Gap Inc, Nike, Levi Strauss and VF Corp are among the six US apparel companies who have become the latest to commit to set emissions reduction targets that help limit global warming through the Science Based Targets initiative.

Retail sales were a mixed bag during August as a decrease in clothing and accessories revenues was partially to blame for a sales slip during the month from July, but the strengthening economy helped consumer spending remain resilient.

US apparel retailer Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) has made a commitment to trace the sources of all wood-based fabrics used in its own clothing lines – and to eliminate by the middle of next year any that are linked to the destruction of endangered forests or the violations of human rights.

Online fashion now accounts for almost one-quarter of total fashion spend in the UK, according to new research, which also suggests British shoppers will spend GBP16.2bn (US$21.9bn) buying clothing, fashion accessories and footwear via this channel in 2017.

Richard Marx has never felt more satisfied than he does today.

The multi-Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter resides in Malibu with his wife of nearly two years, television host, model and businesswoman Daisy Fuentes. And when the couple is not starting their day walking along the beach, they are traveling the world together for Marx’s concerts.

“I come off stage from having these really amazing shows with these amazing audiences, and Daisy finds a really great place to go to dinner to celebrate the night or the next day, we’ll find a really great hiking trail in whatever town we’re in,” said Marx in a recent phone interview, “It’s like I’m seeing the world all over again with somewhat different eyes.”

The Chicago native has put in the work for three decades to get to what he describes as a “sweet spot in his career,” since his self-titled debut album in 1987 which spawned four singles – including the hits “Hold on to the Nights” and “Don’t Mean Nothing,” which earned him a Grammy nomination for best male rock vocal performance. His 1989 follow-up album, “Repeat Offender” was even more successful, with hit singles “Satisfied” and “Right Here Waiting.”

Marx’s stream of major hit singles throughout the ’80s and ’90s often fell into the ballad genre, including “Now and Forever” and the 1997 duet “At the Beginning” with singer Donna Lewis, but his music also has a pop and classic rock sound, such as the songs “Too Late to Say Goodbye” and  “Should’ve Known Better.” Throughout his 30-year career, Marx has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide and continues to hold the record for being the first solo artist to have his first seven singles hit the top five of the Billboard singles chart.

“Even though I had success pretty young, it was never a thought to rest on that and not push myself to do better things or different things. … I’m proud there is a lot of variety in the music that I’ve made and it’s not like a bunch of songs that sound like the same song regurgitated,” said Marx, “That’s always been something that’s been important to me. I’ve always been known as a versatile artist.”

Marx, who turned 54 on Sept. 16, maintains a consistent touring schedule, performing solo acoustic shows and full-band concerts around the world. He and his band will make a stop at the Hyatt Regency Newport Beach on Friday, Sept. 22 for the annual Summer Concert Series.

Marx said that he plans to play all of his hits, not just because they are what his audiences want to hear, but because he enjoys playing them – no matter how many times he has had to perform them in his career.

“I don’t know whether it’s just luck, but I’ve always heard about artists who have hits that feel it’s sort of like a burden to them to play the hits every night, and I just don’t get that. Especially because I wrote all of my songs, so I love those songs enough to record them originally, and now they’ve aged really well for me,” said Marx.

In addition to his own recording career, Marx has also had a fruitful songwriting career, collaborating with and writing for artists of all genres, including the boy band ‘N Sync (“This I Promise You,” 2000), Josh Groban (“To Where You Are,” 2001), Luther Vandross (“Dance With My Father,” 2003) and Keith Urban (“Long Hot Summer,” 2010). His concert will present many of these songs and the stories behind them.

“There’s some songs that are just really fun to play. Like ‘Should’ve Known Better’ is a fan favorite and everyone sings along to it. I wrote it when I was 19 or 20 when this girl dumped me and broke my heart and we can all relate to that, so it’s just fun,” Marx said.

“Then there are other songs with more bittersweet or heartfelt stories, such as my friendship with Luther Vandross. You know, we wrote ‘Dancing with My Father’ together and he won the Grammy for it. He was a dear friend of mine, and I miss him terribly. So my concerts really run the gamut of emotion.”

Besides performing solo and band concerts around the country, Marx does not have any immediate future projects on the horizon – mainly, he said, because he is just enjoying life.

“I would rather be walking on the beach or something like that than holed up in some dark room writing another song. I still care very much about music, but I’m kind of just enjoying this period of playing music I’ve created over the last 30 years and whatever happens in the future happens,” he said. “I’m not driven to prove anything anymore. I’m just really enjoying my life more than ever before.”

An Evening with Richard Marx

When: 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 22

Where: Hyatt Regency Newport Beach, Back Bay Amphitheater, 1107 Jamboree Road, Newport Beach

How much: $75-$120

Call: 949-729-1234

Online: series.hyattconcerts.com

Orange County rushing leaders after the Week 3 games.

Our O.C. leaderboards will be updated each Monday during the regular season.

*Leaderboards are based on stats available each Monday morning.

Judi Dench is all over the internet, rapping with Lethal Bizzle here, playing with a fidget spinner over there.

As up-to-the-moment pop culturally as she may be, however, the 82-year-old actress went thoroughly old school for her latest movie.

In “Victoria & Abdul,” the British stage legend returns to the role that made her a serious movie star two decades ago, “Mrs. Brown’s” Queen Victoria, and earned her the first of her seven Academy Award nominations (she won her Oscar the following year for her brief portrayal of another English monarch, Elizabeth I, in “Shakespeare in Love”).

“Vic & Ab” takes place later in the long-lived royal’s reign, but tells a surprisingly similar story. Much as “Mrs. Brown” looked at the widowed queen’s “inappropriate” infatuation with one of her Scottish servants, the new movie tells the recently discovered tale of a young man from India, Abdul Karim, who catches the empress’ fancy on what was to be a brief ceremonial mission to London. He stayed in Britain to become Victoria’s close friend and advisor, to even more outrage from her jealous staff, the crown prince Bertie and stuffy, racist colonialists of all stripes.

Based on research done by journalist Sharbani Basu, evidence of Vic & Ab’s close relationship came to light over the last decade. When his mother – until the current queen the longest-sitting British monarch in history – finally died in 1901, Bertie, as the new King Edward VII, ordered Abdul and his family shipped back to India and any evidence that could be found of his friendship with Victoria destroyed.

But he didn’t get it all, and more than a century later Basu found the telltale remnants.

“It’s been 20 years, yes,” Dench says of her Victoria-playing interregnum. “I would hope that she’s the same person, I hope one would recognize something of ‘Mrs. Brown’ in ‘Victoria & Abdul.’ It just happens that in 2010, these papers were found, and the diaries and letters. They told about this wonderful relationship that she had with Abdul Karim, and shed light on another aspect and chapter of her life – which is worth telling about.”

As linked as the two films now make her to the ruler of the British Empire at its absolute height, Dench claims she’s no expert on the woman whom most of the 19th century is literally named after.

“Not at all!” Dench insists. “I might have said that in 2001, and look how wrong I would have been! There’s more that’s left to learn, maybe. You just attempt to find out as much as you can and stay as true to the script and to Stephen Frears as you can be.”

Frears, “Vic & Ab’s” director, is no stranger to revealing takes on British royalty; he directed Helen Mirren to an Oscar as Elizabeth II in “The Queen.” He’s quite familiar to Dench as well; this is their fifth collaboration together, counting TV projects, and he directed two of her previously nominated performances in “Mrs. Henderson Presents” and “Philomena.”

“I do like working with him,” the actress says sincerely, but with a droll edge. “Stephen is very monosyllabic, doesn’t say much, won’t give much direction in fact [laughs]. He kind of unconsciously just walks away at the end of a shot, has a little think about it. Then he will come back and sometimes says, ‘Do you want to go again?’ which you know means he would quite like to go once more. But he’s very sensitive and I just really trust him because he’s a very nice person and very self-deprecating.”

Then there’s Ali Fazal, the young Bollywood star who plays Abdul. Dench certainly has some thoughts about him.

“Oh, he’s . . .whew!” she says of Fazal, who made his Hollywood debut in 2015’s “Furious 7.” “I don’t have to say anything about what he looks like, do I? He’s quite charming, he has a glorious sense of humor, he’s thoroughgoing intelligent, and he’s willing to sit for ages and ages teaching me Urdu and practicing everything I had to say in it with me. But he has that sense of humor, which I think is really the most important thing to have. I think that if you can’t laugh at yourself about something, you might as well not begin.”

Despite her own, well, appreciation of her co-star, Dench truly believes, unlike some others, that there was no hanky-panky between Victoria and her Muslim Munshi, or teacher.

“I think it was purely platonic love,” the actress asserts. “He was a teacher to her, he was an advisor, he was a son, a friend, a confidante. He was all of those things at a time when she was in her 80s, all of her friends were dying and she was feeling lonely – and she was finding the weight of being queen, the responsibility and the pressure, very very heavy on her.”

Although she began playing her most widely seen role, as spy boss M in the Pierce Brosnan and later Daniel Craig runs of James Bond movies, a bit before “Mrs. Brown” was released, Dench credits all of her subsequent big screen success to her first Victoria film.

“It was entirely ‘Mrs. Brown’,” she reckons. “ ‘Mrs. Brown’ was made for television, but [then Miramax head] Harvey Weinstein thought it should be in theaters in America. And that was one of the few leading roles I’d played. I’d been told quite early in my career that there was something wrong with my face, so I didn’t want to do films because I overreacted to that. But as I was very active in the theater, it didn’t matter at the time. Now, I just feel very, very lucky indeed that I get so much film work.”

A mainstay of Britain’s National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Companies, Dench was appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 1970 and dubbed a Dame Commander in 1988, well before Oscar and other movie accolades began piling up. Considering that and her convincing movie queenliness, we had to ask if she was ready to actually take the throne when Elizabeth II decides enough is enough.

“Ha, no,” Dench chuckles. “I’ve only played Queen Victoria twice and Elizabeth I once. That’s all I’ve done, and I’ve been on the stage 60 years! So I don’t think of myself at all as some kind of queenly.”

Currently also onscreen in “Tulip Fever” and soon again in frequent collaborator Kenneth Branagh’s latest movie version of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” Dench seems more than content with the status of her career.

And now, when that isn’t enough, having discovered the fidget.

“I didn’t know that was a remarkable thing,” she says of the fad toy. “I had no idea. I showed it to Ali. My grandson gave it to me and I thought, that is the most wonderful thing.

“Was that wrong of me to think? No? That’s very nice.”

A Torrance police officer’s receipt for pizza touched off a firestorm on social media Monday after it was revealed that his server typed an obscene message onto his bill.

The officer, who was in uniform, did not respond and, in fact, left a tip when the female server handed him the shocking receipt that said, “F— The Cops” when he stopped for takeout lunch Thursday at Pielogy, 3720 Pacific Coast Highway.

“He remembers a young lady who rings him up,” said Sgt. Ronald Harris, a Torrance Police Department spokesman. “He looks at the receipt. He immediately noticed what it says.”

A spokeswoman for Pieology, a custom fast-casual pizza restaurant based in Rancho Santa Margarita, said Monday the employee was fired and the worker’s message does not reflect the attitude of the chain.

Officer didn’t make scene

The officer, who declined to speak publicly Monday and asked a department spokesman to speak for him, did not talk to the server. Instead, he decided not to make a scene.

“He wanted to say something. He wanted to go up to the young lady who actually wrote this,” Harris said. “He wasn’t angry, but he was so pressed for time.”

The officer received what is known as a “uniform discount,” which police officers sometimes receive from businesses when buying restaurant meals. It was his first time there, and he was not expecting a price reduction. He added the savings to the bill as a tip, Harris said.

“He watched her very closely when they packaged his pizza because he wanted to make sure it wasn’t altered,” Harris said. “He was empathetic. He wanted to know “what happened to you to make you do something like this?’

“He paid his bill, grabbed his food and headed out to an assignment to relieve some other officers on a busy day,” Harris said.

Although the lunch was handled by a female worker, the receipt shows a male employee’s name, Harris said, indicating the woman possibly was logged in as someone else.

Officer’s wife calls for boycott

Later, the officer showed the receipt to other officers. One of their outraged wives posted a copy of the receipt on Facebook and it quickly spread.

“I want to share this with everyone to show the unprovoked hatred that my husband and his partners deal with everyday,” she wrote. “This is not the type of business that I want to see in the city where I live. My husband’s partner was just trying to get a quick bite to eat in the middle of a busy shift and this is what he received.
Needless to say, we will never eat at Pieology ever again. I hope you all will help support our police and share this both near and far. It is NOT ok to treat our officers like this.”

Through noontime, the officers’ wife had received more than 100 comments and the receipt was shared nearly 250 times. Many people vowed never to eat there again.

“That is disgusting and disgraceful!! How can people be so mean? Makes me furious!!” one woman wrote.

Others defended the restaurant, saying the actions of one employee should not reflect the entire business.

Employee fired

A copy of the receipt also was sent directly to Pieology, which tweeted: “Thank you for reaching out and sharing this experience. We will look into this matter.”

@pieology My sister’s friend whose husband is a police officer received this when he grabbed lunch. May need to do some retraining… pic.twitter.com/V2FMYGLD5Q

— Stephanie (@LucentLagiacrus) September 18, 2017

A young employee who answered the telephone Monday said he was told to refer calls to corporate headquarters. A public relations consultant later emailed a statement to the Southern California News Group.

“We at Pieology are extremely disappointed in the actions of this employee, and apologize on behalf of the entire Pieology family for this upsetting situation,” spokeswoman Vanessa Legutko wrote. “The actions of this employee do not in any way reflect the thoughts of Pieology, and we are taking swift and serious action to rectify the situation, including terminating the offending employee.

“We have the utmost respect and gratitude for the men and women who keep our communities safe, and have no tolerance for hateful language or actions. This location in Torrance is a heartfelt supporter of all men and women in uniform, especially the brave first responders, and shows its support with a discount for all uniformed police, firefighters and military members.”

‘No hard feelings’

The officer, meanwhile, “said there’s no hard feelings,” Harris said.

“He feels very sorry for this individual and wonders what bad experience she had with law enforcement to do something like that,” Harris said.

The department plans to reach out to the restaurant.

“Our stance is that this is an unfortunate situation,” Harris said. “We don’t hold any ill feelings toward this business. We will try to get in touch with the manager and handle it internally.”

LOS ANGELES >> It’s been two days and the images of Memphis players slicing up UCLA’s defense are still vivid in head coach Jim Mora’s mind.

He recounts the plays in detail: the two missed tackles that led to an 80-yard run, the pick on Lokeni Toailoa that led to a 47-yard touchdown on a short screen, the defensive bust that led to a 42-yard touchdown on another screen.

He and the coaching staff obsessed over the film since leaving Memphis on Saturday night. They ripped it apart, he said, and now the Bruins are going back to the drawing board to sort out their injury-riddled defense that is giving up 515.3 yards per game heading into Saturday’s conference opener against Stanford at 7:30 p.m. in Palo Alto.

“The problem is when you’re mixing and matching guys, you have to judge what they can and cannot execute and that’s the puzzle,” Mora said. “So you do the best you can. I know this: Our players are all in on defense, our coaches are and we’re going to do our part.”

He paused, looked directly into a reporter’s video camera and repeated: “We’re going to do our part.”

The Bruins used defensive linemen Keiseasn Lucier-South and Jaelan Phillips as stand-up outside linebackers Saturday to solve a linebacker shortage. Junior Josh Woods was suspended for the first half, and senior Kenny Young and redshirt freshman Breland Brandt were unavailable due to head injuries. Brandt suffered a concussion against Hawaii, tried to practice through it last week, but became nauseated after 15 minutes and was promptly removed from practice.

UCLA has only three sacks in the past two games after tallying six against Texas A&M. Mora said inexperience and limited personnel have hamstrung the team’s pass rush. Young players are paralyzed by the threat of giving up a big run play instead of just reacting to a pass rush opportunity.

“We need to come off the ball better,” Mora said. “Our linebackers need to strike better and what’s happened is that we’ve had to mix and match a little bit.”

Riley out for year

Redshirt freshman Keyon Riley will miss the remainder of the year with an upcoming shoulder surgery. The reserve defensive back dislocated his shoulder two weeks ago after he slipped in the locker room, Mora said, and played through it against Hawaii, to the amazement of his coaching staff. Riley had four tackles and one pass breakup against the Rainbow Warriors. Riley dislocated his shoulder again last week getting out of a cold tub, which was enough to shut the 6-foot, 200-pound Servite graduate down for the year.

Riley did travel with the team to Memphis and pleaded with coaches to let him play.

“Keyon is such a dang warrior,” Mora said. “He said, ‘Coach, just play me. I’m going to have to have surgery anyway, so if it just blows out all the way, what’s it matter?’ But we’re not going to do that to the kid.”

Starks suffers MCL injury

Senior Nate Starks is expected to miss significant time due to a medial collateral ligament injury he suffered in the first quarter against Memphis. Mora said it’s possible Starks misses the rest of the year, further depleting UCLA’s running back unit that was without junior Soso Jamabo for the past two games due to nagging injuries.

Quick hits

DE Jaelan Phillips could still play Saturday as the freshman continues to get treatment on his right ankle. … LB DeChaun Holiday is “really close” to returning from a shoulder injury he suffered in spring camp, Mora said. … WR Audie Omotosho underwent knee surgery to repair an MCL injury last week. Mora said the recovery usually takes three to four months, so the redshirt freshman is likely out for the year. … UCLA’s home game against Colorado on Sept. 30 is scheduled for a 7:30 p.m. kickoff on ESPN2.

Watchwords for ICB’s spring 2018 collection included “urban wonderland” and “optical illusion,” which were apt given the design collective’s reference photo of a sewage drain with graffiti above it. It lead to collaborations with Carl Rauschenbach and Edward Granger, two New York-based artists whose works play on geometry and graphic elements. Their prints enlivened T-shirts, sweatshirts and silky silhouettes; they also inspired the stark chevron prints on the brand’s first attempt at making knitwear from scratch. They’ve made some great knitwear before with fabrics they’ve found, notably the solid brights with elongated sleeves from fall 2016; the ones this season maintained similar silhouettes, but now with a grittier attitude.
It all highlighted an evolving edgier customer (she had a mountaineering spirit last season, after all). Where the dreamlike gloss of that season translated to tough silhouettes for the outdoors, for spring it found its way onto softer, more relaxed layers appropriate for wandering through an urban city. Pajama sets, for instance, toyed with soft lines and fluidity but weren’t too precious to be worn out; ditto for silk slips and soft-tailored coats that balanced minimalism and comfort. They showcased a relaxed side to chic, though customers likely won’t oppose the

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