In a statement diamond necklace loaned from the Queen and a floor-length Jenny Packham gown, the Duchess of Cambridge looked dazzling at her first official engagement of the year.
In a stunning statement diamond necklace on loan from her grandmother-in-law the Queen and a floor-length Jenny Packham gown, the Duchess of Cambridge looked dazzling at her first official engagement of the year.
The dress – a favourite of Kate’s first worn last year – featured a sweetheart neckline, fitted short sleeves and bodice and a flowing skirt with layers of diaphanous voile in a midnight bluey-green, accentuating Kate’s very slim figure.
There were no nerves for the Duchess on this solo event at London’s National Portrait Gallery, possibly because she’s become something of a regular to the art house, of which she’s Patron.
Smiling and laughing, she climbed the Gallery steps which had been decked out in gold glitter runners for the occasion, to meet a line-up of celebrity guests at the black tie gala fundraiser.
The necklace was a wedding gift to the Queen from the Nizam of Hyderabad and looked dazzling around Kate’s elegant neck.
Despite the blustery weather, crowds gathered outside the Gallery to catch a glimpse of the Duchess and paparazzi set up their ladders eager for that money shot.
Inside, the celebrity guests included David Bailey and his model wife Catherine, actress Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman and cross-dressing artist Grayson Perry, who also looked elegant in a black smock-style gown with a cream shawl collar topped off with silver glitter eye make-up.
In a short speech the Duchess praised the gallery’s achievements saying “I simply could not be more proud to be its Patron”.
It was an impressive display from Prince William’s wife who is proving something of a natural as a royal ambassador. Also the perfect warm-up for the couple’s upcoming tour of Australia.
Kate borrowed the Queen’s necklace, which was a wedding gift from Nizam of Hyderabad.
Kate was still sporting a deep tan from her recent Caribbean holiday.
The priceless jewels looked fantastic on Kate’s slender neck.
Kate’s famous tresses were back to their shiny best at the event.
Kate looked stunningly beautiful at the event.
Kate chose a short-sleeved gown despite the chilly London weather.
Fans and paparazzi braved the cold to catch a glimpse of Kate and weren’t disappointed – she looked stunning.
The Duchess was in excellent spirits, smiling throughout the visit.
Kate left George at home with his dad for a night out at her favourite gallery.
Kate’s midnight blue gown is a favourite – she wore it for the first time last year.
Kate wore the same gown at last November’s Women in Hedge Funds gala at Kensington Palace.
Grandmother-to-be Jade Jagger has proudly announced that she is pregnant – at the same time as her 21-year-old daughter.
The 42-year-old jewellery and fashion designer posted a picture revealing her baby bump with the caption: “Happy to announce this granny is going to become a mummy … xx double whammy this year.”
Jade is six months pregnant, meaning she will become a mother and a grandmother in the same year.
The daughter of rocker Sir Mick Jagger and activist Bianca, Jade is married to DJ and festival promoter Adrian Fillary.
Her daughter Assisi, 21, fell pregnant to her chef boyfriend at the end of 2013.
Jade was just 20 years old when she became a mum to Assisi and Assisi told Hello! Magazine young mums run in the family.
“The women in our family just tend to have children young, it runs in the genes,” she said.
“I grew up quite quickly and wouldn’t have considered having a child if I was doing what my friends are doing at this stage, messing around.”
Assisi’s child will be the first great grandchild of rock legend Mick, 70, and Jade’s revelation means he will also become a grandfather for the fifth time.
Adorable curly haired child star Shirley Temple, who sang and danced her way into hearts everywhere, has died. She was 85 years old.
“We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and most importantly as our beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and adored wife for fifty-five years of the late and much missed Charles Alden Black,” a family statement said.
Temple, who passed away at her home in San Francisco on Monday night, was born on April 23, 1928, and started her film career at the tender age of three. By age six she was a full-blown movie star, made famous by films such as Bright Eyes, The Little Colonel,Poor Little Rich Girl and Heidi.
During her youth Temple avoided the scandals and arrests that plague other child stars but once reflected that her fame may have robbed her of some of her childhood.
She stopped believing in Santa at age six, when “Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph”.
Temple grew up to become a pretty young woman, but audiences lost interest, and she retired from making movies at 21.
In her private life, Temple was only 17 when she wed John Agar, who would eventually star alongside her in two movies. Their five-year marriage produced a daughter, Susan.
In 1950 she wed Charles Black in a marriage that lasted more than 50 years until his death in 2005. She and Black had two children.
Despite her film career and her political activism later in life Temple said her greatest role was that of a wife, mother and grandmother.
“There’s nothing like real love. Nothing,” said Temple upon receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2006.
Shirley Temple Black is survived by her children, Susan, Charlie and Lori, her granddaughter Teresa and her great-granddaughters Lily and Emma.
Shirley Temple received her lifetime achievement award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2006.
Shirley Temple showing the Jonkers diamond at the South California Fair in Los Angeles in October 1933.
Shirley Temple in 1932 holding American actor, Bill (Bojangles) Robinson’s hand in a farmyard during a scene from Edgar Lewis’s silent film, The Littlest Rebel.
Shirley Temple in a 1936 poster for the film Stowaway, directed by William A Seiter.
Temple was the biggest film star in the world during the depression era bringing joy to the hearts of a struggling nation. Her portrait featured on a 1930s Christmas card.
Shirley stopped believing in Santa at age six, she once said, when “Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph”.
Temple developed into a pretty young woman but as an adult couldn’t maintain her early fame so she retired from films at age 21.
Shirley Temple wed John Agar in September 1945 at age 17. Their union lasted five years and they had one daughter, Susan.
Shirley Temple reads her fan mail at home in 1944 in Los Angeles in 1944.
Shirley Temple and her second husband, Charles Black, pose together at the premiere of director William Wyler’s film, ‘Roman Holiday’. The pair remained married for more than 50 years, until Charles died in 2005.
Shirley Temple with her daughter Susan, son Charles, daughter Lori and husband Charles at home in 1957.
Shirley on the set of The Shirley Temple Show in 1960.
Shirley became very politically active later in life. Here she is in 1968 speaking in front of a poster of Richard Nixon at a Republican Party election press conference at the Cafe Royal in London.
Shirley promoting her bestselling book Child Star in 1988.
Shirley with fellow child star Dakota Fanning in 2006.
Flowers for Shirley Temple are placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to mourn the star.
Is there any truth to the old adage that you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have? We dusted off our sharpest suit and consulted the experts. Here's what they had to say.
You may have a brain the size of a planet and people skills to rival Mother Teresa, but if you turn up to an important meeting looking like something the cat dragged in, don’t expect people to listen to what you have to say.
Image consultant Jon-Michail, the CEO of Image Group International, says your work wardrobe is a key part of your personal branding.
“First impressions speak louder than what comes out of your mouth,” he says.
Appearance is particularly important at the job interview stage. A US study, reported in Forbes, found interviewers decided within the first 10 seconds of meeting job applicants whether they were right for the job.
In another study of 1000 university graduates working in the US within large corporations found woman, in particular, believed dressing the part was a vital factor in attaining success. More than half (53 percent) of the women surveyed said aspiring female executives needed to dress very conservatively to get ahead, avoiding flashy make-up, plunging necklines, too-short or too-tight skirts, and long fingernails.
It’s (almost) impossible to overdress for a job interview
Sure, the company may have casual Fridays, but don’t assume that means you can turn up to the job interview in frayed jeans and a tatty T-shirt.
Nina Mapson Bone, the general manager of recruitment for Chandler Macleod recruiters in NSW and the ACT, says she can think of hundreds of occasions when candidates have missed out on jobs because they have dressed too casually but only one case where someone was overdressed.
“It was for a retail environment where the brand had a certain [funky] image and the person turned up in a suit.”
She says in most cases, a dark suit is pretty much the perfect interview outfit.
Don’t let your accessories let you down
Even the most elegant suit can be brought undone by scuffed shoes and a handbag held together with safety pins.
Mapson Bone says once you’ve landed a job, you can be more flamboyant with your wardrobe choices, but it pays to dress “a level up”.
“[If] everyone wears jeans every day but the boss always makes an effort to wear a smart skirt and blouse … in case she has to see clients without notice, then dress the same way.
“You’ll be the one that gets to go with her if someone is needed, or gets noticed for being professional, or at the very least doesn’t stand out as being inappropriately dressed.”
Think smart, not sexy
There’s a time and place for sexy, and the experts agree it’s generally not at work.
Jon-Michail suggests asking yourself: “Is this outfit appropriate for Friday night work drinks or a lap dance?”
“If you’re going to use sexuality to open doors for you, just remember the pros and cons … We know some women will judge you more harshly than a bloke will.”
Forget about the latest fashions
Unless you’re working in a fashion-forward industry, it’s probably best to save the floral onesie for a night out.
Jon-Michail says you can’t go wrong sticking to a palette of black, navy, charcoal, teal and silver. “They work year in, year out.”
Mapson Bone recalls being taken aside by a boss early in her career and advised to tone down her fashion choices.
“She said something like, ‘I see your career progressing fairly rapidly and I don’t want your clothing to hold you back.’
“It made me feel like she’d gone out of her way to help, rather than criticising what I was wearing.”
The domestic goddess tweeted the pasta alla puttanesca – Italian for “spaghetti a la whore” – link as her recipe of the day alongside the words “need I say more?”.
The post was an apparent reference to her former husband Charles Saatchi’s new girlfriend Trinny Woodall, who hours earlier tweeted a tasteless joke seemingly about Saatchi’s abuse of Lawson.
Writing about turning 50, Woodall wrote: “It’s great that, at 50, life can still grab you by the throat and shake you up.”
Saatchi was last year photographed apparently choking Lawson in a Mayfair restaurant – the same establishment now frequented by Saatchi and Woodall.
Lawson’s retaliatory tweet was a huge hit with her followers and was retweeted and favourited hundreds of times, leading her to post a denial that the message had any “agenda” other than promoting a delicious recipe.
But Lawson fans wouldn’t accept this answer, further speculating the tweet could be a reference to Lawson’s former aide Francesca Grillo, who was yesterday revealed to be having an affair with a married former police officer.
Grillo was last year cleared of fraud in a sensational court case that saw Lawson admit to occasional drug use.
The grizzled Welsh fisherman with mischievous eyes and a sing-song voice sounded a little melodramatic when he said, “The royal family, and I mean Her Majesty The Queen, Charles, William and baby George owe their inheritance to the tides of Tenby.”
When I roared with laughter, he looked surprised. “Look, Boyo,” he said, from his lobster pot seat on the quay of Tenby harbour. “When Henry Tudor was being hunted down by soldiers in 1471, he took refuge here, hid in a tunnel that led to the harbour, and when the king tide came in, he fled to France in one of the mayor’s boats. No high tide, no escape, certain death and no Queen Elizabeth the First or Second … for that matter.”
He had a point. Tenby’s harbour empties at low tide just like a bath when you pull the plug, leaving boats sitting at precarious angles on the sand. Henry Tudor did, in fact, narrowly escape death that day in 1471, returning to Wales 14 years later with a victorious army which won him the throne as Henry VII. Henry VII is Elizabeth II’s (15) great uncle. And if Henry hadn’t escaped that day, who knows who would be on the throne today. A bit of Welsh logic, I suppose.
However, I hadn’t come to Tenby for a history lesson, but to walk from its medieval harbour to the estuary at Laugharne, where the celebrated Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, spent his later years writing verse on that “heron priested shore”, to put it in the poet’s own words.
2014 is the Centenary of Dylan Thomas’ Birth and to mark the event, the Welsh have opened a 16km stretch of footpath that allows hikers to walk between the iconic little port and the charming hamlet. It may be only a short section of the Wales Coast Path which, in its entirety, offers 1400km of uninterrupted hiking around some of Britain’s most beautiful cliffs and beaches, but it stitches together the Pembrokeshire section of pathways with that of its neighbouring county, Carmarthenshire, both voted two of most spectacular stretches of coastline in Europe. Along the entire length of the Wales Coast Path are many inspiring sights, including the four World Heritage castles of Caernarfon, Beaumaris, Conwy and Harlech, where Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales in 1969. Then there’s the Italianate fantasy village of Portmeirion; the seemingly endless sandy beaches of the Atlantic coast, where surfers flock from all over Europe; and the country’s smallest city, St Davids, with just 1408 souls who fit snugly into its 12th century cathedral.
In comparison, the walk between Tenby and Laugharne is a modest stroll, about 16km in all, but before setting off, I took the ferry from Tenby to Caldey Island, home to a monastery since 1084. At low tide, the ferry goes from Castle Beach, 50 metres around the headland in front of the ice-cream cabin that sits on the sand beneath the town’s pastel-coloured terraces that line the cliffs.
The ice-cream cabin and the view of South Beach, Tenby.
The colours of Tenby’s houses are more reminiscent of Portofino, on Italy’s Ligurian Coast, than Wales. So it didn’t come as a surprise when the Cistercian monastery on Caldey Island looked like a turreted castle on the Rhine. Further up the hill towards the lighthouse are the ruins of the original religious community, next to a 6th century cross. The little church of St Illtyd’s looks as if it could have been built in days of King Arthur and Merlin. From a certain angle you can see its moss-covered spire lists like the Leaning Tower of Pisa and to be frank I wouldn’t care to live in the Old Priory next door.
St Illtyd’s Church, Caldey Island, and the Caldey Island ferry.
A colleague once wrote that “the joy of walking a coastal path is the simplicity of its navigation. Keep the sea on your left or keep the sea on your right, and walk.” And the path from Tenby to Laugharne is easy to navigate. It begins with a delightful wooded stretch to Saundersfoot, where three tunnels, once used to transport coal, save the calves the effort of climbing up several steep hills.
Next comes a gentler landscape of undulating fields, neatly divided by hedgerows, that rises above sandstone cliffs. Here, the path heads inland onto the high ground of Gilman Point that overlooks the 11-kilometre expanse of Pendine Sands: pearl grey under cloud; sparkling white, yellow and blue under sun.
Once used for numerous land-speed record attempts between 1924 and 1927, the sands are now deserted and offer step after step of solitude, with only the sound of breaking waves as your constant companion.
On the approach to Laugharne, through bluebell woods with lazy estuary below, the path wends its way past discreet but sturdy stands inscribed with Dylan Thomas’ poetry, “high tide and the heron dived when I took the road”.
The castle at Laugharne, South Wales.
My walk’s end was next to the castle. Yes, it seems there are ancient castles around every other corner in Wales. And further along on a slight rise is one of Dylan Thomas’ former homes, The Boat House. Here, you can savour the estuary view while enjoying tea and traditional Welsh cakes.
The Boat House, Dylan Thomas’ home, on the River Taf estuary, Laugharne.
Up the hill is Browns Hotel, the poet’s local pub that dates back to the 1750s and offers bed & breakfast. Here you can sample the local brew, Brains ale, at Thomas’ favourite table in the corner, where there’s a photograph of the bard and his wife, Caitlin.
Browns Hotel, Laugharne, with a portrait of the poet on the sign. Dylan Thomas’ first home in Laugharne, Seaview ([email protected]), on Market Lane, is now a comfortable Bed & Breakfast, where you can book a night in the poet’s old bedroom.
Dylan Thomas’ first home in Laugharne, Seaview ([email protected]), on Market Lane, is now a comfortable Bed & Breakfast, where you can book a night in the poet’s old bedroom.
Not everyone is a Dylan Thomas fan, but you have to tip your hat to his choice of home. The beaches in Wales are as awe-inspiring as they are in New South Wales and one wonders whether our founding fathers were influenced by this when they named the new colony.
What the two places don’t have in common is the same weather. As Dylan Thomas’ line “the pale rain over the dwindling harbour” suggests, Wales has its fair share of wet weather. And yet my experience was two weeks of glorious blue skies. And if the sun does shine, with 1400 kilometres of the Wales Coast Path to explore, you’ll find adventure at every turn.
While Oprah Winfrey is no stranger to donating to charity, the star has revealed just how hard it was to auction off some of her most prized possessions back in November.
The 60-year-old raised $600,000 for the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy College Fund, but said letting go of some of her material possessions was certainly a learning experience.
“For just a split second, I considered bidding on my own folk-art needlepoint rug with the lovely leaf design,” she told O magazine.
“But knowing what you need is more than knowing what you want.” The media mogul joked she had a “mid-level anxiety attack” when it came to decluttering her life.
“When you’re coming into your own, nobody ever teaches you how to ask for less,” she said.
“But over the years, you begin to make distinctions; you start to focus on what’s important, and you start to realize what’s superfluous.”
Oprah gave up a number of ‘meaningless’ objects at the Santa Barbera auction which turned out to be her biggest yard sale yet.
It featured more than 300 of her household items including some Jetson electric bikes, still-life paintings and a hand-made Persian rug that fetched $6,150.
“What I need is dogs and books, light and space. Instead of feeling walled in by stuff, I want to feel surrounded by calm,” she said.
The idea for the auction all started when Oprah attempted to remodel her bathroom around the her much-loved single-piece onyx bathtub which she realised had come to represent wealth for her.
She began questioning why an inanimate object meant so much to her.
“It made me feel special. Lots of people have nice houses, but not many have a hand-carved-out-of-one-piece-of-onyx tub,” she writes in the magazine.
She says the auction not only helped those who benefitted from the funds, but helped herself to let go of a number of other belongings she had become attached to and realise what really mattered in her life and her home.
“You realize that a single piece of art that really speaks to you can be far more powerful than a wall filled with “important” works,” she said.
“That a meal eaten with feet up and pajamas on is usually a lot more pleasurable than any fancy-schmancy food at a black-tie gala… that less actually is so much more.”
There appears to be no reconciliation in sight for Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth as the pair both move on with other love interests.
While Liam has been seen kissing The Vampire Diaries star Nian Dobrev, Miley has hooked up with German photographer Cornelius Käss.
The 21-year-old, who is about to embark on her Bangerz tour, met the London-based photographer in November last year when she visited the UK to meet with celebrated photographer Rankin.
Cornelius has since flown to LA for a romantic rendezvous with Miley.
“Miley fancied Cornelius straight away and made it known to everyone that she had to have him,” an insider told Heat.
“They hung out when she was over here in November and they really liked each other, so he flew over to see her in December – that’s when things really started to heat up. They’re still sexting now and Miley can’t stop telling everyone about him.
“They’re making plans to meet up again in London soon.”
Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge has made her first official appearance for 2014 at the National Portrait Gallery’s fundraising gala.
Wearing a beautiful gown by her favourite designer Jenny Packham, the Duchess topped off her outfit with a stunning diamond necklace which she borrowed from Queen Elizabeth.
The Nizam of Hyderabad necklace, which was given to her majesty as a wedding present, has a matching tiara and was made by Cartier.
See Catherine dazzle at the event here!
Catherine arrives at the event.
The Duchess and a young Queen Elizabeth wear the Nizam of Hyderabad necklace.
The Duchess greets the waiting crowds.
Catherine looked lovely in a beautiful blue dress.
Tired of getting the lady in your life a Valentine’s Day gift that remains in the back of her closet with the tags on? Our online gift guide can help you choose something she’ll really like this year.
Get the lady in your life something she’ll love this Valentine’s Day!
Pandora sterling silver heart rings with stone, $49, Pandora.net
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