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FASHION - You don't want a lump of coal for Christmas, but a little black lace dress and the accessories to match might be on your list this year. Its sort of an old-fashioned Victorian Christmas idea, but don't forget black lace suffers from a Madonna/whore complex in fashion. When done in white and in a voluminous form for wedding dresses , lace is considered innocent and pure. In black and in the boudoir – lace is sexy, racy and risque. With the colour of flesh underneath there is also underlying simmering sexuality. Miuccia Prada , in her fall/winter collection, managed to marry the two personalities of this fabric with guipure lace dresses. She took black lace and made it look austere and prim and by adding dickies at the neckline – they practically look like something a nun or Mennonite might wear, a naughty one. Prada believes in lace so much that she reportedly bought the entire stock produced from a Swiss factory. Small surprise, whatever the highly influential Prada...

I haven't posted anything for ages, but I haven't forgotten you guys. So I'm wishing you, and those around you, a fantastic Christmas and an awesome year to follow. Hopefully 2009 will bring a new "Advertising etc" ;) All the best guys. André

Last year during the January 2008 fashion week... 'There should be more than one spot for a black model," says Yordanos Teshager, 21, a reed-thin, nearly 6-foot-tall model from Ethiopia who is represented by the prestigious Elite agency. But despite going on 85 cast calls seeking work during Fashion Week last season, she says she often left feeling that "they were going to hire a white girl." Teshager walked in only 11 of some 200 shows last September, a season in which, overall, women of color were glaringly absent. Of the 101 shows and presentations, more than a third employed no black models. Models were a homogeneous bunch - overwhelmingly white, bony and often blond. Along with the obvious - and serious - issue of racism, some wondered whether it wasn't all becoming just a little boring. When Fashion Week comes to town observers won't just be looking at the clothes - they'll also be looking for a serious change in who's wearing them. "I wou...