Speaking of past seasons, Lorenz has once again joined forces with Alexandre Plokhov. (The two collaborated before she launched Fenton.) Tomorrow, Plokhov makes his return to New York with his debut womenswear collection after spending time working for Versace.

“He wanted the jewelry to be really graphic and strong but almost seamless with the clothing,” Lorenz tells Style.com of the oversized cuffs she created, in basic black and white as well as “shocking” colors. “We used rough-cut diamonds as inspiration—the result is a multifaceted, enormous cuff; they are huge!”
—Kristin Studeman

Photo: Ben Gabbe / BFAnyc.com

The first-term Republican governor has long been concerned that top high school graduates go elsewhere for college and often stay there rather than staying put in New Jersey, one of the few states where the flagship public university doesn’t contain the state name.

Part of the problem is a shortage of slots for students, and part is the reputation of Rutgers, a school of 58,000 students spread across three campuses.

Under the governor’s plan, fast-growing Rowan University, which 20 years ago was largely a teacher’s college known as Glassboro State College, would take over the Rutgers-Camden campus, including its law school, in suburban Philadelphia.

Rutgers, whose main campuses are 30 miles from New York City, would absorb parts of the scandal-stained University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, gaining a medical school. The remaining parts of the University of Medicine and Dentistry would be renamed the New Jersey Health Sciences University.

“We cannot compete economically in this state with good but not great institutions at any level,” Christie said at a news conference. “We need to make the steps happen to allow us to go from good to great.”

Officials at Rowan are excited about the idea,wholesale Dsquared, but it’s causing consternation at Rutgers-Camden. Rutgers officials at other campuses say they need more time to study the plan.

Christie said the moves would strengthen New Jersey’s entire higher education system, giving southern New Jersey a major research university, improving the links between research and patient treatment, and strengthening ties to the state’s pharmaceutical industry at Rutgers’ main campus in New Brunswick and Piscataway.

He said they would also give a new start and more focused mission to the University of Medicine and Dentistry, which spent years mired in scandal related to no- or low-show jobs being given in exchange for steering patients or taxpayer money to the school, billing irregularities and employees accepting favors from contractors.

The idea of major university reconfiguration has been around for a decade, but university officials and politicians have never mustered the will to make it happen.

The strong-willed governor cited one major difference this time around that he said will result in real change: “It’s me.”

Christie said that the cost has not yet been calculated but that most of it would be absorbed by the current university budgets. He said there would not need to be deep layoffs anywhere, as long as the universities as constituted now aren’t overstaffed but he said there might be.

At Rutgers-Camden, third-year law student Wali Rushdan said many students were concerned about whether losing the Rutgers brand would make it harder to attract top faculty or make it more difficult for graduates to get jobs.

“The general mood is that people are completely against it and we wonder where the authority for it even comes from,” said Rushdan, 29.

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Follow Mulvihill at http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill.

HSBC.

“The Chinese market is too big to be neglected for most foreign companies,” Hua said. “Once the dust settles, foreign investment inflows into China are expected to rise steadily again.”

Still, total FDI in the year to date of $103.8 billion suggest 2011 is poised to be a record-breaking year.

Hua noted, however, that rising costs in China and a slowdown in the global economy were forcing some low-end manufacturers to relocate to other regions.

The contraction indicated by the PMI came swiftly after Commerce Ministry data revealed the first year-on-year fall in foreign direct investment growth in China in 28 months.

But Hua Zhongwei, an economist with Huachuang Securities in Beijing, says the long-term allure to global investors of the world’s second-biggest economy remained strong and he expected a reasonably swift rebound.

The PMI, the earliest indicator of China’s industrial activity, is likely to entrench views that manufacturers are struggling with waning global demand and tight domestic credit conditions.

Qu’s comments accompanied the release of the HSBC flash manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI), which showed China’s factory activity shrank again in December after new orders fell.

“With inflation quickly shifting to disinflation, the Chinese government can and should make more aggressive easing on both fiscal and monetary fronts to stabilize growth and jobs.”

Data from the Commerce Ministry showed that U.S. investments in China dropped 23.1 percent from a year earlier to $2.74 billion in the first 11 months of the year.

Investments from the European Union — China’s single largest trading partner — were $5.98 billion in the January-November period, up a tiny 0.29 percent from a year earlier.

Investments from 10 of China’s Asian neighbors, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan and South Korea, however, jumped 17.98 percent to $89.6 billion in the same period.

Service-sector FDI was up 18.6 percent between January and November, more than twice the 7.6 percent rate of growth in the manufacturing sector in the same period.

Separately, China has approved 74 yuan foreign direct investment (FDI) projects since the yuan FDI rules were launched in October, with total investments of 16.53 billion yuan ($2.6 billion), Huang Feng, a foreign investment official with the Ministry of Commerce, was quoted by the local media as saying.

Investment inflows, which surged in the years after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, have recovered strongly after being hit hard by the global economic slowdown.

EXPORT OUTLOOK SEVERE

But the darkening backdrop is clearly concerning Chinese officials, with economic growth having slowed for three straight quarters and many forecasters expecting it to dip in 2012 below 9 percent for the first time since 2001.

“The overall trade environment next year for China will be complicated, partly due to the economic uncertainties in the European countries, and I should say that the export situation in the first quarter of next year will be very severe,” Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang told a news conference at the release of the FDI data.

Growth in Chinese exports and imports slowed in November, fresh evidence of faltering demand abroad and at home that is pushing Beijing towards a more explicit pro-growth policy stance, data showed on December 10.

Customs data showed exports at their most sluggish in two years — stripping out the volatile month of February, which was affected by the Lunar New Year holiday.

PMI data delivered more evidence of a further slowdown in export orders. They barely grew on the month and a sub-index of output prices signaled a further fall in the prices Chinese firms were able to charge to get goods out of the gates.

The uncertainty of the external environment saw China on Wednesday pledge to guarantee growth in the face of an “extremely grim” outlook for the global economy in 2012, rounding off its annual policy-setting conference with a series of commitments to deliver economic stability.

Economists say fine-tuning of economic policy towards a pro-growth setting is already under way. Data showed Chinese banks made 562 billion yuan of new loans in November, a shade more than forecast as Beijing gently eases tight credit conditions.

Bank lending is a focal point in China’s monetary policy as it is controlled by the government to steer economic growth and control inflation.

Inflation appears to be coming off the boil, having fallen from a three-year high of 6.5 percent in July to 4.2 percent in November, but stability-obsessed Beijing is wary of any policy that might fire up prices again.

Periods of high inflation have historically been accompanied by periods of social tension, making the leaders of China’s ruling Communist Party particularly sensitive to sharp price rises or a sudden erosion of consumer spending power.

However, Beijing this week also promised a tight leash on the property sector to cool housing prices and bring them back to a “reasonable level,” which some investors fear could add to the risks of an economic hard landing as prices and investment fall.

(Editing by Nick Edwards and Alex Richardson)

The data highlights increasing risks to China’s growth emanating from a deterioration in developed market economies while domestic demand is being dented by government efforts to rein in rampant real estate inflation.

November’s $8.8 billion of commitments were down 9.8 percent on November 2010, the first fall since July 2009’s 35.7 percent year-on-year collapse to $5.4 billion.

BEIJING (Reuters) China’s economic growth could be slowing further as data on Thursday showed the first year-on-year drop in foreign direct investment in 28 months and a fresh fall in new orders signaled a further contraction in factory activity.

U.S. INFLOWS SINK

“Growth momentum remains weak with additional downside risks from exports and the property market not yet fully filtering through,” said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist at

A sharp drop in inflows from the United States was a particular drag, slowing year-to-date growth in FDI flows to 13.2 percent from 15.9 percent in October’s data.

The slowdown in FDI growth comes after the first outflow in net capital from China in four years in October, part of a recent trend of capital flight from emerging markets largely driven by Europe’s festering debt crisis.

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté is certainly used to flights of fancy, but this one was more unusual than most: a “poetic social mission” in space, on board the International Space Station. He documented the experience in a series of extraordinary photographs, which are gathered in “GAIA,” just published by Assouline.

To see photographs from “GAIA,” click the slide show at left. The book is available from Assouline.

Not a professional photographer, Laliberté found that he was able to frame his shots gracefully, perhaps because of his work at Cirque du Soleil. He described an experience of seeing clouds circling the earth morph into familiar forms, tumbling through the thin air at great height: “suddenly you surprise yourself looking and identify an animal shape or a character in motion.”

The trip into space was a rare — and expensive — opportunity. Thewinding down of the American space program has made space tourism even more difficult than it was before, according to Laliberté, who paid $35 million for the privilege of hitching a ride on a Russian space shuttle. Of his 11 days in space, nine were spent on the International Space Station, which orbited around the earth 176 times during his stay. Did he harbor any trepidation before his adventure? No. “I have never nurtured fear,” he said. His boldness was rewarded with extraordinary vistas, as well as some unexpected perks. “The food was great,” said Laliberté, with the cuisine inspired by many nations’ culinary traditions. “I was surprised to see how good the food was and how varied it was.”

But it was those vistas, of course, that will linger. The book’s stunning photographs reveal bodies of water nestled between mountains, elegantly rippled coastlines, snaking rivers, alien patterns in cracked dry earth, and vast spherical spacescapes. They are accompanied by quotations from all over the world. “Part of the concept of the book tried to create not only images to show the beauty of the planet but texts by people greater than I am” to encourage reflection, Laliberté said.

“Wings,” a World War I aerial dogfight epic made in 1927, won the first ever Oscar for best picture. Paramount Pictures, which is celebrating its centenary, has restored the classic silent action film and will present it with live organ accompaniment at the headquarters of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences on Wednesday, ahead of a Blu-ray release on January 24th.

William Wellman, a veteran World War I fighter pilot, directed “Wings,” giving 1927 audiences a view of the world most had never seen. With cameras affixed to the flimsy bi-planes, a crew of flyers created dogfights featuring death-defying aerial stunts that continue to amaze viewers today.

“The thing about ‘Wings’ that’s so exciting is that it was the ‘Avatar’ and the ‘Star Wars’ of its day. It was a state of the art action film,” said Academy archivist Randy Haberkamp.

Set in Hollywood during the advent of sound, “The Artist” is not the only new movie focusing on early cinema. Martin Scorsese’s 3D family film “Hugo” centers on French film pioneer Georges Melies, and in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” Owen Wilson plays a modern screenwriter time traveling back to the 1920s.

“I think the zeitgeist is the realization that silent films are not a dead art form because true cinema is a very visceral and visually-generated thing,” Haberkamp said.

In “Wings,” Richard Arlen played David Armstrong, a small-town kid with a taste for speed. Immune to the affection of Mary (Clara Bow), the girl next door, he is smitten by city girl Sylvia (Jobyna Ralston). His rival in romance is Jack Powell (Charles Rogers), heir to a fortune.

Volunteering for service, the two men become fast friends through their wartime experience. Early on, they meet Gary Cooper playing a doomed pilot in one of his first screen appearances, a role that catapulted him to stardom.

WAY OVER BUDGET

Budgeted at what was then a record-setting $2 million dollars, “Wings” wound up costing way over that amount while Wellman spent idle days waiting for clouds, which he claimed were needed to offset the planes against the background.

Due to his bickering with studio brass, Wellman was not invited to the 1929 Oscar ceremony even though the movie was a hit. Powered by public enthusiasm for Charles Lindbergh’s daring crossing of the Atlantic, “Wings” went on to become one of the top-grossing films of the decade.

Silent, black-and-white movie “The Artist”, directed by Frenchman Michel Hazanavicius, is unlikely to become a major box office blockbuster despite having won more than 40 awards, including three Golden Globes last Sunday.

But it is considered a front-runner for the best film Oscar in February, and it may represent a reexamination of cinema’s early roots in an era of dwindling movie goers.

“Through festivals and the availability of different kinds of materials on streaming and DVD release, I think people are experimenting with different types of films,” said Paramount archive vice-president Andrea Kalas.

“People listen to the Beatles and the latest thing, and maybe something similar is happening with film too, where we’re appreciating all sorts of different movies from different eras,” Kalas said.

Oddly, early film technique has become more relevant in the modern era where a proliferation of digital effects has resulted in spectacle-driven box office. Consequently, action scenes are becoming longer and dialogue scenes shorter.

“Most of the movies that we go to see now are based on action sequences,” said Haberkamp. “If you don’t know how to cut an action sequence, if you don’t know how to stage an action sequence, you don’t know too much. Frankly, that’s where the silent era really was phenomenal.”

With all the technical advancements through the years, not a lot has changed, according to Haberkamp. What continues to make cinema past and present a unique art form is the transposition of images and the ability to manipulate time and space.

“In the end, I don’t care whether it’s silent or sound I just care whether it’s compelling and well made,” he said. “I think that’s why there are so many people looking at silents going, ‘Wait a minute, there’s something going on here that is more than just a dated technology.’”

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Bob Tourtellotte)

Throwell’s piece caused some gawking on the street, and shocked viewers into reconsidering their relationship to what Throwell calls “the most mysterious street in America.” “Ocularpation” was developed while the artist was in a residency given by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council: for 6 months, Throwell worked in a basement studio at 14 Wall Street and investigated the area’s significance, social, political, and artistic. ARTINFO spoke to the artist just hours after the “Ocularpation” performance ended, and chatted about the inspiration for the performance, the immediate reaction, and why it wasn’t “just a flash mob where people run up and take their clothes off”: 

What was the inspiration for the “Ocularpation” performance?

My mother put away her money, like a good American, into retirement, and she retired in mid-60s. Then the stock market crashed, and she lost almost all of her savings. She had to come out of retirement and look for a job, but no one wanted to hire a woman in her mid-60s. It took her a long time to find a job. First she was depressed, but then she was furious. Over the course of the past 3 years, there has been no change in the system that caused the damage that violently altered her life. She feels she was straight up swindled by people who had nothing happen to them.

This project is a direct response to the opacity of the financial industry in the United States. It’s call “Ocularpation Wall Street”, a combination of ocular, as in sight, and occupation, meaning job, and the taking of a site, the military term. Aggressively performing your profession in public.

How did the actual performance get started?

The first half was a survey that I took of Wall Street, to find out who actually works on Wall Street. I went business to business, asking what jobs they did there. I came up with a chart listing who works on the most mysterious street in America. Then I got performers to perform those jobs, in the percentage that they were represented, on the street itself.

There were 10% personal assistants, 8% stock traders, and 2% prostitutes, for example. The actual project had 200 people in it, 50 performers, and then there were helpers, and there were people documenting it. We met up in a park beforehand, then walked down to Wall Street, and everyone was spread out evenly down the whole street. Right at 7 a.m. people began working their professions, I was a hot dog vendor. Lawyers, federal workers, museum workers, janitorial was huge. The performers started clothed, after about a minute, they start stripping down, they were naked for maybe a minute, then they started putting clothes back on. At 7:05 it was all over.

Who were your volunteers?

Mostly artists I know, a few people who contacted me about the performance as well. Drea Bernardi, she’s an artist that helped me a lot with the performance.

I heard a few people actually got arrested. What was the reaction like?    

There were three arrested out of 50, they were taken to 1st Precinct, charged with disorderly conduct, and something else I haven’t heard of before, exposure of a person. [Note: Throwell followed the three and later bailed them out.]

The general reaction was fantastic, actually. The NYPD was very excited, very supportive. They wanted to talk about it, to know what I think about it. Public reaction was also fantastic. I’m a fan of the absurd; I think it’s something audiences really get. Still, a lot of people didn’t even stop and look, they just kept walking, Blackberries blazing. If an army of naked people can’t get you to stop, I don’t know what can.

Did you warn anyone before the performance started?

No. These are public streets. Part of my practice is reclaiming public property for us. As our culture is slowly devoured by corporations and all the public things begin to disintegrate, it’s our responsibility as citizens to aggressively reclaim space for ourselves.

Was the performance just about the Wall Street crash, or are there other political factors?

It’s no coincidence that we scheduled a performance for the day that America was going to default. My personal feelings are that, with these mechanics that affect our current financial state … it’s just not this abstract concept. My mother is this woman who was derailed from the reward of being a hard working American. It’s very concrete, very real. It’s easy in the news to get lost in the abstract pie graphs of unemployment, but that’s definitely not the case here.

So this is your way of putting Wall Street’s machinations in front of people’s faces?    

Yeah.

See the slideshow at left for photos of Zefrey Throwell’s “Ocularpation: Wall Street” performance. Warning: They definitely feature naked people. 

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Demolition crews used high explosives to implode the 20-story former Prudential Building that had been a landmark of the district landscape southwest of downtown Houston since 1952.

The crews had planned initially to touch off the explosives shortly before 8 a.m. Sunday,wholesale Ed hardy scarves, but dense fog delayed the series of blasts until 11:15 a.m.

The Prudential Insurance Co. of America built the 500,000-square-foot skyscraper to serve as its southwest regional headquarters. The M.D. Anderson Cancer Center bought the building in 1974 and made it the center’s main building in 1980 before vacating and closing the building in April 2010.

Most of the printscome from the archive of the John Kobal Foundation, founded by the eponymous collector who began tracking down the photographers behind the glossy images in the 1950s and ’60s, just as corporate takeovers of the big Hollywood studios began phasing out the promotional practice. He continued to collect the photos until his death in 1991.

“When he becameinterested in the men behind the images, almost all of them were still aliveand reachable,” said film and art critic John Russell Taylor about Kobal. “It was John who realized their importance, at a time when no one else gave adamn about them.”

Studios used tosend the commissioned portraits to fans and the media in efforts to spread wordabout the features. Eugene Roberts captured a 1929 black-and-white photographof Louise Brooks that elegantly resembles the era’s fashion illustrations. Other highlights of the exhibition include a 1950 portrait ofa hunky Marlon Brando used to promote “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and adisheveled Vivian Leigh in a 1939 shot from “Gone With the Wind.” Striking images of Elizabeth Taylor,Joan Collins, Grace Kelly, and Clark Gable are also on view.

Clickon the photo gallery at left to view images from “Glamour of the Gods:Hollywood Portraits.”

The studio will release the fourth installment of its series on October 19.

The most recent “Paranormal” movie, this year’s “Paranormal Activity 3,Wholesale Ed hardy,” was released October 21. It opened to $54 million for the biggest October opening ever. The first “Paranormal,” made for a mere $15,000, grossed $193.3 million worldwide. It was released the last week in September, 2009. The second, made for $3 million, grossed $177.5 million worldwide. It was released October 22, 2010.

“Paranormal 4″ will open against “The Big Wedding,” a romantic comedy from Lionsgate, and “Gangster Squad,” a Warner Bros. crime drama.

TheWrap reported in October that a fourth “Paranormal” was all but certain.

* March 2011 — Alexander McQueen Fashion House. In what might be termed a case of “loose lips sink ships,” the fashion house’s CEO Jonathan Akeroyd is said to have told a professional contact that the British design house had received the commission. This would put the late fashion designer’s right-hand assistant and current Alexander McQueen label creative director, Sarah Burton,Cheap Ed hardy belts, in charge of Middleton’s wedding gown.

* March 2011 — Bruce Oldfield. If the name sounds familiar, royal watchers are sure to remember that Bruce Oldfield was credited with being the late Princess Diana’s favorite designer. Eagle-eyed reporters keeping an eye on the premises of notable British fashion houses reported that Middleton’s sister (the maid of honor), her mother and also the Countess of Wessex have been seen frequenting the establishment. The latter is the mother of 7-year-old Lady Louise Windsor, who is one of the bridesmaids at Prince William and Kate’s wedding.

* February 2011 — Erdem Moralioğlu. A powerhouse in the British fashion industry, his fashion house was rumored to be perfect for Middleton’s sense of style. Not outrageous or controversial, Erdem fashions are known to flatter slimmer models who can carry a traditional look. In the same breath, fashion gossips pooh-poohed the idea of the bride’s hiring Bruce Oldfield and putting herself in competition with Prince William’s late mother.

* December 2010 — David Emanuel. The designer of Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding gown was thought to be the natural choice for Prince William’s bride. While the dress made of antique lace, ivory silk and taffeta was a breathtaking creation for the Princess of Wales, it is difficult to imagine the much more independent and less demure Middleton in these types of traditional trappings. David Emanuel has not been mentioned recently when discussing the royal wedding gown.

* November 2010 — Phillipa Lepley. She was an early favorite among the betting public. The fact Middleton chose an Issa creation when facing the press after the engagement announcement was thought to speak volumes. Close in style to Lepley gown looks, the designer who is billed as “London’s leading couture bridal designer” would have been a logical choice for the royal bride’s fashion style.

Alexander McQueen’s fashion house categorically denies being involved with the April wedding or its gown. This, of course, is par for the course.