Return of the summer dress
The News Review:
- Return of the summer dress
- FOCUS Malaysia’s Proton must revamp, ally with foreign partner to…
- Scotland: Scottish Agenda: Robert Ballantyne: Any idiot knows you…
- LI @ WORK; Wooing Customers With All That’s Organic, and Trying…
- 50 years of shock and awe
Return of the summer dress
Guardian Unlimited – Sep 18, 2005
It’s that time again – London Fashion Week – and the museum in south Kensington is its home for five days. Throughout last week’s New York Fashion Week, as every year, the word was that London’s fashion scene is over and London Fashion Week is dead and buried. Apparently, all the home-grown big names (think Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Matthew Williamson) don’t want to show their collections here any more and big buyers don’t even bother coming. Maybe it’s the famous British ‘Dunkirk spirit’, but fashion show officials say that this year the London event is going to be better than ever. Over the next five days, the city will play host to 52 ‘official’ fashion shows and as many (if not more) unofficial ones. 30am until 9pm daily, the world’s models, designers and media will be waiting to see what will be filling the shops and our wardrobes come next spring.
FOCUS Malaysia’s Proton must revamp, ally with foreign partner to…
Forbes – Sep 18, 2005
2 litre Savvy, which went on sale in June as its first new model in 16 months, but it has been shunned in favour of the MyVi produced by more nimble Malaysian competitor Perodua. In what has become a typical tale for Proton, the Savvy was launched later than the MyVi, with no automatic version available nor test drive vehicles, and the finish and features were inferior to its competitor. In the face of the flood of imports as well as home-grown alternatives, Proton is aiming to improve its bottom line by exporting at least 100,000 vehicles annually by 2008, from just 17,000 in 2004. But Bonnell said that strategy is doomed because Proton does not have a brand presence in the international market, making it virtually impossible to bolster overseas sales in the face of aggressive competition. ‘The auto industry in Asia now is extremely competitive. We now have China producing cars and selling at 10,000 dollars a unit,’ he said. Most observers believe that however bad things get, the government, which has a 42 pct stake in Proton through the state investment arm Khazanah Nasional, will not allow the automaker to fold or be snapped up by a foreign player.
Scotland: Scottish Agenda: Robert Ballantyne: Any idiot knows you…
Times Online – Sep 18, 2005
But if the row achieves anything, it should draw a few more readers to Graham’s speech, which he has helpfully put on his website, Graham technology. In it, he calmly, accurately and devastatingly accuses Scotland’s civil service of a public procurement policy that plays safe, buys big and international, and excludes home-grown small and medium-sized enterprises. But while McConnell indulges in name-calling, his deputy, Nicol Stephen, has already secured a meeting with Graham to discuss his very valid grievances.
LI @ WORK; Wooing Customers With All That’s Organic, and Trying…
New York Times – Sep 18, 2005
It’s a tightknit community. It tends to get very, very political. ” Home-grown businesses like the Makinajian farm, established in the late 1940’s, take a great deal of effort to operate, Mr. He and his father, Edward, and sister, Christina, put in 10 to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, attending to their animals and crops and to the customers in their retail store, at the entrance to the farm. Retailing organic products in cyberspace can be a simpler proposition.
50 years of shock and awe
Times Online – Sep 18, 2005
Who can forget the one taken in February 1968 by Eddie Adams of the Associated Press that showed the chief of the South Vietnamese national police insouciantly blowing the brains out of a suspected Vietcong on the streets of Saigon? And will we ever become inured to the photograph from the summer of 1963 that showed a Buddhist monk committing suicide as a protest against the policies of the government of South Vietnam? Prompted by this event, Kennedy would soon withdraw support for the regime; but America’s imbroglio in the region was only just beginning. The work on the pages of the Sunday Times Magazine reflects almost every theatre of conflict and natural disaster since the 1950s: Afghanistan, the Balkans, Chechnya, the tsunami, Iraq. And some of the most striking images are home-grown. The World Press Photo Awards are still highly coveted, not least since the rules they operate under have become ever more rigid. Governments are much more controlling, and media organisations more reluctant to commission untested photographers. It’s now much harder for photographers to make their name and change the world with a single photo. We should be thankful that at least some of them are prepared to try.