China :: Lifestyle

October 01, 2011 BEIJING, Oct 1 Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon said the upscale shoemaker hopes to open up to 50 stores in China over the next five years in what she dubbed an exciting market for high-end goods. China is the worlds fastest-growing market for luxury products and an ongoing economic boom is creating new dollar billionaires every year in a huge explosion in wealth. A shopper peers through the window of the Jimmy Choo store on Bond Street, London. The British company plans to open 30 stores in China by 2016. AFP pic Jimmy Choo currently has just two shops in China one in Beijing and another in Shanghai. A third will open at the end of the year in the eastern city of Nanjing, said Mellon, the shoemakers chief creative officer. Our (China) business has increased 100 per cent (in terms of profits) in the last year on the existing locations we have, said Mellon, who was in Beijing as part of a British delegation to the Chinese capitals first design festival. She said the ...

Add to My Stories Share [caption You book the theatre tickets, organise dinner with friends and remind him to have his hair cut this weekend. But new research shows busybody wives to try to micro-manage their husbands social lives may be storing up problems. US scientists found men who do not have enough spare time to spend with their own friends, can feel less attracted to their partner. They say wives who have steadily cut theties with their husbands old friends in favour of having dinner parties with other couples can erode mens feelings of masculinity and lead to conflict within the relationship. The authors said there is nothing wrong with the wife doing most of the organizing of their social activities as women tend to be more organized. But they said reducing his contact with his friends to the point that all your socialising is done together can be dangerous. It suggests wives should encourage their husbands to spend time alone with male friends even the ones they dont ...

Add to My Stories Share My great fear is that Kirstie Allsopp will turn out to be one of those smug celebrity mothers the sort who manages a pilates session and a spot of pureing parsnips before heading off to work via the (private) school run. She is, after all, one of the highest-paid women in television, a woman who runs her own production company while being a mother to two young sons and stepmum to two more and yet she is giving this interview to promote her new TV show, which has her espousing the virtues of home baking and needlework, and the accompanying book, which is being serialised over two weeks in Weekend. Helping hand: Kirstie Allsopp with her partner Ben and sons Bay and Oscar I watch a preview of Kirsties Handmade Britain before meeting her, only to learn that the woman who was once asked to join David Camerons Government as an adviser spent seven weeks appliquing foxes on a cushion to enter in a country fair and truly believes that we can all do the same. Ini...

Add to My Stories Share Enlarge Crisis: Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore Was it worth it, Demi, after all that hard work? Im talking about the diets, the hair appointments, the assorted face lifts and Botox shots, after the fat-injection knee operations, the teeth bleaching, the vitamin supplements, the rigorous application of Factor 20 even on cloudy days, the crunches, the ignored munchies, the spa stays, the pelvic floor exercises, the wheat juice, the hideous detox with the Austrian leeches, the months on the paprika water Master Cleanse, the whey shakes, the eight-hour turbo moisturisers, the flights to Brazil for the full body overhaul, the regular appointments with the dedicated nail cultivist in Hollywood, not to mention the years of workouts and waxes, the massages, the plucking, the fearsome and brutal eradication of any hint of ageing or fraying at the edges or fading to grey. All those dedicated, disciplined measures, Demi, to beat back the passage of time, to hold back ...

Add to My Stories Share She's the richest supermodel in the world, earning 27million of her own money in the last year alone. So Gisele Bndchen, a working mother-of-one, is hardly the poster girl for mysogony. Yet several female members of the Brazilian government have called for her latest lingerie campaign to be banned, branding it 'sexist'. Sexist? Several female members of the Brazilian government have called for Gisele Bndchen's new lingerie ad to be banned following viewer complaints The ads for Hope underwear aired last week and feature a half naked Gisele, 31, confessing to her other half that she crashed his car, maxed out his credit-card and invited her mother to come and stay. The voiceover suggests the only 'correct' way to deliver the news would be by stripping to your underwear and 'using Brazilian charm' to cushion the blow - with the tagline 'Hope teaches.' Government officials from the women's secretariat in Brasilia r...

Add to My Stories Share The power of music: The Duchess during her interview on the show When ill health caused her to vanish from the royal circuit, many thought the Duchess of Kent had become something of a recluse. The truth was very different. It later emerged she had been teaching music at a state primary school in Hull most of the time in anonymity. Now in a revealing interview the 78-year-old has told how her eight years in the classroom were the most wonderful of her life. She spoke about the tickle of excitement she got when she recognised talent in her pupils. And she spoke of her fears that music could disappear from the school curriculum altogether, depriving under-privileged children of any stimulation. In a pre-recorded interview to be broadcast on The Alan Titchmarsh Show on ITV1 today, the duchess also gave an insight into her very un-royal life describing how she was known to her pupils as plain Mrs Kent, uses an iPhone and listens to commercial pop station Hea...

Add to My Stories Share The power of music: The Duchess during her interview on the show When ill health caused her to vanish from the royal circuit, many thought the Duchess of Kent had become something of a recluse. The truth was very different. It later emerged she had been teaching music at a state primary school in Hull most of the time in anonymity. Now in a revealing interview the 78-year-old has told how her eight years in the classroom were the most wonderful of her life. She spoke about the tickle of excitement she got when she recognised talent in her pupils. And she spoke of her fears that music could disappear from the school curriculum altogether, depriving under-privileged children of any stimulation. In a pre-recorded interview to be broadcast on The Alan Titchmarsh Show on ITV1 today, the duchess also gave an insight into her very un-royal life describing how she was known to her pupils as plain Mrs Kent, uses an iPhone and listens to commercial pop station Hea...

Add to My Stories Share Enlarge Crisis: Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore Was it worth it, Demi, after all that hard work? Im talking about the diets, the hair appointments, the assorted face lifts and Botox shots, after the fat-injection knee operations, the teeth bleaching, the vitamin supplements, the rigorous application of Factor 20 even on cloudy days, the crunches, the ignored munchies, the spa stays, the pelvic floor exercises, the wheat juice, the hideous detox with the Austrian leeches, the months on the paprika water Master Cleanse, the whey shakes, the eight-hour turbo moisturisers, the flights to Brazil for the full body overhaul, the regular appointments with the dedicated nail cultivist in Hollywood, not to mention the years of workouts and waxes, the massages, the plucking, the fearsome and brutal eradication of any hint of ageing or fraying at the edges or fading to grey. All those dedicated, disciplined measures, Demi, to beat back the passage of time, to hold back ...

Add to My Stories Share Children as young as ten will be given lessons in how to spot airbrushed celebrities in an attempt to boost their self-esteem. They will be shown pictures of Britney Spears in a swimming costume before and after her bottom and thighs were digitally slimmed down. The youngsters will be asked why alterations might have been made to the pop star, who distributed the pre- and post-production images last year to highlight pressure on women to look perfect. They will also be asked how a movie poster featuring actress Keira Knightleys enlarged bosom was subjected to digital enhancement. Body issues: A slide from the lesson asks pupils about what is real The primary school teaching pack has been produced by not-for-profit company Media Smart, in partnership with the Government Equalities Office. It is being promoted by the Home Office today. The scheme is designed to help children understand how magazines alter images and the impact this can have on them. More......

Add to My Stories Share Enlarge Crisis: Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore Was it worth it, Demi, after all that hard work? Im talking about the diets, the hair appointments, the assorted face lifts and Botox shots, after the fat-injection knee operations, the teeth bleaching, the vitamin supplements, the rigorous application of Factor 20 even on cloudy days, the crunches, the ignored munchies, the spa stays, the pelvic floor exercises, the wheat juice, the hideous detox with the Austrian leeches, the months on the paprika water Master Cleanse, the whey shakes, the eight-hour turbo moisturisers, the flights to Brazil for the full body overhaul, the regular appointments with the dedicated nail cultivist in Hollywood, not to mention the years of workouts and waxes, the massages, the plucking, the fearsome and brutal eradication of any hint of ageing or fraying at the edges or fading to grey. All those dedicated, disciplined measures, Demi, to beat back the passage of time, to hold back ...

Add to My Stories Share He hadnt slept after a frantic night of emergency rescues in his RAF helicopter. But no amount of drama in the air was going to stop Prince William making one important stop on solid ground yesterday. Almost 30 years after Princess Diana toured the Royal Marsden Hospital in Surrey on her first solo engagement in 1982, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited to meet young cancer sufferers. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge meet with patient Digby Davidson today as part of their tour of the Oak Centre, a new 18m cancer unit at the Royal Marsden hospital in Sutton William, president of the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, poses withpatient Ellis Andrews at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in South London, while Kate, right, chats to patient Fabian Bate And they ! chatted animatedly to the patients in the hospitals new 18million Oak Centre for Children and Young People, sharing a joke with leukaemia sufferer Digby Davidson after making t...