Word: branded
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...same can be said of Thailand's fledgling fashion industry. No longer a cheap haven for the manufacture of apparel invented elsewhere, the country has lately been generating fashion designers like China churns out brand-name knockoffs. "I can count about 30 new designers on the market in just the last year or so," says Anna Limpichart, a fashion-show organizer responsible for next month's Bangkok Fashion Week, an annual runway showcase for local designers. Even seen-it-all international cognoscenti are taking notice. After attending last year's Bangkok Fashion Week, Paris-based fashion critic Diane Pernet said...
...What you increasingly see in Paris and Milan department stores and boutiques, though, are clothes from Thailand. The Senada Theory brand, by designer Chanita Preechawitayakul, is sold in more than 100 shops worldwide, and sales have been growing at an average of 30% annually for the past several years. Greyhound, too, is widening its footprint: overseas sales increased twofold in 2005 and a new franchise store in Australia is planned for this year. Department stores around the world, including Isetan in Tokyo, Barneys in New York and Harrods in London, also stock Thai-designed clothes...
...beneficiaries of Thailand's new fashion consciousness is Disaya Prakobsantisukh, a lingerie designer who opened her first Bangkok shop in 2004 while still a fashion student in London. Disaya, 27, sells her Boudoir brand in five spots around Bangkok. She describes her creations?which also include lingerie-inspired ready-to-wear clothes?as "very femme ... sexy and childish at the same time." Even though they're locally made, they're not cheap: a hand-knitted, torn-chiffon dress sells for $550. But that doesn't seem to be hurting her business?this year's plans include tripling the size...
Feehan and Hamilton take their subject seriously, but not all do. In Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson, a former model uses her can't-be-killed status to scare the bejesus out of her stepmother, who did a postmortem heist of all her Manolo Blahniks (a shoe brand that pops up in these books a lot; the designer must offer a specter discount). It ends happily for our heroine, although these books are not the kind that necessarily conclude with a wedding. It's probably safer that way, given that for vampires, "till death do us part...
...Hamas goes in promoting its brand of Islam may yield answers to a dilemma that is roiling the Middle East: Will the party choose moderation, now that it has inherited responsibility for governing some 4 million Palestinians? Or will it use its power to impose a fundamentalist ideology that, coupled with its militant anti-Israel stance, has produced suicide bombings against Israel and led the U.S. and the European Union to designate it a terrorist organization...