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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2011
Years
lifestyle In this file photo, a model presents an outfit by Greek Fashion designer Lila Nova. — AP
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reece is in crisis, but it was hard to tell at Athens fashion week, which showcased spring and summer collections for 2012. “Keep Greek Fashion in Your Hearts,” was the motto, a hard ask in a country on the verge of financial ruin. But the models on the catwalk and the glitterati on the red carpet did their part. Gowns shimmered, lipstick glistened. Pink cocktails flowed, courtesy of the sponsors. Glamorous looks can be deceiving. In Greece, shops are closing, unemployment is climbing, pensions are evaporating and people are protesting. Austerity rules. Foreign loans are the norm, foreign investment is not. Few Greeks have the means or inclination to splurge on clothes, much less garments tailored to individual taste. Fashion is the purview of the wealthy elites, but its struggle to adapt and even survive in the Greek mess mirrors other mired economic sectors. And unlike some Greek industries, fashion never enjoyed staunch promotion by the state, as in powerhouses France or Italy, and most designers lack a strong production base for their portfolios. Broadly, it’s a story about relevance. Fashion anywhere aims to connect with a mass audience, but exclusivity and flamboyance can make it seem out of touch. Even more so in Greece, where students, civil servants and garbage collectors take grievances to the streets. A few Greek designers have international repute. London-based Sophia Kokosalaki, who adopted classic Grecian draping for a soft, flowing look, designed thousands of outfits for the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. But for the most part, Greek designers cater to a domestic clientele, relying on word-of-mouth marketing and operating out of small workshops, or ateliers. Local buyers are scarce, the fallout from a crisis that has pitched Greece to the edge of a debt default and now threatens the unity of the eurozone. Celia Dragouni, a 32-year-old designer who describes her style as “hippie, bohemian” and “romantic,” has a website and a fan page on Facebook. Now she seeks direct contact with international buyers because business at home is shrinking, especially in the slow year-end season. “I’m sending some mails and fixing my portfolio,” Dragouni said. “I’m trying to get to know the buyers. I’m aiming abroad.” It’s not all grim. Weddings are a big deal anywhere, but Greeks go all out. Dragouni, who works extensively with silk and lace, custommade 30 wedding gowns this past summer, the traditional season for getting hitched. Yet she said some designers who used to charge 10,000 euros for a wedding dress have dropped the price by as much as two-thirds, even when cutting and stitching with the same high-quality
materials. Many Greek designers cater to singers and other local celebrities, unable to generate the kind of mass-produced, ready-to-wear lines that would endow their labels with corporate strength and true staying power. That makes their predicament more dire as revenue dries up and entertainment becomes more of a luxury than a fixture. “I always thought local Greek fashion was generated by the local music industry and by what’s happening abroad, which for a small country is OK. The only problem with that is that it does not concern the needs of the Greek people who actually shop at Zara,” the Spanish retailer, said Erotokritos Antoniadis, a Cypriot designer based in France. He said he concluded that “fashion is not enough by itself,” and has mixed design with cuisine, opening a canteen in Paris that sells Mediterranean dishes. The four-day October event, known as Athens Xclusive Designers Week, happens twice a year and is modeled on bigger, star-studded fashion weeks in Paris, London, Milan and New York. It has hosted shows by Vivienne Westwood, Guy Laroche and other international houses in the past, but this time organizers limited catwalk space to Greek designers, and a few others with links to Greece. “We wanted to send a message to everybody to support the Greek designers because it is a very critical moment for our country,” organizer Tonia Fouseki said. “It is an established event, but we were afraid a little bit before the event of how people would react, if they would like to come.” She said Greece has about 70 full-time designers and that 20,000 people visited the conference center where the collections were shown, signaling that: “People need to see. Even if they can’t buy, they want to see.” Konstantinos Mitrovgenis, who has made clothes for many Greek singers and for the theater, was declared best new designer, an award that allows him to display at a fashion event abroad, possibly in Malta or the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, or even New York City. An industry profile says he has pioneered the use of “lighted structures and modular clothes” to create a “functional avant-garde style.” Another home favorite was the 20-year veteran known as Miltos, who has a studio in the chic Athens district of Kolonaki and picks a theme Napoleonic, 1960s, horseriding - for each of his collections. “It’s like a fairytale and people like it,” he said. But he acknowledged: “It’s very difficult to have a personal style because all the people want to see the Internet, want to see the global designs.” Signs of economic strain were evident. Some designers dropped out, lacking resources to put together a collection. There was little evidence of expensive crystals or other precious stones used to enhance clothing in the past.
Antoniadis, who showed a collection there, described much of the clothing on display as “very couture and very sexy,” but not down-toearth. “It will end up in the nightclubs,” he said. “I didn’t really think it concerned the actual girl, the actual woman who would go to work or the office, who would actually need everyday clothes.” — AP
In this file photo, a model presents an outfit by Greek Fashion designer Tamy’s Archive during the Athens Exclusive Designers Week in Athens. — AP
Review
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In this photo, ABC News correspondent Christianne Amanpour poses at the New York Premiere of “In The Land of Blood and Honey,” a film written and directed by Angelina Jolie. — AP
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ngelina Jolie’s directorial debut, “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” picked up its first awards-season mention on Tuesday, as the Producers Guild of America announced that the film will be honored with its Stanley Kramer Award. The award, named after the producer of “The Caine Mutiny,” “High Noon” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” was created in 2002. According to the PGA, it honors “a motion picture, producer or other individual, whose achievement or contribution illuminates provocative social issues in an accessible and elevating fashion.” “In the Land of Blood and Honey” is set in Bosnia during the war in that country during the 1990s. Its dialogue is largely in the Serbo-Croatian language, and it depicts the tortured relationship between a couple who find themselves on different sides of the devastating conflict. Jolie’s work “is an extraordinary film that portrays a complex love story set against the terrors of the Bosnian War, especially towards women,” said PGA presidents Hawk Koch and Mark Gordon in a statement. “This film truly embraces the legacy of Stanley Kramer.” Previous recipients of the Stanley Kramer Award include last year’s winner, Sean Penn, as well as the films “Antwone Fisher,” “In America,” “Hotel Rwanda” and “An Inconvenient Truth.” The film’s producers-Jolie, Tim Headington, Graham King and Tim Moore-will accept the award at the 23rd annual Producers Guild Awards ceremony on January 21 at the Beverly Hilton. — Reuters
uckily for Tom Cruise, “Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol” is one of his finest action flicks, just what’s needed to potentially restore some of this fallen star’s box-office bankability. For director Brad Bird, though, the fourth “Mission,” rock solid as it is, ranks only as his second-best action movie, after the animated smash “The Incredibles.” Cruise may be the star here, but Bird’s the story, a director who’s only making his fourth movie and, remarkably, just his first live-action feature. This is the best of the “M:I” movies, far better than Brian De Palma’s original, No 2 by John Woo and even the franchise’s previous high with No 3 by JJ Abrams, who stuck around as producer on this one. Those three filmmakers had years and years of action stuff behind them with real, live actors. Yet along comes Bird to show that the enormous talent behind his Academy Award winners “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille” and his acclaimed cartoon adventure “The Iron Giant” transfers mighty nicely from animation to the real world. Granted, this is the real world, “M:I”-style, where Cruise’s missions and stunts truly are impossible by the laws of physics and normal, plausible storytelling constraints. But Bird applies the anything-canhappen limitlessness of cartoons and just goes for it, creating some thrilling, dizzying, amazing action sequences. If you have the slightest fear of heights, grip the arm rests tightly and press both feet flatly to the floor during Cruise’s attempt to scale the world’s tallest building; even safe in your seat, an unnerving feeling of vertigo is bound to result as you stare down from the 130th floor. For all the complexity of the action and gimmicks, Bird and screenwriters Andre Nemec and Josh Appelbaum (executive producers on Abrams’ “Alias”) wisely tell a simple, good-guys-against-bad-guys story. They keep Cruise surrounded by a tight, capable supporting cast in Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton and Simon Pegg, who co-starred in “Mission: Impossible III.” The movie starts with a clever jailbreak by Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, stuck in a Moscow prison for reasons unexplained until late in the story, then serves up an opening-credit montage fondly reminiscent of the old “Mission: Impossible” TV show.
Once free, Ethan is dispatched to infiltrate the Kremlin along with Impossible Missions Force agents Jane Carter (Patton) and Benji Dunn (Pegg). But it’s all a setup by madman Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), who sets off a devastating explosion at the Kremlin to cover his theft of a Russian nuclear launch device and manages to finger Ethan’s team for the blast. With U.S.-Russian tension at its worst since the Cuban missile crisis, the threat that’s always hung over the IMF team comes to pass: the secretary (Tom Wilkinson) disavows knowledge of their actions, leaving Hunt and his comrades on their own as they try to clear their names and stop Hendricks from instigating nuclear war. Joining them is Wilkinson’s aide, William Brandt (Renner), a guy who takes to field work a little too easily to be the desk-jockey analyst he claims he is. Cruise looks shaggy, and sure, we could blame his bad haircut on the fact that Ethan’s just out of prison. But it doesn’t help an aging screen idol to look so unkempt; the “Mission: Impossible” world routinely defies reality, so would it have been so farfetched for Ethan to stop by a salon before heading back into action? What Cruise does on screen is pretty much the same-old. Ethan runs, Ethan leaps, Ethan bashes faces, Ethan violates traffic laws, Ethan runs some more. Cruise has two main modes in his acting repertoire: flash that thousandwatt smile or play the stone-face, and he mostly does the latter here, so honestly, Ethan’s not all that interesting when he’s standing still and talking. That work ethic of Cruise, though, shows in every one of the spectacular action moments. For the climb up Dubai’s 2,700-foot (823-meter) Burj Khalifa skyscraper, the filmmakers claim they had planned to re-create part of the building’s exterior and have Cruise scale it on a safe soundstage. But Cruise wanted to climb the real thing, so much of the sequence was filmed with him harnessed to the building more than 1,000 feet (300 meters) up. Cruise has reined in the “gone bonkers” antics of his private life that turned off so many fans, and if he’s willing to dangle himself in the air like this, maybe it’s time people think about giving him a break. Renner’s a great
addition to the cast, and if there are more missions down the road, hopefully he’ll be back. He exudes class, intelligence, warmth and humor to counter Cruise’s often robotic Ethan. Patton is almost too gorgeous to exist, let alone be some junior field agent instead of a supermodel. But she’s a tough, wily presence, particularly in a showdown with an enemy assassin (the nearly as gorgeous Lea Seydoux). And Pegg is Pegg, the comic relief who adds some decent chuckles. Nyqvist, the male lead in the Swedish version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” shows hints of the unhinged villain he no doubt could play with relish. But he’s unfortunately shackled by a few brief scenes that never give him a chance to unleash his inner Blofeld. “Ghost Protocol” ends with a talky epilogue that feels tacked-on and trite, though it offers a couple of cameos from “Mission” past. —AP
US actor Tom Cruise arrives on the red carpet for the UK Premiere of Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, at a central London cinema. — AP
Actress Paula Patton, who plays Jane Carter, arrives.