14 生活時尚 S T Y L E WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2010 • TAIPEI TIMES

Move over skinny jeans, denim goes wide for spring

Shift in shape comes after two years of skinny dominance, while other spring styles tinker with safe formulas

By Alexandria Sage Reuters, LAS VEGAS

A “skinny” tag hangs on a pair of denim jeans on display at a store in New York. Photo: Bloomberg

omen who hate skinny jeans can entice shoppers who have proven scarce at the check- retailers are nervous so vendors will continue to make or an Army-inspired top might now have ruffles, adding rejoice this spring when the extra-tight out line since the recession. skinny and other styles to offer a range of options, jeans a feminine twist to a harder-edge look. denim that has dominated the market The move comes as jeans as a category will lessen in makers said. But these details don’t hide the lack of innovation for more than two years makes way for importance this spring, experts said. Khakis and corduroy “[Retailers] are seeing it in the trend reports, they’re in fashion. wide-leg cuts. pants are expected to steal the focus, said vendors. very curious, but they’re not really booking it heavily “There’s really nothing overwhelmingly new,” said WBell-bottoms and boot-cut styles will appear in US True Religion Brand Jeans is increasing the amount yet,” said Hala Jbara, director of marketing for Pepe Eric Beder, analyst at Brean Murray Carret. “Yes, there’s stores this spring. Many apparel watchers predict the of non-denim apparel in its line to between 30 percent to Jeans. “They’re more willing to try boot cuts.” a tweak here or there, but the women’s business is eventual demise of the skinny that has spurred both 40 percent, from about 5 percent last year. moving at a glacial pace.” adoration and revulsion. “Denim has slowed down dramatically. She doesn’t SQUEAL-WORTHY? And given the conservatism in the market, many buyers “The pendulum is swinging away from skinny,” said want to buy more jeans,” said Oscar Feldenkreis, That fear of the unknown is also evident in a wealth have been placing orders for immediate delivery, rather Ryan Dziadul, a spokesman for VF Corp’s 7 For All president and chief operating officer of Perry Ellis, of recycled styles on display on the trade show floor than predict how trends will play out in the spring. Mankind. “There are millions of pairs out there. For speaking of the female shopper. “And the jeggings trend where distressed leggings and tops, military-inspired “I’d rather buy right now. I don’t know what they spring, it’s about bell-bottoms.” has slowed down.” pants and jackets or the ubiquitous graphic T-shirt [shoppers] will want in six months,” said April Bullock, a Wider-leg jeans made an appearance last week at the Jeggings, or leggings designed to emulate the tightest jockey for attention. buyer who owns two stores in Mississippi. Magic apparel trade show, the twice-annual Las Vegas jeans, have been popular this past year across a variety “We’re seeing silhouettes we saw last year,” said Holly Bullock said apparel brands were overplaying the pilgrimage where retail buyers place orders for the of retailers, from high-end Bloomingdale’s to discounter Valdez, co-owner of a Costa Mesa, California boutique. military trend, but that others inspired a second look. newest looks. Wal-Mart Stores. “They’re playing it safe, but changing it up a bit.” “We’ve squealed a few times,” she said. “Fringe is big. Jeans makers are looking for something new to Despite the trends shifting to a wider look, some A graphic T-shirt this spring may have an uneven hem It makes us squeal.”

New Bayreuth festival manager divides Wagnerians Richard Wagner’s great-granddaughter Katharina Wagner is taking on the purists at opera’s most exclusive festival — and trying to exorcise its Nazi past

By Kate Connolly world, for which you can wait 10 years to The late Bayreuth festival chief Wolfgang Wagner for tickets,” she says. “And after all, The Guardian, London secure a ticket: this year, for the 54,000 is kissed by his daughter Katharina Wagner in July Richard was all for making the festival Wotan, father of the gods, has just tickets there were 408,000 applications 2008 at the Festspielhaus in the southern German more accessible.” kissed his daughter, Brunnhilde, to sleep from more than 80 countries. The festival city of Bayreuth. Photo: AFP After the one-hour production of and left her to burn alive. Katharina is seen by legions of fans as a sacred Tannhauser, the nine-to-15-year-old Wagner raises her eyebrows as she shrine to Richard Wagner, who set it up was she his lover? I don’t know, I wasn’t Booz siblings Olivia, Carolin, Marvin smacks her lips around an ice cream, to showcase his works 134 years ago. in the bedroom.” and Deborah, from Bayreuth, rave and looks on in satisfaction at the sea These Wagnerians are deeply divided Katharina was prepared for this role about the characters, particularly the of 20,000 people who have gathered on over Katharina, who after a long family from an early age. “At one point when punky skateboard-riding Venus. “It’s Bayreuth’s carnival ground to watch a battle, but with the staunch backing of I was about 20, my father asked me our first time at a Wagner opera,” live transmission of The Valkyrie on her father Wolfgang, took over the helm whether I could imagine taking on the says Deborah. “I’d thought it would a huge screen. “I think we’ve pulled it last summer together with Eva, 33 years job. I said ‘yes.’ I could imagine it, but be boring, but it was great fun.” They off,” she says. her senior. “The feeling of Wagnerians it wasn’t like I absolutely had to do it.” disappear to a tent to try on costumes, Dressed in jeans and polo shirt, towards her oscillates between holy She studied theater in Berlin, and staged talk to the singers and experiment with the attire of the co-chief of Germany’s veneration and calling for a witch hunt,” her first opera, Die Meistersinger, at smoke and foam machines. Bayreuth festival could hardly be in says Die Welt’s cultural commentator, Bayreuth in 2007. The production was At the entrance, a group of self- starker contrast to that of the high Lucas Wiegelmann. booed for some of its more outlandish confessed hardcore fans who have society event’s standard dress code. This is the first time the sisters have features (statues of Beethoven and dropped in to survey the opera for But then Wagner neither looks nor been completely on their own, following Mozart boasting erect plastic penises, themselves deliver a damning verdict. behaves as you might imagine the head the death of their father in March. for instance) by many of the die-hards “Patronizing and belittling to Wagner,” of one of the world’s most talked- Poignantly, his seat in the Festspielhaus, — one even threw a cushion at her. But says one. “Let the people have Wagner about cultural institutions to, or even where he watched no fewer than 1,300 power away from the traditionalists his close friendship with then-director it convinced her father that Katharina in its entirety or not at all.” the great-granddaughter of composer performances, has been cordoned off by setting up a new team of “active Winifred Wagner (the Welsh-born wife was capable of assuming the role. It’s at moments like these, says Richard Wagner. out of respect. “I feel Dad’s absence in festival patrons” to encourage more of Siegfried, and Wolfgang’s mother), the She says she will never get used to Katharina, that she feels like getting in It is clear that Wagner feels more at every nook and cranny of Bayreuth,” transparency and artistic freedom, and festival enjoyed a fair amount of artistic the Wagner fanatics, however, some of her car and escaping the claustrophobic home here at the public viewing — one says Katharina. “But he’s also constantly less bureaucracy. The move is risky, independence under the Third Reich. It whom she finds “rather scary.” Some confines of Bayreuth — which has been of the innovations that has characterized there with me, whispering in my ear, as the traditionalists, who make up is also rumored that Winifred and Hitler, even ask for locks of her trademark described outside festival time as having her young tenure so far and with which ‘You’re doing a good job, girl.’” the Society of the Friends of Bayreuth, whom she called Wolf, were lovers. So blond mane. “When I brush my hair, the half the number of inhabitants of New she has taken on the powerful Bayreuth The sense that a new era has begun control much of the festival’s funding. another of Katharina’s initiatives has stray strands end up in the waste paper York’s main cemetery, but being twice establishment — than hobnobbing with is palpable. At the free public viewing, “I don’t want Wagner just to be for been the setting up of an independent basket, just like anyone else’s,” she says. as dead — to the openness and freedom the great and good. “The people are down locals — 70 percent of whom admitted people who have a lot of money,” says historical commission to investigate the Turning up last weekend to of her beloved Berlin. to earth here. I feel at home,” says the in a recent survey they had never seen Katharina. “It should be for everyone. unanswered questions about the festival’s introduce her pet project, the children’s Tellingly, her favorite place during 32-year-old in her characteristic deep, a Wagner opera — are invited to watch When I’m told I’m killing the myth Nazi connections. opera, her long glittery nails and large the five-week festival is a motorway gravelly voice. “I hope very much that high culture while devouring sausages, due to my podcasts, live streams, or “I, for one, am personally interested diamante hoop earrings flashing in the service station cafe on the outskirts the public viewing will be seen as my beer and pretzels. There is also a kinder television transmissions, I’m really about the extent to which the family sun, Katharina passionately outlines of Bayreuth, which overlooks the contribution to the festival, as an attempt opera, now in its second year, in which sorry, but the myth is the work itself. was involved [with the party] on an her mission to win a new generation of autobahn to Berlin — and where it is to make it less stuffy, and elite, more a Wagner work — this year it was Nothing can destroy that. The myth is individual basis,” she says. “I want to Wagner enthusiasts. “It’s our duty to the highly unlikely she will be discovered open and transparent.” Tannhauser — is condensed to a more Richard. End of story.” find out more about my grandmother’s world of opera. We have to be actively by a Wagner fan. “I love sitting here This is no mean goal. Bayreuth is one digestible and child-friendly format. The festival has had a troubled history. fascination for this man, which lasted recruiting new opera lovers as it’s no drinking a coffee,” she says, “and of the most conservative festivals in the The sisters have tried to shift the Thanks to Hitler’s love of Wagner and right up until the end of her life. But good if they have to wait for 10 years dreaming of escape.”