scientist Linus Pauling. The vermillion medal usually features a view of Ile de la Cite and a simple inscription on the reverse.

In 2005, the medal was a source of Hollywood controversy when Anne Hidalgo a senior socialist politician promised in the name of Delanoe that the mayor intended “to be vigilant” that Tom Cruise would never receive the Grand Medaille due to his membership of the church Scientology, regarded as a cult in official French circles.

“It’s another great honor and from the French government too,” Valentino has been telling friends, referring to the fact that he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur in July 2006.

France’s Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres pinned the red-ribboned honor onto Valentino in the Palais Royal’s opulent ministry of culture, once Richelieu’s Palace. However, Delanoe will make his award to Sir Val in the 19th century City Hall.

Valentino announced his retirement in September, seven weeks after celebrating his 45th anniversary in fashion with a sumptuous weekend in Rome. His departure came three months after equity fund Permira won a takeover battle to acquire the Valentino Fashion Group, in a deal that valued the designer’s fashion house at $380 million.

He certainly is going out on a high, not as a champion slugging out some final pointless rounds. His celebratory weekend in Rome summed up his obsession with opulent living.

His fashion house spent a reported 10 million euros on his Eternal City festivities, including a private party of 400 set in the ancient Temple of Venus and designed by cineaste Dante Ferretti, set director Zefferelli and Fellini in Italy and latterly of Oscar winners “Cold Mountain” and “The Aviator.” Beauties floated in five-meter long Valentino sinful red dresses across the amphitheater, shadows cast expressionistically over apartment buildings, ancient stones, churches and Mediterranean pine. Guests like Uma Thurman, Claudia Schiffer, Sarah Jessica Parker, Anne Hathaway and Elle MacPherson attended a runway show in the longest Renaissance room in Rome the next day, before enjoying a dinner for 1,000, wined on Ruinart and Tignanello and entertained by Annie Lennox.

Valentino, who dressed Jacqueline Kennedy in her wedding with Aristotle Onassis, was the first major Italian designer to show his couture collection in Paris.

Valentino will stage his final, final couture show on Wednesday, Jan 23, in what promises to be an emotional affair. In recent years, Valentino has staged his couture catwalk displays in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, but as the historic art school is undergoing extensive renovations he will show elsewhere this season.

Valentino, who owns Wideville, a Louis XIII chateau near Versailles, where by the couturier’s estimate he has grown one million roses, will be pretty much based in Paris next month.

In a related move, Valentino is skipping the men’s catwalk season in the third week of January and will instead show his final men’s collection in presentation in Paris.

Giorgio Armani has unveiled the first images from his latest ad campaign, starring a buffed and sensual David Beckham at his most come hither.

Beckham’s new position as “worldwide testimonial,” in normal parlance that means model, for Emporio Armani Underwear begins in January, coinciding with launch of the collection in the United States, where Beckham moved this year.

The former captain of the English national soccer team, Beckham signed up this spring to play club football with the LA Galaxy. Beckham, who led England in last year’s World Cup finals in Germany, has played 99 times for his national team.

Fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, a duo renowned for their erotic sense of aesthetics, shot the steamy campaign on location in Los Angeles. The opening black and white image features a chiselled jawed Beckham in mega tight – yet bulging - white briefs, whose waistband bears the brand’s logo.

“David is truly a modern day icon in that his fame extends well beyond the realm of soccer,” Armani said in a release. “He represents a notion of modern masculinity: as a sports hero, husband and father. He is also a man with a great sense of style. There was a time when soccer players were not always considered to be fashion role models. David Beckham has helped to change that.”

The campaign will debut with a special gatefold in the February edition of the US edition of Vanity Fair, long Armani’s favorite magazine, before rolling out globally in sport, fashion and lifestyle magazines and on signature billboards in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, London, Milan, Rome, Paris and Tokyo.

Beckham recalled first meeting “Mr. Armani,” while training with the England team for whom Giorgio designed their World Cup suit.

“I’ve been a big fan of his style for a long time and, through the years, my wife and I have become friends with him, so I’m happy to be working with him now. For me Giorgio Armani is a man who has been at the top of his game for more than thirty years,” insisted Beckham.

Armani has long used soccer stars as a powerful communications vehicle, dressing a pantheon of modern greats including Ronaldo, Luis Figo, Thierry Henry, Christian Vieri, Fabio Cannavaro, Andriy Shevchenko and Kaka’.

Using a football star in his ads is nothing new for Armani who famously selected England goalie David James for Spring Summer 1996 Armani Jeans campaign. Since then Andriy Shevchenko and Kaka’ have also been testimonials for the designer.

The Emporio Armani Underwear spring 2008 fashion collection features summer colours, such as lime, watermelon and turquoise, stretch cottons with innovative use of the symbolic EA eagle logo and special fabrications in bamboo and micro piquet. Prices range from 18.50 euros, or $27, and up.

Yves Saint Laurent will not stage a men’s show in next month’s Paris men’s season, the first time YSL has skipped out of the masculine ready-to-wear schedule in over a decade.

The fall winter 2008 season, which runs from Thursday, Jan. 17 to Sunday, Jan. 20, also features the return of Belgium designer Dries Van Noten to Paris, after a hiatus of one season.

YSL, instead, plans to hold a private dinner presentation for a selection of editors and buyers, where people actually get to touch and check out the clothes.

“There is something about the men’s way to communicate fashion that, at least for me is not correct. It doesn’t speak to the kind of people I would like to speak. So, I am looking for a more personal interaction. So, probably we will do a sort of presentation that is like a preview,” explained Stefano Pilati, YSL’s creative director.

Saint Laurent will also stage a fete in the same period to celebrate the revamp of its historic Place St Sulpice boutique in St Germain, injecting a dose of color back into a store that the previous creative director Tom Ford had made largely black.

All told, there are 44 shows listed on the Paris calendar, meaning catwalk events will be staged at one-hour intervals throughout the City of Light from 10 A.M. to 9 P.M.

“Four days makes a pretty tight schedule but also a very strong one. It also means that, when you have a dozen shows in one day, there is no room for any others,” said Didier Grumbach, president of the Chambre Syndicale, French fashion’s governing body, which just issued the men’s show schedule.

Grumbach said he was “very pleased that Dries has returned to Paris, after the designer decamped to Milan for one season.
“As you know we have changed the calendar now, so that the Paris men’s collections come right after the Milan’s men’s shows, which makes it easier for all buyers. Before we had the haute couture sandwiched in between Paris and Milan, which meant people had to hang around Europe an extra week, which was stupid,” remarked Grumbach.

The season also includes the men’s runway debut of Bruno Pieters, the Danish designer; and includes a slew of happening young design labels such as Korea’s Juun J, UK-based Wintle and emerging Jeroen Van Tuyl.

Vivienne Westwood will return to the London catwalk this season, staging her Red Label collection in the British capital for the first time in nine years.

“We are back by popular demand,” insisted Westwood, the doyen of British avant-garde designers.

“The sales of all of our lines are increasing and we decided that the Red Label, which is successful worldwide and so popular in the UK, should have its own show,” added Dame Westwood, who began presenting Red in New York in the late Nineties.

Her return marks the latest homecoming by a UK designer and follows on the heels of Luella Bartley and Matthew Williamson, who both moved their runway events back to London last season, exiting the Manhattan catwalks.

Westwood, who awarded a DBE in 2006 “for services to fashion” and thus can title herself a Dame, will stage the Red label show in London’s fashion season, scheduled from Sunday Feb. 10 to Friday Feb. 15, 2008.

Vivienne’s logo is a royal ORB with a cross on to; punkily bejeweled it’s an apt image for a designer sometimes nicknamed the Queen of British fashion.

Westwood will continue to show her first line, the demi-couture Gold Label, as usual in Paris later in the month. When she staged her debut fashion show in Paris, Westwood became the first British designer to do so since Mary Quant in the Sixties.

Her men’s collection, known as Man, will also stay put, though in its case in Milan.

Vivienne launched her Red Label collection in 1994 to build a wider market for her own inimitable mélange of historic British tailoring and French chic.

Besides fashion, Westwood designs watches, her own tartan, an eyewear collection and table ware for Wedgwood, as well as boasting five perfumes ranging from Boudoir to Libertine

This will be the first time the grounds of the building on the edge of the East River have played host to a fashion event.

Due to take place on February 6th, the fundraising gala will celebrate the launch of Gucci’s new flagship store on Fifth Avenue and, with help from Madonna, will generate support for Malawi.

Already set to be one of the key events of New York Fashion Week, the party will be staged on the North Lawn of the UN building and will include live performances from Alicia Keyes, Timbaland and Rihanna.

Madonna’s involvement in the Gucci party was announced last month. The star, who adopted a son from Malawi earlier this year, will host the event alongside Gucci’s creative director Frida Giannini and a series of other celebrity UNICEF sponsors.

Giannini recently announced that she has designed a limited edition range of eight exclusive accessories which will be launched on August 8th next year to coincide with the opening of the Beijing Olympics.

The Brazilian model, currently the face of the label’s latest fragrance ‘The One’, will launch her ready-to-wear collection in spring.

Bundchen by Dolce & Gabbana is expected to appear in selected stores across the globe by March, reports Vogue.

Described as “chic and feminine” the range will be the first design venture for Gisele, who has reportedly considered previous collaborations but waited to work with her two friends.

The model has been a regular fixture at Dolce & Gabbana over recent years, appearing on the catwalk and in print campaigns for the design duo.

Her appearance in the campaign for ‘The One’ has apparently helped to boost worldwide sales of the fragrance by some £75 million.

Known as the highest-paid model in the world, Gisele revealed recently that she has a strong business acumen, insisting on being paid in euros instead of American dollars due to a recent fall in the US currency’s worth.