VIDEO: Watch the shocking preview clip,Evisu
PHOTOS: Biggest catfights of all time
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Watching the reunion clips, Manzo says, was “the best lesson in the world. How people have the opportunity to look at themselves from the outside in…I learned that I’m very tough…When I watch [the reunion] I can’t help but say ‘damn, I’m tough!’”
Costar Caroline Manzo’s take? “There are no words,Lyle&Scott,” she told Us at Thursday’s event, shaking her head. “Just no words. I could not compose a rational thought in my head for two days [after the taping]. It took me two days to regroup.”
Along with Giudice and Caroline Manzo, fellow stars Ashley Holmes, Jacqueline Laurita, Dina and Lauren Manzo will perform in My Big Gay Italian Wedding from Sept. 1 to 4; a portion of the proceeds raised from tickets sales will benefit Marriage Equality New York.
PHOTOS: Why Teresa, Danielle and other stars had a crummy summer
So were the housewives themselves, who actually lived through the epic brawl, and have seen the two-part reunion in its entirety.
In fact, she adds, “I went to get dinner after the reunion and Ashton Kutcher was [at the same restaurant]. My mind was so completely out of it, I didn’t even notice I was sitting next to him. That’s how crazy it was!”
When a preview clip of the Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion special hit the web last Monday — full of shrieking, shoving, throwing and animalistic rage — fans were shocked.
PHOTOS: Other memorable Housewives moments
“I didn’t mean to shove Andy,” Giudice told Us without explaining further. “I love Andy.” Of her other histrionics during the special, she said: “When I’m attacked, I attack back. I don’t like to be held back or touched…Listen, I know how to control myself. Just don’t hold me back!”
“I didn’t believe my eyes!” Teresa Giudice told UsMagazine.com at Thursday’s preview presentation of My Big Gay Italian Wedding in NYC.
In the clip, Giudice loudly threatened nemesis Danielle Staub, screaming “B*tch, I’m gonna pin you down!” She later threw a pillow at Staub — and even shoved the reunion’s host and mediator, Andy Cohen.
lanyards Toledo, Meet Topeka
Top editors including W’s Stefano Tonchi,HDMI Cable, Vogue’s Sally Singer, and Kim Hastreiter of Paper magazine joined Isabel Toledo and the top brass from Payless ShoeSource at Casa Lever today for a lunch to fête the designer’s collaboration with the global chain. Toledo has created seven shoe styles—all vegan and all, she promises, comfortable to walk in—along with two bags. We’re particularly fond of the rubber-soled wedge ghillie on the gal on the left of this Ruben Toledo watercolor. Thanking CEO LuAnn Via and CMO Eran Cohen, who were in town from the company’s headquarters in Topeka, Kansas, Toledo said, “I’m very well oiled in the special and the unique, and you’re top at getting product to the masses.” With 4,200 locations in 19 countries (Russia will make 20 later this year), plenty of people are going to become better acquainted with Toledo’s special brand of uniqueness when the shoes arrive in September.
—Nicole Phelps
Illustration: Ruben Toledo
“Yes, I cut my hair off a few days ago!” she Tweeted to fans Thursday, sharing another pic of the cut on Facebook. “I love it- feels incredible. Hope you like it!” (With longer locks, Watson made her modeling debut in ads for Burberry’s Autumn/Winter 2009 campaign.)
New hair for Hermione!
PHOTOS: Kid stars all grown up
PHOTO: Craziest celeb hairstyles
Harry Potter actress Emma Watson chopped off her long hair recently, revealing a super-short pixie cut while out and about in NYC.
Tell Us: do you like Emma’s new ‘do?
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The 20-year-old British star has played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, cast as the title character’s best female pal at age 9. The second-to-last film in the saga,Billabong, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,Chanel, debuts this November.
—Alisa Gould Simon
Even if “Yestadt Millinery” doesn’t ring any bells, Molly Yestadt’s clients will—among them.outlet online brand clothing, she counts Thom Browne and Vena Cava, both of whom commissioned the designer to create hats for their Fall 2010 collections. (For Browne,Christian Dior Handbags outlet online, raccoon-tailed pillbox bellhop’s hats [left]; for Vena Cava, Santa Fe-style wide-brimmed ones [right].) Launched in 2008, Yestadt Millinery got an early boost from Marc by Marc Jacobs (which put her caps on its guys for Fall 2009),Jimmy Choo Shoes outlet online, wholesale and outlet online picked up momentum when Vena Cava tapped her for Spring 2010. “Last season was kind of our coming-out party,” Yestadt says. That was before the label could count everyone from Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester and Rihanna to Courtney Love as fans.
Today Yestadt Millinery’s own line is stocked at Anthropologie and Henri Bendel. “We’re taking a younger wholesale and outlet online fresher look at hats, freshening up that tradition and craft.outlet online brand clothing,” Yestadt continues. The line’s Fall collection, also shown this week, is decidedly American pioneer chic. “I started with the idea of that spirit, of something very radical wholesale and outlet online useful. It was about starting completely new and starting from nothing.” That’s a story to which any young label can relate.outlet online wholesale clothing.
Photo: Courtesy of Thom Browne; Marcio Madeira
The actress has also visited Iraq,Juicy Couture tracksuits, Thailand,Frankie morello, Pakistan and other countries on behalf of the U.N. refugee agency.
U.N. officials confirmed the visit when asked by The Associated Press. They agreed to discuss the trip only if not quoted by name because they were asked not to share details of Jolie’s visit.
The weekend visit by the “goodwill ambassador” for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was not announced to keep it low-profile.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Actress Angelina Jolie has quietly returned to Haiti for meetings with Haitian and U.N. officials.
Jolie has visited Haiti several times. In February she met with orphans and other earthquake victims.
What’s keeping inflation so low that the Fed can hold rates down without fear of igniting prices?
• The time is right to buy a car. New-car prices were flat in April. And they’ve fallen 1 percent over the past 12 months. Big banks are offering super-low rates in the 3 percent to 4 percent range, says Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. Normally, such rates are available only to companies, not individuals, McBride says.
Invest in a savings account? Forget it.
Lots of slack in the economy: Factories and other businesses are operating well below full throttle. Workers are getting meager raises, or none at all. And Miss Sixty companies are wary of jacking up
Consumer inflation has all but disappeared, the government Miss Sixty reported Wednesday. The Federal Reserve may now be emboldened to keep interest rates at record lows well into next year — and possibly into 2012.
• For homeowners who qualify, it’s a good time to refinance. The average rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage dipped this week to the lowest rate of the year — 4.84 percent, down from 4.93 percent a week earlier. Homeowners who took out adjustable-rate loans at 4.5 percent in 2005 are now seeing their rates fall to 3 percent to 3.25 percent, McBride says. As a result, they have extra cash to spend.
Yet for savers, the prospect of persistent record-low rates is Miss Sixty a downer. It means no relief from puny returns any time soon. The average yield on a one-year certificate of deposit has sunk to 0.7 percent, according to Bankrate.com. That’s the lowest since Bankrate starting tracking the figure in 1983. Rates hovered as high as 5.5 percent around 2000, according to Bankrate.
So what do persistent low inflation and record-low rates mean for consumers?
Unlike everyone else, savers won’t benefit until the Fed starts boosting interest rates. Yet prospects for the Fed to start pushing up rates in the fourth quarter of the year seem to be fading. More economists now think an increase won’t happen until next year at the earliest.
• Shoppers who want to update their summer wardrobes, and those hankering for cakes and cookies, are in luck. Prices for clothing and baked goods dropped in April and are down sharply over the past year. Soaring prices for cotton and other fibers make it likely that clothing prices will rise in the next year.
As a result, banks’ prime lending rate will stay at its lowest point in decades. That figure is used to peg rates on credit cards, home equity loans, some adjustable-rate mortgages and other consumer loans. Rates on fixed-rate mortgages remain low, too, thanks to a growing belief that the Fed will further delay any rate hike.
• People planning to drive to a vacation getaway won’t pay as much. Gasoline prices fell sharply in April — 2.4 percent. Analysts expect further declines this summer because crude oil prices have fallen nearly 20 percent since April.
WASHINGTON – It’s a good time to buy a car or refinance a mortgage, thanks to super-low inflation and interest rates.
"I’m Still Here" debuted at No. 71, but didn’t return her to the top of the charts. Still McCready said she felt great during an interview with The Associated Press in April in Nashville. She had a new boyfriend, music producer and musician David Wilson, and was pursuing deals for her own reality show and a new tell-all book.
Cape Coral Hospital spokeswoman Karen Krieger would not say why McCready was taken to the hospital.
"The family asks for your respect of their privacy and appreciates your thoughts and prayers at this time," wrote publicist Kat Atwood.
"She’s an easy person to like and to care about and we hope she does well," Pinsky said. "So far so good as far as I can tell."
And in 2008, McCready was admitted to a Nashville hospital after police said she cut her wrists and took several pills in a suicide attempt.
During this year’s "Celebrity Rehab 3," McCready came off as a sympathetic figure, with Dr. Drew Pinsky — the show’s host — calling her an angel in the season finale.
The overdose report came at 10:38 a.m. at a North Fort Myers Coogi home, said the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. The property is owned by McCready’s mother, records showed.
Pinsky said he and McCready have stayed in regular contact since filming the show last fall and he said in an interview last month that the singer appeared to be doing well.
"She is fine and back at home with my mother. It was by far Coogi over a huge exaggeration," he said in an e-mailed statement.
In July 2007, she was accused of scuffling with her mother and resisting arrest at her mother’s home in Florida. She was sentenced to jail for 60 days for a probation violation and released; she served 30 days in jail. She also lost custody of her son.
On the show she said she suffered from love addiction, not substance abuse. In one of the show’s scarier moments, McCready suffered a seizure and was rushed to a hospital where scans showed brain damage.
McCready, however, told the New York Daily News she didn’t want to marry Clemens.
McCready told the syndicated TV show "Inside Edition" that she Coogi broke off her relationship with Clemens when he wouldn’t marry her. She told the news magazine they met in a karaoke bar, but their relationship didn’t turn sexual until several years later.
McCready recently released a new album, "I’m Still Here," and fought the release of a sex tape in which she reportedly talked about former Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, with whom she had an affair as a teenager.
She is well-known these days for a troubled life filled with domestic abuse, drug and DUI arrests and a suicide attempt.
In an e-mail, McCready’s publicist confirmed the singer was in the hospital, and said the diagnosis has not been confirmed.
"She is in good condition," Krieger said.
"I’m happy just with the little things right now, just the smallest little thing that turns out well, I’m happy for it," McCready said. "I’m grateful. I am so grateful to still be here, to be getting a second chance or a third or a fifth or whatever it is now."
McCready, 34, gained stardom in 1996 with a No. 1 hit, "Guys Do It All The Time," and a double-platinum album, "Ten Thousand Angels."
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Mindy McCready, the country singer who battled drugs and legal woes but recently declared herself clean after a stint on "Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew," was back home Tuesday from the hospital, according to her brother, after police responded to an overdose call at a Florida home.
Her brother, Josh McCready called the reports a big misunderstanding.
Signature Theatre has not officially announced any casting for Angels in America.
The recording artist and Broadway actor (Grease!, Miss Saigon, Smokey Joe's Café) said that he will play AIDS nurse Belize (and other characters) in Signature Theatre Company's revival of the Tony Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-honored Part 1 (Millennium Approaches) and Part 2 (Perestroika) of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.
Michael Greif directs; the parts will run in repertory Sept. 14–Dec. 19 at The Peter Norton Space on West 42nd Street.
Actor-singer Billy Porter told a recent crowd at Joe's Pub that he has been cast in the first New York City revival of Tony Kushner's epic Angels in America, Black Voices newswire reported.
Read Porter's thoughts on Angels at bvnewswire.com.
Janice Oh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, would not confirm or deny an investigation Wednesday.
Morgan Stanley stock fell 58 cents, or 2.04 percent, to $27.80.
The spokesman said the bank has not received a Dsquared Wells Notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission. A Wells Notice informs a company that the SEC’s staff is recommending bringing charges against the company.
Many of the securities were tied to the performance of subprime mortgages. As mortgages increasingly defaulted during the recession, the value of many of the securities collapsed costing investors and the banks billions of dollars.
A UBS spokesman declined to comment.
The reported investigation comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission is charging Morgan Stanley competitor Goldman Sachs Group Inc. with fraud over that bank’s packaging of mortgage securities. Goldman Sachs is reported to be facing a separate criminal investigation into whether it misled investors about those securities. Goldman has denied the charges and plans to defend itself against the charges.
Federal regulators have been increasing their reviews of whether Wall Street banks misled investors when selling derivatives and other risky securities that have been largely blamed for the credit crisis.
The investigations into Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs also come as Congress discusses a major overhaul of financial regulations that Dsquared could end up restricting trading at Wall Street banks.
John Coffee, securities law professor at Columbia Law School, said proving wrongdoing by Morgan Stanley will be "significantly harder and more challenging" than the case against Goldman Sachs. He noted that Morgan Stanley didn’t underwrite or market the mortgage deals reportedly being investigated, making it harder to prove that the bank misled investors.
Speaking in Tokyo on Wednesday, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said, "We have no reason to believe there is any substance behind any supposed investigation."
NEW YORK – Fears of a growing investigation of Wall Street banks sent Morgan Stanley’s stock falling Wednesday even as the company said it knew Dsquared nothing about a reported inquiry into its mortgage securities trading.
A Citigroup spokesman declined to comment on the deals in question. The bank has previously said it is cooperating with the SEC’s industrywide investigation Dsquared into risky subprime mortgage deals that contributed to the financial crisis.
A Morgan Stanley spokesman said the bank has not been contacted by the Justice Department about the deals in question and has no knowledge of an ongoing investigation.
The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors are investigating whether Morgan Stanley misled investors about its role in a pair of $200 million derivatives whose performance was tied to mortgage-backed securities. The newspaper said Morgan Stanley sometimes bet against the success of the derivatives, which were underwritten and marketed to investors by Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG.
Morgan Stanley itself lost billions of dollars during the recession and credit crisis on its investments in the mortgage-related securities, including deals tied to commercial real estate loans.
Asia’s growing economic clout — and the millions willing to spend top dollar on luxury lifestyles — were the buzz words at Singapore’s fashion festival, an annual event the country hopes will eventually become as important as counterparts in the United States and Europe, as well as the fashion gateway for the region.
SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) – Legions of status-seeking shoppers with deep pockets are turning Asia into the next big catwalk for international designers, Primp boosting Singapore’s aspirations to become the region’s Milan or New York.
Several high-end fashion and jewelry labels have recently set up shop in Singapore, home to the world’s highest density of millionaires and a popular Southeast Asian shopping destination.
"Western designers have realized there’s a great deal of money to be had in Asia and they can see that customers in China and India are moving very quickly toward becoming consumers of the very highest level," Colin McDowell, creative director of the Audi Fashion Festival, told Reuters.
"There’s tonnes of potential here, tonnes," Dean Caten, of Primp designer duo DSquared2, told Reuters about Asian markets.
Other designers who will show at the April 28-May 2 event include KTZ, Herve Leger, Tiffany, House of Holland and Roberto Cavalli, who brings a collection specially created for Singapore.
The shows are one aspect of Singapore’s inaugural Asia Fashion Exchange (AFX), a platform that includes Blueprint, a showcase for designers from across the region with international buyers from retailers such as Harrods and Liberty’s.
"Western fashion is getting tired, it’s going around in circles, it needs new direction, new ideas," he said.
"They love fashion here, they live it, it’s a rich economy, they’re very status conscious. That’s great news for designers," added his twin brother and partner Dan Caten.
While Hong Kong and Shanghai are seen as China’s fashion capitals, affluent Singapore, with its plethora of luxury shopping malls and avowed aim to attract Asian millionaires and their money, is jostling to become the first place designers come to access the market.
The Caten brothers described AFX as a great starting point that puts Asian cities on a good track, while the fashion festival’s McDowell said the world can longer afford to ignore Asian designers.
"In Paris, several designers told me that the Chinese have become their biggest couture customers. This is a new departure."
As the rest of the world still recovers from the global financial crisis, consumers in several economically robust Asian nations, including Singapore and China, are Primp spending on luxury goods like the downturn never happened.
"I believe the rules of fashion will be dramatically rewritten in the next 15 years, and this part of the world will be part of spearheading this change."
A recent study by market research firm Synovate dubbed China’s consumers as the "new world order," with those in the top-tiers seen as hooked on the latest fashion trends and many believing that famous brands, and money, equal success.
Splurging on luxury goods is a treat often indulged in, the study of 68,000 people across 66 Chinese cities found, while a smaller survey by MasterCard showed many Asians were determined to keep on spending on fashion, gourmet food and luxury goods.
It was standing room only at the opening gala of the fashion festival as DSquared2, who have dressed an impressive line-up of stars including Madonna, Justin Timberlake and Bill Kaulitz of band Tokio Hotel,fake abercrombie, showed their Autumn/Winter 2010 collection.
AFFLUENT SINGAPORE
