Ms. Spencer would go on to take home an Oscar for her supporting role in “The Help.” But even if she hadn’t, her dress would have been a winner on Hollywood’s biggest night, landing her on many a best-dressed list. In addition to its feminine elegance, the garment was praised for the way it transformed Ms. Spencer’s voluptuous curves into more slimming contours.

“She’s not a thin-thin girl, so I had to give the illusion of her as tall and thin,” said Mr. Shoji, 64.

The diminutive Japanese designer, whose close-cropped hair is speckled with gray, was at his studio near downtown Los Angeles, sitting in a Zen-like showroom that was minimally decorated with an orchid and Japanese art. The only blast of color was Mr. Shoji himself, who was wearing a cobalt blue cardigan and a pink polo shirt buttoned up to his neck.

Read the rest at the New York Times

Read the rest at The Independent

Alas, there were no snakes or grizzly bears to wrangle into submission. Mr. Grylls, 37, was not in the Rockies fending for his life, but less than an hour from Los Angeles, filming a commercial for Degree deodorant.

Not that it was any easier than filming his TV show, which drops Mr. Grylls in the most God-forsaken pockets of the planet and watches him face off against blinding ice storms and insect-drenched jungles. “It’s quite difficult,” he said, walking away from the cameras after what felt like the 80th take, a pair of young makeup artists in skinny jeans trailing behind him.

Lately, this kind of “labor” has been taking up more of Mr. Grylls’s time, as he finds himself transitioning from a wacky British television character known for drinking his own urine and sleeping inside a dead camel (for hydration and warmth, respectively), into a more mainstream celebrity.

Dockers recently selected Mr. Grylls as the face of its campaign, which features the boyishly handsome adventure fanatic tramping through Central Park in slimly tailored khakis and a narrow tie, looking more like a young Gregory Peck than Crocodile Dundee. The images have already caused a stir: Out magazine’s Web site published a Bear Grylls “Swoon Alert” wondering why Dockers was forcing the “dreamy nature explorer” to wear shirts in the photos.

Read the rest at the New York Times.

Lisa Vanderpump, a cast member of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, threw her hands up in exasperation.

“These are real,” she said, peering southward at her generous, porcelain cleavage, which was peeping out from behind a bright magenta cocktail dress. “You know what I mean?”

It was late in the afternoon, and Vanderpump was comfortably ensconced at a table at SUR (not French; English for Sexy, Unique Restaurant), her and husband Ken Todd’s latest Euro-y addition to the Los Angeles dining scene.

Her pocket-sized pooch Giggy snoozing beside her, she’d just come from a taping of Chelsea Lately where Chuy—Chelsea Handler’s “vertically-challenged” sidekick, in the words of the always verbally imaginative Vanderpump—had apparently copped a feel of her derriere. In Chuy’s defense, it had been a fact-finding mission of sorts, or at least an attempt to verify whether the body part in question had been surgically enhanced—an allegation promulgated by talkshow host Wendy Williams.

“I don’t know why she said it, because she’s black as well, right?” Vanderpump said. “So she’s used to—you know, I have a black butt, right? But she kept saying, ‘Lisa Vanderpump has had a butt implant!’”

Read the rest at The Daily Beast

“Everybody was freaking out the next day,” said Ms. Steinfeld’s fashion stylist, Karla Welch, who said she had suddenly been inundated with calls from designers who in previous weeks had been less than forthcoming with their wares.

“She’s a very young girl,” Ms. Welch said. “I can’t blame the designers for not wanting to go that young” initially. But they were, it turned out, absolutely willing.

Led by Ms. Steinfeld, Hollywood’s red-carpet season last year was a veritable youth-quake, with starlets like Jennifer Lawrence, now 21, and Emma Stone, 23, proving that high fashion isn’t just for “older” femmes fatales like Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman. (Ms. Stone had a similar stop-the-presses moment at the Globes, in a peach-colored Calvin Klein frock.)

Read more at the New York Times.

When she turned to the Internet, “There was nothing — no road maps, no anything,” recalls Ms. Monosoff, who lives near San Francisco and was education director for the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships for President Bill Clinton.

Fast-forward to today, and the term “mom inventors” yields about 290,000 results on Google. There is Ms. Monosoff’s own Web site, Mom Invented, which supports aspiring “mompreneurs” and licenses and sells products under the Mom Invented brand, a Good Housekeeping-like seal of approval. Other sites include the Mogul Mom, where mothers can satisfy their inner Edison by reading posts like “How Do I Get My Product in Stores?” and “Don’t Get Burned By Your Light Bulb Moment.” Not to mention the dozens and dozens of online stores, like the Busy Mom Boutique, that sell mom-made products.

Read the rest at The New York Times.

But this method, known as “raceways” technology, does not produce enough seafood to be very cost-effective. That’s because only so many tubs can fit in a confined space, requiring a huge facility to produce a large number of shrimp. Given the limitations, importing shrimp has remained far cheaper than farming them here.

Agricultural experts were stymied until Addison L. Lawrence, a scientist at the Texas AgriLife Research Mariculture Laboratory, had an idea so simple that it was revolutionary: Why not stack the tubs on top of one another? And so was born the concept of “super-intensive stacked raceways,” an innovation that makes it possible to produce up to one million pounds of shrimp annually per acre of water, compared with the 20,000 pounds produced by natural ponds, and the 50,000 pounds produced by the original raceways system, Dr. Lawrence said. The technology is to be used in a production facility starting next year.

Read the rest at the New York Times.

Sophia Rossi is sitting in a café on Robertson Boulevard, explaining her friendship bracelets. “I had Lauren’s here. This is Soleil. That’s Nicole,” she says, fingering the tangle of thin, colorful strands that dangle from one wrist.

“If I could have a whole arm of them, I would,” Rossi, 29, says wistfully, as she blinks several times from behind a pair of black, chunky glasses. Her long, dark hair falls softly around her face, accenting her eyes, which are round and liquid.

Rossi has a lot of friends, most of whom you’ve probably heard of. Lauren is Lauren Conrad, of the now-defunct MTV reality shows The Hills and Laguna Beach. Soleil is former Punky Brewster actress Soleil Moon Frye. Nicole is Nicole Richie.

The Bigg Chill hasn’t changed much since it opened in 1990 in a nondescript strip mall in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Its color scheme is still pink-on-aqua, like a Jane Fonda leotard. There is no dance track on the sound system. And the yogurt flavors veer toward variations of chocolate and vanilla, not green tea or pomegranate.

And yet, even as the designer yogurt craze may be cooling in this city — and even as a new trend, toward self-serve yogurt, arises — business at the Bigg Chill is booming. On any given night of the week, a line forms out the door, sometimes 20 people long.

Read more the New York Times.

“I HAVEN’T become a Bridezilla,” Petra Ecclestone cooed languidly over the phone in her British accent. “I think I’ve been really relaxed. That’s just my personality.”

It was mid-August, and Ms. Ecclestone, the 22-year-old daughter of the Formula One Management chief executive Bernie Ecclestone (net worth $4.2 billion), was in London refining details of her $5 million wedding on Aug. 27 to James Stunt, an entrepreneur and a reputed party boy, that was in the same medieval castle where Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were married. Among the highlights: a $130,000 Vera Wang gown, performances by Eric Clapton and Alicia Keys and white roses from France.

Outside, the city was burning and world financial markets were plummeting, but Ms. Ecclestone, who has long platinum locks and a Barbie doll figure, had work to do. Not only were there the dreaded seating arrangements to deal with (“All the politics, who’s going to sit next to who,” she said), but she was preparing for the introduction of her new handbag line, Stark, at New York Fashion Week.

Read more at the New York Times.