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PARIS — It is back to the old ways for men’s fashion week, which kicked off in Paris on Tuesday, with the last pandemic-era restrictions cleared and the surprise return of Hedi Slimane of Celine, who had previously called official fashion shows “obsolete”. 

Even during previous waves of infections, the fashion crowd was never particularly keen to see their make-up smudged by a mask or their partying constrained by social distancing. 

But with the last restrictions on international travel dropped, this week will see the return of several big names, including US designers Tom Browne, known for his creative shows, and Matthew Williams of Givenchy. 

The biggest surprise, however, is the return of Slimane, creative director of Celine and one of the most influential figures in men’s fashion of recent decades, who will close out the week on Sunday. 

One of the key brands within the LVMH group, Celine last presented as part of the official fashion calendar in February 2020, before Slimane dramatically announced that the traditional timetable was “obsolete” and “archaic”. 

“These days, creating a sense of event and rarity seems more essential than an obligatory exercise at a fixed time,” he told Le Monde at the time, and has since been releasing collections for men and women at his own pace, often with films shot in luxurious settings around France. 

The house did not respond to AFP’s query about its change of heart. 

‘Rejoice’

In the lead-up to the pandemic, there had been a widespread sense that the fashion calendar’s pace had gotten out of hand — both physically exhausting and environmentally unsound. 

But two years of pandemic left many eager to return to the festive atmosphere around fashion weeks. 

“We are very happy that Celine is back,” said Pascal Morand, head of France’s Federation for Haute Couture and Fashion. “We don’t have any other comment to make, other than to rejoice.”

Meanwhile, in the on going debate about gendered shows, Paris finds itself as something of a halfway mark between London — which has removed the divide between men’s and women’s shows — and Milan, which has reaffirmed the split out of fear of undermining traditionally male-focused brands. 

“Paris will be a bit of both,” said Morand.

“The trend for non-gendered clothing created by streetwear and sportwear is deep and societal — it’s long-term. 

“But the male-female divide still makes a lot of sense,” he added, especially since there is a real sense of “innovation and creativity” in men’s fashion at the moment that warrants a dedicated showcase. 

One example is the hotly tipped Ami-Alexandre Mattiussi, who is expected to present a mixed men’s and women’s show on Thursday. 

The studio started off as a hip men’s brand in Paris but also made its mark on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival, dressing Spanish icon Rossy de Palma and France’s Sophie Marceau.

Other highlights this week include Marine Serre, presenting for the first time in the men’s week, having made a a name for herself in womenswear with green-minded, up-cycled clothes and innovative shows. 

Louis Vuitton has yet to designate a successor to Virgil Abloh, who died from cancer at 41 in November, but will this week present a collection created by his staff. 

PARIS — Sexy women’s underwear didn’t fare too well during the jogging-bottoms-and-pyjamas phase of the pandemic, but from the red carpet to lingerie shows, ultra-sultry intimate apparel is making a comeback — and is now much more visible.

Rihanna helped set the mood with her radical approach to pregnancy fashion — sporting a transparent babydoll dress over a black thong at the Dior show in Paris this winter. 

Or there was Megan Fox’s all-but-invisible Mugler dress over a white thong at last year’s MTV Awards. 

Having your undies on display has been tried by the likes of Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez and even fictional fashion icon Carrie Bradshaw on “And Just Like That...”

“It’s a trend that we see a lot in pop culture. Rihanna, Cardi B, Kim Kardashian — they’ve seized on these styles in a very extroverted way and with a real feminist dimension,” Renaud Cambuzat, creative director for Chantelle, told AFP.

Lingerie brand Chantelle was previously associated with comfort above all, but it has joined the trend, launching a new Chantelle X line that prioritises sexiness. 

That was the dominant vibe across this year’s International Salon of Lingerie in Paris which concluded on Monday — where many were embracing the new appetite for thongs and transparent designs. 

Experts say there has been a shift, however, and that this trend emphasises women wearing lingerie for themselves rather than trying to impress others. 

“We are witnessing the return of the scruffy sexuality of the 2000s — styles that refer to the archetype of the objectified woman, but which no longer have the same meaning,” said Benjamin Simmenauer, philosopher and professor at the French Institute of Fashion. 

“It is no longer a question of being ordered to seduce, but of a feminist reappropriation of sexualised clothing,” he added. 

Re-investing in sexy

The return of sexy lingerie marks a course correction after several years of change in the lingerie business, Chantelle’s Cambuzat said.

“Four or five years ago, we were in #MeToo, and there was a desire to move towards something seen as more respectful,” said Cambuzat.

“The #MeToo fight is not completely won but the field has opened up. There are women and brands that have found legitimate ways to reinvest in ultra-sexy styles.”

The change is evident in the way the big brands have embraced greater diversity in their models and advertising.

Victoria’s Secret — which was seen as symbolising a narrow beauty ideal in the past — has abandoned its slogan “The Perfect Body” and its army of “Angels” in favour of more full-figured models and strong personalities such as footballer Megan Rapinoe. 

“We must not confuse #MeToo and puritanism. A woman can also wish to seduce out of her own conviction,” added Samar Vignals, of French lingerie brand Aubade, which has asserted the need for “more audacity” in the post-pandemic moment.

The company, previously known for its monochrome close-ups on bums and breasts, is now running ads that show faces, sometimes staring straight into the lens. 

Aline Tran, founder of the erotic lingerie boutique Les Rituelles, said there needs to be less anxiety around seduction, and it should instead be seen as something empowering.

“We talk a lot more about acceptance of our bodies,” she told AFP. “Seduction is a great feminist asset. It allows us to regain control over our body and by extension over our mind.”

PARIS — As a young woman straps on her vest and headset and becomes immersed in a virtual world, Mainak Chaudhuri talks excitedly about the potential of the technology.

“This is the first step towards the metaverse,” Chaudhuri of French start-up Actronika told AFP at this week’s VivaTech trade show in Paris.

The vest can give users the sensation of being buffeted by the wind or even feel a monster’s breath on their back, and it can be used to enhance movie watching, education or gaming.

It is a family-friendly vision of the 3D immersive Internet, now widely known as the metaverse, and sits well with some interactive experiences already widely available for children — like virtual trips to museums.

But campaigners and experts are increasingly warning that the wider ecosystem needs to start acting on child safety to ensure the benign vision is realised.

“The biggest challenge is kids are getting exposed to content that is not intended for them,” said Kavya Pearlman, whose NGO XR Safety Initiative campaigns to ensure immersive technology will be safe for everyone.

The problems she envisages range from children being exposed to sexual and violent material, to worries over young people being used as content creators or having inappropriate contact with adults.

Even though the metaverse has not yet been widely adopted and the technology is still in development, early users have already brought to light serious issues.

One woman’s allegation that her avatar was sexually assaulted in the metaverse sparked global outrage.

Worries about the future of the technology have only grown as the economic opportunities have become clearer.

‘Colossal’ money

Metaverse-linked investments topped $50 billion last year, according to research firm McKinsey, which predicts the figure could more than double this year. 

“We’re talking about absolutely colossal amounts of money, that’s three times more than the investment in artificial intelligence in 2017,” McKinsey partner Eric Hazan told AFP. 

Chief among the investors is tech giant Meta, which owns the likes of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.

The firm has already rolled out measures to give parents more control over the content their children interact with while using VR headsets.

Meta and many of its competitors market immersive products with a lower age limit of 13 — though it is widely accepted that younger children will use the tech.

Pearlman raises a broader concern that very little is known about the possible effects on young people’s development.

“Organisations have not yet validated these experiences from a scientific perspective,” she said.

“Yet, they are allowing kids to be exposed to these new technologies, practically experimenting on children’s developing brains.”

The metaverse has shifted the paradigm, according to Valentino Megale, a neuropharmacologist who researches the issue.

While the public has so far merely consumed what others have created, in the metaverse “we are going to be part of the digital content”, he said.

“This makes everything that we experience in that world more compelling,” he told the RightsCon digital rights conference last week, adding that it was particularly true for children. 

Experts worry that the industry needs scrutiny before the rot sets in.

‘Ethical basis’

The solution, they argue, is to make sure the builders of these new virtual worlds instil child protection measures into the ethos of their work.

In other words, each piece of software and hardware should be constructed on the understanding that children might use it and will need safeguarding.

“We are potentially going to have a huge impact on their behaviour, their identity, their emotions, their psychology in the exact moment when they are forming their personality,” said Megale. 

“You need to provide an ethical basis and safety by design from the beginning.”

One of the most controversial areas of product design is the kind of suit that will allow users to feel all sorts of sensations — even pain.

Such suits are already being manufactured, simulating pain through electric shocks.

The products are intended for military or other professional training.

Chaudhuri said the products developed by his firm Actronika use vibrations rather than electric shocks and were perfectly safe for anyone to use.

“We’re about engaging the audience and not necessarily doing a real-time firefighting scenario or a battlefield scenario,” he said.

“We don’t cause pain.”

A quicker and more exciting yet more practical take on the trendy modern Mini brand, the Cooper S Clubman is a car that successfully appeals on different levels. Fashionable in design and up-market among small urban-oriented cars, the Mini Cooper S Clubman builds on the basic Mini premise with the entry-level version of two powerful engine options for the enthusiast drivers. Combining that with a more spacious estate body, it is then the hot Cooper S is then transformed into a fast family car.

Stretched and sporty

A “dad racer” interpretation of the Mini, the Cooper S Clubman is the BMW-owned British brand’s second modern hot estate generation. Taking its name from the historical snub-nosed, recessed headlight 1970s take on the iconic original Mini, rather than the Traveller or Countryman designations traditionally used for Mini wagons, the modern Mini estate first arrived in 2007. When launched, it featured unconventional door arrangement with a single left-hand passenger door and a small rear-hinged supplementary right-hand side door to improve rear seat accessibility.

Introduced in 2015 and updated in 2018, the second generation Clubman adopts more conventional full 4-passenger doors, but boot access remains through twin side-hinged doors rather than a common up-swinging tailgate. Bearing modern Mini hallmarks including circular lights and big grille, the Cooper S Clubman’s detailing is, however, subtly sportier, while its longer wheelbase and roofline present a perhaps more mature take on Mini’s design sensibilities. Thick lower black cladding, meanwhile, lends an assertive style, but can make the wheels look small, from some angles.

Perky performer

Powered by a larger, less stressed 2-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine rather than the previous generation’s 1.6-litre, the Cooper S may only be slightly more powerful, but it delivers power and torque over a wider, flatter and more accessible range. If not as perky as its predecessor, the third second generation Cooper S Clubman is, nevertheless, eager at top-end, and benefits from a responsive low-end. With little turbo lag, torque develops into a muscular 206lb/ft torrent over a broad 1,350-4,600 plateau.

Providing confidently responsive overtaking and acceleration on inclines, the Cooper S Clubman’s generous torque band underwrites seamless power accumulation. Driving the front wheels through a quick shifting 7-speed dual-clutch automated gearbox in place of the pre-facelift model’s 6-speed automatic, the Cooper S Clubmen is punchy and consistent, with 189BHP produced throughout 5,000-6,000rpm. Capable of 228km/h top speed and able to sprint through 0-100km/h in 7.2-seconds, the Cooper S Clubman’s larger engine is meanwhile more efficient, and returns 5.7l/100km combined fuel consumption.

Eager estate

Agile and manoeuvrable, the Cooper S Clubman may be bigger and heavier than its predecessor, and longer than 3- and 5-door hatchback sister models, but translates the Mini brand’s much vaunted “go-cart” handling about as well as can be for an estate car. That said, it remains a small car with eager cornering. Its stretched dimensions and larger footprint, however, provide better motorway and cornering stability, while it has less of a tendency to feel bouncy over bumps and road imperfections.

Pointy and nimble, the Cooper S Clubman briskly scurries through corners with taut body control and instinctive finesse. With quick and direct steering it turns in crisply and with confident front grip. Meanwhile un-exaggerated tyres allow adequate feel. Riding on all-independent MacPherson strut front and multi-link rear suspension, the Clubman’s rear wheel are more settled and travel better over lumps, bumps, imperfections, and through tight, fast-driven corners. A sophisticated ride for its class, the Clubman’s vertical control is buttoned down and reassuring.

Maximising the Mini

Smooth but slightly firm over sudden and jagged imperfections, the Cooper S Clubman’s driving position is, however, alert, well-adjustable and supportive, with good front and side visibility and controls within easy reach. With its minimum 360-litres luggage volume expanding to 1,250-litres when rear seats folded, the Clubman isn’t quite as cavernous as most estates, but is significantly more accommodating than sister hatchback variants. Similarly, front seats are comfortable and well-spaced for even tall drivers, while rear space and access is improved.

Styled with a retro-inspired theme, the Mini’s cabin features an abundance of circular motifs looking back to the original model for inspiration. Materials are, meanwhile, of generally better quality and texture quality than predecessor models, and many alternatives in the same segment. In terms of layout, the Clubman’s speedometer is now better positioned in front of the driver, while a circular unit now housing a sophisticated infotainment system, occupies the centre console space where the speedometer was positioned in preceding models.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, transverse, turbocharged 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 82 x 94.6mm

Compression ratio: 11:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, direct injection, continuously variable valve timing

Gearbox: 7-speed dual-clutch automated, front-wheel-drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 189 (192) [141] @5.000-6,000rpm

Specific power: 94.6BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 135BHP/tonne (estimate)

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 206.5 (280) @1,350-4,600rpm

Specific torque: 140.1Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 200Nm/tonne (estimate)

0-100km/h: 7.2-seconds

Top speed: 228km/h

Fuel consumption, urban/extra-urban/combined: 6.7-/5-/5.7-litres/100km 

CO2 emissions, combined: 129g/km

Fuel capacity: 48-litres

Height: 1,441mm

Wheelbase: 2,670mm

Tread, F/R: 1,563/1,565mm

Overhang, F/R: 801/795mm

Ground clearance: 141mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficiency: 0.34

Luggage volume, min/max: 360-/1,250-litres

Unladen weight: 1,400kg (estimate)

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning Circle: 11.3-metres

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/multi-link

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/discs

Tyres: 225/45R17 

By Aseel Salhab
Infant and Child Sleep Consultant

As you prepare for summer break, and if you have young children, don’t let this stop you from vacationing together as a family. Studies indicate that vacationing away from work and routine is beneficial for your mental and physical health. Here are the benefits and challenges of travelling with young children: 

Why do we need a vacation once in a while?

•Improved physical health: With less stress, your body functions better by lowering the level of cortisol

•Improved heart health: Taking vacations could help reduce the risk for metabolic syndrome — a cluster of health issues including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess belly fat and abnormal cholesterol levels

•Improved mental health: With exposure to stress, the neurotransmitters in your brain alter how the brain functions. Vacation time improves mood and reduces stress by removing you from the activities and environments that you associate with stress and anxiety

•Greater wellbeing: After a vacation, your body is more relaxed, you get better sleep, are in a better mood and have more energy to offer your family and work

•Improved sleep: Time off from work and household responsibilities help break negative sleep habits, like working late or checking your mobile phone before bed or in the middle of the night

•Increased mental capacity: Going on vacation gives your body and brain a boost to stay positive. It also improves your capacity to learn. There’s a link between travel and creativity too!

•Boost happiness: Many studies reveal that even planning a trip helps boost your serotonin levels which is the happiness and mood stabiliser hormone

Travelling with babies and young children

Many parents fear travelling with their children, worrying about long packing lists, unpredictable schedules and the break from routine. While travelling with a child at any age may seem like a daunting prospect, it can significantly boost their development and help them adapt to changing situations.

Travelling regularly with young children and babies as young as six months and surrounding them with speech and sound from all around the world can help them later on in life with their language development.

Travelling tips

•Writing your travel list two weeks ahead: List all of your child’s needs, including formula milk, bottles, medications, nappies and wipes

•Arriving three hours earlier than the flight time: This makes it easier for parents to take their time at check-in, bathroom runs, shopping and getting a light snack before boarding

•Considering flight time: Try your best to book your flight when it’s your baby’s nap time

•Nappy change: Change your baby’s nappy before boarding the aeroplane and take older children to the airport restroom before the flight

•Planning for discomfort: Help your baby adjust to changes in cabin pressure by encouraging swallowing during takeoff and landing; you can breastfeed or use a pacifier

•Packing smart: Make sure nappies, wipes, a change of clothes, books and toys are easily accessible

Activities to keep your child busy on the aeroplane

•Reading books

•Magnetic games

•Card games

•Workbooks or activity books

•Card games

•Colouring books

•Healthy snacks

•Children’s movies downloaded before you fly

Helping your baby overcome jetlag

•Planning ahead: You can start the transition to the new time zone a few days before departure to ensure your child is close to the new time zone, making travel and sleep easier. For example, shift nap times, mealtimes and bedtime in 15-minute increments, either earlier or later, depending on what direction you are going

•Watching your baby’s sleeping cues: Put your baby to sleep the moment you arrive to prevent her or him from being overly tired. Wake your baby up the next day, early in the morning, to get them back in their routine again

•Offering snacks: Keep the feeding and the snacking time as you usually do at home

•Going out if you arrive in the daytime: This will help adjust to the daily routine and get your child sleeping at night

Remember, this is only a vacation and everything gets back to normal once you’re back home. Try to enjoy as much as you can as you create memories with your child. Time does fly!

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

PARIS — To many they are art’s next big thing — digital images of jellyfish pulsing and blurring in a dark pink sea, or dozens of butterflies fusing together into a single organism.

The Argentine artist Sofia Crespo, who created the works with the help of artificial intelligence, is part of the “generative art” movement, where humans create rules for computers which then use algorithms to generate new forms, ideas and patterns.

The field has begun to attract huge interest among art collectors — and even bigger price tags at auction. 

US artist and programmer Robbie Barrat — a prodigy still only 22 years old — sold a work called “Nude Portrait#7Frame#64” at Sotheby’s in March for £630,000 ($821,000). 

That came almost four years after French collective Obvious sold a work at Christie’s titled “Edmond de Belamy” — largely based on Barrat’s code — for $432,500.

A ballet with machines

Collector Jason Bailey told AFP that generative art was “like a ballet between humans and machines”. 

But the nascent scene could already be on the verge of a major shake-up, as tech companies begin to release AI tools that can whip up photo-realistic images in seconds. 

Artists in Germany and the United States blazed a trail in computer-generated art during the 1960s. 

The V&A museum in London keeps a collection going back more than half a century, one of the key works being a 1968 piece by German artist Georg Nees called “Plastik 1”. 

Nees used a random number generator to create a geometric design for his sculpture. 

‘Babysitting’ computers

Nowadays, digital artists work with supercomputers and systems known as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to create images far more complex than anything Nees could have dreamed of. 

GANs are sets of competing AIs — one generates an image from the instructions it is given, the other acts as a gatekeeper, judging whether the output is accurate. 

If it finds fault, it sends the image back for tweaks and the first AI gets back to work for a second try to beat the gamekeeper. 

But artists like Crespo and Barrat insist that the artist is still central to the process, even if their working methods are not traditional.

“When I’m working this way, I’m not creating an image. I’m creating a system that can create images,” Barrat told AFP. 

Crespo said she thought her AI machine would be a true “collaborator”, but in reality it is incredibly tough to get even a single line of code to generate satisfactory results.

She said it was more like “babysitting” the machine.

Tech companies are now hoping to bring a slice of this rarefied action to regular consumers. 

Google and Open AI are both touting the merits of new tools they say bring photorealism and creativity without the need for coding skills. 

Enter the ‘transformers’

They have replaced GANs with more user-friendly AI models called “transformers” that are adept at converting everyday speech into images. 

Google Imagen’s webpage is filled with absurdist images generated by instructions such as: “A small cactus wearing a straw hat and neon sunglasses in the Sahara desert.”

Open AI boasts that its Dalle-2 tool can offer any scenario in any artistic style from the Flemish masters to Andy Warhol. 

Although the arrival of AI has led to fears of humans being replaced by machines in fields from customer care to journalism, artists see the developments more as an opportunity than a threat. 

Crespo has tried out Dalle-2 and said it was a “new level in terms of image generation in general” — though she prefers her GANs.

“I very often don’t need a model that is very accurate to generate my work, as I like very much when things look indeterminate and not easily recognisable,” she said. 

Camille Lenglois of Paris’s Pompidou Centre — Europe’s largest collection of contemporary art — also played down any idea that artists were about to be replaced by machines.

She told AFP that machines did not yet have the “critical and innovative capacity”, adding: “The ability to generate realistic images does not make one an artist.”

TOKYO —A deadly pandemic with mysterious origins: it might sound like a modern headline, but scientists have spent centuries debating the source of the Black Death that devastated the medieval world.

Not anymore, according to researchers who say they have pinpointed the source of the plague to a region of Kyrgyzstan, after analysing DNA from remains at an ancient burial site.

“We managed to actually put to rest all those centuries-old controversies about the origins of the Black Death,” said Philip Slavin, a historian and part of the team whose work was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The Black Death was the initial wave of a nearly 500-year pandemic. In just eight years, from 1346 to 1353, it killed up to 60 percent of the population of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to estimates.

Slavin, an associate professor at the University of Stirling in Scotland who has “always been fascinated with the Black Death”, found an intriguing clue in an 1890 work describing an ancient burial site in what is now northern Kyrgyzstan.

It reported a spike in burials in 1338-39 and that several tombstones described people having “died of pestilence”.

“When you have one or two years with excess mortality it means that something funny was going on there,” Slavin told reporters.

“But it wasn’t just any year — 1338 and 1339 was just seven or eight years before the Black Death.”

It was a lead, but nothing more without determining what killed the people at the site.

For that, Slavin teamed up with specialists who examine ancient DNA.

They extracted DNA from the teeth of seven people buried at the site, explained Maria Spyrou, a researcher at the University of Tuebingen and author of the study.

Because teeth contain many blood vessels, they give researchers “high chances of detecting blood-borne pathogens that may have caused the deaths of the individuals,” Spyrou told AFP.

‘Big Bang’ event 

Once extracted and sequenced, the DNA was compared against a database of thousands of microbial genomes.

“One of the hits that we were able to get... was a hit for Yersinia pestis,” more commonly known as plague, said Spyrou.

The DNA also displayed “characteristic damage patterns,” she added, showing that “what we were dealing with was an infection that the ancient individual carried at the time of their death.”

The start of the Black Death has been linked to a so-called “Big Bang” event, when existing strains of the plague, which is carried by fleas on rodents, suddenly diversified.

Scientists thought it might have happened as early as the 10th century but had not been able to pinpoint a date.

The research team painstakingly reconstructed the Y. pestis genome from their samples and found the strain at the burial site pre-dated the diversification.

And rodents living in the region now were also found to be carrying the same ancient strain, helping the team conclude the “Big Bang” must have happened somewhere in the area in a short window before the Black Death.

The research has some unavoidable limitations, including a small sample size, according to Michael Knapp, an associate professor at New Zealand’s University of Otago who was not involved in the study.

“Data from far more individuals, times and regions... would really help clarify what the data presented here really means,” said Knapp.

But he acknowledged it could be difficult to find additional samples, and praised the research as nonetheless “really valuable”.

Sally Wasef, a paleogeneticist at Queensland University of Technology, said the work offered hope for untangling other ancient scientific mysteries.

“The study has shown how robust microbial ancient DNA recovery could help reveal evidence to solve long-lasting debates,” she told AFP.