The womenswear shows and presentations in Paris continue with designers Roland Mouret, Hussein Chalayan and Raf Simons at Dior all taking to the catwalk
A desire to gain a husband, western looks, or even clients are a few reasons why Iran has the world's highest nose surgery rate
Of the many ways in which revolutionary ideals have backfired in the Islamic republic, perhaps none is more visible than the Iranian obsession with physical beauty. Far from focusing on internal spiritual values, young people — some aged 14 — are having cosmetic surgery in the hope of attaining "doll faces" to make them look like the actors they see in Hollywood movies and satellite television programmes from the west.
Iran has the highest rate of nose surgery in the world. According to a report in the conservative Etemad newspaper, as many as 200,000 Iranians, mostly women, go to plastic surgeons each year to reduce the size of their nose and make the tip point upwards.
For many, surgery is a reaction to the restrictive rules of compulsory hijab. "They won't let us display our beauty," one woman said.
"It's human nature to want to seek out attention with a beautiful figure, hair, skin … but hijab doesn't let you do that. So we have to satisfy that instinct by displaying our 'art' on our faces."
Others see it simply as taking advantage of the benefits of modernity.
"Science and technology have progressed, and people can look more beautiful," said one. "Why shouldn't we?"
The spike in inflation experienced by Iranians in recent months has compounded the already high price of such surgery. At present, the cost of an average nose job in Iran is 50-100m rials (about £1,100-2,200), stomach surgery can be had for 30-70m rials, a facelift runs to 30-60m rials, and a complete forehead lift can cost as much as 150m rials. This in a country where the average worker in a major urban area earns about £275 a month.
Are customers satisfied with the results of what they are voluntarily submitting to at great expense?
Marjan is a 33-year-old clothing store owner and divorcee. She has had two cosmetic operations: one for her nose, and one for her eyelids and eyebrows. For her nose surgery in 2009, she paid 45m rials (then about £2,800), and for her eyelid and eyebrow work in 2011, 25m rials (about £1,300 at the time).
"Probably because there were other distractions and things going on when I was a teenager, I wasn't really thinking about altering my face," she said. "But about five years ago I started really feeling the need to do it. I felt like my face was starting to weather a bit, whereas I could still look younger and prettier if I wanted."
Marjan, who has had two temporary marriages, or sigheh , since separating from her husband, currently lives alone.
"I think what myself and many other young girls see as a motivating factor for improving their appearance is simply landing a better husband who is himself in a better situation, in addition to having a better social life with a greater degree of self-confidence. I always used to feel like something in my face was lacking, and I really hated the way I looked when I laughed and smiled, so I was really uncomfortable dealing with people. I feel much better now," she said.
The work Marjan has had done has not been without complications.
"I haven't had any problems with my nose, but after the eyelid and eyebrow surgeries, I sometimes get major headaches, and I still feel like there are stitches up there," she said.
Hanieh, a 35-year-old office worker, had a nose job recently enough that her face still bears evidence of the surgery. "It may take several months for the nose to take its final shape," she said. "I'm a bit worried, though."
Her concerns stem from the post-surgery difficulties suffered by other patients with whom she's spoken: respiratory problems, the nose being dented or malformed due to rolling around in sleep or a physical blow, sinus pain and congestion during the winter months, growth of extra tissue or bone, and loss of the sense of smell.
Hanieh said she obtained a bank loan of 70m rials to pay for her nose.
How did she accomplish that? She said the bank loaned her money to buy a car. She sold the car and used the proceeds for her surgery.
"My nose looks just how I want it to look now, so I hope nothing comes up," she concluded.
Another woman who hads surgery not long ago said: "I do have a better social life and I don't have to be ashamed of my big, fat nose anymore. In our family, different types of cosmetic surgery are a totally normal thing, and most of the women and girls have had their noses done."
As for complications, "I haven't had any particular problems, except that when I get a cold, I get a runny nose something fierce. I have to be careful then. People who have really big problems after their nose jobs have their doctor to blame, though. They got what they paid for, which was a physician who didn't know his or her stuff."
In recent years, men have caught nose job fever as well.
Mohammad, who works in a makeup and accessories store in a busy area of Tehran, had rhinoplasty about two years ago. Along with improving his appearance in general, he cited attracting more customers as his main motivation.
"I deal with hundreds of uptown girls and women every single day," he said. "They all come to me when they want to purchase cosmetic supplies, so I have to look nice and spiffy for them."
The Rhinology Research Society of Iran conducted a study in co-operation with Johns Hopkins University in the US which showed that the rate of nose jobs per capita in Iran is seven times that in America.
The number of people paying for work on their stomachs and breasts is also increasing. While exact statistics on such work are unavailable, reports from specialists in the field suggest that only a fifth of these surgeries are for medical purposes, while the other 80% are purely cosmetic. According to one analysis, cosmetic surgery is as prevalent in the Islamic republic as it is in Brazil.
The cosmetic surgery trend apparently includes the wives and daughters of the conservative ruling establishment (and some of the president's men). According to Ettela'at, a centrist newspaper, and other Iranian news websites, the wife of Ali Akbar Velyati, special foreign policy adviser to the Supreme Leader, died several years ago due to complications with liposuction.
As the demand for cosmetic surgery booms, a growing number of operations are being performed by unlicensed practitioners. The pathology research group of the Arya Studies Centre of Tehran recently issued a report stating that while there are only 157 licensed cosmetic surgeons in the capital, about 7,000 people are actually doing such work there.
There has been a consequent surge in botched operations, with some patients sustaining irreparable damage.
"These surgeries are essentially the result of an unhealthy image that people have of themselves. Many simply see themselves as very ugly," said Reza, a psychiatrist and family counsellor.
"Some may have had tense, problematic childhoods. Thus they suffer from low self-esteem and resort to these surgeries because they think it will lead to a better, more enjoyable social life."
Many who go into surgery end up regretting their decision.
"Recently, a health official announced that around 30% of people who have cosmetic surgery are dissatisfied with the results," Reza said.
There is more than one way to assess the outcome of cosmetic surgery. A woman named Atefeh, her nose small and pointing to the sky, walks down the street with an air of confidence.
"I had my nose surgery about five years ago, when I was 29," she said. "To be honest, one of the reasons I did it was to land the man of my dreams, but unfortunately I'm still on the market."
Burberry add a touch of cheeky kinkiness to the traditional trenchcoat for it autumn-winter catwalk show at London fashion week
The New York museum's forthcoming show could be riddled with errors and fail to give Malcolm McLaren due credit, say critics, as a battle against fakes and counterfeits from the era rages
"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" was Johnny Rotten's parting shot as he threw down his microphone and the Sex Pistols walked off stage for the last time in San Francisco's Winterland in 1978.
The words may turn out to be prophetic as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York prepares to unveil Punk: Chaos to Couture, a Costume Institute show due to open in May celebrating punk's enduring influence on fashion.
Last week the institute previewed a selection of the pieces that will be on display. While fashion critics welcomed the show – and the museum's director, Thomas Campbell, drew attention to punk's Dadaist roots – Malcolm McLaren's widow, Young Kim, was drawing attention to more contentious aspects of punk's legacy.
McLaren, the architect of punk, was the Sex Pistols' manager and proprietor of a Kings Road shop, which traded variously as Too Fast to Live, Sex and Seditionaries, with his partner Vivienne Westwood. He died in 2010. Young claims there are numerous errors in the institute's collection of punk clothing. She provided the Observer with a list of items in the Met's collection which she considers to be misattributed, misdated or questionable.
"My concern is for history to be portrayed correctly," she said. "I wrote to them to say pretty much everything in there is wrong. They should have engaged Malcolm when he was alive."
Fashion author Paul Gorman is an expert on punk clothing and memorabilia and worked with McLaren on authenticating his creations. He claims that the Met is not applying the rigour that it would to, say, 17th-century Chinese ceramics, and that McLaren's contribution is not being fully recognised. "The curators should be applying the same rigorous procedures to establish provenance and authentication to punk as they do to everything else," he said.
At issue, say Gorman and Young, is a Seditionaries T-shirt design featuring a rant against Derek Jarman's film Jubilee. It is dated 1976 and attributed to McLaren, whereas the T-shirt was Westwood's design and the film was not released until 1978.
In a second instance, the Met unveiled the famous Naked Cowboys T-shirt, saying that the pop artist Allen Jones had been arrested in 1975 wearing one. Gorman says that it was Alan Jones, a Sex shop assistant, who was detained and charged with indecency.
"If the curators are not applying basic procedures such as dating, then what kind of procedures are they applying to authenticate the objects themselves?" asks Gorman. "Very few of these clothes were made yet there are thousands and thousands of pieces out there."
In response to the huge international business of fake punk clothing, McLaren spent the last five years attempting to catalogue his work. He assisted Damien Hirst after the artist had spent tens of thousands of pounds with the punk memorabilia dealer and author Simon Easton on clothing that McLaren subsequently claimed to be fakes. Curators for the Met were acknowledged to have been customers of Easton and displayed items purchased from him for its Anglomania show in 2006. On a trip to visit Easton, Andrew Bolton, now curator at the Costume Institute, remarked: "It's a bit cloak and daggerish, isn't it?"
Last week, Bolton hailed the forthcoming show, noting punk's "incendiary influence on fashion", while a museum spokesman said that "the provenance of all the punk pieces in our collection and in the upcoming exhibition have been verified".
However, it is unclear whether the items sourced from Easton for Anglomania have now been excised from the collection.
Young, who holds McLaren's copyrights, fights a continuing battle against the commercial exploitation of his name. She recently blocked the sale of a "Malcolm McLaren Tribute Collection" and has also identified what she called an industry of "fraudulence and fakery".
But, like punk itself, sorting the real from the fake is a difficult task. Institutions, including the Met, have found themselves caught up in controversies by the shadowy aspects of punk's legacy.
"Punk was a cyclone of very toxic energy, despite its creativity and colour, and still emanates a very bad energy – as summed up by the ugly spectacle of McLaren's funeral," points out critic Michael Bracewell. "There is an amazing story to be written about punk memorabilia, with a truly astonishing cast of crooks, obsessives, celebrities, fashionistas, academics, general hangers-on, victims, museum directors, auction houses, and so on."
McLaren himself claimed that "fashion was much more important than the music. Punk was the sound of fashion." The Met's show is concerned strictly with punk's influence on fashion.
The spokesman for the museum pointed out that "there will only be about 10 vintage punk ensembles in the exhibition. The primary focus of the show will be 90 punk-influenced high fashion ensembles from 1977 to today."
The exhibit will be divided into several rooms and categories: the punk club CBGB's in New York; Seditionaries; the Clothes for Heroes gallery; as well as four categories on the influence of punk's inventive, leather-and-glue, DIY ethic: Hardware, with a focus on Sid Vicious; Bricolage, using Debbie Harry dressed in a bin bag; Graffiti and Agitprop, as exemplified by the Clash; and Destroy, which looks at punk's deconstructionist spirit, typified by Johnny Rotten.
The Met recruited a cast of UK fashion industry stars – including Sam Gainsbury, the design consultant who created the stage for the museum's record-setting show Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty two years ago, as well as the set designer Gideon Ponte, photographer Nick Knight and hairdressing superstar Guido Palau.
Diana Vreeland, founder of the Costume Institute, was no stranger to controversy, exaggerating the size of women's wigs in a show of fashion from the Court of Versailles French fashion for effect. Friends of the Sex Pistols say the issue of provenance is overstated – McLaren's ethos was, after all, "cash from chaos", says record producer John Porter, aka Howard Usedtobe. "This is punk. If the clothes were real, you'd feel cheated."
Keep up with all the shows as they happen directly from guardian.co.uk/fashion
As the fashion pack jets back from a cold and weather-beaten New York, London fashion week kicks into gear. Over the next five days the Guardian will be running live streams from the catwalks on guardian.co.uk/fashion, including collections from Clements Ribeiro, Julien Macdonald, House of Holland, Margaret Howell, Mulberry and more.
Watch all the shows you fancy for free on guardian.co.uk/fashion right now.
• The London fashion week schedule in full
Fashion chain appoints Ernst & Young as administrators as it joins long list of post-Christmas retail failures
The Republic fashion chain has collapsed into administration – putting 2,500 jobs at risk.
The Leeds-based company, which has 121 stores and employs 2,500 people, appointed Ernst & Young as administrators on Wednesday and immediately made 150 staff at its head office redundant.
It is the latest in a long list of retail failures since Christmas, including Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster, with the total loss of up to 10,000 jobs.
Hunter Kelly, one of the administrators appointed by E&Y, said Republic had suffered from a "very sudden and rapid decline in sales in late January".
"The impact on cash flows has resulted in the business being unable to continue to operate outside of an insolvency process. Unfortunately, it has been necessary to make 150 employees at the head office in Leeds redundant," he said.
Kelly said Republic would continue to trade "with a view to selling the business as a going concern".
"The brand Republic is well recognised, particularly in the north. It has a powerful website offering, owns well-known brand names, and has some very attractive and profitable stores," Kelly added. "We are grateful for the continued support of all employees and customers during this time, and would like to thank everyone at Republic for their commitment and hard work as the business continues to trade."
Republic, which sells youthful brands such as Jack Jones and SoulCal, was still offering vouchers for sale on its website on Wednesday afternoon. Retailers often refuse to accept vouchers as soon as a company enters administration.
HMV was forced to reverse its decision not to accept vouchers after Tory MP Sir Tony Baldry accused the retailer of theft.
Republic closed individual stores' Twitter accounts last week after an HMV employee "live-tweeted" redundancies at the entertainment retailer, according to Drapers magazine.
Republic's main corporate Twitter account was still tweeting on Tuesday night. The account, @RepublicFashion, failed to respond to numerous tweets asking if it was going bust. Lesbinum asked: "NOOOO @republicfashion are going into administration :'("
Republic's profits collapsed by 86% to £3.7m in the year to January 2012, the latest year available at Companies House.
Andy Bond, the former chief executive of Asda, quit as Republic's chairman last week as the company brought in KPMG to help it offload some of its stores.
Republic was bought by private equity group TPG for £300m in 2010. Its previous owner, Change Capital Partners, a private equity firm run by former Marks & Spencer executives Luc Vandevelde and Roger Holmes, more than quadrupled its money by selling the chain to TPG.
TPG has twice been forced to pump in more cash to keep the chain afloat. In November TPG, Bond and Republic's founders pumped in £20m. At the time, TPG said it wanted to at least double the number of Republic stores in the UK and Ireland to more than 200.
The chain was founded in 1986 in Leeds by Tim Whitworth and Carl Brewins. Whitworth started selling clothes as a Saturday boy on a market stall and went on to build Republic into a nationwide chain.
He left the business last year and was replaced by Paul Sweetenham, the former boss of TK Maxx in Britain.
Whitworth is said to have amassed a £60m fortune, according to therichest.org. He reportedly owned 23% of the equity at the time of the sale to TPG.
Adele abandoned black, and got away with it; Prince adopted it, and didn't. Meanwhile, Katy Perry clearly wasn't having anything to do with the broadcasters' edict to keep everything under wraps. Here are the outstanding outfits – good and bad; daring and demure – from the annual music-awards bash
This short film, currently screening at Tate Liverpool's Glam! exhibition, celebrates the colour-saturated, fetishistic style of 70s fashion photographer Guy Bourdin
In this 1974 film, which is being screened at Tate Liverpool's Glam! exhibition, two models dressed in geisha costume test out poses for a Vogue shoot by Guy Bourdin
Orange, unlike pink, is a unisex colour. Jess Cartner-Morley picks out shades and styles that might suit your taste
Underwear retailers Calvin Klein and H&M vie for your Valentine's Day cash with two very different ways of selling you boxers … and two very different leading men
Our thoughts turn to Valentine's Day, and in a pleasant diversion from red-foil-wrapped chocolate hearts, it is turning out to be a good week for men in pants. Pants, so we are encouraged to believe, being the most romantic item to buy for the man in your life this 14 February.
During Sunday night's Super Bowl a certain Matthew Terry, the beautiful and almost disgustingly ripped star of the new Calvin Klein underwear advert was introduced to the world, making the 21-year-old former personal trainer from Ohio the most tweeted-about man on the planet for half an hour. Justifed? You can decide here, and here
This morning at 9am, H&M set its own man in boxers loose online, at noon said man will be tweeting from @HM and by tonight he will be viral on every media platform available, including a full 90-second advertising slot during One Born Every Minute on Channel 4. He is, of course, the nation's favourite underpant model, David Beckham, who is promoting his "Bodywear" line with the Swedish retail giant in a very entertaining and knowing mini-movie directed by Guy Ritchie.
In the ad, we see our hero locked out of his Beverly Hills home as the missus takes off in the Range Rover on the school run, his dressing gown (presumably with his house keys in the pocket) trapped in the car door. So off David runs through the back gardens of his disbelieving neighbours' mansions; he jumps through bushes, dives into pools, vaults over paparazzi and runs rhythmically fast in the manner of a top footballer chasing a ball. You get the metaphorical picture. I'll let you enjoy the rest.
Unlike the old-school man as machine approach of the Calvin Klein advert by the New York agency Baron + Baron, H&M's in-house approach is brilliantly apposite to the gilded-cage lifestyle we imagine David Beckham leads, with cameraphones at every turn. Except through Ritchie's lens, Beckham, self-deprecating smile at the ready, wears a pair of khaki ribbed trunks (only £9.99), which need a little flick at the left buttock every time he embarks on a new adventure.
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