Laguna Niguel has a handful of signature amenities, including City Hall, Crown Valley Park and the Sea Country Senior and Community Center.

Unlike some cities, Laguna Niguel has chosen not to name any of these facilities or their rooms after former residents or elected officials. A unanimous council vote on Tuesday, May 2, plans to keep it that way.

The Laguna Niguel City Council voted to adopt a policy that buildings and rooms in the city not be named after people. The resolution also included a provision in which a recognition wall celebrating individuals would not be created.

The vote came nearly three months after the council listened to a request to dedicate and name a room at the senior center after former Laguna Niguel Mayor Joe Brown.

“All of this started with an unsolicited nomination, and I think that I would prefer to see the city have a policy that we not name rooms and buildings after people,” Councilwoman Elaine Gennawey said before the vote, adding that she preferred to name facilities after geographic sites or historical matters.

“It’s counter to the culture of our city and would hate to see us start down that road where it could then become a very political process,” Gennawey said.

Brown served as mayor in 2002 and 2005. He also served three terms on the council. City staff estimated naming a room or making a plaque for Brown could cost between $500 and $1,300.

Mayor Pro Tem Fred Minagar said he didn’t necessarily view naming a facility or room would be “political.”

“I don’t see a reason why not to showcase their contributions to this great city,” Minagar said.

“We owe them a token of appreciation on top of everything else that they’ve done.”

Councilwoman Laurie Davies said volunteers and elected officials are already recognized in the council chambers and at the annual volunteer dinner, citizen of the year competition.

In addition to being against naming facilities after people, Davies did not support creating a recognition wall.

“A great leader is a humble leader,” she said.  “Although (it’s) a nice gesture, it’s not necessary.”

In other business, the council approved the guidelines for the one-year adoption pilot program of the 1st Assault Helicopter Battalion, 140th Aviation Regiment.

A budget workshop will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday, May 10, at City Hall, 30111 Crown Valley Parkway.

Big things are happening for Fleur du Mal designer Jennifer Zuccarini. In 2016, Zuccarini was inducted to the CFDA, and for fall 2017, she’s launching Fleur du Mal’s first full ready-to-wear collection.
With four years of creating beautiful, lingerie-focused collections under her belt, Zuccarini knew the line was ready for the next step. “It all started with the silky suit,” Zuccarini explained. “After doing a lot of slipdresses and feminine pieces, I was craving to do tailoring.” The refined collection successfully embodies Fleur du Mal’s effortless sensuality with soft, silky and smart suiting pieces that can be layered over signature intimates, slipdresses and bodysuits. To add to the men’s wear look, Zuccarini successfully introduced Prince of Wales to the collection à la structured bodysuit with matching suit pant and a lace-trimmed slipdress. Standout pieces included outerwear silhouettes, such as a light pink, velvet bomber and trenchcoat, and a red silk bomber. 

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Antonio Marras has designed an exclusive T-shirt celebrating the 100th anniversary of Giro d’Italia, Italy’s most famous and prestigious annual multiple-stage bicycle race.
The competition will kick off on May 5 in Alghero, Marras’ hometown located on Sardinia’s western coast.
The T-shirt, which is printed with a hand-drawn illustration reflecting Marras’ signature eclectic and unconventional style, will be produced in a limited number of pieces. They will be sold at 39,90 euros, or $43.57 at current exchange rate, at several shops in Alghero, as well as Antonio Marras’ boutiques and at the showroom of Panoramika, the Sardinia-based graphic design and publishing company which developed the project with Marras.

Antonio Marras 
REX/Shutterstock

Later this month, the designer will participate in the fourth edition of Arab Fashion Week, taking place May 16-20 at the Meydan Hotel in Dubai.
Last December, the designer opened its first Antonio Marras store in Dubai. The 4,306-square-foot unit, which reproduces the brand’s Nonostante Marras concept store in Milan, is located at the City Walk Residential, a real estate project developed by Meraas Holding LLC. The store, which is decorated with pieces selected by Marras, is connected through an antique gate from the Sicilian town of Syracuse to a restaurant, which the brand filled with special

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“We don’t want to play on defense anymore, but play to win.” This is the mantra announced by Miroglio Fashion’s new chief executive officer Hans Hoegstedt on Wednesday. Appointed last October, Hoegstedt presented a series of new strategies to enhance the brands in the group’s portfolio and a financial investment of 40.8 million euros, or $44.5 million at current exchange, to reach such goal.
Based in Alba, in Italy’s Piedmont region, the apparel division of Miroglio Group — which also includes Miroglio Textile and logistic company M2Log — produces and globally distributes 11 fashion brands for women. These include Motivi, Oltre, Fiorella Rubino, Elena Mirò, Caractère, Per te by Krizia, Diana Gallesi and Luisa Viola, in addition to the Ipekyol, Machka and Twist labels, which joined the company’s portfolio due to the partnership with Turkish Ayaydin Group.
In 2016, Miroglio Fashion totaled 513 million euros, or $559.8 million, 87 percent of which accounted by the retail channel. More than 83 percent of the revenues were to credit to just four of the group’s labels — the Motivi, Oltre, Fiorella Rubino and Elena Mirò labels, which are at the core of the company’s strategies for this year.
“We’re not forgetting the remaining brands, but it’s

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APRÈS SKI: Testimony to the gig economy, a former bank executive’s quest to find cashmere-like sweaters that wouldn’t irritate her sensitive skin led Christine Griffin to launch knitwear made of cotton and natural fibers.
With a home in the ski town of Beaver Creek, Colo., Griffin set out to design sweaters inspired by the Vail lifestyle — cozy oversize styles. While she and her husband have been skiing out west for more than 20 years, her father-in-law has known the lay of land since Beaver Creek first opened in the early Eighties. “He actually had the opportunity to buy a place in Vail for $10,000, but it was just too much at the time so he didn’t do it. We laugh about it now, but it’s not that funny. It’s really sad. It probably would be worth $10 million now. It kills us,” she said. “My husband is a professional ski instructor for fun. He’s a banker by trade, but his dream is to get out there and just be in the snow everyday in the winter instead of in a bank.”
While the mountain life agrees with Griffin, the preferred look — comfortable, big, chunky cashmere or wool sweaters cause her

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FOUR EYES: Berlin-based eyewear brand Mykita has new digs in Paris. The label has set up shop at 19 Rue du Pont aux Choux in the Marais, upgrading and expanding from its previous location at Rue du Pas de la Mule.
The 645-square-foot store, which opened late April, has a floor-to-ceiling mirrored wall at its entrance that highlights new collections on seemingly free-floating shelves. Inside, the brand’s signature white wall curves around the back of the store, using perforated steel angle beads to display its designs. Additional glasses are stored in repurposed flight trolleys.
The boutique features an integrated Zeiss lab and an in-house optometrist, and carries all of the brand’s collections, including its collaborations with Bernhard Willhelm, Damir Doma and Maison Margiela.

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SPRING IN MILAN: Isabelle Harvie-Watt has joined the Spring Group (Spring Studios and Spring Place) as a partner and chief executive officer of the firm in Milan.
Harvie-Watt is tasked with expanding and managing the group’s footprint in Italy. This includes the opening of Spring Studios (Creative Agency, Production Services & Studios/Events), now operational in Milan, as well as the collaborative workspace and membership club Spring Place, scheduled to open by 2019. She also serves on the firm’s global executive committee, focused on identifying leading strategic decisions for the group.
“Spring is a platform where culture, creativity and ideas come together to transform brands and drive aspiration for consumers globally,” explained Harvie-Watt. It has a network that extends from London and New York to Milan. By the end of the year, it will also include Los Angeles. Francesco Costa is the chairman and owner of Spring Group.
Born and raised in London, Harvie-Watt has a Master of Arts in history and Italian literature from the University of Edinburgh, and has been working in Italy for 25 years. Most recently, she was chief executive officer of Havas Media Group Italy and managing director of Havas’ Global luxury division LuxHub.
Harvie-Watt previously held executive positions in

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Jill Newman

Ancient Greece meets Paris in Karl Lagerfeld’s cruise 2018 show.

Playing politics with the pensions of nearly 3 million state employees, retirees and beneficiaries is nothing new to California’s pension funds and lawmakers, but after a raft of proposals in recent years to direct investments based on factors other than fiduciary concerns, even the politicized pension funds may be realizing that enough is enough.

The numerous politically-motivated investment diktats over the years include an encouragement to invest in “green” technologies and bans on tobacco companies, gun manufacturers, coal companies, firms that might displace government employees by winning contracts to perform state or local services at less cost and/or better quality, companies doing business with apartheid South Africa and private prison operators (though government-run prisons that do the same thing at higher cost are apparently fine).

The trend continues this year, with proposals to divest from Turkish government bonds (due to the country’s failure to recognize the Ottoman Empire’s genocide of between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians 100 years ago) and companies involved in the Dakota Access Pipeline and the building of a Mexican border wall.

The pension funds themselves may be tiring a bit of all the restrictions on their investments, however. After an eight-month study of the tobacco divestment, California Public Employees’ Retirement System staff recommended eliminating the ban last year. “As a mature, cash-flow negative system, CalPERS is obligated to seek out and implement the portfolio construction methods that best serve our mission — the sustainable delivery of promised benefits,” a staff report concluded. (That did not prevent the board from voting 9-3 to maintain the policy, however.)

After all, the divestment caused CalPERS to leave some serious money on the table. According to a report from Wilshire Associates, one of CalPERS’ chief investment consultants, “Those investors who continued to invest in tobacco have, in fact, seen over 900 percent in cumulative returns over the past 15 years, making the tobacco industry the second-highest performing industry over that time period and significantly outperforming the broad market.”

This is hardly the only instance of progressive values harming the state’s pension funds. A separate Wilshire analysis in January estimated that CalPERS’ divestments going back to the South Africa ban had cost the fund a total of $7.9 billion, including about $3.7 billion from its tobacco divestment in 2000 and $4.4 billion from the South Africa divestment in 1986, with some minor offsetting gains from its Iran and Sudan bans from 2007. It also lost $7 million from its firearms divestment, which goes back just a few years and made up just a small amount of the fund’s portfolio to begin with.

“I’ve been involved in five divestments for our fund,” CalSTRS Chief Investment Officer Chris Ailman told the CalSTRS board in 2015 when the board was contemplating a proposal to divest its coal holdings. “[On] all five of them we’ve lost money, and all five of them have not brought about social change.”

After a CalPERS investment initiative to focus on “clean” energy and technology resulted in a loss of 9.7 percent between 2007 and 2013, former chief investment officer Joseph Dear described the effort as “a noble way to lose money.”

But, hey, it wasn’t his money anyway, and at least it made some politicians feel good and gave them some street cred with their activist social justice warrior constituents.

CalPERS Chief Operating Investment Officer Wylie Tollette had a more level-headed response. “To use the CalPERS portfolio as the political football can be damaging to the interests of the state and the taxpayers, because ultimately the taxpayer ends up footing the bill for the benefits,” he recently told the Sacramento Bee.

California’s pension systems are already struggling with low funding ratios and a long-term investment outlook that has already forced them to lower their annual investment return assumptions multiple times in recent years. It is time for a separation of investment and state. Giving employees total control of their retirement investments by switching them to 401(k)-style defined-contribution retirement plans would allow them the freedom to engage in “socially responsible” investing — or not — without putting taxpayers on the hook for others’ financial social engineering.