Saturday, August 30, 2008

Marisa Miller

Victoria's Secret model Marisa Miller has a great body - slim, toned and tanned. Her hobbies are said to be surfing and volleyball, and is said to train with a personal trainer at a boxing gym.

Her measurements are 86.5-58-89.

A youtube video showing her working out can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzKbMAY90RM



Her breasts are said to be natural, a quote from Fitness magazine "I used to be shy about [my body] because I was a tomboy, but I was also a size D by the time I was 16". It also details some of her favoured forms of exercise: "I’ve tried everything. I love surfing: it’s spiritual and physical. I alsolike Spinning. It’s good toning for your rear and legs. I’ll put in one of my favorite Guns N Roses music video DVDs and start pedaling. I find it’s so much easier to work out when I can distract myself with somethingvisual."







"SURFING EVERY DAY KEEPS MY BODY TIGHT AND DEFINED," Marisa says. "The exercise gives you the whole package: The paddling is good for cardio, pulling yourself up is great for your arms, and the balancing gives your leg muscles a great workout."


"ALL EXERCISE RELIEVES STRESS--ESPECIALLY SURFING," Marisa says. "Even when the conditions aren't right, just getting wet helps. I walk out of the water feeling like a different person."


"I TAKE MY GOOD EATING HABITS ON THE ROAD," Marisa explains. Because of modeling, the 25-year-old logged 150,000 miles last year alone! Marisa's latest eat-right strategy: "I stop somewhere like Whole Foods Market before I get on the plane. Planning ahead is definitely worth it." She grabs a tuna sandwich, a spinach salad or a Naked juice smoothie to travel with.


"WHEN I'M HOME I COOK A LOT," says Marisa, who'll make a veggie omelet for brunch, and then a mixed greens salad with cut green grapes and goat cheese later on. "I eat often and try to have my largest meal during the day, and then a smaller one at night to maintain a great energy level throughout the day."


"HAVE A RAINY-DAY BACKUP PLAN FOR WORKOUTS," says Marisa, who lives in Southern California, 10 minutes away from the beach. But when she can't get into the water for whatever reason, she does a Spinning bike routine at home every day.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

MK, as she is known to her friends and family, is also a punctual and professional sort. She arrives for a poolside tea in Los Angeles 10 minutes early, ordering a hot chocolate while explaining her fetish for all things sweet — "I'm a candy girl, like Tootsie Rolls and Swedish Fish" — and objecting when the waiter tries to take the sugar bowl away.

She is wearing a nautical striped T-shirt (her mom's, from the '70s), tucked into two black Wolford slips rolled down and turned into a tight, Robert-Palmer-video-style mini, and multicolored sparkly Christian Louboutin stilettos. She's just had her hair colored, returning to a sunnier shade after some experiments with both peroxide ("I woke up one morning and was like, I want white-trash hair today") and the dark side (an auburn-haired near-Goth moment last year). She's carrying a large black fringed leather Prada tote — she doesn't do small bags — and her fingers are covered with rings, most notably two vintage coiled gold snakes stacked on top of each other. ("They remind me of twins, sort of double headed.") Altogether, the effect is less her famed "bag-lady chic" than an edgy, body-conscious, and, yes, sexy silhouette. If she weren't 21, she could be 40. And French.

Few people need reminding that Mary-Kate — with her twin sister, Ashley — literally crawled into celebrity aged nine months (courtesy of Full House) and has not been out of the spotlight ever since. She has been a celebrity for more than two decades. Perhaps that's one reason she seems as if she came out of the womb worldly, the textbook old soul. "Yeah," she says with a small shrug. "I get that a lot."

With all of that attention and all of the money (her and Ashley's company, Dualstar, has famously become a "billion-dollar business"), Mary-Kate could easily have ended up the type who wears pink terry cloth and carries a variety of small dogs. "Could you imagine?" she says with the politest version of a snort. "No way." She credits her exceptionally close-knit family (she has five siblings) and, interestingly, early stardom with helping her keep her perspective. "I think it helped that I started in front of the camera, so it didn't come as a shock. If I was a teenager and was thrown into the spotlight, I don't know how I would react, to be honest."

Though the tabloids are all too keen to brand her a skinny, nervous deer in the headlights, in person Mary-Kate is easy in her skin, confident and surprisingly tactile, curling up in her seat and touching you on the arm to make a point. She laments the generic style of most actresses and cites only men as style inspirations: "Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp. Men, they just dress the way they want, and they don't think about Who Wore It Best." She doesn't much care for Who Wore It Best, noting she avoids those pages by "wearing vintage so often. I just dress the way I feel instead of looking for what's the new handbag."

If Mary-Kate and Ashley have their way, more people will be wearing clothes and carrying bags the way they do. They have just shown the fifth collection of their ready-to-wear line, the Row, and recently launched a contemporary label, Elizabeth and James, named after a sister and a brother. The Row's holiday collection (in stores next month) is a slick mix of skinny leather pants, razor-cut blazers, butter-soft, slouchy tees, and a destined-to-be-cultish pullover fur. Lauren Hutton, who stars in the Row's Spring '08 look book, says, "The clothes are extraordinary. A man I was with just loved them. The pieces are just so genius, soft like a baby's skin. Simple minimalist stuff, but really spectacular."

Mary-Kate, designer, faces an interesting challenge. She has to marry Dualstar — which has made its fortune selling tween-tastic DVDs and pastel Mary-Kate and Ashley T-shirts at Wal-Mart — with her increasingly edgy and subversive taste. Dualstar executives, some of whom have worked with her since she was a child, often nag her, mom-style, about pulling her hair back "or wearing a color," she says with a laugh. "I had this event recently, and I was like, They're going to be so happy that I'm wearing ... purple. I actually have to think about those things, though, you know, so I don't get trashed."

Get trashed sometimes she does. Hutton says, "Once in a while, she'll wear something and I'll think, Oh, baby doll, take another look. But to have the bravery, to take the chance to do that, is pretty wonderful. She is making her own way, which is hardly ever done in Hollywood." Of Mary-Kate's penchant for gigantic Balenciaga heels, Jenji Kohan, the creator of Weeds, says, laughing, "I'd be like, 'It's Tuesday. Do you really want to be wearing those shoes?' But she pulls it off." Designer Giambattista Valli, a friend, says, "She likes to take risks, but because she has such strong personal style, she always manages to make it work. Even if she had nothing on, she'd have style."

And MK chic is spreading. "Sometimes I'll look at people or at a magazine and I'll do a double take because I'm like, Oh, my God, that's my outfit, but that's not me," Mary-Kate says. Playing with her wire-rimmed aviators, she jokes wryly that she should have bought shares in Ray-Ban. (She and Chloë Sevigny pretty much brought back white '80s Wayfarers.) She tends to fall in love with a look, then wear it until she's done. "If I put together a good outfit, I'll wear it for three days and then switch it up with a blazer," she says. "I still love my vintage jeans, my tights, and my pants, though." She didn't start wearing heels, in fact, until a couple of years ago: "I kept watching Ashley walk around in them so gracefully, and I'm such a klutz. But I ended up loving heels, and I don't usually take them off." She wears precisely one pair of flat shoes: Chanel's knee-high patent-leather gladiator sandals.

This season, it's Balenciaga's fall collection — all of it — that has Mary-Kate obsessed. She is close to designer Nicolas Ghesquière and says, "He is so talented, but he's the nicest, most down-to-earth guy, and that makes everything he does more brilliant. I bought everything, but I haven't got anything yet," she says like a girl impatiently waiting for Christmas. Will she wear the new pieces with her infamous clodhopper boots? "Uh-huh. Wore them the other day, actually."

Mary-Kate always goes with her gut, even if some people (back to those tabloids) don't quite get it. "The tabloids say things about me? What do they say?" she asks archly. "People are going to write what they want, and everyone's going to have their own idea of who I am. But I'm not trying to be friends with the people who are reading them, really." After a rough couple of years filled with near-forensic scrutiny of her weight, she'll have you know that she does eat. "This is not going to sound good," she laughs, "but I like making crispy tofu sticks with peanut sauce. I love my sashimi and my salmon and my vegetables." She observes, "Stress plays a big role in how I look day-to-day. I've always been very active — Pilates, yoga. I grew up horseback riding every day for hours. I love dancing. I usually last longer than anyone on the dance floor."

A common image of Mary-Kate has her emerging from a coffee joint with an oversize cup. "I always get creamed for having my Starbucks cup," she says, sighing. "But the only time people get photos of me is when I'm getting coffee, when I can't sneak away from the camera." She also resents the pictorial implication that she and Ashley are dilettantes. "They take photos of us going into our offices, and it's 'Mary-Kate and Ashley shopping again.' But I'm going to work for eight hours, and we're working so hard. ..." She trails off. "It just shows how people want to think of you."

Mary-Kate is not above celeb watching herself, however. Newly obsessed with Victoria Beckham, she notes she avidly watched Beckham's Coming to America documentary: "She's running around in a bikini and heels, and I'm like, Oh, my God! I do that, too!" How positively Grey Gardens. "I run around my house naked with heels all the time. It's so funny. All my friends will tell you I love running around in kimonos and jewelry or naked with jewelry."

More people will be watching Mary-Kate soon, thanks to her role in the Emmy-nominated Weeds. "I am a very good Christian girl," she says with a wink. "She has her moral beliefs — and she happens to smoke pot." Of her newest cast member, Kohan adds, "Mary-Kate is complicated. She's a big celebrity, a huge media icon, but you have to separate the media images from someone who has the same issues, the same desires, as anyone else."
Of course, Mary-Kate's image, in all its incarnations — from high fashion to small screen — is her strongest asset. And she has yet to settle on one. "I feel like I've lived 10 different lives already and I'm only 21," she says, almost as a reminder to herself. "But I also feel like I'm entering a new chapter."

One thing on which she is clear, though: She doesn't need to be looked at all the time. What would she do for a day if she were invisible? "I would probably go to a restaurant with my friends, who would be able to see me, of course," she adds pragmatically, "and I would sit outside and enjoy a nice lunch with them. Then I would walk down the street."
The old soul takes a sip of her little-girl-sweet hot chocolate. "That's what I would do."

LA Livin'

+ Rent a unit in a reasonably good area


Food:
- rice
Can be a base for stir fries, risottos and is good with satay sauce

- sugarfree drinks
Can be mixed with alcohol, also made into ice blocks

Extra's
Camel Menthol Cigarettes
Cheap Vodka

Going Out
Teddy's
Hyde
Les Deux
Chateau Marmont

Clothes
- Melrose Avenue
- Rose Bowl Flea Markets
- Vintage shops
- American Apparel
- Urban Outfitters

Exercise
- Hike around Runyon Canyon every second day
- Treadmill or rowing machine in the house
- Windsor Pilates and Barry's Bootcamp DVDS



Saturday, August 9, 2008

Elle UK Excerpt

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'I love playing dress up' Mary-Kate tells ELLE this month. 'I get inspired by old films, weird things. It could just be the person sitting across from me or it could be a full Victorian costume, ' she reveals, giving us an insight in to where she gets the inspiration for her unique blend of granny-chic meets couture bag lady style. A look that has made her just as famous as her acting career has, if not more so.

'What I find odd though is that a weekly [magazine] will come out describing my outfit as a fashion disaster, while the fashion industry actually respects what I wear,' Mary-Kate tells us. And the industry certainly does love what she wears. 'With her you already know future generations will look at her as an icon', says Margherita Missoni, while Karl Largerfeld is also a big fan of her look. ' I like the way Mary-Kate is mixing Chanel with other things, life is not a fashion show, and I find a total designer look boring'.

With fashion credentials like these it's no wonder she has teamed up with twin sister Ashley to create two fashion labels, The Row and Elizabeth and James - named after their younger siblings. They are both heavily involved in the design process at their companies, but, 'I think more of my energy goes in to Elizabeth and James' says Mary-Kate, about the collection, that has just gone on sale in Selfridges and at net-a-porter.com in the U.K. The Row is 'Ashley's baby' she says.

She counts Edie Sedgwick and Brigitte Bardot among her style icons but says in truth, she says, when it comes to trying something new 'I'm up for anything.' Which is maybe why she and Ashley have also made their first foray in to writing this year with their upcoming book Influence - for which they interviewed 22 people from the fashion industry who inspire them, including Christian Louboutin and John Galliano.

It seems like a lot of work for the diminutive star, but she thrives on it. 'I have so much more respect for fashion designers now because it's hard work and never ending. It's not a movie. You can't wrap it and go start something else.' she says.
And it looks like she's gaining all of that respect now too.

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