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Picture of the day: Dsquared menswear 

Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall, the ultimate rebel student soundtrack, blared out from Dsquared's classroom set. 'Model' students lounged at desks at the end of the runway, throwing balled-up paper, smoking in class, flunking algebra. Meanwhile their classmates walked the catwalk in a mash-up of public-school blazers, high-school denims and sweats, and Citizen Smith-customised military parkas worn over the quintessential Dsquared tuxedo.

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VIDEO: Smoking Room - moda [Smoking Room - fashion] 

1 Dress party. Approximate dates: firm commitments, family dinners, the last night of the year ... We select for you the perfect looks, the costumes with the right cut, the timeless tuxedos to meet the label, and note amid the bustle of any big event.

ALFONSO OHNUR / ALVAREZ BERTA / VIDEO: LUIS GARCIA CRAUSER | December 01, 2011

And enjoy a holiday in style.

[You can view and use the video in your website / blog from YouTube and Vimeo]

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Tobacco Tot Portraits - 'Smoking Kids' Aims to Ignite Discussion Over Belgium's Smoking Ban (VIDEO) 

'Smoking Kids' is a photo series from Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens that confronts the country's recent ban on smoking. The shoot is filled with children dressed as adults enjoying cigarettes.

The shoot is designed to spark thought, not controversy. Janssens chose to use kids in order to get attention focused off of the adults themselves and onto the act of smoking. The kids are not dressed as normal children however. They represent adult smokers and are dressed as everything from members of the military to early Hollywood actresses. The artist was inspired to create Smoking Kids after watching a YouTube video starring an Indonesian boy who chained smoked up to 40 cigarettes a day.

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• Controversial ‘Smoking Kids’ Glamour Shots: Artistic or Absurd? [VIDEO] 

Now there is the "Smoking Kids" pictorial spread. Belgian photographer Freike Janssens was inspired by the YouTube video of the two-year-old Indonesian boy who chain smoked 40 cigarettes a day.

So she developed "Smoking Kids." The glamour shot series includes 15 portraits of children, dressed in various ornate garments, smoking cigarettes. They are meant to visually mimic adult figures, like military personnel and Old Hollywood actresses.

Titled "The beauty of an ugly addiction," Janssens supposedly confronts viewers with the contradiction of an unhealthy habit and the alluring attraction of cigarette smoking, according to ILoveBelgium.com.

The children in the photos are between the ages of four and nine.

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Carine Roitfeld, ex-Vogue editor: 'Never ever share your daughter's wardrobe'  

To celebrate the publication of your new book, Irreverent, you held a party with a vampire fancy-dress theme in Paris. Are you a secret Twilight fan? . . .

My husband is trying to quit smoking so I'm never going to use a cigarette again in a picture. It's a new decision.

Do you smoke?

Me, I don't.

Because there's a general perception that fashion editors and models stay thin by smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee…

I don't smoke and I do eat. I'm skinny because of my dad. It's true I know a lot of models who keep thin with a cup of coffee and a cigarette but I don't think it's wise because I have kids. I try not to show in a picture something that's not good for them.

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A sophisticated rebellion  

Why were these garments considered so shocking? The idea that respectable women did not wear trousers was the convention but perhaps more provocative still was the idea of Le Smoking as the first truly unisex garb. Saint Laurent stated he loved Les Smokings because "they look equally chic on men and women". That sexual ambiguity was certainly part and parcel of the Dietrich image, famously bisexual on screen and in life. The late Helmut Newton once stated: "Le Smoking . . . [is] exactly the way I wished my ideal woman was dressed. It is the glorification of the 16th-Arrondissement bourgeoisie woman with too much money, too much free time on her hands and up to all sorts of tricks."

He immortalised the Saint Laurent woman as just that in 1975, clad in Le Smoking, cigarette poised between fingers, hand effortlessly resting in trouser pocket – Jean-Pierre Derbourd, former technical director of Yves Saint Laurent, once said the arms on Les Smokings were specially fitted to this slouched pose. That mood of transgression still characterises Le Smoking today – it's a rebel, certainly, but more sophisticated than blue jeans and les blousons noir, less wanton than the miniskirt and less obvious than the safety-pinned T-shirt. Le Smoking is perhaps the only form of rebellion in dress that has never fallen into self-parody. Perhaps that is because the tuxedo jacket is now a fashion perennial – indeed, it is so ubiquitous that its appearance barely qualifies as a "trend".

Le Smoking is the perfect combination of sensuality and rigour; a formula for sleek evening elegance – and it's a formula designers are loath to fiddle with. Why fix something that isn't broken, after all? . . .

When it comes to Le Smoking, an icon of the 20th century that seems set to continue into the new millennium, it feels fitting that M. Saint Laurent should have the last word:

"For a woman, Le Smoking is an indispensable garment with which she finds herself in fashion, because it is about style, not fashion. Fashions come and go but style is forever."

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A Super-Stylish Vampire 

If the definition of a vampire is a pallid, blood-sucking monster with frightening fangs, Carine Roitfeld, former editor of French Vogue and a pivotal figure in the fashion world, does not seem to fit the bill.

The party she gave this week at the close of a month of international fashion shows was to celebrate, for the last and final time, the publication by Rizzoli of her appropriately titled book: "Irreverent." .. .

The book opens with a T-shirt with the words "Vogue love you mum." It was created by her son at the age of 8, long before his mother worked for French Vogue and transformed it from a mélange of Parisian culture and fashion to what Ms. Roitfeld calls "erotic chic." That was defined by sophisticated displays of flesh, like a Patrick Demarchelier photograph of a model wearing not much more than a lacy Breton hat, a pair of high-heeled boots and the inevitable Gallic accessory: a cigarette.

"It was a different era. Everybody smoked; we didn't even know it was bad," says Ms. Roitfeld, claiming that now that her partner has given up smoking, she will never again use a cigarette as an accessory.

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Gaile Lai burns own hand  

ng Kong model Gaile Lai has a burn mark on the back of her left hand . . .

A close friend said that when Leon learned she had used a cigarette to burn her hand he threw away her cigarettes and ashtrays.

He also gave her a good telling off and said she was "too immature to be a mom."

Gaile reportedly apologized to Leon with tears streaming down her face.

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• Glamour Cigarettes: Volvo Moscow Fashion Week’s Official Tobacco Sponsor  

Volvo Moscow fashion week has once again chose Glamour Cigarettes owned by Japan Tobacco International to be their official tobacco sponsor. Last year Glamour cigarette's set up an elaborate stage adorned with pink curtain and posh lounge chairs, in order to collect names and hand out cigarette promotional items to fashion week patrons. Glamour set up a back drop and photographers so that everyone in their lounge felt like a model. Very attractive Glamour cigarette girls walked about the event handing out pink Glamour cigarette promotional items to anyone who would give them there personal information for the Glamour Cigarette database.

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Vogue editor regrets cigarette shots  

French Vogue's former editor Carine Roitfeld regrets using cigarettes in so many of her fashion shoots.

After several years as the magazine's editor, Roitfeld left her post in January. Since then she's embarked on new projects, including penning a tome called Irreverent.

It contains her favourite images she's been involved with, and Vogue.com has published a sneak peek.

Roitfeld says she wishes she had never shown models smoking in her pictures because she knows it probably had a profound effect on many young women.

"The book is dedicated to my husband, who quit smoking seven months ago," she says.

"When he decided to stop smoking, I said, 'My God, it's too bad I didn't try to help him to stop before'.

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Carine Roitfeld: "I will never use a cigarette again in a photo shoot"  

Carine Roitfeld regrets using cigarettes in so many of her fashion shoots.

The star was the editor of French Vogue magazine for ten years, leaving her post in January. Since then she's embarked on a number of new projects, including penning a tome called Irreverent. It contains her favourite images she's been involved with, and Vogue.com has published a sneak peek.

Carine explained she wishes she'd never shown models smoking in her pictures as she knows it probably had a profound effect on many young women.

"The book is dedicated to my husband, who quit smoking seven months ago. When he decided to stop smoking, I said, 'My God, it's too bad I didn't try to help him to stop before.' Now I decide I will never use a cigarette again in any shoot," she explains.

"When you're doing fashion pictures, you're talking to lots of figures; some are very young, and they're like sponges.

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A sophisticated rebellion  

A garment that manages to bridge the gender divide, Le Smoking is a symbol of evening elegance in menswear and the seductive power of female cross-dressing.

It is, for all intents and purposes, a man's tuxedo but once part of a woman's wardrobe the Gallic term stuck, not least for the endless Anglo-Philistine puns it allows when describing the "smoking hot" appeal of a woman appropriating this most masculine of garments.

Le Smoking has been a stalwart of the well-dressed man's wardrobe for decades but, until relatively recently, its adoption by women raised eyebrows and even hackles. It was Yves Saint Laurent who transformed Le Smoking into high fashion for women . . . The late Helmut Newton once stated: "Le Smoking . . . [is] exactly the way I wished my ideal woman was dressed. It is the glorification of the 16th-Arrondissement bourgeoisie woman with too much money, too much free time on her hands and up to all sorts of tricks."

He immortalised the Saint Laurent woman as just that in 1975, clad in Le Smoking, cigarette poised between fingers, hand effortlessly resting in trouser pocket – Jean-Pierre Derbourd, former technical director of Yves Saint Laurent, once said the arms on Les Smokings were specially fitted to this slouched pose. That mood of transgression still characterises Le Smoking today – it's a rebel, certainly, but more sophisticated than blue jeans and les blousons noir, less wanton than the miniskirt and less obvious than the safety-pinned T-shirt. Le Smoking is perhaps the only form of rebellion in dress that has never fallen into self-parody. Perhaps that is because the tuxedo jacket is now a fashion perennial – indeed, it is so ubiquitous that its appearance barely qualifies as a "trend".

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• Despite warnings and health modelling, it appears smoking is still the fashion 

A RASH of fashion images depicting models smoking or holding cigarettes or cigars is being investigated for possible breaches of the Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Act.

Quit Victoria executive director Fiona Sharkie said images produced by fashion brand Ellery and internet magazine Tangent were referred to the Department of Health and Ageing for investigation and could lead to prosecution. The act prohibits ''any picture that gives publicity to or otherwise promotes or is intended to promote smoking''.

''It's disappointing that they're promoting highly aspirational products with a product that kills up to half of users,'' Ms Sharkie said. . . .

Other images out of the reach of the act because they were circulated from other countries include Chanel, Marc Jacobs and Jean Paul Gaultier. . . .

Tangent magazine, also regarded as one of fashion's coolest platforms, posted several video and photographic editorials of topless or scantily dressed models smoking cigarettes and cigars to its current issue. One shot includes a jacket by Alex Perry. ''No, not cool,'' said the designer. ''Artistically, they are beautiful images but they're misleading, especially for a younger market.''

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I was a smoker then, so I don't think I even thought about the cigarette. But I woke up that it was a silly thing to do. I felt really negligent. I would never use a cigarette in an ad again.
Designer Alex Perry, whose 2007 photo of a bride smoking a cigarette, was found to be in breach of the Australian Association of National Advertisers Code of Ethics.

• Alex Perry pledges to quit smoking 

Fashion designer Alex Perry is among 2000 Australian smokers expected to quit the habit soon, but it has nothing to do with cigarette packaging becoming less glamorous.

The Australian says that up until two weeks ago, he lit up about 20 smokes a day, a habit he says is synonymous with working in fashion.

He has since cut down to five a day and by May 31, which is World No Tobacco Day, intends to ditch the habit altogether.

"I think the fashion industry is known for smoking, if that makes sense," Mr Perry told AAP on Tuesday.

"It's a glass of champagne and a cigarette, and it's all fabulous darling, but it actually isn't, and that's why I want to lead a healthier life."

To mark this year's World No Tobacco Day, quit-smoking product maker Nicabate has launched a Pledge to Quit page on Facebook to encourage smokers to quit.

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Yves Saint Laurent promotes own-label cigarettes in Asia and Russia 

TOBACCO advertising is banned in Australia, the US and Europe, and smoking indoors is against the law in many of the world's major cities. But in fashion, it appears, the habit is still as fashionable as ever.

Cancer risk seems to be of little concern to Yves Saint Laurent, which is promoting and selling cigarettes bearing its designer logo.

The cigarettes, which come in a sleek black box with gold foil, are being marketed towards women in Asia and Russia.

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