Fashion Industry

Her old company is bankrupt, she's knee-deep in messy litigation, and she has lost the rights to her own name. But Los Angeles designer Carole Little is preparing a return to the fashion scene. Little and her longtime business partner and ex-husband, Leonard Rabinowitz, are planning a September launch of a design studio to sell Little's creative talent to apparel manufacturers.

A self-indulgent pilgrimage to the shrine of '70s fabulousness, "Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston" assembles a fine assortment of archival material but falls far short of its stated goal. Halston, who died in 1990, is a compelling subject - a Midwesterner who became synonymous with Manhattan night life while changing the fashion industry - and his story helps to define an era. That story is trivialized in this glitter-deep overview of familiar Studio 54 terrain. The film combines two documentary subgenres: the fashion doc and the inquisitive-filmmaker-inserted-in-every-scene doc. The spotlight-hogging director is star-struck first-timer Whitney Sudler-Smith.

WHEN IT comes to sportswear logos, Fila's rounded "F" is only slightly less iconic than Adidas' triple stripes and the Nike swoosh. The '70s tennis star Bjorn Borg grand-slammed his way into sports history wearing the F-crest on his chest, and less than a decade later the logo resurfaced as an urban status symbol for New York's burgeoning hip-hop scene (there was even a group called the Fila Fresh Crew). The craze for new Fila gear died down in the late '90s, but vintage pieces remain in hot demand.

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.

Spiegel Inc. and Ebony magazine, responding to a growing black consumer market, said Tuesday that they plan to launch a new clothing catalogue for contemporary black women. The nation's largest mail-order catalogue company, Spiegel is designing a line of clothing in conjunction with Ebony magazine that the companies say reflects fashion trends among black women. The company's catalogue, expected to be mailed to 1.

Dear Karen: My mom and I are setting up a small business providing patterns, samples and manufacturing services for the garment industry. What is the best way for us to find customers on a low budget? Answer: You should join Fashion Business Inc. (Fashionbizinc.org), a nonprofit organization that provides resources for Los Angeles apparel firms.

The fashion industry feted itself Monday night in New York, when the Council of Fashion Designers of America hosted its annual awards show. Sean Combs of Sean John was named Menswear Designer of the Year, beating more traditional 7th Avenue names Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors, and Zac Posen, the Young Turk whose label Combs invested heavily in last month, nabbed the Perry Ellis Award for Ready to Wear.

Free training for entrepreneurs in the fashion industry is available at the nonprofit Fashion Business Incubator in downtown Los Angeles, courtesy of the state of California, which recently awarded the fledgling program a $170,000, two-year grant. For qualifying entrepreneurs--those with at least one but not more than nine full-time employees--the money will cover all or part of the cost of the program's fashion business classes. The next round of classes will begin in January.

Bernard Ozer, the colorful trend spotter of the nation's fashion industry, has died of heart disease at the age of 60. Jody Donahue, a friend and associate, said from New York on Tuesday that Ozer was 60 and died Sunday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. Until last month, Ozer was vice president of fashion merchandising and marketing at Associated Merchandising Corp.

Halston, the fashion industry icon who lived up to his self-assessment as "the great American designer dream," has died after an 18-month battle with AIDS. He was 57. The award-winning designer, whose full name was Roy Halston Frowick, died in his sleep Monday night at Pacific Presbyterian Hospital in San Francisco, according to nursing supervisor David Rein. Robert Frowick, the designer's brother, said death came as a result of AIDS and Kaposi's sarcoma, an AIDS-related cancer.

What do you say to parents who are afraid to send their 18-year-old to art school for fear that he or she won't get a job after graduation? When it began in 2007, the Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region gave parents hope (and hopeful students talking points) by documenting the wealth of jobs in creative fields such as fashion, advertising, toy design and digital media, as well as the entertainment industry. This year, the picture is bleaker, along with so many broader economic indicators.

How fun to read about little Hollywood scandals in the first person ["The 'Sabrina' Mystery," Oct. 24]. I hope you'll have further excerpts from Mr. Dorleac's forthcoming book, or maybe a column about costume design. Deborah Neikirk Hollywood Hills Limited sizes, limited customers Your article ["Kept Out of the Club," Oct. 24] made me angry. Since when is a 10 considered obese? The average woman wears a 10/12. The fashion industry needs to get it. If a store only has smaller sizes they are losing a lot of business.

Fortysomething cover girls, curvy models and must-have items from Chico's and White House/Black Market? We've known for a while now that fashion no longer belongs solely to the young, rich and reed-thin. It's on TV and film, and in your local Target store, where Isabel Toledo, who designed First Lady Michelle Obama's lemon-grass yellow Inauguration Day suit, has a new collection. It has even seeped into the world of baby diapers, now that Cynthia Rowley has lent her design talents to Pampers, of all things.

Get ready to banish ruffles, beads and bows because fashion is cleaning up. A smart, new minimalism has swept the fall runways in Paris, and most notably at Céline. In her second runway show for Céline, Phoebe Philo proved she is fashion's new pacesetter. When the first model stepped onto the white-carpeted runway earlier this week in a navy blue funnel-neck coat cut with military precision and a pair of riding boots with sensible, metallic gold block heels, it was clear this show was about wardrobe solutions, pure and simple, in a range of neutral shades.

After logging thousands of miles over the last month, going from one fashion capital to the next, one runway extravaganza to another, it's time for a reality check. Alexander McQueen's Atlantis fantasy and Chanel's high-class hoedown were something to look at -- and blog and Tweet about. But come spring, what will they mean to a woman's wardrobe? And will they mean enough that she will buck the retail trend and actually spend on clothes? That's the challenge for the store buyers who hit the designer showrooms after everyone else has gone home, for photographers who spin visual fantasies to sell clothes in advertising campaigns and glossy magazines spreads, and for editors and stylists who will ultimately try to teach women how to wear what's new when it hits the racks in four months' time.

There will always be beauty, style and grace on the pages of fashion magazines and books, but the death of Irving Penn this month marks the end of an era of seminal photography. Penn, along with Richard Avedon, who died in 2004, practically invented modern fashion photography -- a place where art meets commerce -- in the mid-20th century. The influence of both artists -- along with a small group of mavericks who came after them -- figures prominently in fashion editorial and advertising campaigns to this day. Their striking images shaped how the world saw fashion and have long been ingrained in our psyches.

Rayon production is a dirty business. Chemicals used to dissolve wood pulp into rayon fiber are notorious pollutants. Environmental regulations enacted since the mid-1970s have thrown the domestic industry into a tailspin. Until now. Two European chemical giants, working separately, are producing a new kind of rayon using a technology that is virtually pollution-free.

TROMPE l'oeil bikinis and kitschy Carmen Miranda turbans. Preening haute couture salons and street kids in T-shirts and plastic sandals. Rio de Janeiro's breezy hedonism and Sao Paulo's monochromatic mayhem. Brazilian fashion is many things all at once. But on a soggy May evening in this restless megacity, Brazilian fashion is a man named Namie Wihby, who's sashaying around in a pair of black high heels at the Wannabe modeling school.

Over the years, we've noticed that fashion weeks are a lot like high school -- with cliques and hierarchies, where seemingly insignificant things (like where you sit) take on exaggerated importance. Because L.A.'s latest efforts to pull together a cohesive, organized week have turned into a fashion "month," rather than survey the mosaic of events, we're focusing on the star students instead: the assorted designers (established as well as the up-and-comers), retailers, muses and shutterbugs who reflect the true DNA of the City of Angels.

The reality television show "Project Runway" this season is putting the spotlight on Los Angeles, where designers toil in a loft downtown, competing to win $100,000 to start their own clothing line. The local industry could use the boost. L.A.'s once-flourishing garment design and manufacturing industry is shedding jobs as quickly as a mohair sweater loses its fur. Weak U.S. consumer spending is generating less demand for the services of the people who stitch, cut and sew clothing in Los Angeles County.