ALERT: You Have Fewer Than 3 Days to Get Your 'Love Actually' Fix

Photo: Karl Lagerfeld

Chanel can make anything—even walking barefoot through grime-y city streets—seem chic. Case in point? Karl Lagerfeld's spring 2015 campaign for the maison, starring Gisele Bündchen.

Photo: Karl Lagerfeld

Lagerfeld photographed Bündchen wandering the deserted streets of Saint Germain-des-Prés, pausing at iconic locations like...

Photo: Karl Lagerfeld

Café de Flore, a spot you'll find packed with fashion editors during Paris fashion week.

Photo: Karl Lagerfeld

Photo: Karl Lagerfeld

Photo: Karl Lagerfeld

Photo: Karl Lagerfeld

and the Seine.

Photo: Karl Lagerfeld

This marks Bündchen's second campaign coup for the spring 2015 season. She's also fronting Stuart Weitzman’s spring ads.

Proof That 2015 Will Be the Year of the Vadjacent

Michelle Monaghan, Kendall Jenner, Rihanna; Getty Images

February 26, 2012. Does that date ring any bells for you? No? February 26, 2012 was the day that Angelina Jolie extended a pointed leg and announced to the world that there would finally be light on the one place that, previously, sun simply did not shine. And in the nearly three years since Jolie exposed the most northern region of her rectus femoris, legions of red-carpet walkers have tried to emulate (and improve upon) her stellar example. Yes, if all goes according to plan, it's safe to say that 2015 is shaping up to be the Year of the Vadjacent™.

Rita Ora, Jaime King, Halle Berry; Getty Images

What is the Vadjacent, you ask? Obviously, it's the scintillatingly sensitive sliver of skin that annexes the inner thigh to the, well. It's also a crevice that, bathing-suit season aside, was generally considered unsuitable for public consumption. Want more? Did you know that the Vadjacent is one of the only parts of the female anatomy that hasn't yet had its 15 minutes (see: The Year of the Nipple)? Well, now its time has come.
But be warned: Pulling off the Vadjacent is no rookie movie. The Vadjecent requires a talented waxing professional, a healthy aversion to underwear, and more than a pinch of old-fashioned chutzpah. And while there may be some contention among the ranks as to whether Kendall Jenner deserves to be in the highest echelon of models, it's pretty clear she's a certified VIP: Vadjacent Instructing Professional (evidence above).

Isabeli Fontana, Jessica White, Cara Delevingne; Getty Images

Other VIPs worth noting: Jessie J, who expertly exposed the stretch of skin from her kneecaps to her navel at the VMAs; Rita Ora, who routinely rocks the look with aplomb; and me, Justine Harman, a journalist, a friend, an only half-decent dog mother, a wife, and an early adopting, yet timid, Vadjacent enthusiast.
2015 is looking up, isn't it?

The author at her 2013 wedding; Abby and Lauren Ross

What Ferguson Means for Black Women

Photo: Lesley McSpadden (Getty)On Monday, along with most of America, I waited to hear what the grand jury in Ferguson would decide. But I knew what it would be. I have been down this road before. My breath bated, my chest tight with anxiety, I still hoped that somehow one of us might get justice. That one of our lives would matter before the courts of the country that we labored to build.
When the decision came down that they declined to indict, I was buying Christmas tricycles for my twin nephews. They are two. They are happy babies and they remind me so much of their father and myself when we were children. And I cannot wait to be there for every first, every trial, every error; I cannot wait to watch them grow from boys to men. And what should be one of the greatest joys of my life brings me one of the biggest pains of my life: One day, their mother, my mother and myself will have to tell them about police brutality in this country, how and why they are targets, and of their unique place in this American horror story.
It is left up to us because their father (my brother), Clinton Roebexar Allen, was shot seven times and killed by a Dallas police officer, Clark Staller. As with Wilson, a grand jury declined to indict Staller, despite five eyewitnesses’ testimony, despite Clinton being shot in the back and under his arm while his hands were up, despite mishandling of evidence, despite all of these things. This is not standard procedure, state or federal, for a jury to decline to indict. In fact, in 2010, of the 162,000 federal cases that were prosecuted, only 11 juries issued a “no-bill.”
Photo: A protestor arrested at the 1964 Rochester race riots.
Only four percent of police-involved shootings are even reported to the FBI’s database. And even in these instances, which are self-reported by law enforcement and therefore probably do not even represent the full extent of the problem, reports show that over a seven-year period ending in 2012, a white police officer killed a black person nearly two times a week. Take Dallas, for example, where my brother was killed. When my mother’s organization, Mothers Against Police Brutality, and others in Dallas started pulling data and public records requests from the police department, we found that in 40 years since the last officer was indicted in Dallas (for shooting a 12-year-old Latino boy in the back of the head), close to 180 black and brown people had been killed at the hands of the police. In other words, we should not expect justice. And it is these facts and this history that black women have to face when rearing our boys. They can be killed, at any time and we are not to expect justice. Not even a trial.
When these men are killed, it is left to us women to pick up the pieces. To hold our families together. To be mother and father, aunt and nephew, brother and sister to the children that are left behind.
And we are tired.
We are tired of hearing the rhetoric that these men are killed because they come from broken homes. Clinton’s father was present in his life. Michael Brown’s father was present in his life. Trayvon Martin’s father was present in his life. Half of American marriages end in divorce; if our homes are broken, that means your homes are probably broken too. Black men are routinely given harsher and longer prison sentences than white men. These absences leave not just a psychological and emotional impact, but a financial one as well. Few families in America are able to make it on one salary, but that is what black families are expected to do when their co-breadwinners are taken.
Photo: Medgar Evers’ funeral
We are tired of having to teach them: “If you are stopped by the police, put your hands on the wheel. Do not unexpectedly reach for anything. Speak calmly. Please come home in one piece.” I do not know a black man that has not been given this talk, because being black is enough to put their lives in danger. My uncle, a respected professor and anesthesiologist, drives a Lexus. He is routinely stopped by white cops who consider all those things to be “suspicious.” This is supposed to only happen to black men when their pants are sagging and they listen to rap music.
What are we to do? What do we do when there is an implicit racial bias against people of color that police forces in this country refuse to address and change in their officers? What do we do when the police shoot our 12-year-old babies because they think they are armed, 20-year-old men? For the people that say that we should not protest, we say, it is the only choice that we have left. We cannot call the police, we cannot go to court and get justice, so we are in the streets, protesting. The value of black lives has been totally denied through the “respectable” and “civil” conduits that white people have the privilege to trust, rely on and believe in.
Photo: A woman protests in Ferguson.
Women carry the weight and responsibility of these families being dismantled. In this renewed engagement of feminism, those who stand and identify with feminism must support this too. I am a woman and my right to live freely with my family intact has been violated. I and so many other women are left with a challenging task. We, the survivors, are left to rear these beautiful boys into fearless and brave men, but our country is asking us to teach them to be diminished and fearful in the face of the police because they might be killed.
A black mother told me last night, “I want a white mother to know what I feel. I want her to sit up like me, and wonder when her child doesn’t come home, if he’s been shot by the police. I want her to feel the terror of knowing that the love of your life, your child, can be taken from you because of the color of their skin.” We want our boys to have a chance.
Ferguson is a wake up call. Black mothers are being told to prepare their sons for second class citizenship. We cannot do that. We cannot go quietly into the night on this one. And we need other mothers, other women that love their families and have the privilege to know that their sons, if stopped by the police, will make it home, to stand with us. Because we have been left no choice but to stand.

The Best Black Friday Sales to Shop Now

Photo: Getty Images
Black Friday is one of the most terrifying exciting shopping days of the year. For those of us who aren't brave enough to camp out for Walmart televisions, today is the day we can finally shop the fall winter collections at 40 percent off. Here, the best Black Friday deals—and the even lazier Cyber Monday steals—to take advantage of now.
Nasty Gal
On Black Friday, Nasty Gal is offering 30% off select black items (get it?!) online, and up to 50% off clothes of other colors starting Monday.
Lust Covet Desire
Lust Covet Desire is offering 30% off all full-priced and sale items Monday with the promotional code ALLBLACK30 with free shipping on domestic orders over $50. Brands include 3.1 Phillip Lim, Ryan Roche, and Assembly New York.
Net-a-Porter
Net-A-Porter: Black Friday markdowns at the original luxury e-tailer begin November 28, and Cyber Monday sales on December 1.
Equipment and Joie
From Wednesday to Monday, all full-price and sale Joie, Equipment, and Current/Elliott items will be 25% off in store and online.
Avenue 32
Monday, December 1 is Avenue 32’s global 24-hour flash sale, with 40% off selected items.
Aritzia
Aritzia’s Black five-day sale means up to 60% off fall, winter, and holiday styles both in store and online Wednesday through Sunday. We thought it couldn’t get better, but Monday brings 60% off deals, and adds free shipping.
Giejo
Giejo swim is offering a site-wide additional 50% off with offer code THANKSGIVING50 at checkout November 27 through December 1.
H&M
H&M is offering over a week of sales with pre-Black Friday deals up to 70% off until the 29th in store and online. On Friday, additional deals from $4.95 are offered and value scratch cards will be given to the first hundred shoppers up to $300. Sunday and Monday give online shoppers 30% off their entire purchase and free shipping on orders over $50.
Intermix
Intermix is making a good thing even better with 30% off already marked down items Thanksgiving through Monday in store and online. Monday brings 20% off full-priced online items and free shipping.
Aldo
Starting on Friday and ending Monday, all sale items are 50% off the original price in store and online, accessories stores offer the same deals Friday, plus a gift with purchase. Early birds receive 20% off full priced merchandise from 8PM Thursday to 10AM Friday.
Bella Bag
All bags from luxury designers like Céline and Chloe are 50% off Friday through Monday. One shopper will receive a trip for two to New York Fashion Week with their online order delivery.
Sigerson Morrison
Get 30% off full-priced Sigerson Morrison and Belle shoes Thursday through Monday with the promotion code Thanks.
American Eagle
Starting Friday American Eagle Outfitters is offering a free party bus service to shuttle customers between AEO stores and prime shopping destinations around NYC, ending December 20th. While supplies last, AEO and Aerie fleece blankets are included with purchases of $60 or more.
Moda Operandi
Starting Thursday, Moda Operandi is offering up to 50% markdowns. On Monday the site is offering the gift that keeps on giving: a $250 gift card for a future purchase with an over $1000 order and promotional code “Monday.”

Watch Rashida Jones and Jimmy Fallon Take on Holiday Versions of Pop Songs

Photo: NBC
Still curled up in a post-turkey feast food coma? (Us, too.) Well, here's a little something that might perk you up!
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Chanukah, The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon invited guest Rashida Jones to perform some modern-day takes on holiday songs. But obviously, these aren't your standard Xmas sing-a-longs.
Taking on parodies of everything from Sam Smith's ballad "Stay With Me" to Nicki Minaj's booty popper "Anaconda," it's a holiday medley of epic proportions — and one that we really wish would get some airtime between the usual rotations of "Jingle Bells" and "Feliz Navidad." Our favorite part? The food baby ode to Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass." Sample lyrics: "Because you know I'm gonna gain some weight/gain some weight/(need sweatpants)..."

Suzy Menkes At London Fashion Week: Day Five

With vivid light from a stained glass window illuminating one church wall and organ music coming from the opposite side, young women walked the knave. Their hair was wet and tangled like a drowning Ophelia. Their black dresses and shoes were plain, except for a waft of fluff.

Picture credit: Indigital

The sweet solemnity of the Simone Rocha show was the most romantic vision of womanhood seen in the London spring/summer 2015 shows. Every emotion was there, from sobre moments with chiffon headscarves, as though going to Sunday worship, to wild oriental flowers in lacquer red.

Picture credit: Indigital

"I was thinking so much of ballet," said the designer backstage. And she must surely have been thinking of her own poetic steps: her Irish background, with her grandmother's crochet, worked into the collection; her extended Asian family in Hong Kong; and her step forward as the lone representative of the Rocha family, her father John having retired this season.
But emotion, however heartfelt, is nothing in fashion if you cannot represent that feeling in clothes. And Simone Rocha did not put a fluffy shoe wrong (even if she herself was wearing her signature pearl-decorated slippers).
The fragility of the women in simple nude chiffon dresses with a curving furry hem; the energy in the red florals and polka dots; the lacy, bridal white… All this emotion gathered into perfect modern clothes: decent dresses, tailored coats, often worn over straight trousers and flat shoes. The work on fabrics, which is one of the designer's strengths, made apparently simple pieces special.

Picture credit: Indigital

Simone, who dedicated the show to the late professor Louise Wilson, her mentor at Saint Martins, is a true talent with a sweet, clear voice. London fashion once had a New Romantics phase. Simone Rocha is the post-feminist, twenty-first-century version.

Sam Hunt Was Never 'Gung-Ho' About the Song That Made Him Famous

Photo: David McClister

Country music's rookie of the year is part heartbreaker, part hipster—and he likes it that way. With his penchant for snappy shoes and DIY T-shirts (he sports one in the laced-with-moonshine video for his breakout hit, "Leave the Night On"), Sam Hunt doesn't look like a former NFL quarterback. But he is. After graduating from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2007, the Nashville native briefly signed as a free agent with the Kansas City Chiefs. And though he's since left the locker room days behind, Hunt, who has written tracks for Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban, and whose debut album, Montevallo, is out today, isn't your average 10-gallon-hat country act. Take, for example, his cut "Break Up in a Small Town." Its heartache-on-Main-Street is typical country fare, but its Drake-like execution—dub step, talking interludes, and autotune—suggests that the 29-year-old is still calling audibles. Here, we chat about his surprising summer smash, how he's going through a "plain" fashion phase, and where those hit songs really come from:
I was surprised to learn you were a jock, but are also fashion forward. How has your style changed since two-a-days?

I don't know where my fashion sense comes from, exactly. I've always been interested in, not necessarily being unique, but not necessarily sticking to the preexisting paradigm—whether it be clothes or music or whatever. I definitely grew up as a small-town…I guess you could call it the "small-town football player," according to the stereotype. I wasn’t involved in music at all. I was a big fan of music, but I only listened to the music that was around me, which was just country music on the radio. It wasn't until I was 18, when I was graduating high school, that I went and bought a guitar on a whim. It sort of changed my direction as far as the stereotype goesDo you have certain designers or stores that you like?

Right now I'm going through kind of a plain phase. Everything I'm wearing is really simple. That was sort of a product of pushing, pushing, pushing, and getting a little more radical with some of the clothes I was wearing. You get tired of the loud, obvious thing and revert right back to being very plain. I like doing stuff like, for instance, in the "Leave the Night On" video, I had on a plain, white T-shirt. I just wanted to do something to it to make it a little different so I just cut a big strip out of the side, from the shirttail up to my armpit, and cut a big red strip out of another T-shirt and just sewed it in there.

How do you get from small town football player to writing songs for Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban?

Those opportunities to have songs recorded by those guys were a product of relationships that I made when I moved to town [Nashville] and getting involved with a publishing company that gave me opportunities to write full time and introduced me to more writers and guys that I was able to learn a lot from. I finally found three or four guys that I really clicked with and I’ve been writing with those guys ever since. I really feel like I honed in on a sound and a style of writing that best fits me. I had the good fortune of having those guys hear songs of mine and wanting to record them. I was flattered. It sort of took off from there.

Photo: Chase Lauer

What is your writing process?

My process has evolved—and is still evolving. I'm still learning a lot as a songwriter. I try to write down and make a note of ideas that I cross paths with on a day-to-day basis, whether it be a conversation or something I hear on the radio, seeing a movie, or just thoughts in my head as I'm walking down the street. Now, the majority of those ideas are not very good. Sometimes when I sit down in a room—at first it's with a co-writer like Zach Crowell, who produced my record—I'll go through my phone and look at ideas that I've stored. It might not make sense to me at the time, but might spark something in his mind, or vice versa. A lot of times I'll go into the little vocal booth and freestyle for 10-20 minutes at a time and he’ll just record little nuggets that will eventually turn into a song.

What's a bad idea you've had recently?

I can't even really think of one right now. I'd have to go through my phone and find something ridiculous that I probably have stored in there. I actually sat in the pool with my phone about two weeks ago and I just got a new one. I lost a lot of bad ideas, actually.

Did you have any inkling that "Leave the Night On" would be so big?

No! I actually didn't at all! I always liked that song and it was fun, but I never was gung-ho about that song as far as having a really strong personal connection to it. It's not that deep of a song! It's really cool to see that people are connecting with it. Zach and Shane [McAnally], my producers, really did a lot to turn that song into something bigger than it was when it was written on an acoustic guitar.

Does it ever get annoying to sing the same songs over and over again when you're performing?

Yeah. [Laughs] Yes.

How do you do it?

If I was singing it by myself, I'd be over it really fast. But singing it live to an audience that appreciates it, and seeing people sing it back and seeing the happiness and the joy on the faces of the people singing it, that makes it a lot easier to sing it over and over and over, night after night. I definitely have that same "over it" thing even when I'm writing songs; I'll love it for a couple weeks, and then I’ll think, 'I gotta write something new!' Picking songs for this record has been the hardest thing ever because I feel like every song on the record has to be the song I wrote today, not six months ago. I feel like they're too old.

As a writer, I don't feel like anything I write is good. But sometimes I look back and think, 'That wasn’t so bad.'

Exactly! I have the exact same thing with songwriting. It takes time. A lot of times, you have to see a reaction. People react to it, and you think, 'Maybe there was something to that that I just wasn't able to be objective about.'