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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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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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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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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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The 14-day journey takes 38 guests on a luxe 2,200-mile tour of England, Wales, and Scotland.

The simultaneously rugged and ultra-soft fabric is making waves in the world of luxury fashion.

The 11,838-square-foot home mansion has six bedrooms, nine baths, and a backyard made for entertaining.

LOS ANGELES — Is this really happening?

In the shadow of the Coliseum, where the Rams have not played a playoff game in 39 seasons, the most devoted of diehards, dressed in their throwback yellow and blues, can’t help but smile and wonder. A year ago, a playoff berth was no more than an impossible dream.

But that feels like an eternity ago now, as a surreal celebration is underway on the blacktop of Lot 2. Music is blaring. The smell of barbecue is in the air. The beer is flowing, selfies are being snapped, and the mood is electric. Strangers pass and toast red cups, flashing the same stunned look. How did we get here? They all seem to wonder.

The euphoria will wear off in the hours to come, as the Rams’ comeback efforts fell short against the Falcons, their playoff party ending after just one wild night. But even the wildest of optimists in Lot 2 will admit, long before the result is final, that they never expected to be here at all. Not only did the Rams return to the postseason, where the franchise hadn’t been since 2004, they hosted a playoff game in Southern California for the first time since Jan. 4, 1986.

That day, the Rams shut out the Cowboys, 20-0, in Anaheim. Three weeks later, Sean McVay, the wunderkind coach behind the Rams’ revival, was born.

Mark Millsap was in the Anaheim Stadium stands for that final playoff game in the Southland. He wore an Eric Dickerson jersey and watched as the Rams back tore through the Dallas defense for 248 yards. Eight years later, when the Rams moved to St. Louis, Millsap drew a red line through the middle of that jersey in a fit of rage.

He never imagined then that they might return. But 32 years later, Millsap stood on the blacktop in a hard hat outfitted with Rams horns, wearing the jersey of Dickerson’s heir apparent, Todd Gurley. As the party carries on around him, he turns to his son, Mark, who, like the Rams coach, wasn’t born the last time the Rams played a playoff game in Southern California. Now, though, father and son are together amid this euphoric sea of Rams jerseys, and Millsap can’t help but wonder if the decades of exile were all leading to this.

“I think it was meant to be,” Millsap says.“I was thinking about that today. If they would’ve never left, we wouldn’t have Sean McVay. Everything would be different. It all fell into place. It came full circle.”

Here, at this tailgate, there’s plenty of talk of destiny. It’s the only explanation that seems to justify how this turnaround came to be, but inside the Coliseum, the sentimentality fades into the ecstasy of the moment.

Since the Rams return, questions of whether the team might ever catch on in the city have raged on. But on this particular night, the buzz in the building is at a fevered pitch, as game time approaches. Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner who presided over the Rams return, walks the first row of bleachers obliging autographs and snapping selfies. Goodell’s presence at most NFL stadiums often elicits boos, but here, the sentiment in the building leaves no room for negativity.

One poster Goodell signs reads “Why not us? Why not now?” And until the final whistle blew and the team’s charmed season met its end, it certainly felt like this night belonged to the Rams. Before the game, as a Kendrick Lamar bass line quaked through the entire bowl, fans danced on bleachers across the stadium. Players bounced to the beat as they stretched. It wasn’t until the game started that their energy turned anxious and frenetic.

Rams legends, from Eric Dickerson to Torry Holt to Steven Jackson, lined the sidelines. Celebrities made appearances. Snoop Dogg performed at halftime, rapping in a suitable fog of smoke, splicing the Rams name into a medley of his greatest hits. It was one hell of a party, in a city that lives for such nights.

For the diehards who gathered hours earlier on Lot 2, it was a culmination.

“We stuck it out all of these years,” said Dave Stanley, one of the original members of the Rams’ fan group, the Melonheads. “We hung with the Rams. Now, it’s all worth it.”

For the rest of Los Angeles? Only time will tell whether the Rams have won them over. A long playoff run might’ve gone a long way towards making that a reality.

But for one night, the apathy and empty seats were a distant memory. The playoff drought was over. After 32 years, the NFL postseason returned, however briefly, to Los Angeles. And after a miraculous, one-year turnaround for the Rams, it seems clear that the city won’t have to wait much longer to experience it again.

LOS ANGELES — Playoff experience didn’t beat the Rams Saturday, not exactly. Playoff expediency did.

The Atlanta Falcons made no turnovers. They identified the Rams’ rush defense as a sore they could irritate, and they did. They punted when they should have, and they kicked field goals, from 54 and 51 yards, when they needed to. They needed to remove Todd Gurley from the passing game and they did that, too.

They checked all the boxes they could find and they won, 26-13, breaking the Rams’ express after one long, glorious lap.

Afterward, Jared Goff was repeatedly asked to mouth the we-had-a-good-season speech. It should give hope to Rams fans that he would not.

“It (stinks) to have to quit playing,” Goff said. “We’ve got some really good dudes in there. The more big games you can play, the better off you are. As far as playoff experience goes, I don’t even know what that means. You just play the game and they played it better than we did. If this had happened two weeks ago like this, they would have beaten us then, too.”

Often the quarterback has to bear the cross when a season dissipates. Goff left that honor to Pharoh Cooper, the Pro Bowl returner who muffed a punt and fumbled a kickoff, and the Falcons took those chances to score 10 points.

“The first one was a fluke, the second one I know he wishes he had back,” Goff said. “Those special teams guys have won games for us all year.”

Goff was actually fine, considering he was belabored by the pass rush on the first two series, and that the Rams ran only 10 plays in the first quarter and six in the third. They only had the ball for 22:25. That wasn’t enough bandwidth for all the musicians in the band.

“We had to wait to settle into the game,” Goff said, “but we’ve done that before.”

Goff actually made enough big plays. At the end of the first half he drilled Robert Woods with a beautiful 39-yarder down the middle, to set up what might have been a touchdown try if Rob Havenstein hadn’t been caught holding. Sean McVay chose the field goal there and a 13-10 deficit.

Even after the Falcons went ahead by 13, Goff whisked the Rams downfield in a hurry, without blowing a timeout. He went 11 for 13 on that drive until he threw what appeared to be a 5-yard score to Tyler Higbee. At that point there was 2:16 left and the Rams didn’t need to kick onside, with all three time outs in hand.

But then Higbee fell victim to that popular game show, Catch Or Not A Catch, and the Rams had to pick up a fourth-and-5. Deion Jones, one of a horde of quick and brazen Atlanta defenders, broke up the try to Sammy Watkins.

“That’s what I feel good about,” Aaron Donald said. “We got down, and we made some mistakes we shouldn’t have made, but our guys came out and fought.”

Goff had three completions for 20 or more yards. He just didn’t make enough little plays that could sprout into big ones, couldn’t find Gurley on those screens and flares that have overloaded defenses all year. Although Gurley got 101 rushing yards, he caught four balls for just 10 yards. Even on a short week and with travel, the Falcons found the instruction manual and followed it rigidly.

“Really we just didn’t have enough plays,” McVay said. “We only tried one of those screens, and they were in a jam structure early on and forced an incompletion. It really goes back to the rhythm. We weren’t able to get enough plays off.”

The Falcons filled the box with as many as nine defenders and overpopulated the middle and the flat. Then their cornerbacks won more man-to-man battles with the L.A. receivers than they lost.

Offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian also dodged the pitchforks for another week by calling 39 runs, a tactic that worked better after Michael Brockers, the left  defensive end, left with a knee problem.

“Michael has been so stout for us,” McVay said. “They did a good job of getting runs off consistently.”

The observant Falcons noted that the Rams were 30th in a 32-team league in yards given up per rush (4.7).

“We thought we might be able to crease them,” Ryan said, “but the best thing is that we stayed with it  even though we didn’t do much with it in the first half. We thought our offensive line could lean on them.  It was tough sledding for sure, but it was our best plan for success.”

The Falcons needed only one home run and they got it with 7:22 left in the third quarter. Working against a corner blitz, Ryan flipped a screen to Mohamed Sanu, who set up his blockers and burst for 52 yards. Two plays later, Ryan slipped on the annoyingly slick turf but still was able to lob an 8-yard score to Julio Jones, for the 13-point lead.

You could probably say the lack of experience didn’t necessarily hurt the Rams, but the wealth of it helped Atlanta. Last year the Falcons won the NFC and then, as you might have heard, let a 25-point lead evaporate in the Super Bowl. Some of them were around in 2012 when the Falcons came within a play of beating San Francisco for the NFC title. This was Ryan’s ninth playoff start. The amplified Coliseum noise was just a low buzz to them.

“You have to keep yourself in a mental space where you’re not worried about the finality of the game,” Ryan said. “The challenge is to stay locked in and keep your mindset on execution.”

The Rams may be great or disappointing in 2018 but they won’t be the same. Their schedule will be tougher and certainly more disjointed, with more prime-time games. They probably won’t have a healthy offensive line for 16 games. The new-team smell that pervaded Thousand Oaks all season won’t return.

But the Rams will be patching, not rebuilding, and if you thought they had the coach and the quarterback before Saturday night, you must feel they still do.

“I don’t think the game was too big for our players,” McVay said. It wasn’t. It was too quick.

FULLERTON — A man was killed Saturday night when he was struck by a car while walking in Fullerton, authorities said.

It was just after 9 p.m. at 151 West Orangethorpe Ave., said Fullerton police Sgt. T. Kandler.

The man, in his 30s, was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, Kandler said.

The car’s driver remained at the scene and assisted in the investigation, which shut down Orangethorpe Avenue between Harbor Boulevard and Highland Avenue, the sergeant said.