Your book is a memoir and style guide. What sort of fashion advice can we find inside?
“One of the longest sidebars in the book is about packing for trips and my general fascination with the decline in how people dress for travel. I’m like, ‘Do you really need to be wearing pajama bottoms, a hoodie, and bring your pillow from home? It’s really not that long!’ My thing right now is to try to get people to just put a little bit more thought into it, because when you’re traveling somewhere you’re beginning a journey, no matter where it is. So, why not start it with some sort of look?”

Got it. No sweat pants. What should we wear instead?
“I think people confuse comfort with sloppiness. But you can wear jeans and a button-down or a T-shirt, a blazer, and flats and be comfortable. Also, I always have a scarf when I’m traveling because airplanes are always all of a sudden refrigerators, as well — they’re so cold!”

What runway pieces are you dying to work with? 
“I would say anything from Givenchy’s spring collection, for both men and women.”

Are there any trends you want to be over (besides velour on planes)?
“I’m not a big fan of embellished jeans. I was just in Miami, and every single shop window had jeans with some sort of embroidery on them. I think a simple, well-fitted jean is enough. I love colored jeans, but I’m just not a big fan of embellishments and extra fixins.”

We love your style. How would a lady get her boyfriend to dress like you?
“Just drug him, slap a bow tie and some glasses on him, and take him out somewhere.”

What areas of S.F. have you explored during your stay here? 
“I’m staying at the St. Regis right now and it is beautiful — one of my favorite hotels I’ve stayed in this month. We just ate at The Slanted Door today. We had something called glass noodles with chicken, the Slanted Door spring rolls, the spare rib, and a grapefruit and jicama salad. Now, I don’t even know if I can do dinner.”

San Francisco is such a tech city. Would you consider yourself a “techie?” 
“No, not at all! I couldn’t even get the wifi to work at my hotel!”

Have any fave fashion apps? 
“Style.com is what I’m always on and Trendabl is another I like.”

Finally…are you sick of the Rachel Zoe drama? 
“I wouldn’t say I’m sick of it. It just doesn’t exist, so it’s not really anything that I put my energy towards. The only thing to say is that I wish Rachel all the best, and I’ve totally moved on and have my own business, and she has her thing going on. It’s a pretty simple process of an assistant leaving a boss, and whatever her feelings are towards me are her feelings.”

source from: refinery29

Among the inaugural class of 12 designers, Prabal Gurungo is the breakout success story. He went from selling his collection to two stores, from an East Village apartment, to a business with 72 stores, 8 employees and a new showroom under construction on West 37th Street. Mr. Gurung was also a runner-up in the council’s 2010 C.F.D.A./Vogue Fashion Fund contest, and he won the Swarovski Award for women’s wear last year.

Other participants, like Waris Ahluwalia and the labels Public School and Ruby Kobo, are beginning to appear in prominent stores and magazines. Bibhu Mohapatra, who had worked from a studio on the Upper West Side, now has sales approaching $2 million a year, and he moved into a 5,000-square-foot showroom on West 38th Street.

“It gave me the courage to take the steps I knew were necessary to grow my business,” Mr. Mohapatra said.

Then there are designers like Joel Diaz and Christina LaPens, partners in Jolibe, who went from three retail accounts to zero, not that they are complaining. Besides below-market rents, the incubator offers access to industry mentors to help with a business plan. Mr. Diaz and Ms. LaPens said they had realized the wholesale model would mean that Jolibe would not make money for at least five years, so they chose to focus on custom orders and an e-commerce site planned for this summer.

“It’s not that the dream was shattered,” Ms. LaPens said. “It was more about reining the dream in.”

Another designer, Tom Scott, lost an investor last summer and dropped out. He hasn’t shown a collection for two seasons, but, because of connections made at the incubator, he is still in business, working from a loft in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He’s developing a men’s line for Project No. 8 and dog sweaters for Ikram and Barneys.

“In New York City, you can feel isolated,” Mr. Scott said. “At the incubator, you felt a real sense of community.”

source from: nytimes

The wedding fervor, which saw a million Britons cram the streets of London on April 29, 2011 to catch a glimpse of the future king and queen, has inevitably faded with the memory of the fairytale dresses, uniforms and horse-drawn carriages.

But royal watchers and many members of the public believe the couple have boosted the monarchy’s popularity and offer an escape for a nation beset by recession, unemployment and financial insecurity.

Even if, as naysayers argue, the duke and duchess are merely celebrities whose wealth and style are out of reach of all but a few, their popularity reaches far beyond Britain.

Media outlets in Britain, the United States, Canada and beyond remain enamored with Catherine and second-in-line-to-the-throne Prince William.

“I think it’s been a complete triumph for them,” Claudia Joseph, a biographer of Catherine, said of their first year of married life.

Where the couple, and their PR team, have been particularly successful, commentators say, is in projecting the image of a relatively ordinary pair, albeit it one that has access to palaces, castles, glitzy red carpets and the odd butler or two.

While William has been working as a rescue helicopter pilot in north Wales, they have stayed in a rented home on the island of Anglesey, a move that has helped them build the “couple-next-door” idea.

“William drives himself to work, enjoys a pint in the local pub, Kate shops at the local supermarket, cooks for her husband, they go for walks, go to cinema, watch television,” Joseph said.

MEDIA MESMERISED

Some newspapers have followed the royal couple with a commitment bordering on obsession.

Barely a day goes by when either the Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph — as right-leaning publications natural allies to the monarchy — do not splash images of them over their pages, usually accompanied with gushing prose.

On Friday, the Daily Mail featured photographs of the duke and duchess attending an official function on its front page and again on page 3 and 27.

The Telegraph devotes its main front page picture to Prince William holding a baby and page 4 to a story of how Queen Elizabeth and father-in-law Prince Charles get on well with Catherine.

Often stories are about official engagements, including visits to charities, trips abroad and movie premieres.

They also focus on fashion, with the duchess seen as a key arbiter of taste whose choice of clothes and accessories sends items flying off the high street shelves.

“Catherine’s style spans the catwalk and the high street and she is a great champion of British brands, making her an excellent style ambassador,” said Caroline Rush, chief executive of the British Fashion Council.

In one of the more bizarre examples, pictures of the duchess playing field hockey led to a surge in interest in the sport — one online retailer saw sales of hockey sticks surge 238 percent in the days after she paid a visit to the British Olympic team.

Some articles have ventured into pure speculation.

“Kate Middleton’s sexy underwear secret revealed!” ran a headline on the website of celebrity Now magazine, followed by an unsourced story based on conjecture.

If and when the couple have a baby is currently top of the “guessing games”, followed by speculation over whether the duchess has an eating disorder — a sensitive topic given that William’s late motherPrincess Diana, to whom Kate is inevitably compared, suffered from bulimia.

Coverage has extended to Kate’s sister Pippa, who also shot to global fame as a result of her appearance as maid of honor at the royal wedding.

A recent trip to party in Paris may have caused royal blushes after Pippa was criticized for being photographed in a car with a man wielding what looked like a pistol at pursuing paparazzi.

Generally, however, the press has been overwhelmingly favorable, although anti-monarchist group Republic counters that support for the royals is weaker than headlines suggest.

It said this week that polls showed a fall in the number of people believing Britain would be worse off without the royals — down to 51 percent from 63 percent this time last year.

Only 41 percent said they believed the monarchy was a unifying force, with 32 percent saying it made no difference.

“These polls put the lie to the claim that the monarchy is enjoying a resurgence of popularity,” Republic’s chief executive Graham Smith said. “No poll over the past 18 months has shown any increase in support for the monarchy.”

FEEL-GOOD FACTOR

However, royal officials believe that austere economic times have added to the monarchy’s allure.

“Continuity and stability has strength in its own rights while everything else is in a state of flux,” one senior royal aide told Reuters on condition of anonymity, due to the palace’s demands for discretion in dealing with the press.

“One of its roles in a way is to provide a sort of ballast to the nation, a solid foundation, and it probably comes to the fore more obviously in difficult times.

“You saw that with the royal wedding last year. People realized they could have a celebration. It was something that people turned to very naturally.”

The queen may well be grateful to her grandchildren for casting the royals in a positive light, following a series of scandals including popular Diana’s death in a Paris car crash aged 36.

The 86-year-old monarch is gearing up for a weekend of national celebrations in early June to mark her 60th year on the throne, a spectacular event expected to draw more huge crowds to London and media attention from around the world.

In sharp contrast to their very public wedding, the duke and duchess will be avoiding the limelight on their anniversary on Sunday at a long-planned event with friends at an undisclosed location in Britain, their spokesman said.

source from: yahoo

On Monday, the Paris fashion house announced that Raf Simons was taking over as artistic director, replacing John Galliano, who was fired from Dior last year after he made anti-Semitic remarks. Mr. Simons’s first collection is planned for July at the fall haute couture shows in Paris.

The choice of Mr. Simons culminates more than a year of discussions and apparent soul-searching by Dior and its boss, Bernard Arnault, who is chairman of LVMH, about the ideal person to give creative direction to the 66-year-old luxury brand. The company issued a statement that the new Dior designer “will propel its iconic style into the 21st century.”

In an interview Monday, Mr. Simons expressed delight at the appointment. “The first time I heard about the Dior position,” he said, “I thought, ‘This feels right.’ ”

Marc Jacobs, the American star at Louis Vuitton, was a favorite until talks broke down late last summer, reportedly over compensation. Other big names, including Alber Elbaz of Lanvin, rejected Dior’s advances. Highly regarded or not, Dior seemed to have trouble finding someone.

In October, its chief executive, Sidney Toledano, said the search could take months. A few weeks later he, Mr. Arnault and his daughter, Delphine Arnault, the deputy director of Dior, began talks with Mr. Simons.

At the time Mr. Simons, 44, was at Jil Sander. But while Mr. Simons is influential, having started the trend for bright colors that has washed over much of the affordable clothing market, and was in discussions in 2010 with the French rival PPR about taking over Yves Saint Laurent, he was not widely seen as a candidate for Dior. His minimalist designs for Jil Sander seemed at odds with Dior’s ultra-femininity. And he is a low-key presence in a business that tends to love Barnum types.

At his studio in Antwerp, where he has run a separate men’s wear business since the mid ’90s, he often answers the phone himself.

Dior was founded on frivolous yards of expensive French silk as Europe lay in ruins from World War II. The shock of Christian Dior’s New Look, with its tiny waists and generous skirts, gave the house a reputation for excess, as well as a taste for headlines. In 1996, seeking to capitalize on that legacy, Mr. Arnault replaced the cerebral Gianfranco Ferré with a former British punk, John Galliano. He quickly ripped into Dior’s stodgy image — literally.

A 2000 couture show was based on the clothes of homeless people. Although Mr. Galliano’s techniques led to a wave of deconstructed and frayed fashion, Dior was criticized (at one point during the uproar, riot police surrounded the house), and Mr. Galliano had to apologize.

His creative excesses continued to be celebrated, if not indulged, by the press as well as his bosses. “I would never put a limit on my goals,” Mr. Galliano told the writer Michael Specter in 2003. “I would love to see what a John Galliano airplane would look like, or a hotel.”

Revenue for Christian Dior Couture, which includes ready-to-wear and accessories, grew steadily over the decade, to $1.39 billion in 2011.

Then, in February of last year, Mr. Galliano wrecked his career with an anti-Semitic rant caught on a cellphone camera. Fired from Dior, he was later found guilty by a French tribunal in connection with two separate bar clashes in Paris with people who accused him of hate crimes. He told the court he could remember nothing about the incidents, blaming his behavior on job stress and addiction to Valium and alcohol.

Temperamentally, Mr. Simons is the opposite of Mr. Galliano, who, according to a close friend, admired Mr. Simons’s show in February for Jil Sander, a collection of delicately feminine clothes in pinks and beige. It was also Mr. Simons’s last for Sander. He was fired shortly before the show, replaced by the brand’s founder.

There was for a time speculation among American retailers and journalists that Dior might decide to retain Bill Gaytten, its studio chief, who has supervised collections since Mr. Galliano’s dismissal. Also, in separate but intriguing news, Saint Laurent announced it was replacing Stefano Pilati with Hedi Slimane, the former men’s designer at YSL and subsequently Dior.

In the men’s wear arena, Mr. Simons and Mr. Slimane were seen as rivals. And they are likely to be so again as Mr. Simons expands into haute couture and Mr. Slimane takes on women’s fashion for the first time.

“Of course I haven’t been in the archives yet, but for me the strongest impact is the first 10 years of Dior and how to link that to the 21st century,” Mr. Simons said Monday. “Mr. Dior was very innovative during a short time span. And it was in the middle of the 20th century, a period I am very interested in, whether it’s linked to fashion, architecture or art. So I find it very challenging to rethink couture.”

He added: “I’m not one of those people who would say, ‘Ah, couture makes no sense anymore because everything today should be accessible.’ Clearly there is an interest from people in this level of creativity.”

While not the obvious choice for Dior, given his history in avant-garde men’s fashion, Mr. Simons is nonetheless the logical one. In his six years at Jil Sander he expanded its minimalist form to include more feminine shapes, some based on ’50s couture. (In the interview on Monday, Mr. Simons noted Dior’s affinity for naming his collections after shapes, like Corolla and Figure.)

More telling are his men’s shows, in the mid ’90s, in which he often projected a generation’s ideas and obsessions against a monumental backdrop. A romantic is surely what he is. His contract with Dior allows him to continue his own men’s line.

He faces challenges at Dior, a global brand that is spreading through Asia (the company recently opened a new flagship in Taipei) and in emerging markets. Dior also has the opportunity to sharpen its signature look, so that its apparel is recognizable in the street, as Chanel already is.

Asked if he had concerns about the pressures of a big house, Mr. Simons said he did not. “I’m someone who takes responsibility,” he said. “I’m not an isolated person. The more I connect to people, the more I have the feeling that things work.”

source from: nytimes

LARRY LEVINE, heavyset and bald, runs a thriving business out of a gated apartment complex in Ventura County, Calif., a setting that’s not at all bad for a home office considering some of the prison cells he’s lived in. But as he drops into his plush beige and white sectional couch to talk business, something is nagging at him.

source from: nytimes

The tinting can increase the value of gold by a factor of five, meaning the chemically-altered precious metal is likely to appear in jewelers’ display windows worldwide soon, according to University of Antioquia engineers.

“It does not involve painting the gold or covering it with some material that disguises the traditional white, yellow or pink of the precious metal,” said Maria Eugenia Carmona, the principal researcher on the project.

“It involves subjecting it to an elaborate thermochemical process of eight to 10 hours, after which not only does its color become red, blue or green, among others, but also its market price increases significantly,” she said.

Colombia extracted 56 tons of gold from its mines in 2011, representing a 4 pcercent increase over the previous year. Colombia’s gold exports were valued at $2.8 billion in 2011, a 31.4 percent increase, according to official figures.

Colombia, Peru and Mexico are Latin America’s biggest gold producers.

“We are sitting on a mine and it’s sad to see large companies take our gold as a raw material to other countries where it is processed to return here at a high price,” Carmona said.

A better option, she suggested, is to give the gold added value that would allow Colombians to export a new product.

Well-known Bogota jeweler Eladio Rey said the thermochemical transformation produced an outcome that is “wonderful, so innovative.”

“It is undoubtedly attractive to traders and buyers because of the diversity of colors, and much better if a high quality for the metal can be guaranteed,” Rey said.

The only similar tinting process the University of Antioquia researchers could find was done in Italy, where blue gold was produced.

The University of Antioquia process involves mixing 24-carat gold with reactive metals in a four-to-one ratio. The mixture is then subjected to a thermal process in special ovens, which changes its color.

After cooling, the material has the appearance of precious stones, and can be coated with a protective resin and mounted in rings, brooches or pendants.

Rey says he likes the coloring process, not only because it allows gold to be combined with other gemstones, but also because it allows the product to be labeled “made in Colombia.”

source from: yahoo

Mystery had been surrounding Savannah’s plans after it was revealed in January that she and her film star sister had stepped down to explore “new pastures,” although Sienna has now confirmed on behalf of her sister that a solo label is in the works.

“My sister is an amazing designer — she’s working on her new label at the moment,” Sienna told Vogue UK April 5.

“In fact she’s designing in my attic as we speak. I just can’t wait to wear all of the pieces.”

There is no word on whether Savannah, who studied at prestigious London design schoolCentral Saint Martins and has previously worked for Alexander McQueen and Matthew Williamson, will be taking a different direction with her new line.

Since Sienna and Savannah launched Twenty8Twelve in 2007, the label became well known for its contemporary cuts blending edginess and femininity. The brand continues without them and will be known as “Twenty8Twelve London” rather than “Twenty8Twelve by s. miller” as of this fall.

source from: yahoo

Ms. Kinnaird was in New York City last month, checking on her outpost on Greene Street in SoHo, which opened in June 2009. Today, Space NK has stores in New Canaan, Conn., and Scarsdale, N.Y., as well as boutiques in several Bloomingdale’s stores.

On a sun-dappled Thursday morning, service at the SoHo branch was friendly but reserved and, in stark relief to the blaring nightclub music at Sephora only a couple of streets away, had a hushed tranquillity. On the shelves was a mix of niche brands, mostly from France, Spain and the United States. But recently Space NK has been stocking more English brands, as well.

“We’ve seen an increase in really good stuff from London coming through,” said Ms. Kinnaird, pointing to Zelens, a line created by the Westminster-based plastic surgeon Dr. Marko Lens. “The bar has been raised.”

Even at Sephora, the French cosmetics behemoth with hundreds of locations nationwide, English brands are taking up more shelf space. Illamasqua, a richly pigmented color cosmetics line that promises “make-up for your alter ego,” is now carried in 52 American Sephora stores, double from when it was introduced here in 2009.

And St. Tropez, a self-tanning brand that is closer to “The Only Way Is Essex” than English rose, has gone from occupying at least one shelf per Sephora store to three. According to St. Tropez, sales in the United States have increased by 70 percent in the last year, likely encouraged by celebrity associations like that of Gwyneth Paltrow, who attributed her sunny glow at the 84th annual Academy Awards to the line.

Back in England, women are spending more pounds on beauty, including the services of the facialist Sarah Chapman, who opened Skinesis Clinic in London’s Chelsea 10 years ago. Eve Lom, a favorite of beauty editors who has made inroads in the United States market, “is like the grand doyenne of English skin care,” Ms. Kinnaird said. “Sarah is who is next.”

Ms. Chapman introduced a house-named beauty line three years ago, positioned somewhere between the no-nonsense dermatologist lines and the luxury botanical-based brands. The signature product, Skinesis Overnight Facial, is a serum that blends peptides with exotic-smelling essential oils.

“Before, there was a really strong identity to French or Swiss skin care,” Ms. Chapman said in a telephone interview from London. “Now there is a shift to British lines, and the U.S. customer is much more open to that. Part of it is because those French lines are still where they were 10 years ago. They are like spa brands, and it’s not enough. The customer has moved forward.”

Ms. Chapman said she was pleasantly surprised by the traction she has found in the American market. Skinesis sold well in its debut on QVC’s American channel last year, and she is in talks to continue that relationship. “The Americans and the English feel more connected,” she said. “Maybe it’s the language, but it’s also the approach. Especially with New York City and London, there’s the drive to be at the forefront.”

But English lines are also masters of heritage branding. At Min New York, a beauty boutique in SoHo that specializes in fragrances, Mindy Yang, the company’s vice president, walked through a dark wood interior, decorated with Chesterfield-style leather tufted sofas, that could’ve passed as Oscar Wilde’s living room.

The store’s English perfume selection included Miller Harris (a relatively young brand by Lyn Harris), Penhaligon’s (circa 1870) and Taylor of Old Bond Street, a men’s line with unisex appeal that was established in 1854, during Queen Victoria’s reign. “For Americans, British brands speak to this elegant, dandyish lifestyle — there’s always this grand story — and with etiquette,” Ms. Yang said. “I think people miss etiquette. They’re looking for a real connection.”

Besides “Downton Abbey,” Ms. Yang mentioned the rekindled interest in British royalty after Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding last summer as a possible reason that people are buying more English scents. Penhaligon’s Bluebell, a fragrance once favored by Princess Diana, is a best-seller, as is the Blenheim Bouquet, a bracing citrus concoction inspired by Winston Churchill.

The perfumes tend to be literal. According to Ms. Yang, there’s usually an aromatic, or herbal note, and lots of citrus and floral notes, as if dousing one’s pulse points with a liquefied English garden. “French scents are more like accessories,” she said. “They can be very complex and esoteric. British scents are very wearable. It’s confidence in simplicity.”

Jo Malone of London, a fragrance company that began from casual kitchen concoctions and is now owned by Estée Lauder, shares a similar sensibility, with unisex scents like lime basil and mandarin.

Many fans of English brands tend to be professionals, like doctors and lawyers who can wear only subtle scents to work, Ms. Yang said. Others are nostalgic travelers. “They’re often inspired by a specific place,” she said of British scents like Taylor of Old Bond Street’s Eton College cologne. “Some of our American customers want to ‘revisit’ that place they went on a trip.”

Indeed, Ms. Kinnaird introduced Beautannia, an in-house bath line, last November, with scents named after British locations, including Bloomsbury, Balfour and Brideshead. May will bring Brighton, a seaside scent with notes of sea moss and grapefruit.

Rococo Nail Apparel, a three-year-old London nail-polish brand also stocked at Space NK, named its spring collection Garden Party. It was founded by two sisters, Ange and Vernice Walker, who have created polishes for Roland Mouret and Burberry runway shows and become known for creative hues like T-Cup, a popular powder blue with a subtle gold sheen.

“It was inspired by an actual teacup with the light blue pattern with gold rim,” said Ange, the older sister by 10 years. “It’s funny, but a lot of editors really go for that kind of back story.”

In May, Rococo will introduce the Rock and Royal threesome, which features an intense blue, shimmery red and sheer white. The hues were created for the queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the 60th anniversary of her accession to the British throne, in June.

“In New York, it’s all about Kate and Will,” Vernice said. “Everybody is watching what Kate will wear.”

But then again, the new nail polishes could also work nicely for the Fourth of July.

source from: nytimes

Before, the British label only offered e-commerce for the US and UK although it is now available for 30 countries including France, Italy and Norway. There is also a separate scarf boutique and the diffusion line McQ has its own micro-site accessible via the homepage.

In terms of digital innovations, the new site includes a host of runway videos and images, and with echoes of online pin board Pinterest, users are able to select from thousands of McQueen archive images to curate their own pages. They can also share these via social media. This follows increasing attempts by fashion brands to offer shoppers a place to experience a label rather than just making purchases — Valentino even launched its own virtual museum last year.

Meanwhile, following the launch of his Karl line at Net-a-Porter back in January, Karl Lagerfeld recently unveiled a new website karl.com, which features an online store as well as a “World of Karl” area, where users can learn about the creator’s favorite quotes as well as watching behind-the-scenes videos and interviews.

source from: yahoo

“During years of working for a living, I have experienced much of the legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this country,” Ms. Steinem told the almost exclusively male gathering. “I have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public gathering places and turned away from apartment rentals. All for the clearly stated, sole reason that I am a woman.”

Over the last 40 years, Gloria Steinem has almost always been at the other end of the phone when some member of the news media has sought comment about a pressing issue involving women’s rights, whether it was Roe v. Wade (“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”), the tax problems that all but doomed the chances of the first woman to run for vice president on a major ticket (“What has the women’s movement learned from Geraldine Ferraro’s candidacy for vice president? Never get married.”) and even the presidency of George W. Bush (“There has never been an administration that is more hostile to women’s equality, to reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right”).

And that raises a question well worth asking in 2012: Where is the next Gloria Steinem, and why — decades after the media spotlight first focused on her — has no one emerged to take her place?

The question resonated last month, when the organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced plans to pull financing from Planned Parenthood, and when Rush Limbaugh’s tirade against a Georgetown law student and her congressional testimony over contraceptive rights became national news.

People like Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida; Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards; and Arianna Huffington made the television rounds. Facebook and Twitter percolated with links and commentary; bloggers weighed in. It was a roar heard on all platforms, from many individuals.

But none was seen as a singular voice of opposition on an issue — women’s reproductive rights — that was debated so intensely it felt like a throwback to the 1970s. (In fact, Ms. Steinem, who turns 78 this month, again entered the fray when she, along with Jane Fonda, wrote an online column for CNN, asking the Federal Communications Commission to look into whether stations that were carrying Mr. Limbaugh’s radio show were fulfilling their obligation regarding “the public interest.”)

The past year has been a time of reflection about Ms. Steinem’s legacy: she was the subject of a widely viewed HBO documentary, “In Her Own Words,” and the recipient of Glamour magazine’s lifetime achievement award. In the magazine, describing the influence of Ms. Steinem, Christine Stansell, a University of Chicago history professor, said she “was to the women’s movement what Martin Luther King Jr. was to civil rights: the galvanizer.”

History’s most formidable figures have always been a tough act to follow, of course. There will never be another Martin Luther King Jr., but Jesse Jackson was certainly waiting in the wings to give it a go.

Reflecting recently on Ms. Steinem’s pivotal role in the women’s rights movement, the author Susan Faludi said, “We’ve not seen another Gloria Steinem because there is only one Gloria, and someone with her combination of conviction, wit, smarts and grace under fire doesn’t come along every day.”

Ms. Faludi may actually be the closest thing the world did see to an heir apparent. Her 1991 book, “Backlash,” was a barnburner, a bold depiction of how the Reagan decade had rolled back feminist gains. Along with Naomi Wolf, whose best-selling “Beauty Myth” took aim at an image-obsessed culture, she seemed poised to become a voice of change. In March 1992, Ms. Faludi and Ms. Steinem even appeared on the cover of Time, both of them deglamorized and steely in their gaze.

Twenty years after Ms. Faludi and Ms. Wolf burst onto the scene, both have receded from the front lines. For her part, Ms. Faludi said she was not interested in leading any battles.

“I’m a writer, not a political organizer, and never had the desire for the latter,” she said.

It’s rare to find the introversion and intelligence required to be an author and thinker fused with the charisma and good looks to knock it out of the park on the “Tonight” show.

“Gloria Steinem did not invent feminism,” said Rebecca Traister, author of “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” “She was a figurehead chosen by the media for complicated reasons. She was young and white and pretty, and she looked great on magazine covers. I’m not deriding her. She tells this story about herself.”

This was back when the three big networks and a handful of must-read magazines could anoint even a reluctant spokesperson, which Ms. Steinem certainly was. But that star-making monolith has splintered into a pluralism of blogs, social media and niche cable outlets.

“There’s far less likelihood of a leader like Steinem emerging today because it’s far less likely for people to be looking in the same direction at the same time,” Ms. Traister said.

Leaders of all stripes are hard to come by lately. Occupy Wall Street is a populist movement without any identifiable spokesperson. Last summer’s feminist eruption — the SlutWalks against sexual violence that took place on college campuses — were organized not by one person but by legions of men and women together. Rage is channeled into online comments and Facebook posts and tweeting for the revolution, whatever that revolution may be.

Ms. Steinem herself has labored mightily to correct the notion that she was a lone revolutionary or that feminism was only for the privileged. She rarely made formal public appearances in the ’70s without her lawyer Florynce Kennedy or the child-care expert Dorothy Pitman Hughes, both African-Americans. She is currently working with Smith College, her alma mater, on an archive that reflects the diversity of modern feminism.

But the movement has also changed in undeniable ways. The injustices that united so many under one umbrella in the ’70s — no, sir, you can’t put your hand on a female employee’s rear — have been replaced by a thousand shades of gray.

“It is easy to unite against a clear enemy,” said Stephanie Coontz, the historian whose 2011 book “A Strange Stirring” examined the legacy of Betty Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique.” “Once we’ve abolished these blatantly discriminatory laws, the fight becomes more complicated. There are disagreements about what liberation will mean, what we want to do with our lives.”

The battle over who speaks for women and why has always been fraught. And Ms. Steinem’s role came with scars. Ms. Friedan is said to have resented Ms. Steinem’s influence, and the racial and political implications of a beautiful white woman becoming the face of a movement still create problems today.

“We watched the second-wave feminists wrestle about this question of who owns the movement and why,” said Courtney E. Martin, an editor of the blog Feministing and author of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.” Along with Jessica Valenti, a founder of Feministing, Ms. Martin is a pioneer of the feminist blogosphere (a quick-hit list of which would include Jezebel, Feministe, Slate’s Double X, as well as feminist beat reporters like Irin Carmon of Salon), and it is where the raucous spirit of the ’70s still thrives. But it is a matrix of voices, an antic and hyperlinked conversation in which no one figure dominates.

“This moment needs a different kind of leader,” Ms. Martin said. “It doesn’t create stars.”

Latoya Peterson, editor of the blog Racialicious, said: “We’ve entered a period where there isn’t a single narrative about anything. ‘Feminism’ has given way to what other women have termed ‘feminisms’ — all the various ways that we seek justice and equality.”

Take Racialicious, for example. It’s a blog about race and pop culture, but conversations about sexuality, body image and gender stereotypes are regular features. The big political issues of yesteryear have been supplanted by messier sociocultural questions that a new generation debates in its own patois of activism, with terms like “rape culture” and “slut shaming” and “fat positive” and “cisgender.”

And so the 21st century labors on with a more inchoate sense of feminist leadership.

For her part, Ms. Steinem wrote in an e-mail: “It’s obviously a great sign of growth and success that the media no longer try to embody the bigness and diversity of the women’s movement in one person.”

Ms. Steinem’s DNA has been scattered into a million cells — in the blogs, as well as in the work of women whose labors do not land them on cable shows: Ai-jen Poo, the organizer of Domestic Workers United, or Navi Pillay, head of the Commission on Human Rights at the United Nations.

“We often have a cultural fantasy about individuals,” said Emily Nussbaum, the television critic for The New Yorker and a longtime feminist reporter. “But collaboration is just as frequently the source of great things, and it’s less rarely recognized. Change doesn’t always happen because of one person, but that’s what makes for great biographies.”

Which brings the discussion back to Ms. Steinem herself.

“Only a diverse group can symbolize a movement,” she said. As for whether there should be another Gloria Steinem, she replied, “I don’t think there should have been a first one.”

source from: nytimes