Latest news with #Me+Em
Sky News AU
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
Tasmanian-born Queen Mary of Denmark rushed inside during official public appearance after shock 'encounter'
Tasmanian-born Queen Mary of Denmark was caught off guard during a royal walkabout on Monday, after she was stung by a wasp in front of a crowd of onlookers in the town square of Gråsten, Denmark. The Queen, 53, had been greeting locals alongside her husband, King Frederik X, 57, and their children Princess Isabella, 18, and Prince Vincent, 14, as they officially kicked off the Danish royal family's summer holiday at Gråsten Palace in southern Jutland. King Frederik confirmed in a short speech that their eldest son, Crown Prince Christian, 19, and Vincent's twin sister, Princess Josephine, would later join the family at the palace. Wearing a paisley-print dress by Me+Em, Queen Mary was all smiles as she accepted flowers and chatted with well-wishers in the afternoon sun, until the mood shifted during a formal moment on stage. Onlookers caught footage of the Queen suddenly flinching and grabbing her leg in pain, clearly distressed. Her children quickly gathered around her, while King Frederik rushed to her side. Mary could be seen pointing to the sky and rubbing her leg as the situation unfolded. According to Danish media outlet Billed Bladet, the Queen asked her family to continue greeting locals while she was quietly escorted into the nearby Hotel Det Gamle Rådhus by security. "Princess Isabella and Prince Vincent delivered the goods together with King Frederik, and shortly afterwards, Mary came out again from Hotel Det Gamle Rådhus," the outlet reported (as translated by "The queen certainly did not seem to be badly affected by the encounter with the stinging wasp, and she, together with the king, Isabella and Vincent, made sure to greet the many citizens who had gathered in the square." Footage of the moment quickly gained traction on social media, with one user captioning the clip: "Sadly Queen Mary was stung by a wasp (she dealt with it like the champion she is) I wish her a speedy recovery." Comments poured in online, with many praising Mary's poise and her children's supportive response. "The kids are so polite and lovely shaking hands with everyone and smiling. And poor Mary I hope she's okay!" one royal fan wrote. "They are the sweetest children. And Mary came out again even after she was bitten by a wasp… so graceful.. love the Royal family.. they are the best in the world," another added. "Queen Mary is just so cool .. no fuss at all! Love her!' said a third, while someone else commented: 'She is one tough Aussie our Mary!' After recovering from the sting, Queen Mary rejoined her family as they made their way to Gråsten Palace, where the royals will spend the coming weeks. The Baroque-style palace carries sentimental value for the Danish royal family. It was gifted to King Frederik's grandfather, King Frederik IX, upon his marriage to Ingrid of Sweden, and has remained a beloved summer retreat ever since.
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Princess Beatrice Brings French Girl Style to Wimbledon in a Striped Sandro Skirt Set
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The excitement of Royal Ascot might be over, but the 2025 Wimbledon championships kicked off on Monday, June 30—and the royal fashion is already as hot as the heat wave sweeping Britain at the moment. Princess Beatrice and her mother, Sarah Ferguson, were the first royals to attend this year's tournament, and the Duchess of York's eldest daughter leaned into French girl style for their mother/daughter day out. Sandro has long been a favorite brand of royals like Princess Kate and Queen Letizia, and Beatrice chose a crisp cotton blouse and coordinating skirt from the French retailer. The cropped shirt isn't your basic button-up, though—Bea's blouse featured white floral cutouts embellished with summery beading. She tucked the top into a matching cotton skirt with a flounced hem and the same cutout detail, wearing her hair down in loose waves and carrying a taupe leather clutch. View Deal View Deal Meanwhile, the Duchess of York went for a bold floral style from another royally approved brand, wearing a bright green Me+Em midi dress with keyhole detail. Ferguson joins fellow Me+Em fans Duchess Sophie and the Princess of Wales, both of whom have worn the British designer's fashion-forward pieces on numerous occasions. It's expected that Princess Kate—who serves as patron of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club—will attend at least one match during the championships, which end July 13 this year. In 2024, the Princess of Wales attended the men's finals with daughter Princess Charlotte and sister Pippa Middleton, marking her second appearance of the year as the princess battled cancer. View Deal View Deal View Deal
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Princess Beatrice Brings Understated Flair in Striped Sandro Look to First Day of Wimbledon 2025
Princess Beatrice was joined by her mother, Sarah Ferguson, for the first day of The Championships, Wimbledon on Monday in London. They sat in the royal box on center court to watch Carlos Alcaraz of Spain take on Fabio Fognini of Italy in the first round of the annual Grand Slam tennis tournament. For the summertime sporting occasion, Princess Beatrice opted for a coordinated set courtesy of Sandro. The British royal wore the Tiare shirt in sky blue, which featured white and blue stripes with a buttoned placket and rhinestone openwork flowers on the long sleeves. More from WWD Princess Diana's Birthday Looks Through the Years: Her Sleek Black Jacques Azagury Dress, Vibrant Colors and More Princess Eugenie Gives the Peplum Silhouette a Summertime Spin in Self-Portrait for the Tate Modern 25th Anniversary Fundraising Gala Why Tennis Players Wear All White at Wimbledon: The Championships' Historic Dress Code Explained Princess Beatrice coordinated the shirt with the Jasmin midi skirt in the same stripe and color motif. The skirt was also decorated with embellished cutout flowers. Her skirt included a high-waistline with an A-line silhouette, and the hem fell just below the knee. Sarah Ferguson wore a jacquard floral print maxidress courtesy of Me+Em. The 2025 summer season kicked off for Sandro in March, when the French brand announced its capsule collection inspired by artist Louise Bourgeois. The summer line, which hit stores in April, featured a bevy of spirals and textiles created in collaboration with Louise Bourgeois' foundation. 'Paying tribute to an artist who has such a singular creative and artistic language brings substance to the brand and allows our customers to live a unique experience where fashion meets art in its expressive power,' chief executive officer Isabelle Allouch said in an interview with WWD in March. The French American artist, who died in 2010, is best known for her giant sculptures of spiders, including a 20-foot-high bronze creation that sold for $32.8 million in 2023, setting a record-high price for a work by a female artist. Princess Beatrice is a longtime supporter of Sandro's designs and previously wore a dress from the French label for an event in June 2024. She also often wears such labels as Beulah London, Simkhai and more. View Gallery Launch Gallery: Wimbledon 2025 Celebrity Looks, Live Updates: David Beckham, Simu Liu and More Photos Best of WWD Princess Diana's Birthday Looks Through the Years: Her Sleek Black Jacques Azagury Dress, Vibrant Colors and More Lauren Sánchez's Fashion Evolution Through the Years: From Her Days as TV News Anchor to Today Labubu vs. 'Lafufu': How to Spot the Differences Between Real and Fake
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Hands-Free Brand Kizik Is Popping Up in 9 Cities Across US With Mobile Truck Activation
Kizik is setting out across the country to spread the word about its hands-free shoes with a new retail activation. Starting on Monday, the Utah-based company is launching a 9-city mobile activation tour in what Kizik is calling a 'strategic move' as it aims to 'scale beyond pure direct-to-consumer towards omnichannel growth' and tests what retail can look like for the company. More from WWD China Insight: What the 618 Shopping Festival Says About China's Retail Landscape Me+Em to Open in Manchester Following Successful Retail Streak Silvia Tcherassi Drops Exclusive Capri Capsule Called the 'Moving Truck,' the series will offer a 24-hour-only, on-the-ground experience designed to build brand equity while collecting meaningful customer insights in real time. Kizik noted that the pop-ups will open in high-traffic locations and are 'built to drive both brand engagement and measurable growth through direct conversion and remarketing.' Each pop-up will offer guided product walk-throughs with Kizik experts, showcasing new products and best sellers for kids and adults; on-site digital data capture of customer preferences and sizes; gamified 'Hands-Free Challenge' zones that put the brand's tech to the test; and stacked discounts and email-based remarketing journeys that evolve based on customer behavior on-site. According to Kizik chief marketing officer Elizabeth Drori this pop-up series was inspired by the brand's try-on experience. 'We have what we call the 'aha' moment, which is what happens when a customer steps into a pair of Kizik shoes,' Drori told FN in an interview. 'It's this multi-sensory experience where you hear the sound of the shoe popping onto your foot, you feel the sensation of the technology sort of springing back and securing your foot into place. And it's one of those 'wow' moments where people realize how our shoes work. And so, we really want to lean into that and amplify it as a big strategy for this year, because it's really what sets us apart from the competition.' The mobile tour kicks off on Monday at Brookfield Place in New York City then it will travel to Boston on July 2. Other stops include Philadelphia on July 8, Washington, D.C. on July 10, Minneapolis on July 13, Denver on July 16, and Los Angeles on July 20. The tour will wrap up in Salt Lake City with two different stops in the area on July 23 and July 26. Drori added that after the tour is complete next month, Kizik plans to use the mobile truck for other events later this year. 'We are partnering with the Parkinson's Foundation in October where we will utilize this truck for what we are planning with the organization,' the executive noted. 'The series will be centered around the Foundation's 'Moving Day,' which is an annual fundraising walk organized to raise awareness and support for Parkinson's disease.' This new activation comes in the midst of the brand's efforts to double down on its retail strategy. Over the last several months, Kizik has opened new stores across the U.S. In an exclusive interview with FN last May, former chief executive officer Monte Deere said he planned to have a total of six stores by the end of 2024 with new openings on Newbury Street in Boston, New Jersey and Denver slated for late 2024. 'In 2025, we have several more in the pipeline,' the CEO said at the time. 'We're looking hard at Washington, D.C., Nashville, Seattle and Portland for new openings next year.' In June, the footwear brand named former Nike executive Gareth Hosford as its new CEO. Deere, who has led the company since 2019, is continuing to serve on the board of Kizik, and its parent company HandsFree Labs, where he'll advise on the company's licensing arm of the business. Best of WWD All the Retailers That Nike Left and Then Went Back Mikey Madison's Elegant Red Carpet Shoe Style [PHOTOS] Julia Fox's Sleekest and Boldest Shoe Looks Over the Years [Photos]
Spectator
15-06-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Saudi Arabia's soft power art attack
From roughly the 1970s to the mid-2010s, Saudi Arabia was the stuff of nightmares, referred to now, with understatement, as 'the dark period'. Governed by the austere, brutal credo of the cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th century Quran literalist who divided the world into true Muslims (Salafis/Wahhabis) and their mortal enemies, Saudi life was ruled by fear of the omnipresent religious police. Executions were commonplace, TV was banned, women were essentially locked up, and most foreigners and outward travel were blocked. Wahhabiism has been softened a great deal since then. Since 2017, when the frenetic moderniser Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) became Crown Prince, a thousand laws have been dropped, and suddenly women, while still second-class citizens, no longer have to cover up or ask a male guardian's permission to leave home. They can also drive and own property (after they turn 21). Many are hoovering up education and plum jobs. It is hard to demur in the face of all this money and activity. But should we? Human rights abuses persist in the theocratic monarchy, with show trials, detentions, executions and dodgy treatment of foreign workers. There is no free press or protest culture. The righteous pursuit of consequences for the grisly 2018 state-ordered massacre of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist critical of the regime, remains entirely blocked. But the bright, bushy-tailed of the West don't seem too bothered. Once peopled only by doleful Saudis in heavy national dress, the planes to and from Riyadh and Jeddah are full of Americans, Europeans and British travellers, mostly on business but some on holiday. MBS is throwing billions at making Saudi Arabia a plausible luxury holiday destination for Westerners and the great and good, progressive intelligentsia and right-wingers alike are keen to help. The lefty firebrand Emily Maitlis gushed about a minibreak to Saudi earlier this year, sharing how a former prime minister had prepared her for her trip by saying he had 'never seen anything quite like the Saudi growth experiment before'. Excited, she packed her 'Dries Van Noten floor-length coat and a wide silk headscarf in matching stone', plus 'wide Me+Em jeans'. She also brought an abaya, the full Islamic drapery. To survivors of the pre-MBS period, such garb might be taken as a symbol of the darkest cruelty towards women outside of Taliban-run Afghanistan. For Maitlis, it was 'a lifesaver for all those moments I want to disappear anonymously into the old city' and allowed her to walk back from the pool 'without revealing an inch of flesh, bikini dripping innocently underneath'. Saucy. The umbrella for all this fun, both in tourism and sport, is Vision 2030, a master plan intended to keep the party going when the oil music dwindles. Amid all the investment in industry, sport and tourism (Neom, the desert metropolis that includes an enclosed city in a horizontal skyscraper, is costing trillions to develop), the cultural pride of Vision 2030 is the arts bit. The state has mobilised a web of bureaucracies to commission and disseminate Saudi artistic flair at home and abroad. In 2021, its Ministry of Culture claimed that the Kingdom held 100 cultural events put on by 25 cultural organisations, all organised by the Ministry of Culture. It's all a bit like 1984 meets the Guggenheim. Showpieces of this arts power drive include Riyadh's inaugural Sotheby's sale in February this year, held in the ritzy art colony of Diriyah (an attendee reported serious teething problems due to confusion about an Islamic law to do with auctioneering, which had not been troubleshooted in advance). The Diryah Biennale is in its fourth year; its launch in 2001 saw 1,000 guests, including foreign press and art market stars, crowd the spanking new Diryah Biennale Foundation. Art Week in Riyadh has just concluded, with 45 galleries, private and state collections, while Desert X AlUla, the latter an oasis and ancient trade centre, launched in 2020, with the latest edition of its open-air exhibit titled (somewhat ominously) 'Presence of Absence'. Abroad, Saudi art, previously a non-entity, is muscling in. The Smithsonian recently announced a partnership with Saudi Arabia to preserve the Kingdom's ancient city of Dadan; following Trump's visit, Saudi is gifting the Smithsonian a pair of rare leopards. Saudi design is, for the first time, now on show at the London Design Biennale at Somerset House (until 29 June) and Saudi craft is on show at Selfridges. The kingdom has become a regular at the Venice Biennale. Last year saw a major exhibition at Sotheby's covering the last 50 years of art in Saudi Arabia, and a Christie's London exhibition by Saudi artist Ahmed Mater. And so on. What's in it for us? Loadsamoney. But not for free. Saudi money is copiously funding the arts in Paris; a €50 million (£42 million) towards the renovation of the Centre Pompidou accompanies nine new deals that trade French cultural expertise for cash. Starmer is keen to play too; Historic England will offer its expertise to the Saudis, and Britain will push holidays in AlUla, in return for hefty investment here. There is plenty of private Saudi money in the mix, including the Jameel family's Art Jameel foundation, the Saudi Aramco-sponsored King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture and the Saudi Arts Council. A long-established vector of Anglo-Saudi warmth takes the form of Edge of Arabia (EOA), the brainchild of 'social entrepreneur' Stephen Stapleton and two Saudi artists, Mater and Abdulnasser Gharem, who met in 2003. EOA's first London exhibition took place in 2008 in service of 'encourag[ing] grassroots cultural dialogue in Saudi Arabia and between Saudi Arabia and the Western world'. It is hard to demur in the face of all this money and activity. But should we? Is it our problem if the freedom of expression of those funded by the kingdom is still limited by conservative Islam? In taking MBS's money, how far and in what ways do we compromise our ethics? The answer is mixed. In tourism and sport, perhaps, it might be a case of bowing to what is on offer and looking the other way. Art is different, mainly because, unlike the other Gulf states, there does appear to be a sincere and embedded tradition. 'Saudi has the fundamental building blocks for a vibrant cultural scene,' says Princess Alia Al-Senussi, an Ivy League-educated descendant of Libyan royalty, art advisor and co-author of a nifty handbook called Art in Saudi Arabia. Young artists feel fundamentally Saudi, which is different to many of its neighbours. There is a great sense of pride. It's a vast country [producing diverse art]. What there wasn't before is the multiplication of government projects and agencies that are involving themselves in culture. She says Saudi artists forced to work elsewhere during the 'dark period' are mostly thrilled to be back, and are, including the likes of women's rights advocate Menal AlDowayan, who represented the kingdom at last year's Venice Biennale, 'deeply patriotic'. Al-Senussi spoke to me on Zoom (WhatsApp is banned) from an Uber and then the forecourt of the Radisson in Riyadh. She was principally concerned not about artistic freedom but that artists over-commissioned for big government projects might not have time to experiment or 'make mistakes… Every artist needs to be careful with the trajectory of their career – and learn how to say no,' she added. Easier said than done, perhaps. Before MBS, Saudi's artistic tradition seemed to thrive both in spite of and because of the repressive regime. Sir John Jenkins, British ambassador to Saudi Arabia between 2012 and 2015, told me: Even in small towns in boondocks, you'd find little photographic exhibitions, a lot of them featured women. As to the question of whether any of it is any good, what I've seen has been pretty derivative, but then I think most western art is pretty crap. 'When I think of Saudi Arabia, I think of the Tudor court, that sort of mixture of high aspiration and brute force,' he says. 'We talk about soft power. Soft power is marvellous. But soft power comes with hard power.' There is no doubting anymore that Saudi is exporting both.
