“Sex and the City: The Movie” began shooting in New York on Sept. 17 and, judging from the first few days of production, the costume designer Patricia Field has lost none of her mojo.

Au contraire.

Although the movie’s four stars are nearly a decade older than they were when the U.S. television series began, Field continues to dress Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her trio of BFFs (Best Friends Forever) in the same wild array of haute couture and vintage finds that transformed both fashion and television’s glamour quotient when the series aired from 1999 to 2004 on the maverick cable network HBO.

” ‘Sex and the City’ was key to what is now driving fashion,” said Merrill Greene, vice president and creative director of Stylesight, a New York-based online trend-tracking and forecasting service with clients like Macy’s, Target and Victoria’s Secret. “Patricia Field’s curation of what is available at large gave the characters street cred and drove desire. Patricia is always on the edge, mixing things up, mixing highbrow and lowbrow.”

The exhibit is open Sept. 27 through Dec. 7, with the opening and reception from 2 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27, in Harley Hall.

Under the inspiration and guidance of Karin J. Bohleke, the museum’s new director, the exhibit will feature garments and accessories spanning the 19th and 20th centuries.

Through the meticulous craft of professional dressmakers, trim manufacturers or the talents of the owner, ordinary garments were transformed into either a sumptuous or a simply elegant fashion statement with beads of all shapes and sizes sewn onto the fronts, backs, sleeves and necklines. To add style to their accessories, the fashion-conscious adorned their handbags, gloves, hats and shoes with beads and other decorative ornaments.

This exhibit reflects contemporary interest in stylish beadwork and glittering trims; it can be a source of inspiration to those now looking to add a touch of beauty to an otherwise plain garment.

Hosmon, a sixth-grade teacher at Redeemer Lutheran School in Stuart, will mark her third appearance in the charity’s annual fundraiser. The Oct. 19-21 event is a 60-mile trek in three days along parks, neighborhoods and beaches from Clearwater to St. Petersburg.

“I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from the community,” said Hosmon, 25. “I am becoming more and more convinced that a cure will be found in my lifetime. I can’t wait for that day to come.”

The Martin-St. Lucie chapter of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans sponsored the fashion show for Hosmon with the Christian modeling agency Model4Jesus in the school’s gymnasium with the help of local businesses and individuals.

Last year, her team raised $8,000. This year Hosmon hopes to raise $10,000.

Proceeds support the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund.

Actress Kirsten Dunst chatted with her ‘Marie Antoinette’ co-star Marianne Faithfull in the front row, while a tanned and blonde Victoria Beckham stopped to kiss top fashion editors on the cheeks.

With massive global advertising campaigns, Chanel’s interlocked double-C logo has become as recognizable as McDonald’s Golden Arches.

Journalist Dana Thomas, author of “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster,” believes luxury brands have lost their cachet since large conglomerates started snapping up family owned businesses during a wave of acquisitions in the 1990s.

“It went mass — the businessmen started hyping the brands and focusing on the logo and stamping it on everything from bikinis to handbags to scarves,” she told The Associated Press.

“And many of these companies, as soon as they were publicly traded, started worrying more about the bottom line than how well the hemline was sewed together,” she added.

Privately held Chanel does not publish sales figures, but industry sources estimate its annual revenues at some $4 billion.

The firm staged its spring-summer ready-to-wear show on a bombastic set inside the Grand Palais, a recently restored 19th century glass-and-steel structure near the Seine river.

Models strutted in star-pattered blue dresses with red-and-white striped jackets — perfect for campaigning on the U.S. presidential election trail next summer.

Denim swimsuits and matching jackets and jeans were faded to different shades of blue and teamed with rows of pearls that gave the casual outfits an offhanded elegance.

Front row guest Claudia Schiffer said she was struck by how impersonal the shows had become since she and her fellow supermodels worked the catwalk in the 1990s.

“The models have become numbers, while in the 1990s we were all known by name,” she said.

At Sonia Rykiel, they still do things the old way. Models wrapped in swirls of pastel chiffon and feather boas smiled and danced for the finale of the joyful presentation — and you could tell they were getting a real kick out of it.

Nathalie Rykiel, artistic director of the French label founded by her mother, said the family touch was what made the brand special. She has turned down purchase offers and is determined to keep the business in private hands for as long as she can.

“I respect the money, and the business has changed and therefore you need a lot of money today to be in this business. But I feel the press and everybody in the fashion world respects Sonia Rykiel as a different company,” she explained.

British designer Alexander McQueen turned his show into a tribute to his mentor, the eccentric British fashion editor Isabella Blow, who took her life last May.

The air hung heavy with the scent of Fracas, Blow’s favorite perfume, and models paraded in her signature look of radical tailoring paired with outlandish Philip Treacy hats.

The mind-blowing headgear included a cluster of red butterflies that topped a skintight gray wool dress, and a glittering black lace visor with a matching body tattoo.

Many of the outfits had a sadomasochistic edge, with wide leather belts forcing a handspan waist. Blow famously scoffed at practical concerns — she once showed up for a lunch wearing antlers shrouded with a lace veil.

As a model hobbled past in a pink funnel skirt and Japanese-style sculpted shoes, one could imagine the former front-row fixture clapping with glee.

Record labels have sued more than 26,000 people they accuse of downloading and offering music for sharing online in violation of copyright laws. Many of those people have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars.

Thomas was the first person to fight back all the way to a trial. Six major record companies accused Thomas of offering 1,702 songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network. At trial, they focused on 24 songs and jurors decided Thursday that Thomas willfully violated the copyright on all 24. Their verdict was for damages of $9,250 per song, or $222,000.

The recording industry won two victories with that verdict.

Beyond the money, the industry added to a growing body of legal precedents holding that making copyright-protected songs available online, even without proof the songs went anywhere, infringes on the copyrights for the songs.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis was planning to instruct jurors as they began their deliberations that record companies would have to prove someone copied the songs to show copyright infringement.

But record company attorney Richard Gabriel cited cases where making songs available was found to be infringement, and Davis changed course.

Legal experts said the question isn’t settled.

“Record labels don’t like that because it’s harder to prove,” said Andrew Bridges, an attorney who has argued for the Computer & Communications Industry Association that copyright holders should have to prove the offered material is actually used.

“It’s all about whether they get a free pass to impose onerous damages on people without actually having to prove a case,” Bridges said.

International intellectual property treaties assume that simply making a work of art available can violate the copyright, said Jane C. Ginsburg, an intellectual law professor at Columbia Law School.

“It would be hard to see how we could be living up to our international obligations if the law were interpreted differently,” she said.

Ray Beckerman, an attorney who has represented people sued by the record companies, said the companies used one case where there was a $22,500 default judgment to scare people into settling.

“Now, look at this. This is 10 times better. They can talk about this case, they can use it for frightening people,” he said.

Beckerman said the damage award was disproportionate to the price of the 24 songs Thomas was accused of sharing for free. She could have bought them for 99 cents each on a legal download site, he said.

Record company lawyer Richard Gabriel argued at trial that Thomas made the songs available to millions of users on Kazaa.

The lawsuits have cost more than they’ve brought in. But the Recording Industry Association of America has said it wants the lawsuits to send a message that downloading music illegally is risky.

But the number of people sharing files online at any given time has risen 69 percent to almost 9.4 million since 2003, when the lawsuits began, according to BigChampagne LLC, research firm that tracks file-sharing traffic.

That suggests the publicity has had a limited effect in deterring people from swapping music online, said Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne.

Record companies “don’t want to be on the front page battling a lot of customers,” Garland said. “They want to be on the front page selling a lot of Kanye records.”

Thomas denied that the Kazaa account at issue during the trial was hers. Neither side presented the computer hard drive Thomas owned in 2004 and 2005, which she allegedly use to download and offer the songs.

Thomas said Friday that people who heard about the verdict have been leaving messages on her MySpace page offering to help.

“I guess it’s my Native pride,” said Thomas, who is a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. “Up until this point I have not held my hand out and asked for financial assistance from anyone.”

Thomas, 30, works for the Mille Lacs band coordinating a federal grant for cleaning up contaminated land. She said she doesn’t have the means to pay.

“I am a single mother of two boys. I make $36,000 a year at my job,” she said. “At best they could try and get a court order garnishing my wages.”

Her attorney, Brian Toder, said that copyright law automatically awards court costs and attorney fees to the winning party.

Paying those too could push the total judgment against Thomas as high as a half-million dollars.

Recording Industry Association of America spokeswoman Cara Duckworth declined to comment on the group’s plans for enforcing the judgment.

Thomas questioned whether the record companies will be able to enforce the verdict because she is an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs band, lives on its land and works for the band.

But Kevin Washburn, who teaches American Indian Law as a visiting associate professor at Harvard Law School, said tribal courts generally enforce judgments from other courts. And since this is a federal verdict, the tribal courts might not even have a say in enforcing the verdict.

“One way or another she’s got to pay,” he said.

The companies that sued Thomas were EMI Group PLC’s Capitol Records Inc.; the Arista Records LLC label and its parent Sony BMG Music Entertainment, which is run by Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG; Vivendi SA’s UMG Inc. and its label, Interscope Records; and Warner Bros. Records Inc., which is a unit of Warner Music Group Corp.

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Earthtimes.org CVS Buying Caremark for About $21.2B
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By LUCAS L. JOHNSON II AP Writer. © 2006 AP. NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Drugstore operator CVS Corp. announced Wednesday it is buying pharmacy benefits manager Caremark Rx Inc.
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