Fashion Designers

In the midday heat of downtown Los Angeles, Chris Johnson squints at the jeans-clad plastic buttocks of mannequins lined up in Fashion District storefronts. He's looking for something special: a horseshoe design stitched in the jeans' back pockets. He passes stores selling counterfeit Coach bags and Prada sunglasses, then heads down an alley to a store where two men are checking their cellphones and looking bored. "Have any True Religion, size 6?" he asks. One of the shopkeepers looks around to make sure no one else is nearby, then disappears into a back room.

This post has been updated. See below for details . Art continues to be very fashionable. In the wake of recent exhibitions that included last year's Rodarte show at LACMA and the late Alexander McQueen at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, another fashion designer has received honors from the fine art world. New York City's Museo del Barrio declared designer Narciso Rodriguez one of the "25 most influential Hispanics in America" in an announcment that it will be honoring the Cuban American next month during its annual gala.

As a girl, Paloma Picasso once showed her father pictures she'd made of "things in the house," including copies of original paintings by Matisse and Pablo himself. Instead of praising her efforts, however, Picasso chastised his daughter for imitating other people's work. "He said, 'Don't worry about copying other people. Do your own thing and you'll be fine,' " she recalls. She has done just that. Picasso, 42, has made her own name as a designer of everything from belts to bedsheets.

Gideon Sundback -- the man who did not invent the zipper but did perfect it -- is the recipient today of a giant, interactive Google Doodle zipper. It's a doodle to add zip to your day, honoring the birthday of the man who helped introduce the fastening device into everyday clothing. Look around -- there's a good chance you'll see Sundback's handiwork in nearly every item of clothing you own, save shirts and blouses. Even sneakers sport zippers these days.

On the day the beautiful blond bride married the rich, handsome groom, the wedding dress designer was sick in bed with bronchitis and a broken phone. Narciso Rodriguez, the 35-year-old head women's designer for Cerruti 1881 Arpe, had no idea that down the coast from his New York apartment, news of the John F. Kennedy Jr.-Carolyn Bessette wedding was exploding, and his dress was making fashion headlines.

Backpacks, once sported by hikers, rock climbers and other outdoor enthusiasts, have come down from the mountain and scaled the heights of fashion. They're a must-have for kids heading back to school. Women are carrying them instead of purses to parties, dance clubs and malls. Backpacks are even going to work--especially on casual Fridays. Some of the latest fashion-conscious backpacks scarcely resemble the functional canvas knapsacks from which they originated.

Just because you've reached--or passed--that "certain age" doesn't mean you have to abandon the fashion style you've acquired over the years. But it might mean that you will want certain conveniences, styling details and fabrics to enhance your appearance, better match your more relaxed lifestyle and make getting dressed easier. The problem, as many women know, is finding these clothes.

Playing golf has proved profitable for jewelry designer Ray Tracey, who creates intricate rings, bracelets and watchbands out of colorful stones wrapped in gold or silver. As any duffer knows, the hands are where everything begins. "I golf in a lot of tournaments," says Tracey: "I meet people on the golf course, and, for the most part, everyone is concentrating on your hands as you're holding the club. I wear a lapis and opal ring surrounded by diamonds, and it's eye-catching.

Cashing in on the insatiable craze for the West's signature fashion item--blue jeans--two of Russia's top designers are now muscling into this market and burying the Communist legacy that denounced denim as an emblem of decadence. Haute couture designers Valentin Yudashkin and Alexei Grekoff are carving out a national niche in the jeans market this fall by adapting the West's wardrobe standby to the tastes and trends prevailing in their country.

Call it brightness backlash. When neon clothes first swept the beach scene more than two years ago, even serious surfers wore them. But now that electric tints are back for yet another season, and moms, pops and kids coast-to-coast are into the trend, real surfers are calling it a wipeout. They have demoted neon to dilettante status. And they're wearing earth tones instead.

He's been blind since age 15. But nobody can say that Mason Ewing lacks vision. Overcoming a nightmarish childhood, Ewing, 30, has been a successful fashion designer in Paris. For the last six months, however, his mind has been set on Hollywood, where he hopes to create a teen comedy and a dramatic series for television. Born in Cameroon to an American father and a Cameroonian mother and raised in France, his own life has been filled with drama. His mother, a seamstress and dressmaker, was murdered when Ewing was 4, he said.

Proenza Schouler designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez are jacked up as they talk about the handmade fabrics in their fall-winter 2012 runway collection, with its urban-warrior-trekking-the-Himalayas vibe. And why not? It's pretty unusual stuff. Embroidery that is a takeoff on ancient Buddhist symbols is "sick. " Colorful leather biker jackets woven using a technique inspired by baskets they discovered on vacation in Bhutan are "killer. " And the tiny plastic beads, which they had to develop their own molds to make, strung together to create a chain-mail effect on tunics?

Fashion exhibitions at museums, like the "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" show that set attendance records at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011, are more popular than ever. Here is a selection of what's on now and what's coming soon, in the U.S. and abroad. Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland | Dedicated to the style and passion of the late fashion icon, editor, traveler and Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute curator. Vreeland also worked as a special consultant to the museum from 1972 to the time of her death in 1989, setting the international standard for costume exhibitions.

It would be easy to see the U.S. premiere of Ballet Preljocaj's avant-garde production of "Snow White" ("Blanche Neige"), with music by Mahler, costumes by fashion legend Jean Paul Gaultier and a Thierry Leproust-designed set, as an attempt to capitalize on the current fascination with the darker take on traditional fairy tales that have been cropping up on TV sets and hitting theaters. The American premiere is this weekend at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, but the scheduling is a coincidence, says the artistic director and choreographer of the edgy French ballet company, Angelin Preljocaj.

Hundreds of shoppers queued up at H&M's Beverly Center store Thursday to snag a piece from Italian fashion label Marni, part of the latest designer collaboration from the cheap-chic retailer. By 7:30 a.m., more than 200 shoppers stood outside the store, many downing coffee and wearing thick coats and colorful wristbands. For safety, H&M issued the wristbands so only groups of 30 at a time would be allowed into the store. "It's a whole social experience, and you definitely make friends waiting," said Candace Allen, 31, an insurance agent from Marina del Rey. She said she had pooled her blankets with another woman so both could catch some sleep on the sidewalk outside the shopping center.

With mid-priced collections as upscale-looking and lavishly detailed as those on the New York runways for fall, who needs to pay top dollar for fashion? So much of the excitement during the New York Fashion Week shows that wrapped up on Thursday was about the so-called advanced contemporary category of labels that cost less than high-end designer collections without sacrificing style. Among those creating a buzz: Rag & Bone, Tory Burch, Alexander Wang, 3.1 Phillip Lim, Helmut Lang, Theyskens Theory and even the  J. Crew Collection.

It's the Vietnamese answer to microwave dinners. For $8 a night, the A-Dong Restaurant in Tustin will deliver to your home a three-course dinner for two packed in a special thermal container. All you have to do is cook rice. The next day, a restaurant employee picks up the container and drops off a fresh meal. In Vietnam, they call this home cooking service com thang, or monthly rice. In Southern California, these Asian meals-on-wheels have become big business for refugee entrepreneurs.

A woman who's in fabulous shape can wear any old tank suit and look terrific. Those in need of a little lifting and compressing, however, owe a debt of gratitude to Gottex. The Israeli swimwear company takes credit for pioneering hard-cup bras, and is exceedingly generous with the Lycra (20% Lycra as opposed to the 13% to 15% used by competitors) in its fabric. Those reasons alone might easily explain why Gottex is America's top swimsuit import.

Armani, Lagerfeld, Prada, Versace — some of fashion's leading designers have ventured into the world of opera, dressing divas and devils at venues such as La Scala and the Met. The trend, which began in the '80s, "has gone crescendo," says Helena Matheopoulos, who describes the couture-costume connection in the new book "Fashion Designers at the Opera" (Thames & Hudson). The London-based Matheopoulos, a former Tatler fashion editor and author of several opera books, focuses on a dozen designers.

In a bustling part of downtown L.A., a high-rise is teeming with stylish young women in short skirts and full makeup wheeling small suitcases in and out of elevators on their way to class. They're students at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, where, down the hall from a flat-screen TV broadcasting a runway show, past a plexiglass case of high-fashion Barbies, two of their peers are consulting with Mary Stephens, the school's self-described "big boss. ""This is a very new-looking shape here," says Stephens, FIDM's director of fashion design.