There’s a reason why everyone goes gaga over Deepika Padukone. With her striking looks and superlative acting skills, the Bollywood diva has managed to win a global fan following.

Deepika makes heads turn almost every time she graces the red carpet. Here are some of the xXx: Return of Xander Cage actor’s most noteworthy public appearances.

1. Deepika took the xXx London premiere by storm in a red Stella McCartney gown. The smokey eyes and nude lips added to her overall look.

Fawad, Deepika turn showstoppers for Manish Malhotra at ICW

2.The Bajirao Mastani star was a vision in an embroidered Sabyasachi couture.

3. Sizzling in a dark-red Manish Malhotra ensemble, Deeps stunned at the India Couture Week 2016. The star sported a royal lehenga with an off-shoulder blouse, a polki-pearl choker and a hath-phool from Hazoorilal by Sandeep Narang.

4. Deepika set the mercury soaring in a scarlet Parbal Gurung gown

5. Draped in a white sari, Deepika made heads turn with her traditional look at the Cannes Film Festival.

I’m a very private person, Deepika Padukone says

6. A resplendent Deeps simply took our breath away in a canary Ralph Lauren gown at the Golden Globes after-party.

The diva effortlessly chanelled femininity and class together as she rocked a sleek black gown at the IIFA Awards 2016.

There's never been a better time to be a boy was the message at London Fashion Week Men's this morning when the high street chain opened proceedings with a reinvention of the British ‘lad’.

With a collection which took the happenings of a South London pub as a starting point, the Topman Design team set out to evoke memories of beer-soaked carpets and pool-playing landlords in a show which included psychedelic prints, bucket hats and laddish logos.

Typically for Topman, a brand that has long relied on music in order to make a connection with its customers, Nineties rave culture served as a point of inspiration with white sports socks and crucifix earrings unveiled alongside nylon anoraks.

Slouchy hooded sweaters and neon motocross leather trousers succeeded in cementing the collection in the era during which acid house and techno music enjoyed its heyday.

odels sporting slicked back hair and oily skin also served as proof that that these were clothes for a work hard and party harder generation.

The show kick started an action packed weekend of catwalk presentations with emerging talents such as Londoners Craig Green and Grace Wales Bonner expected to take to the catwalk.

On Monday Vivienne Westwood is to make a long awaited return to the British menswear catwalk.

This isn’t a modern ruse to attract more visitors in the bleak midwinter. It’s a tradition which dates right back to 1900. It’s thanks to a rich English bachelor called Henry Vaughan who built up a huge collection of Turner watercolours, then left them to these galleries when he died in 1899.

Born in 1809, the son of an affluent industrialist, Vaughan was the sort of aesthete you read about in Victorian novels.

With a private income and no need to work, he devoted his life to collecting art. Then as now, watercolours were very sensitive to sunlight, so Vaughan stipulated that his beloved pictures should only be shown in January when the sun was weakest.

Dublin and Edinburgh still obey his stern command (the other thing he insisted on was that admission to this exhibition should be free).

For 11 months every year, Dublin’s Turners are hidden in an antique cabinet, which Vaughan had specially made to store his precious paintings. The National Gallery’s curator, Anne Hodge, brings out a selection for me to see.

Vaughan gave 31 Turners to the National Gallery here in Dublin (still part of the United Kingdom back then, along with the rest of Ireland). The gallery has since acquired five more ("each of those shows much more sign of damage because they tended to be hung in people’s homes," says Anne).

Edinburgh’s Scottish National Gallery has 38 of Vaughan’s Turners, but Dublin has the best picture of Scotland’s capital - a stormy panorama seen from Arthur’s Seat, dark clouds looming over Auld Reekie.

Born in 1775, Turner was a generation older than Vaughan. The two men met in the 1840s when Turner was at the summit of his fame.

After Turner died, in 1851, Vaughan carried on buying up Turner’s paintings, collecting watercolours from every stage of his career. "He was interested in how artists worked, how artists created things," says Anne.

The first picture Anne shows me is an intricate depiction of beech trees on a windy day. It was painted in 1797, when Turner was still in his early twenties. Its pin-sharp detail is typical of his youthful style.

The next one she shows me is an Alpine landscape, painted 45 years later. It’s intensely impressionistic, 30 years ahead of Monet.

"You can see why Turner was inspirational to the French Impressionists," Anne tells me. "He’s developed from a traditional way of working into something really radical."

These two paintings sum up Turner’s journey from figuration to abstraction - that great leap from classicism into modernism which made him Britain’s greatest artist. "He was doing something new and different," says Anne. "He didn’t really care what people thought – he just did it."

The Vaughan Bequest contains countless treats, painted as far afield as Lucerne and Luxembourg. "Look how rough and ready it is!" says Anne, as we gaze in wonder at a dynamic mountain scene. "He’s a brilliant colourist."

Success gave Turner the means to travel, and his journeys are recorded here: up the Rhine and down the Danube, from Ostend to Venice and back again. However it’s his British seascapes which really arrest the eye.

There’s nothing wishy-washy about them. They’re fierce and gutsy - full of drama. Turner does more with a few splashes on a small piece of paper than most artists manage in oils on the biggest canvas. It’s thrilling to see these masterpieces preserved in Vaughan’s original frames.

"He chose works that were in very good condition, that showed no sign of fading," says Anne, as she carefully removes Turner’s masterworks from this custom-built cabinet.

"When this collection came to the gallery in 1900, everyone was astonished. It was all written up in the papers."

Although he travelled all over Europe, Turner never set foot in Ireland. Yet he’s always been famous here, just as famous as he is in England. Over a century later, this annual show is still one of the highlights of Dublin’s cultural calendar. It’s the gallery’s most popular show, with over 50,000 visitors every year.

But the last word should go to Walter Armstrong, who was Director of Dublin’s National Gallery when Vaughan made his bequest.

"In making his collection, he took the greatest care to confine himself to drawings in which he could see no fading," wrote Armstrong, of Vaughan, in 1902. "Once his, they were religiously protected from the sun."

It’s thanks to Vaughan’s tender loving care that these priceless watercolours still shine so brightly. "A century hence, Turner as a colourist will only survive in things which once formed part of the Vaughan collection," warned Armstrong, "unless those drawings which are still uninjured are put out of reach while there is still time."

J.M.W. Turner at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, and Turner in January 2017 at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh are both on display from 1 to 31 January 2017.

A version of this article was originally published by BBC News UK on 1 January 2016.

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2012 file photo, first lady Michelle Obama, dressed in a Tracy Reese pink silk jaquard dress, walks on the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. Reese, who hails from Detroit, is clearly one of the first lady’s favored designers as Obama has been photographed in her clothes between 20 and 30 times. Jae C. Hong, File AP Photo

NEW YORK 

The morning after Michelle Obama's big speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, in which she argued passionately for a second term for her husband, designer Tracy Reese's phone was ringing. And ringing.

Mrs. Obama's powerfully delivered speech had attracted much attention — but these phone calls were about her dress. A shimmering sleeveless sheath in rose and silvery gray, it was pretty universally considered a fashion slam dunk. And customers wanted it.

There was only one problem, Reese recalls: "We didn't have inventory — we had made that dress custom." And so the label went into production. "And people waited," Reese says. "You know, so many people admire Mrs. Obama and they want to dress like her. We sold quite a few of those dresses." She estimates the number at over 2,000.

Reese, who hails from Detroit, is one of the first lady's favored designers — Mrs. Obama has been photographed in her clothes some 20 to 30 times. But unlike some past first ladies who favored one or two big-name designers, Mrs. Obama has spread her fashion choices among a huge stable of them — often promoting lesser-known names, and taking care to promote American designers at such high-profile events as inaugurations, conventions and state dinners.

Which is why so many designers and industry watchers will miss her when she steps away from her post after eight fashion-conscious years, and why they consider her one of the most influential first ladies in fashion, perhaps even more so than Jacqueline Kennedy, because of her broad appeal.

"Michelle Obama embraced everyone," says Andre Leon Talley, a fashion editor at Vogue magazine. "She embraced black designers, Asian designers, European designers. ... She was very democratic in her choice of clothes."

And that includes wearing fashion that ordinary women could potentially afford — like cardigans from the retailer J. Crew.

"She's made an effort to wear accessible fashion," Reese says. "I think Jackie (Kennedy) was a great role model but she wore a lot of couture, and things that most Americans could not afford." Mrs. Obama, she says, has worn both high-end and moderately priced fashion.

Reese, who is African-American, is particularly proud that one of her designs — a black dress printed with bright red flowers — is on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The first lady wore it to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

Mrs. Obama set the stage for her broad-based fashion choices with her first inauguration. Previous first ladies had often gone with established luxury designers like Oscar de la Renta. Mrs. Obama wore a two-piece lemongrass-hued ensemble by Cuban-American designer Isabel Toledo for day, and a one-shouldered white gown by New York-based, Taiwanese-Canadian designer Jason Wu at night.

For her husband's second inauguration, she wore a sleek coat and dress by American designer Thom Browne, known for his eclectic talents, and in the evening Jason Wu again.

"It was an honor to have the opportunity to dress Mrs. Obama," Browne said in an email message. "She is such a stylish individual because of her confidence and intelligence."

For Browne, Toledo, Reese and others, it was never clear until the moment Mrs. Obama actually appeared whether she would be wearing their designs.

"We would get calls periodically from her team," says Reese. "But we never knew exactly what things were for and when she would be wearing them. And I think that that's just necessary, because you don't know when plans will change."

However it unfolded, it certainly could change a designer's career. "We've been brought to the attention of millions more people than we ever would have reached," Reese says.

David Yermack, a professor of corporate finance at New York University, studied the financial impact of Mrs. Obama's fashion choices in her first year as first lady. He says he found an immediate spike in stock prices of companies whose apparel she wore (he only examined publicly traded companies).

"There was a very strong and immediate reaction in the stock prices of the design firms and also the retailers," Yermack says. For major appearances, this could run into the tens of millions of dollars: "That's happened many times with her."

And the public, Yermack says, remembers what Mrs. Obama wears.

"Do you remember what Pat Nixon or Laura Bush wore? She has the ability to hold the interest of the consumer in a way that almost no one else does. I've looked far and wide — Kate Middleton, Carla Bruni. Nobody begins to approach Mrs. Obama on this."

Yermack thinks what's different about Mrs. Obama is that first ladies "have traditionally tried to be nondescript in the way they dressed — they didn't want to overshadow their spouses ... or be seen as spending a lot on clothing. But she had no inhibitions in that sense.

"She really had an impact on how professional women dressed, and how you could have fun with fashion, in a way that you couldn't imagine Rosalynn Carter or Barbara Bush ever doing," he says. "It's a very short list of first ladies who are going to leave that kind of legacy."

Source by: The news & observer