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LaVar Ball says Lakers ‘don’t want to play’ for Luke Walton

LaVar Ball, the father of Lakers rookie point guard and prized first-round draft choice Lonzo Ball, is at it again.

In an exclusive interview with ESPN from Birstonas, Lithuania, where his two younger sons are preparing to launch their professional basketball careers, Ball was harshly critical of Lakers coach Luke Walton, saying he has lost control of the team, and no longer has the support of his players.

“You can see they’re not playing for Luke no more,” Ball told ESPN’s Jeff Goodman. “Luke doesn’t have control of the team no more. They don’t want to play for him.”

“That’s a good team,” he continued. “Nobody wants to play for him. I can see it. No high-fives when they come out of the game. People don’t know why they’re in the game. He’s too young. He’s too young … He ain’t connecting with them anymore. You can look at every player, he’s not connecting with not one player.”

The Lakers take a nine-game losing streak into Sunday night’s home game against the Atlanta Hawks. Walton said Friday that he didn’t think his job was in jeopardy. “I coach as if it’s not,” he said.

But LaVar Ball seems to think it should be. He criticized Walton for his use of Lonzo Ball in the Lakers’ loss to Charlotte Friday, the rookie’s first game back from a six-game absence because of injury.

“Lonzo looked good, but he also looked disgusted,” Ball told ESPN. “He was ready to play. Four minutes left in the first quarter, he dunked it, getting in a flow and Coach sits him down. Sat him down. Now game goes from four points to 10 to 15 to 20. I don’t know what they’re doing. If he’s ready to play, let him play. Don’t try and monitor no minutes, put on restrictions.”

08.01.2018No comments
32 missing, oil spills out after tanker collision off China

By GERRY SHIH

BEIJING — An Iranian oil tanker collided with a bulk freighter and caught fire off China’s east coast, leaving the tanker’s entire crew of 32 missing and causing it to spill oil into the sea, authorities said Sunday.

Chinese authorities dispatched police vessels and three cleaning ships to the scene after the collision, which happened late Saturday. The South Korean coast guard also sent a ship and a plane to help search for the missing crew members — 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis.

The Panama-registered tanker Sanchi was sailing from Iran to South Korea when it collided with the Hong Kong-registered freighter CF Crystal in the East China Sea, 160 miles off the coast of Shanghai, China’s Ministry of Transport said.

All 21 crew members of the Crystal, which was carrying grain from the United States, were rescued, the ministry said. The Crystal’s crew members were all Chinese nationals.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the collision.

State-run China Central Television reported Sunday evening that the tanker was still floating and burning, and that oil was visible in the water.

It was not clear, however, whether the tanker was still spilling oil. The size of the oil slick caused by the accident also was not known.

Earlier Sunday, Chinese state media carried pictures of the tanker on fire with large plumes of smoke.

The Sanchi was carrying 150,000 tons, or nearly 1 million barrels of condensate, a type of ultra-light oil, according to Chinese authorities.

By comparison, the Exxon Valdez was carrying 1.26 million barrels of crude oil when it spilled 260,000 barrels into Prince William Sound off Alaska in 1989.

The Sanchi has operated under five different names since it was built in 2008, according the U.N.-run International Maritime Organization. The IMO listed its registered owner as Hong Kong-based Bright Shipping Ltd., on behalf of the National Iranian Tanker Co., a publicly traded company based in Tehran. The National Iranian Tanker Co. describes itself as operating the largest tanker fleet in the Middle East.

An official in Iran’s Oil Ministry, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said 30 of the tanker’s 32 crew members were Iranians.

“We have no information on their fate,” he said. “We cannot say all of them have died, because rescue teams are there and providing services.”

The official said the tanker was owned by the National Iranian Tanker Co. and had been rented by a South Korean company, Hanwha Total Co. He said the tanker was on its way to South Korea.

Hanwa Total is a 50-50 partnership between the Seoul-based Hanwha Group and the French oil giant Total. Total did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s the second collision for a ship from the National Iranian Tanker Co. in less than a year and a half. In August 2016, one of its tankers collided with a Swiss container ship in the Singapore Strait, damaging both ships but causing no injuries or oil spill.

___

Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

08.01.2018No comments
Qasimi Men’s Fall 2018

This cocooning collection by Khalid Qasimi was filled with soft silhouettes, plays on proportion and colors straight out of a Crayola box.
The designer said he loved the idea of the urban nomad, the man who carries his wardrobe with him, in layers. Hence, the shirt flowed from under a checked bomber jacket and a sweater was slipped under a short-sleeved shirt. Models also carried striped, colored blankets.
This collection was all about comfort: Trousers were extra-wide and topped with sweaters or jackets cropped at the waist, while coats were voluminous, almost like blankets, in shades of burnt orange, tobacco or rose. The only things missing here were pillows and slippers — but maybe they’ll appear next season.

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08.01.2018No comments
Astrid Andersen Men’s Fall 2018

A star of London men’s week, Danish designer Astrid Andersen said she didn’t move in a specific direction this season, describing her collection instead as a “mood board come to life,” with an homage to Eighties London youth culture and the era’s Buffalo collective of artists, models, stylists and musicians.
Her collection was as shiny and bright as a new pound coin but with a tough edge: Puffer jackets glittered with gold piping or zippers while tracksuits were jazzed up with shiny silk jacquard, plaids and checks, and a long, snuggly sweater coat sparkled with silvery threads.
Although it was technically a men’s collection, Andersen also teased some of her fall women’s designs, which will make their debut on Feb. 1 at Copenhagen Fashion Week. The result was a wild gender mash-up with men in kilts and transparent lace tops and women in swooshy silk trousers and shiny, gold and black oversize hoodies.
Somehow, in the space of about 10 minutes, all of it coalesced into a thing of beauty, an ageless, genderless frolic that put a smile on many faces on a cold January night at the Old Selfridges Hotel.

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08.01.2018No comments
Christopher Raeburn Men’s Fall 2018

It was a collection that captured the January zeitgeist: Christopher Raeburn’s fall outing was built around fabrics fit for the Arctic, secondhand blankets and wool fabric disguised as shearling.
With temperatures still below freezing and Niagara Falls a wall of ice, what better moment to send out coats made from chunky neon Neoprene and Russian naval military blankets?
Called “Immerse,” the collection was all about a plunge into cold water, but rather than sending chills down anyone’s spine, London’s king of upcycling and recycling turned out a collection that was all about protection, warmth, layering and comfort.
Among the standouts of this handsome collection were orange Neoprene coats — long and short — that came with matching gloves that dangled from cuffs; intarsia sweaters, some with albatrosses flapping across the front, others with squid patterns, and gray and white coats made from blankets covered in boxy Soviet-era patterns.
Comforting puffers, done in collaboration with Finisterre, did their bit to keep things cozy, as did helicopter jackets, which Raeburn sourced from Britain’s Royal Air Force.
While the designer spends most of his time wondering how to give supply fabrics and military cast-offs a new life, he hasn’t given up on new textiles entirely. Honorable mention goes to

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08.01.2018No comments
Alex Mullins Men’s Fall 2018

Alex Mullins employed a high-minded concept to achieve the right balance between the formal and the creative.
With the relationship between the right and left functions of the brain in mind, Mullins brought together the logical and the emotional to create a strong, intriguing lineup that felt relevant to the way modern men dress.
The looks proved that opposites do attract: Smart suits, as in a pinstripe double-breasted blazer and matching high-waisted pants, were paired with deconstructed shirting that featured large cutouts and tie-dye graphics.
Among the most striking pieces were a series of jacket and trousers combinations with pieces of smashed ceramic plates sewn on them. “I wanted to visualize thinking with these broken, fragmented ideas,” the designer mused.

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08.01.2018No comments
Merlette Pre-Fall 2018

Designer Marina Cortbawi has been continuing to focus on Merlette’s brand DNA of airy, cotton dresses and separates with signature hand-embroidered details. For Collection 4, the styles grew in number with new tops, dresses and pants. Ellsworth Kelly’s lithographs of negative space and plants inspired both the palette — Malaki green and petal pink with black, white and navy — as well as the textures. Cortbawi infuses the illusion of print via her hand-embroidered details, like a dress with shadow embroidery or bias cut fille coupe striped Italian poplin dress, each offered in multiple colors. Hand smocked and tiered ruffles, basket weave smocking, Victorian sleeves and ruched wrists made for new additions to the cotton silhouettes. The lot was sensibly paired over high-waisted, wide-leg tonal cotton trousers, perfect for the pre-fall season. Cortbawi is also strategically adding updated colorways to classics, like an oversize, Malaki green tiered wrap dress, in order to build her customers’ ideal wardrobes. The approach is to grow sensibly by keeping the line tight and listening to her customers’ feedback — and it’s clearly working. Since the last collection, the brand has grown from 80 to 130 individual shops in Japan, in addition to launching on Matchesfashion.com.

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08.01.2018No comments
Jonathan Anderson Joins Forces Again With Alasdair McLellan

TAKE TWO: Jonathan Anderson packed photographer Alasdair McLellan off to Northern Ireland for their second collaboration on the designer’s Workshops line, a series of monthly collaborations between Anderson and a lineup of fellow creatives that he calls “kindred spirits,” the fruits of which are available at a retail space next to the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch, London.
“I love doing [these collaborations] because it’s my micro-project and more about accessibility and the idea of trying to bring a newness of the time in a way that is actually personal to me,” Anderson told WWD. “This shop is an experiment for me, it was always meant to be, we are now embarking on a new year of working with different ceramist, poets, artists, photographers and archives.”
Within this McLellan collaboration are items including T-shirts, key rings, mugs, stickers, puzzles, badges and posters featuring exclusive photographs by him of models and Northern Irish landscapes.

J.W. Anderson x Alasdair McLellan 
Courtesy Photo

“Alasdair went to Northern Ireland, where I come from, and he shot all the different landmarks that I knew as a kid. The Mourne Mountains, the Giant’s Causeway, the Falls Road…” said Anderson, adding that this was far from McLellan’s first foray into Ireland.
“Alasdair has always

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08.01.2018No comments
Bridget Foley’s Diary: Women in Black

The women will wear black.
But why?
The stated purpose behind the call for women to dress in black at tonight’s Golden Globes Awards is to protest sexual harassment in entertainment and other industries. It’s part of Time’s Up, the sweeping anti-harassment program spearheaded by many of Hollywood’s most powerful women. The initiative includes seeding a legal fund to benefit low-income victims of sexual assault and harassment in the workplace.
From the moment the first Harvey Weinstein story broke in The New York Times in October, this awards season was destined to be like no other. The Globes are the first of the major awards, and the hours-long, on-camera parade to the mics couldn’t happen without acknowledgement that the entertainment industry has been rocked to its core and forced into a new, in-progress way of conducting business.
But why the de facto dress code? Does asking women to converge to a visual norm strengthen their message about forcing change? Or does it infringe on the embrace of diversity, restricting to a degree the creativity involved in dress selection? Absent a clearly articulated explanation (and I haven’t found one), a few “whys” seem plausible. Sartorial sameness has long been employed as a tool of group protest, in photos

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08.01.2018No comments