He's wowing fashionistas at Milan Men's Fashion Week, and rising star designer Andrea Pompilio says this is just the beginning, with a host of young labels like his ready to revitalise the menswear industry.

Italian-born Pompilio, who showed off a Fall-Winter 2015 runway collection on Saturday inspired by his grandfather's military uniforms, is one of the "new generation" of designers admitted to the prestigious week of catwalk shows.

"I've probably been lucky, I ended up here automatically. It's true I've worked 20 years for big fashion houses, so I know exactly how to move and how to approach the world of fashion," he told AFP in an interview.

After experience at houses including Calvin Klein and Yves Saint Laurent, and with a master's degree from Italy's fashion and design school Istituto Marangoni under his belt, Pompilio launched his first men's collection in 2010.

With the help of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, increasing numbers of young designers like him are breaking into Milan's famously exclusive inner circle.

Published: 19 January 2015

Read more ...

Swedish music streaming service Spotify said it has now 15 million paying subscribers, boosting claims that its revolutionary and controversial model can work.

The expanding startup said late Monday it had added 2.5 million subscribers since November amid widespread reports that the unlisted company plans to go public.

"It's been an astronomic amount of growth in a short period of time," Mark Mulligan, a music industry analyst, told AFP, adding that various discount packages explained the surge.

He said this does not mean the service will keep up that kind of development, but said: "Spotify did everything it could to get right growth at the right time."

At the end of 2014, Spotify said it had 60 million users of whom 15 million were paying subscribers, compared to 40 million active users and 10 million subscribers in May 2014.

The streaming service has become a major powerbroker in the music industry since its US launch in 2011, drawing criticism from stars like American pop star Taylor Swift and propelling lesser-known artists into the spotlight.

Spotify's two-tier service lets users stream an extensive catalogue for free with advertising, while those who subscribe pay eight to 11 euros (nine to 12 dollars) a month for ad-free music listening.

Mobile and smartphone users, however, have to pay to be able to choose tracks.

Published: 13 January 2015

Read more ...

Another £100 coin offering a famous picture of Big Ben's tower has been delivered to check the New Year.

The coin, which can be utilized as legitimate delicate, is one of 50,000 being produced by the Royal Mint for 2015.

Emphasizing the clocktower at the Houses of Parliament, it weighs two ounces in 999 fine silver.

The coins can now be purchased for £100 each from the Royal Mint site.

Published: 29 December 2014

Read more ...

A Chinese film mogul who purchased a Vincent van Gogh still life for a record $62 million, Saturday admitted he would have paid even more for the masterpiece.

Wang Zhongjun, chairman of the high-powered Huayi Brothers film studio, bought van Gogh's 1890 painting "Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies" for $61.8 million at Sotheby's in New York in November.

Speaking at a presentation at the auction house's Hong Kong gallery Wang said the price -- a record for a still life painting by the artist -- was "a bit lower" than he had been expecting to pay.

"I like it, it's not a matter of price, it's like I didn't spend money, it hangs on the wall and it belongs to me," Wang said.

"Van Gogh is my favourite artist in terms of his use of colours and many other aspects," he added.

The painting had been valued at $30 to $50 million before the sale.

Wang, who will be hanging the piece at his Hong Kong home, is the latest wealthy Chinese businessman to make an eyebrow-raising art purchase.

Forbes Magazine put Wang's net worth at nearly $1 billion, the 268th richest person in China.

Huayi Brothers Media is one of the largest private entertainment groups in China and has produced and distributed some of the country's popular movies and television productions, according to its website.

Published: 10 December 2014

Read more ...

Like a mirage in the middle of Beirut's high-rise seafront, the exquisite mansion is a lonely reminder of this city's romantic past.

Rose House is an architectural gem, an Ottoman villa perched rather bizarrely next to an equally elegant lighthouse overlooking the Mediterranean.

As newly built apartment blocks crowd in on its palm trees and delicate ochre-pink arches, it has become a symbol to Beirutis of the lightness and beauty their city seems to be losing.

A rare survivor not just of the 15-year civil war that claimed so many of its historic mansions, but the building boom that came with peace from 1990, it is even said to haunt some of their dreams.

The villa that once hosted French president Charles de Gaulle and American abstract artist John Ferren -- a friend of Picasso -- also inspired a film, "Around the Pink House".

Yet its fortunes declined over the years.

But a chance visit by British painter Tom Young and his wife as they strolled along the seafront, together with the enthusiasm of a Lebanese property developer, has brought hope that the villa will be restored and revived.

Published: 10 December 2014

Read more ...

An Italian historian's theory that Mona Lisa might be a Chinese slave and Leonardo da Vinci's mother -- making the 15th-century polymath half-Chinese -- sent online commentators into a frenzy Wednesday.

Angelo Paratico, a Hong Kong-based historian and novelist from Italy, told the South China Morning Post: "On the back of Mona Lisa, there is a Chinese landscape and even her face looks Chinese."

Chinese web users expressed astonishment and disbelief Wednesday, posting dozens of parodies of the painting, with faces from Chinese comedians to British actor Rowan Atkinson grafted over her delicate features.

Little is known about Caterina, the mother of the artist, writer, mathematician and inventor, and the identity of the sitter for the portrait hanging in Paris' Louvre museum has long been a matter of debate.

Paratico, who is finishing a book entitled Leonardo da Vinci: a Chinese scholar lost in Renaissance Italy, cited Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud's 1910 assumption that the painting was inspired by the artist's mother.

"One wealthy client of Leonardo's father had a slave called Caterina. After 1452, Leonardo's date of birth, she disappeared from the documents," he told the paper.

The evidence for a Chinese connection appears to be slight, with Paratico saying he was sure "up to a point" that da Vinci's mother was from the Orient. "To make her an oriental Chinese, we need to use a deductive method," he added.

Published: 03 December 2014

Read more ...

Pope Francis revealed Wednesday that he had sacked a church court official who had been caught offering to facilitate marriage annulments for cash.

The shock revelation came in candid remarks to students attending a course at the Roman Rota tribunal, the equivalent of the Supreme Court for canon law, the body of Church rules.

Telling his audience that he wanted decisions on annulments to be easier, quicker and cheaper to obtain for ordinary people, the pontiff made it clear he regards the current system as deeply flawed.

"We have to be very careful that the procedure does not become a kind of business - and I am not talking about something we know nothing about," the 78-year-old pope said.

"There have been public scandals. Some time ago, I had to dismiss from a tribunal someone who was saying 'for 10,000 dollars I will do both the civil and the ecclesiastical procedure'."

Francis did not provide any further details of the episode but a Vatican spokesman told AFP he understood the pontiff to have been referring to an episode which occurred prior to him becoming pope last year.

The conditions under which a marriage can be annulled -- effectively declared to have never existed -- have been a vexed issue for the Church for centuries.

Most notably, the question triggered the 16th Century clash with King Henry VIII that led to the English reformation and the creation of the Church of England.

Published: 06 November 2014

Read more ...

London was the huge champ as Leading Culture Destinations reported the champs of its inaugural yearly recompenses.

The capital was named as Best City for Culture, and the Tate Modern gathered three recompenses, Leading Culture Destination 2014, and for Exhibitions & Programming, and Digital Experience.

It was the first and final worldwide recompenses to commend the best not-for-benefit visual expressions establishments around the world.cultural foundations in urban areas as far and wide as Paris, New York, Miami, Shanghai, Oslo, Berlin and Mexico City, were among those contending to win nine grants at the occasion, held at Jumeirah Carlton Tower, London.

Published: 22 October 2014

Read more ...

Located near the intersection of 48th Street and Baldwin Avenue is a stringed instrument repair shop that has been resurrecting damaged musical instruments and giving life to new ones for more than 40 years.

When customers enter they will likely see 74-year-old Linda London, owner and operator of London Luthier, quietly sitting behind the counter surrounded by guitars and hand tools. The front of the shop is sparse and dimly lit, but this is one of the few places to go in the Midwest that takes the time to serve the musician as well as the instrument.

London Luthier opened in 1969 and moved to its current location in 1974 when the space became available. London’s husband, Dale, who passed away in 2004, worked as a commercial electrician before he started building instruments. Linda learned to repair instruments by working alongside him.

“This place is challenging because you never know what’s going to come in the door,” she said. “Whenever somebody wanted something special, Dale could figure out how to do it and design it. He always drew out blueprints and did everything to scale.”

Dale received a ninth-grade education, earned first class in electronics in the U.S. Navy and briefly worked as a welder at Nebraska Boiler Co. before he got bored and got his license to be an electrician, she said. She was born in Ord, Nebraska, moved to Lincoln at about 13 years old and graduated from North East High School when she was 16 years old. The two were married the year after she graduated.

“I’m the one that got him started because I’m the one that tried to play classic guitar,” she said. “Of course he didn’t know anything, so he went down and got me an old archtop Harmony with steel strings and high action (the space between the strings and the fret board). I kept trying to play and my fingers would bleed. I thought it was me, and I put it away. Then picked it up again,” London said. “Finally, he started shopping and he found me a nice little nylon string guitar. Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, there wasn’t a lot of things available music instrument-wise. So then he said, ‘Well I can build you one.’ He started researching and realized it wasn’t as easy as he thought it was going to be.”

London had been taking lessons at Thompson Music when her husband decided he was going to build a banjo.

“My guitar instructor said, ‘Well if he can build a banjo he can fix things,’” she said. “Thompson started sending all their instruments over to the house. We’d do setups on them and repair them. Next thing you know, we were over here.”

Her husband learned to build instruments by reading books and researching the principles of acoustics, vibrations of different types of wood and gluing pressures, she said.

“When he sat down to design something he had this innate sense to be able to understand how sound worked on an instrument – the vibrations through the bridge, going out through the braces on an acoustic guitar,” she said. “That’s just the way he was, he could just figure out things.”

Ryan Larsen, owner of Roots Music Shop on the corner of Q Street and North Antelope Valley Parkway, has been getting instruments repaired at London Luthier since the mid-1990s, he said.

“If you take a guitar in there, she’ll take a look at it and within a few moments she’s going to tell you a few things she can fix and make better,” he said. “My first memories of going in there, Dale was always sitting in the chair telling jokes and she was the one behind the counter doing all the work. I’m not selling him short – he did plenty.”

Dale London was considered an electronics and luthier genius, Larsen said. Dale and Linda each had their respective skill sets, but Linda hasn’t always received the credit she deserves, Larsen said.

“I got so good at it that he didn’t even touch them,” she said. “In the early days guys would come in here and they’d want Dale to work on their instrument. They didn’t really want a woman working on them. Dale would say, ‘Well, if you want it to be right, let Linda do it.’”

London’s favorite projects are working on old instruments – “things that have some history to them,” she said. One of the most recent projects was a harp guitar that was purchased brand new around 1903 and passed down through the family of the customer that brought it in.

“When you touch those things it’s like going back in time and you can almost see them be there,” she said. “To take something that’s just going to be thrown away and fix it back up – have it played and passed on – that’s what I really enjoy.”

The harp guitar had ended up in Arizona. When it came into London Luthier, the face of the guitar had buckled up, the bridge was standing on end, wood was splintered around the side of the guitar and a chunk of wood was missing.

Published: 16 October 2014

Read more ...

For six days, umbrellas, yellow ribbons, cartoon takedowns of politicians and song lyrics have been festooned across a city whose streets have been cleared of traffic to make way for a new wave of political protest.

Flyovers are plastered with hundreds of multicoloured notes voicing encouragement; posters of the city's leader characterised as a zombie or vampire hang from bridges; lampposts, footbridges and signs are tied with yellow ribbon -- one of the most widespread symbols of the protest movement.

Sympathisers at home and abroad have changed their social media profile pictures to an image of the ribbon, also used by other movements as a sign representing solidarity and freedom.

Published: 08 October 2014

Read more ...