If there is anything in the world of high fashion more vulnerable to whim than clothes, it is the models who wear them. They seem to emerge from nowhere, sparkle brilliantly, then plunge into Stygian darkness,* the victims of too much deja vu. Now rising into ascendancy is a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season.Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, ...

FASHION Pieced in PlasticThe effect was breathtaking. Out strode the model, clothed in nothing but wafer-thin plastic disks, each glinting with dazzling sun colors and hung together with fine wires. Next came a coat of mail in glistening silver that let a generous amount of skin go unprotected. Then came sun visors shaped like welders' helmets and oversized plastic earrings that dangled weightlessly at shoulder level. It was the U.S. debut at Manhattan's Lord & Taylor of Jewelry Designer ...

Montreal may be better known for snow than style, but two new openings are indicative of the city's transformation into a serious cultural contender. The most eye-catching arrival is "From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk," a first-of-its-kind retrospective of the work of French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier. On display through Oct. 2 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the show traces Gaultier's 35-year career, from his nautical-inspired collections in the 1980s to his costumes for ...

Court on Thursday, June 2, started in typical Rod Blagojevich style. The former Illinois governor arrived and signed autographs in front of the Dirksen Federal Building. The day, however, ended in blistering fashion. "Mr. Blagojevich, you are a convicted liar, right?" U.S. assistant attorney Reid Schar boomed into the courtroom late that afternoon. And in response, Blagojevich flung back a yes — over his lawyer's objections. The long-awaited cross-examination was under way, and like two caged animals posturing to ...

The only time I ever met Henry Ford, he looked at me and probably wondered, "Who is this little s.o.b. fresh out of college?" He wasn't real big on college graduates, and I was one of 50 in the Ford training course in September 1946, working in a huge drafting room at the enormous River Rouge plant near Detroit. One day there was a big commotion at one end of the floor and in walked Henry Ford with Charles Lindbergh. ...

With a title like L'Amour Fou, Pierre Thoretton's documentary about fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his life partner Pierre Berge promises a wild ride, a story of mad love. They had a relationship that endured through 50 years of glamorous living, business failures and triumphs, infidelities and Saint Laurent's drug and alcohol abuse as well as his chronic, often crippling depression. Arrows first flew, Berge tells us, at a fashion dinner in 1958; they soon moved ...

FOR clothes-conscious American women, the summer of discontent is over; this week the autumn of decision begins. Home from vacation, they face the most difficult fall shopping dilemma in decades: whether to go for the midi. Not since Christian Dior's 1947 New Look has a descending hemline raised such a furor. Men denounce the midi as a threat to the golden days of mini ogling; women insist that it will make them look old, or ugly, or dumpy, or sawed-off—or ...

RECREATION The fine-limbed young woman rising from the foam on TIME'S cover is neither a naiad nor the creation of a fashion editor's imaginative whim. She is Mrs. William J. Anderson III, named Michael because she is the third of three daughters in a family that had been hoping for a boy. She is swimming not at Saint Tropez but at Sea Island, Ga.; she comes not from such routinely celebrated places as Manhattan, Boston, or Philadelphia, but from ...

Old spacecraft never die. Well, actually, they do die, and sometimes in spectacular fashion — burning up as they plunge through a planet's atmosphere or into the fires of the sun. The venerable Galileo probe, which was launched in 1989 and arrived at Jupiter in 1995, was sent on just such a suicide dive into the planet when its work was done in 2003 — the better to avoid even the tiny risk that it would crash ...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama made two shocking breaches of foreign policy establishment etiquette. The first was to suggest if the U.S. had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan, Obama, as President, would commit U.S. force to kill bin Laden. This statement of utter common sense was denounced by Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries. "He basically threatened to bomb Pakistan, which I don't think was a particularly wise position to ...