3D Animation School

Animation Training:

In terms of training, few actually get the "right" training. They go to a crash course program like Mesmer f/x (which teaches you about brand X software in 3 short weeks), put together a rather weak demo reel in the same timeframe, and then hit the streets looking for a job. These people, in my opinion, have no training at all because they know nothing of the art of animation, nothing about lighting, nothing about story telling. They just "think" they know the software. The majority of the failures occur amongst these individuals. Sound a little disheartening? It should. You are attempting to break into the film industry. You are just like an actor auditioning for a part. Everyone wants the part, you have to want it more than anyone else, so much so that they couldn't cast anyone else but you for the role.If you go to a top quality and reputable school (and do _well_), your chances of getting your foot in the door for an interview increase ten-fold. The recruiters know what is taught at these schools and can assume that you are versed in a lot of things that most other candidates are not, but not always though. A person who has been trained in cinematology will stage their animations differently than those who have not. It's called framing a scene. Every scene or shot is framed so that it has the maximum impact on the audience in other woods, it tells a compelling story. Students of crash course programs tend to mimic what they've seen before, whether good or bad, which indicates a lack of creativity on their part. It's like copying the Mona Lisa and saying you did it. Yes, you may be able to technically copy something, but without the original there for you to work from, would you be able to paint it on your own? There are a lot of choices to be made...what canvas to use, what medium, what hues, what pose...a lot of questions. Granted you won't be responsible for every question hat needs to be answered, but you will have to be consciously aware of them. That's the difference between a good education and an adequate one.There are no guarantees in this business. It's one part talent and two parts part luck. The old axiom "It's not what you know, but who you know" rings true here. Once you get into the biz, you're over the biggest hump. From then on, you're one of the players who move from one studio to the next, looking for a better job opportunity. But you have to survive that first spring cut to do it. Some people find work but can't keep up with the pace. They end up burning out or getting fired. These companies are looking for the best, and you'll have to stay on top if you want to work for the big boys like ILM, Disney, or Pixar.

Animation Schools and Colleges:

School is very expensive. You can expect to spend about 6K for a crash course in animation as well, but I highly advise against attending such programs for the above mentioned reasons. You get what you pay for. Private schools such as Ringling, Sheridan, etc. will cost you a lot more than state run schools (like twice as much or more!). They're a bit more picky about who they accept and pride themselves in producing top quality graduates. They not in the business of making sure "X" number of students graduate each year, they have their reputations to uphold...hence the dramatic increase in the quality of the education. You will most likely be paying out of state tuition at one of these schools, but federal aid is available to you at most accredited institutions, so always look into that before you choose school "A" over school "B". I'm not about to suggest that you can't find the education that you want where you live, the education curriculums change all the time and more and more schools are offering Animation programs. Just be sure that the school you attend is the right one for you, because in all likely-hood, you won't be able to afford another education at another school after that. A lot of information on different schools is now available on the Net. Check 'em out.

Demo Reels and Choosing a School:

Demo reels should be done while in school. That's something you'll want to check out. Some places provide no means for putting student's work to tape! Avoid these places, as digital to video transfer can cost a fortune! It also shows that they aren't as "hip" to the business as they claim to be. Also understand that a good demo reel takes more than a couple days to put together. Good work takes time. Some folks spend years refining their reels.If you interested in Animation, then don't go to a school that _doesn't_ offer a program in Animation, electives don't count. A lot of schools offer electives in using animation software, and that's not the same thing as being educated in Animation.Get in contact with schools and ask for a free info packet, they should be more than happy to provide you with one and this will give you a good opporunity to see what they offer and teach. If you can, visit these schools and get in touch with former students. There's nothing like seeing a school first hand and touring the facilities, but if you can't do that, contacting former students will give you a good idea of what the school is like. Just make sure you talk to more than one person...different people have different experiences!

What is Fashion Advertising?

The goal of fashionfashionfashion advertisingadvertisingadvertising is to connect potential customers with the brand, as with other forms of advertisingadvertisingadvertising. As with other brands, fashionfashionfashion ads promote a lifestyle just as much as the product, teaching consumers to associate a particular brand with a specific lifestyle and social class. The tone and content of ads may vary, depending on which market the company is trying to target, ranging from very wealthy individuals to people with less disposable income who could still be a valuable customer base.

Print advertisingadvertisingadvertising appears in many magazines and some newspapers in major fashionfashionfashion markets like New York City and Paris. FashionFashionFashion advertisingadvertisingadvertising can also appear in the form of television commercials, billboards, and so forth, and many fashionfashionfashion houses also rely on the free publicity that comes from seeing their products on celebrities and high profile individuals in the news. A designer who gets his or her garments onto movie starlets walking down the red carpet at the Oscars, for example, will see an uptick in demand from people who see the designer's clothes, shoes, and accessories such as jewelry and purses.

In addition to working with fashionfashionfashion houses such as Gucci and Yves St. Laurent, fashionfashionfashion advertisers also work with retailers who carry clothes and accessories. Stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's utilize fashionfashionfashion advertisingadvertisingadvertising to promote themselves and the products they sell. Lower end department stores may also use fashionfashionfashion advertisingadvertisingadvertising to try and capture the bottom of the market for clothing and accessories. Whether high or low end, department stores want to present consumers with images of a specific lifestyle, using ads which tell a story to appeal to consumers and encourage them to buy the company's products.
Often, fashionfashionfashion advertisingadvertisingadvertising is heavily linked with sexuality.

Scantily clad women in suggestive poses commonly appear in advertisements for the fashionfashionfashion industry, whether they are marketing dresses, perfume, or anything else and groupings of models may be utilized in print ads or commercials to create suggestive imagery. Some ad campaigns have crossed the lines in the view of critics, and have generated a great deal of controversy from people who feel that such ads are inappropriate, especially when they can be seen by young children.

Wrinkle Creams Reviewed: How Well Do They Work?

Karen Austin

With the passage of time, our skin often no longer exudes the youth and vitality still pulsing in our veins. Reducing the look of lines or wrinkles that reflect the years of life experience we’ve earned has become easier due to the advancements in skincare that keep us looking our best.

To best address aging’s impact on youthful skin, an understanding of the origin of wrinkles is in order. The presence of wrinkles involves more than just good genes and the exposure to harsh environmental factors like sun damage and pollution. They are the result of the skin’s natural biological breakdown process as it ages. Elastin, the elastic fibers that form the skin’s foundation, deteriorates over time and the production of collagen, skin’s natural filler which makes youthful skin smooth and plump, slows down as we age. This results in thinner, looser skin that is more susceptible to wrinkles and fine lines.

Yesterday’s cold creams which attempted to respond to wrinkles with more moisture have morphed into today’s wrinkle creams that respond to the physiology that causes wrinkles in the first place. Yet, these improvements have produced more choices with differentiations that are harder to detect. Whether navigating the cosmetic counter at the department store or the endless shelf space dedicated to wrinkle creams sold in drugstores and cosmetic megastores there are key points to remember when selecting an effective wrinkle cream:

There’s no one magic ingredient that combats wrinkles. Just like there are multiple factors that cause wrinkles there are multiple ingredients that make a wrinkle cream effective in lessening the appearance of wrinkles.Although there are many formulas and concentrations on the market, not all concoctions are equal. Wrinkle creams, whether sold over the counter or purchased under the care of a dermatologist, consist of active and inactive ingredients. Some of these ingredients include:

Retinols – in its various forms retinols or retinoids are derived from Vitamin A, an antioxidant that protects the skin from environmental free radicals that damage skin at the cellular level.
Hydroxy Acids – whether in the form of a poly or beta hydroxy acid, is derived from natural or synthetic fruit sugars that exfoliate the top layer of skin to reflect the brighter smoother skin hiding underneath dead skin cells.

Nutrients and Minerals – such as copper, CoEnzyme Q10, plant-based Kinetin, and peptides or proteins, stimulate collagen production, enhance antioxidant performance against free radical cells and attract or lock-in moisture to improve the skin’s texture.

Tea Extracts — whether black or green, tea extracts have anti-inflammation properties that soothe skin irritation.The above are the most common active ingredients found in commercial and prescribed wrinkle creams. There are also inactive ingredients such as oils and waxes that preserve and bind wrinkle cream components to make them more aesthetically and texturally pleasing.When finalizing your wrinkle cream selection, Dr. Carl Thornfeldt, a board-certified dermatologist, University of Oregon clinical professor and skin researcher asks that we not be fooled by the mere mention of experimental research studies.

He says, "With topical wrinkle products, the ingredient alone is not the story. In order to choose the best product, look for safety and efficacy studies. Specifically, the studies should show that the marketed product works on living, human skin".Due to the wide array of wrinkle cream treatments currently sold in traditional retail stores, pharmacies and on the Internet and the confusing assortment of ingredients, we scrutinized the most currently marketed wrinkle products.

We used the most current scientific research in order to assess which wrinkle cream products were most effective. While the physiological breakdown of our skin is a natural byproduct of aging, our actions and attention can impede the process thereby extending the enjoyment of vibrant, youthful skin. Selecting an effective wrinkle cream is an excellent way to manage the skin’s aging process. See below for the results of our evaluation.If you are interested in reading about top eye creams on the market and what you should look for in a qualtiy product.

LIGHTS, ACTION, RUNWAYMODEL EXPECTATIONS

By Jennifer Petrini

I am often asked by so many aspiring models, how to break into the industry. As in any fashion trade, modeling is an extremely competitive and cutthroat business. You've seen "Americas Next Top Model" and "Janice Dickinson's Modeling Agency" which glamorize the world of fashion shoots, runway shows and designer clothing. However to get to that working model stature, it can be quite a challenge.

However, models are needed on any level, from local boutique fashion shows to regional advertising campaigns to national cover girls. The steps to get to the top can be extremely difficult but not impossible. It is important to expect to work hard, listen to industry experts and build your book.

FIND A REPUTABLE AGENT

Don't be scammed into paying thousands of dollars by an agency that promises to make you famous. If living in a small town or city, research the agencies that actually work with professional clients, such as advertising and film production companies, and show producers. Don't sign with a company that claims to bring in outside scouts from LA and NYC. A real agent will help build your book so that you are ready to actually work in those markets.

START EARLY

It's no secret that models keep getting younger and younger. Some of the freshest faces on magazine covers are as young as 13. Getting an early start is an advantage that is worthy to explore if possible. However, models of every age continue to work in the industry every day.

BUILD YOUR BOOK

When going to a "Go-See" for a potential job, the client will ask to see your book or portfolio of pictures. Make sure your book is current with all of your previous experience and has a range of different looks you can achieve. To build your book, many new models work with professional photographers on test-shoots and even offer to model for student photographers. These jobs may not pay but can give you some amazing pictures for free.

TAKE A CLASS

Ask your reputable agent where you can take a class to work on posing for the camera or walking the runway. Many agents offer classes onsite to help their clientele improve their modeling skills, while some professionals also teach classes at fashion schools or on a private level.
SALARY EXPECTATIONS
Remember an agency will take 15-20% of what you earn on a paying job. This is unavoidable if you want to book the good gigs. Based on your current market, models are often paid a flat fee for the job. For example, an advertising client may pay $250/model per day for a 2-day shoot. Your agent will take their commission before taxes and then you will receive your check.

BE A REALISTIC SUPERMODEL

Giselle and Heidi Klum didn't expect to become internationally sensations and neither should you. Clients can spot the divas a mile away and are really looking for the fresh face that will work best for them. Have a positive and confident attitude and think big and you just may be the girl on the next cover of VOGUE.

Fashion Marketing Schools

Fashion marketing is the business that moves the world's fashions from designers' showrooms to the retail floor and into the hands of consumers. Through lectures from industry professionals, special field trips, projects, and internships, fashion marketing students gain an in-depth knowledge of the apparel industry and fashion cycles. Students are trained in a comprehensive range of disciplines including fashion merchandising, fashion coordination, buying and textiles, small business management, advertising techniques and marketing strategies, retail management, and visual merchandising.

There are many job opportunities in the world of fashion design, make sure you pick a school and program that provides the right kind of training for you to advance in your fashion career.

SCHOOL OF FASHION DESIGN & MARKETING

Fashion is continuously drawing upon emerging talent and renewing its creative energies. The Polimoda International Institute of Design and Marketing offers anyone interested in entering the world of fashion the possibility to do so by offering high-quality professional training in tune with the needs of industry. Polimoda is a highly specialized fashion and design school located in Florence, Italy. We maintain close ties and continuously collaborate with the fashion industry to continue to provide current students with high-quality professional training in tune with the needs of the current international fashion scene and industry. Our Italian fashion school offers undergraduate and graduate design master courses in the production, sales, marketing and merchandising sectors of the fashion industry, both in English and Italian. Polimoda is particularly well-known for its specialized courses in fashion marketing and its fashion merchandising program. Our fashion design school also prepares students who wish to specialize in the footwear and accessories markets.

Polimoda started in 1986 as a joint project co-financed by the cities of Florence and Prato, along with entreprenurial associations and the collaboration of the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York.Polimoda is also a member of IFFTI (International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes) and works closely with the Regione Toscana and the disctricts of Prato and Firenze, benefitting from European Union funds.

Polimoda presents a wide choice of educational offers, covering all profiles of the fashion system:

PREPARATORY COURSES
POST DIPLOMA COURSES
POST DEGREE MASTER
SUMMER COURSES & SPECIALIZATION COURSES

Fashion Marketing: The Trendsetting Business

Why would someone spend $600 on a new dress or $400 on a pair of shoes? Savvy fashion marketers, that's why. Designers put the latest trends up on the runway, and then it's the business of fashion marketers to get them out of the showroom and into the customers' shopping bags.

Fashion Marketing Degrees:
The Trend Setting Business

An online degree can give you the training you need to succeed in this fast-paced fashion job. With online education, you can get a college degree and career-specific training during your free time, from the comfort of your own home. Typical coursework can include:

Visual merchandising and store design
Fashion design and technology
Management and marketing
Communication and promotion

Fashion Your Ideal Marketing Career

Graduates start in a wide range of fashion jobs, from merchandise managers and purchasing agents to visual merchandisers and retail store managers. These business professionals can spend their time arranging merchandise, attending fashion shows, and pricing clothes. They can also design ad campaigns, consult with fashion designers, and keep track of profits and losses.
According to a National Association of Colleges and Employers survey, entry-level salaries in fashion marketing rose to $37,191 in 2006--which is higher than the national average for all salaries. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, marketing managers' median salaries in 2007 were $113,400 and employment is projected to grow faster than average.
An online fashion merchandising degree can get you in the business with one of these exciting fashion careers!

What is good and what is bad about online fashion boutiques? Let's have a look using an example of a newly launched one...

The announcements and press releases say that "featuring the hottest and freshest fashions from top designers, http://www.shopadorabella.com/ officially “opened for business” this week, offering customers trendy, hard-to-find items, free shipping and fashion tips on “what’s hot”.
The range of items is quite wide. The choice of fashionable items seems to reflect the season and pubic interest (closely correlationg with what we call fashion). The hope page is featuring Rachel Mara's new Bird Print Dress for summer. It is really stylish, and sure to inspire compliments wherever you wear it. I would agree.

The other item exhibited is Cosmofact's famous Bunny Print T-Shirt, which is "so soft and stretchy that you'll find yourself wanting to wear it all of the time!" Well, I would disagree...
Usability and design are good. Customers can navigate the site by designer or by various fashion categories such as dresses, tops, bags, accessories, pants, skirts, lingerie or loungewear. They can also view fashion tips on “What’s Hot”. Additionally, the site features information and articles on the individual designers, showcasing their inspirations, celebrity clients, and origins. Each week, several items will be featured on sale and www.shopadoraBELLA.com will ship free to anywhere in the U.S.

But What't Hot tends to be rather expensive, much more expensive that average items. Candice Held Vintage Scarf Double Bandeau Dress costs $379.00, Bianca Nero Mini Shift Dress is at $211.00, a light Rachel Mara Red Bird Print Dress will take away yours $338.00. Even Satisfaction Shu Shu Belt costs $125.00. Does 'being hot' mean a high price?
The brainchild of creator Jennifer Spiegelhalter was developed with the goal of creating a comprehensive shopping experience for the woman who wants to pull the items from her closet 5 years from now and still feel as sexy in the fashions as the day she purchased them.
According to Spiegelhalter, “I launched this site simply because I love being at the forefront of fashion, clothing, and designers. I developed a great love for clothing at a young age and decided to launch an online store for women who want easy access to current as well as up and coming designers’ hot items and all the latest trends.”

Spiegelhalter runs her online store from Louisville, Kentucky. Most stock is hard to find high-fashion women’s clothing as well as jewelry and accessories. The site offers an eclectic mix of new and established contemporary designers, including Voom by Joy Han, flirty dresses by Yoana Baraschi, butter soft Italian leather bags by Beth Springer, lingerie inspired tops by Diane Samandi, dreamy, rarely found dresses by Candice Held and funky, hand-painted ShuShu belts.
The site is claiming to carry fashion lines that are not always easily accessible to the general public, and strives to change this by fast forwarding the hottest items straight from the runways into people’s homes, whether they live in a small town or the heart of the city.

Paris Fashion Week: Lacroix and its 20th anniversary show

Lacroix staged its 20th anniversary show at this year's Paris Fashion Week. Lacroix's vision was to recapture the quintessence of women, the elegance that dazzled his childhood fantasies. His return to boyhood, produced a collection inspired by the fashion of the era - big hair and big hats.
Christian Lacroix - 20 years in the business. He presented a sumptuous collection that swathed the body in folds of rich velvet or puffs of feather light chiffon. Let's take a look at some of the highlights of each throught CCTV.com.

Models with hair mounted in huge coifs paraded in coats embellished with ethnic detail like silver studs, rustic embroidery and monkey hair trim.
Lacroix's vision was to recapture the quintessence of women, the elegance that dazzled his childhood fantasies. His return to boyhood, produced a collection inspired by the fashion of the era - big hair and big hats.

Karl Lagerfeld's Haute Couture display for Chanel on Tuesday should have been pure poetry amid a bucolic country estate that was home to Marie Antoinette and Napoleon Bonaparte. But pluvial seemed more fitting than bucolic, as rain threatened and models paraded under an already dripping awning.

The collection featured sequined shifts with full sleeves attached to the side of the body like tufted and feathered wings.

‘blue on blue’ that express true individuality

This season, the Levi’s brand looks to ‘You’ for inspiration – You, who express true individuality, possess provocative energy and appreciate minimal, simple aesthetics – and introduces a new range.

‘Indigo’ from the Levi’s Red Tab collection is about the soul of denim; an outcome of a new blueprint that strips away all the unnecessary optics to allow for the beauty of denim to shine through. Presented in a modern light, Indigo marries a fun, playful aesthetic with understated simplicity that will allow wearers to experiment and project their individualism and characters all at once.

“The current denim market mostly consists of denim jeans with excessive detailing and unnatural finishes. With Indigo, it’s about appreciating the beauty of denim without those distractions,” said Agnes Tann, strategic brand planning director for the Levi’s brand, Asia Pacific Division based in Singapore.

The Denim
The Indigo jeans takes a cue from Spring Bottom Pants that were considered workwear in the late 1880’s. Named ‘Spring Bottom’ because of the flare at the leg opening, the unique design of the pants, particularly the triangular patch at the back, has been fused with modern, angular and edgy details with minimal embellishments for Indigo to bring out the beauty of denim.

The denim is a key focus of the range. With colorful customized selvage red cast, a dyed weft almost pure indigo colored denim as well as a special greencast fabrication, the rich shades throw a spotlight on the beauty of denim.

Besides the regular fits for denim bottoms, Indigo will also roll out denim bermudas for men and stylish quirks like the drop-crotch cropped volume jeans for women.

Adding a twist to the collection are buttons and rivets that have been color-coated bright blue – an interesting change from the metallic-looking sundries and reflective of the youthfulness and innovativeness of the Levi’s brand.

With accompanying tops and accessories that create fun looks however assembled, Indigo makes strong statements about one’s individuality.

Graphics
The Indigo range will also include a graphic collaboration with a prominent street artist hailing from Sydney, Australia, by the pseudonym ‘Kill Pixie’.

With his compelling works inspired by different cultures, his unique colorful style and idiosyncratic characters makes a fitting graphical representation of the Indigo range – simple, quirky and symbolizing a mash of cultures all at once.

Campaign
The Indigo range will also be supported by an in-store retail campaign titled ‘Indigo – A New Blueprint in Denim’. Developed by advertising agency BBH, the creative concept follows the product inspiration of going back to basics and appreciating the beauty of denim and hence, translating into a ‘blue on blue’ execution – from the unique and modern blue optics of the campaign to the name of the range, Indigo.

The campaignvisuals are shot by Simon Harsent, New York based award-winning photographer who is no stranger to the Levi’s brand, having shot several campaigns over the years.

The Indigo range is in stores right now.

Hottest Actress Asin-Fashion@Big Bazaar Collection

Big Bazaar, India's largest hypermarket chain, unveiled the new 'Fashion@Big Bazaar Collection' in a glittering fashion show, at the hands of Bollywood's latest heart throb and sensation - Asin.


The new Fashion@Big Bazaar collection comprises of apparel and accessories for all occasions, ranging from daily wear, special occasion wear, casual wear, college wear and office wear. Asin, winner of the Filmfare best debut (female), for her stunning performance in the film Ghajini, joins MS Dhoni, youth icon and captain of the Indian cricket team, as brand ambassador for Fashion@Big Bazaar.

The fashion show comprised of four sequences, with male & female models showcasing the new Fashion@Big Bazaar collection, this summer.

'Fashion@Big Bazaar Mens Collection' showcased at the fashion show included – formals comprising of fil-a-fil, cotton rich stripes, easy care plains shirts teamed with stylish trousers; casual wear with striped t-shirts, cotton yard dyed check shirts, cargos and straight fit denims; party wear comprising of shiny stripe lycra, satin jacquard, plain satin, structured seer sucker stripes shirts, structured self stripe trousers and wet look corduroys;and ethnic wear, which consisted of pin tuck printed silk kurtas along with embroidered silk and jacquard sherwanis.

'Fashion@Big Bazaar Womens Collection' included - party wear comprising of tunics teamed with leggings and evening wear tops with back pocket embroidered denims; casual wear comprised of foil print tees and summery blouses with slim fit denims; whereas, kantha work and kalamkari foil printed mix 'n' match kurtis with leggings, rogan printed patiyalas, sarees and pastel foil printed salwar kameez dupatta sets were showcased as a part of ethnic wear.

The highlight of the fashion show was the striped t-shirt collection paired with worked upon jeans for men, structured formal shirts for men, slim fit stretch jeans for ladies and the fusion metallic discharge print with embroidery collection in ladies ethnic wear. Asin made a grand entrance at the end of the fashion show and floored the audience, looking stunning in garments from the summer 2009 collection of Fashion@ Big Bazaar.

Soha Ali Khan Loves Tommy Hilfiger

Dressed in the true American Fashion statement of the season by Tommy Hilfiger, and sporting a casual attitude, Soha Ali Khan stepped into Tommy Hilfiger's flagship store in Bangalore, amidst high glitz and glamour, to mark the launch of the limited edition sunglasses, created and fashioned by Tommy Hilfiger. Inspired by Soha Ali Khan, the exceptional retro classic and uber chic pair of sunglasses was soon unveiled and sported by the actress.


Looking absolutely stunning in the oblique teardrop shape yellow sunglasses, Soha went on to say that a good pair of sunglasses is a must have for every wardrobe and quite representative of one's character. Terming Tommy Hilfiger as a brand among her favourites and thanking them for taking inspiration from her, she added that the sunglasses are quite like her personality - casual with a little hint of that classic element.

Tommy Hilfiger Limited Edition Sunglasses inspired by Soha Ali Khan takes its cues from the personality of its distinctive muse – vivacious yet chic, sophisticated and poised - a perfect complement for the avant-garde and lightweight styling that shapes the classic frame of this signature style.

An exceptional retro classic, this limited edition is priced at Rs. 8,000 and features urbane elements in two designs. Both styles offer gradient lenses, providing 100% UV protection and embody a unique sense of modern style.

Handmade, the limited Italian double and triple laminates and stainless steel constitutes the basis of the collection, along with an oblique teardrop shape in Yellow - capturing the summer feel, while limited colorations help to protect from the glare of the sun. To create a more distinctive collection, tailored trims and detailing have been added alongside logo treatments consisting of a signature metallic Tommy Hilfiger flag embossed at the temples.

The Tommy Hilfiger Limited Edition Sunglasses inspired by Soha Ali Khan will soon be available at all Tommy Hilfiger stores and select leading departmental stores throughout India.

10th Lakme Fashion Week Finale : Anamika's Bridal Sutra Collection

The venue of the Grand Finale of the Fall/Winter 2009 Lakme Fashion Week at the Grand Hyatt was turned into a beautiful temple with hundreds of metres of fabrics and floral bells suspended from the ceiling with abstract branches curving on the wall. The ramp was edged with hundreds of lamps and as temple bells chimed the fashion extravaganza began.

Anamika Khanna the darling of Kolkata couture and the lady who has made waves on the international fashion scene, presented one of the most stunning collections seen on the ramp at the Grand Finale at Lakme Fashion Week, inspired by the Bridal Sutra collection specially created by Lakme for Summer 2009.

The Lakmé Bridal Sutra Summer 2009 collection has a weightless foundation that blends into the skin rendering a naturally beautiful and radiant finish. The blusher is a pure pressed powder that provides sheer, lightweight application. A revolutionary new product – the cheek and lip tint adds a pop of colour to your cheeks and lips giving a freshly flushed look.

The lip colour range is enriched with super rich moisturizers combined with silky matte textures. For defining your lips, there is the glide on lip pencil that glides on smoothly and stays creamy. A unique foam tip liner – the Eye Artist helps outline, define and intensify your eyes in one easy stroke.

Anamika’s collection divided into a three part bridal wear story had all the typical creative touches that the designer is renowned for in her fusion look with large doses of ethnic elements. Matching the soft delicate sensual colours of the Lakme Bridal Sutra Summer 2009 line, the collection followed the palette for the season.

The Pastel Collection was a dream in shades of coral, salmon, and pink, peach which were entrancingly designed into the most delicate garments. The Prints line was a riot of colours and patterns and the soft white and crèmes were a dream to behold. Anamika’s detailing took an unconventional turn as she knotted the sides of the ensembles or dupattas to create asymmetric lines.

Floral embroidery, trellis work, tiny digital Rajput figurines for prints on silk, antique zardosi and pearls embellished the creations. The fabrics were summery and fluid with chiffon, cotton and the shimmer of lamé adding to the very feminine look.

The silhouettes were soft and swirled around the models as they glided down the ramp. Gorgeous kurtas with shimmering gold borders, Saris with embroidered edges or red and gold borders, Gold polka dots on ecru saris, lots of tiny gold buttees, drapes for luxurious kurtas, salwars had volume and pants were crushed and crinkled for comfort.

Sheer net floated for lehenga over black or red churidars while net cholis had visible shoulder pads and worn over black bustiers.

The grandeur of the all net panelled lehenga over churidars, saris worn short but with cigarette pants or churidars, flowing kaftans were how Anamika visualizedbridal wear for Summer 2009. There was grandeur and style all rolled into one for a superb bridal collection with distinct touches of Bengal.

The finale was the graceful appearance of the three Lakme faces - Indrani Dasgupta in a majestic red long gown covered with gold work, Amrit Magera in a red and cream draped embroidered kurta and Vipasha Agarwal in a grand ornate lehenga, choli and dupatta.

The Anamika Khanna brilliant show for Lakme Bridal Sutra summer 2009 made a glittering impact and was the most awaited event of the Fall/Winter 2009 Lakme Fashion Week.

Shahrukh Khan Swings On Ramp With Manish Malhotra

Can the fashion lovers of Mumbai ask for anything more than Shahrukh ‘King’ Khan on the ramp confidently strutting in an exclusively designed Manish Malhotra creation and a unique arm sling for the ‘royal’ elbow which is healing.

The finale entry by super star Shahrukh Khan as he strode down the ramp for the Manish Malhotra show for Fall/Winter 2009 at Lakme Fashion Week brought the audience on their feet begging for more of ‘King’ Khan and his impromptu thank you speech interspersed with touches of humour that only Shahrukh Khan is capable of in his great inimitable style.

The celebrity lineup in the audience was awesome with Hritikh and Suzzane Roshan, Kareena Kapoor, Kajol, Arjun and Mehr Rampal, Boney and Sreedevi, Malliaka Arora Khan and Arbaaz Khan, Priety Zinta and Tusshar Kapur cheering their friend Shahrukh Khan all the way.

One can always expect the unusual whenever Manish presents a show and this time the designer worked around the colours of the Kolkatta Knight Riders theme of black and gold and presented a stunning sports inspired evening wear line. Besides the base colour story of the Knight Riders, Manish added on touches of deep red, blue and green and wove them into garments that will work wonderfully after dark.

The women’s wear had fabulous black shaded lehengas with dazzling gold gotta and zari borders and teamed with hooded gold cholies all daringly cut. The western wear line had draped pants, gold jumpsuits, micro shorts with accessories like gold cricket pads and matching helmets and gold sneakers.

The men’s wear line started with black Bermudas, shaded Tees, jackets, with one or three gold buttons, leather cropped blousons, black velvet coats and ended with long woollen sherwanis.

It was a show that the audience couldn’t get more of and never wanted to end, as screams of “We Love You Shahrukh” ranted the air and the Super Star walked down the ramp several times to please his delighted cheering fans.

Shahrukh Khan at the Manish Malhotra show was the biggest event of the Lakme Fashion Week that Mumbai and fashionistas will not forget for a long long time.

Can you pack the bloody history of Afghanistan into a dozen half-hour plays?

Were one to measure the extent of controversy aroused by a piece of theatre against the time taken to perform it, Caryl Churchill's recent 10-minute offering at London's Royal Court must have set some kind of record. Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza was staged as the Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip was still going on, and one review read more like a rebuttal drawn up by the Israeli information ministry than a serious attempt at theatrical criticism.

But whatever its merits, the Churchill play was confirmation that political theatre, often as up to date as the headlines on the evening news, is making inroads in London. The uproar caused by Richard Bean's England People Very Nice at the National – is it an uproarious satire on immigration, or simply racist? – is still reverberating. And at the same venue, David Hare has only just finished dismantling New Labour every night in Gethsemane. But the veteran in this genre is Nicolas Kent, artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, north London, who is almost journalistic in his desire to pursue contemporary issues – so much so that his path and mine have crossed more than once.

When I covered Lord Hutton's inquiry into the death of the weapons scientist David Kelly, and the alleged "sexing up" of the intelligence dossier that led us into war in Iraq, Kent was there every day too, and I assumed he was working for another newspaper. A few months later, I saw his distillation of the key testimony at that inquiry, edited down from thousands of pages of transcript. It was the same with the Bloody Sunday inquiry in Northern Ireland: what journalists like me sought to convey in print, the Tricycle endeavoured to put on stage.

The Tricycle has been presenting this cool, Brechtian style of work, which Kent has dubbed "tribunal" or "verbatim" theatre, since 1994, when the Scott inquiry into arms sales to Iraq was recreated. The most celebrated example, The Colour of Justice, consisting of excerpts from the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, also played in the West End and at the National Theatre, toured and was shown on BBC2. But the Tricycle does not get all its scripts from the official Stationery Office.

Kent was commissioning short, pungent political pieces in the manner of Seven Jewish Children as long ago as 2006, when he staged a series of plays about the Darfur crisis. The longest lasted 20 minutes and the briefest only five. "This is a bit more free than verbatim theatre," he says. Now he has turned his attention to Afghanistan, and once again our courses have intersected. As I watched him rehearsing Black Tulips, a 30-minute play by David Edgar which imagines a briefing given to the Soviet troops who invaded the country in December 1979, I remembered being on the foreign news desk of the Financial Times the day it happened, trying to make sense of the scrappy reports coming in on the teleprinter.

Black Tulips is one of 12 half-hour plays the Tricycle has commissioned under the overall title The Great Game: Afghanistan, exploring the history of Great Power involvement there since 1842, when the first British Army to invade this beautiful, violent country was wiped out almost to a man. That was the first attempt to modernise Afghanistan by force, and there have been several more since. Arguably, we are in the midst of the latest such project: in his play Edgar, by holding back mention of the Soviet Union, emphasises that the Nato forces now in the country could have received much the same assurances about being there to help the Afghan people. "It also makes the point that soldiers have more in common with each other than with their governments," the playwright told me later.

Afghanistan produced its own reformist zealots, too. Back in the 1920s, King Amanullah sought to emulate Ataturk's modernisation programme in Turkey, but merely succeeded in stirring up a tribal revolt that forced him to abdicate. One of the 12 plays is set in Amanullah's Rolls-Royce as he flees Kabul. In another, the last Communist president, Najibullah, is being interviewed in the United Nations compound in the Afghan capital, where he took refuge after unsuccessfully trying to flee the country.

I was in Afghanistan in 1992 when Najibullah fell from power, and might have secured the last interview with him in real life if I had not been out of Kabul at the wrong moment. But I did meet Ahmad Shah Massoud, the legendary guerrilla leader who seized the city from the Communists, and found myself briefing Vincent Ebrahim, the actor who will play him at the Tricycle, on how the "Lion of Panjshir" looked and talked.

Massoud famously warned the European Parliament in 2001 that Osama bin Laden and his network were preparing to attack the West, and was killed by an al-Qa'ida suicide bomber on 9 September that year. Some believe his death was the signal to the hijackers who went into action in New York and Washington two days later, an atrocity that brought the latest invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban regime and its al-Qa'ida allies were ousted from Kabul within weeks of 9/11, yet more than seven years later we are sending more troops into the country to fight an insurgency that seems to be growing in strength. Why? It was a question that aroused Kent's journalistic and theatrical instincts.

"I heard people beginning to ask how long we are going to be there, and what the purpose of the mission was," he said during a break in rehearsals. "Experts were drawing parallels between events now and in the 19th century, and I wanted to explain how we got here." The plays are divided into three groups of four, designed to be seen on consecutive evenings or all in one day at weekends. Part one covers the period from 1842 to Amanullah's fall. Part two starts with the Soviet invasion and ends with the Taliban about to take power. The final four plays begin at almost the same moment and take us up to the present day, with two British soldiers in Helmand province. Authors include Bean, of England People Very Nice notoriety, Stephen Jeffreys (The Libertine) and Ron Hutchinson (Rat in the Skull).

If that was not enough of a teach-in on Afghanistan, the Tricycle is holding what Kent believes is the largest festival of Afghan culture ever seen in Britain alongside the plays, with 19 films – both features and documentaries – exhibitions, play readings, talks and debates. The theatre, which emphasises community involvement, conducts workshops for the children of refugees in its area, and reckons about a third are of Afghan origin.

As part of the extensive research he always undertakes, Kent went to Afghanistan last October. He admits that he left here "a pacifist, thinking we shouldn't be there", only to return convinced that we have no choice. "All the Afghans I met said that if we were not there, we would feel the consequences on our streets. All our heroin comes from Afghanistan, and Sangatte, outside Calais, is overflowing with Afghans trying to get here. In Kabul they say these problems would get worse if we left."

It might be argued that support for the British and Western presence is considerably less enthusiastic outside Kabul. But if the Great Game series can convince the British public that the mission in Afghanistan is worthwhile and should continue, as the Tricycle's artistic director now believes, it will achieve something that seems to be beyond the Government. On the other hand, since the Ministry of Defence, in particular, appears to believe that the less said about Afghanistan the better, it might be unwise to count on any block-bookings from Whitehall.

Has the credit crunch made Iceland cheaper for cash-strapped British travellers?

Google may be an imperfect oracle, but before I took the plunge and bought a trip to Iceland on the grounds that it is newly cheap, I sought some numerical backing. With the country's economy collapsing due it its heavy reliance on the banking sector, surely things for the cash-strapped tourist must have changed for the better in the capital?

Tap in "Budget Holiday Reykjavik" and you get 20,000 results. "Expensive Holiday Reykjavik" produced fewer than half as many. It seemed the ideal destination for a Brit burdened by sterling. I clicked to book.

Many aspects of a trip to Iceland are inherently pleasing. For a start, flight times are civilised and there is no time difference between the UK and Iceland. So I arrived at my hotel in a stress-free condition, in the early evening.

The Hotel Cabin is a budget option but the ground floor area looked attractive, so I unpacked and went to the bar. Just in time I spotted a price list, thoughtfully placed on the counter in front of me. How much? Mmm – maybe later. £7 is a bit steep for a small glass of house wine: I hadn't expected to open the duty-free quite so soon.

Suitably fortified, I set out in search of dinner and a first look at the city. Since last weekend, the spring equinox, Reykjavik enjoys more daylight than any other capital in the world. It is a small city, too, so it's easy to tackle even after a flight from London or Glasgow.

Although I was staying outside the central 101 district, I was only 10 minutes from the start of the main street, Laugavegur. I'd already decided to check out Laekjarbrekka, a restaurant recommended by locals and guidebooks alike for its Icelandic specialities: reindeer, mountain lamb and lobster tails are regularly on the menu. The single-storey building at the bottom of the street looked welcoming; it was the menu outside that gave me a bit of a shiver. I could get lamb and lobster in a single course – but only if I was prepared to pay more than £37 for the privilege.

Maybe fish and chips instead, then? After all, Iceland is famous for its fishing industry. I set off towards the harbour and a newish organic bistro, Icelandic Fish and Chips. This was more like it: haddock so fresh it must have been caught that morning, and at a price you couldn't beat back home (£11.30 for two courses). And it's not essential to spend on drinks: everywhere in Iceland, local spring water is provided free of charge. But as I headed back to my hotel, I noticed that the bars were filling up.

This must be the runtur, roughly translated as a pub crawl, which takes place every Friday and Saturday night, between midnight and five in the morning, through the bars of the city centre. How on earth do they afford it? There's supposed to be a credit crunch here too.

The streets were quieter on Saturday morning when I set out to explore, and those locals who were up and about were ensconced in the many coffee shops dotted about the city. £1.30 a cup with a free refill? Now this was more my style – and the Wi-Fi was free, too. I planned a route through the city: I would explore the central square, Austurvollur, where the cathedral and parliament are located, see what was happening at the harbour, linger in a gallery or two. But first, energised by the low-cost caffeine, I headed to the tourist office to see what bargains they might offer.

Was it possible to see Reykjavik on £10 a day? It was possible, apparently. "If you buy this Welcome Card [which costs approximately £8], everything will be free," I was told. "The museums, all the thermal baths, the buses, everything."

I paid up and set off to find out about Iceland's origins at the Saga Museum, an interactive historical display housed in a striking glass-domed building called the Perlan.

I presented my card at the desk. "I think this will get me in for nothing," I said. "I'm afraid not. We are the one museum that is excluded from the scheme," came the reply. I bought a ticket anyway, even though it cost £8.50, slightly more than the 24-hour Reykjavik card. Inside, I learned about the early Viking settlers who arrived in the 8th century; discovered that Reykjavik means "smoky bay" (a reference to the steam rising from all the underground hot springs); and found out about the Alping, or parliament, which is thought to be the oldest in the world.

If the Saga Museum is Iceland's flashiest attraction, the Hallgrimskirkja is its most prominent. Located on the city's highest hill, Reykjavik's main church was designed in the 1930s, and the upward sweep of the exterior is intended as a reminder of the Icelandic mountains. Out of 20th-century expedience, the building had to double up as a radio mast, hence the vast tower which is visible from all over the city (and which is currently shrouded in scaffolding).

Across the street from the church is the Einar Jonsson Museum, where there is a collection of monumental works that I was keen to see by Iceland's first sculptor, as well as the apartment he had lived in with his wife. I approached the desk, handed over my card and smiled; "I think this will get me in for nothing." "Oh no it won't," came the reply. I was beginning to understand how it must have felt to discover your life savings were invested in an Icelandic bank.

For most visitors, a trip to Iceland is more about the unique scenery than the urban attractions. Handily, the day-trip industry is extensive and well organised. At this time of year there are glacier walks, trips along the south coast with its small villages and black sand. The "if-you-make-only-one-tour" option is the Golden Circle trip: the landscape includes waterfalls, geysers and lava fields, studded with volcanic craters that resemble barnacles on a rock.

This curious terrain reflects the fact that Reykjavik is capital of a country with an improbable number of natural hot springs. The heat from the centre of the earth is one of Iceland's greatest assets. It's put to use, among other things, to keep the roads free of ice, heat the domestic water supply, and facilitate the nation's favourite pastime: outdoor swimming.

The nearest thermal baths were five minutes' walk from my hotel. With some trepidation, I showed my Welcome Card. "Great – you can get in for nothing," said the cashier. But I had failed to bring a towel, so the excursion cost me £2.50.

Some people swim at the baths, but most sit in the hot pots: tubs of water that are heated to varying temperatures. I stepped into a pot labelled 44 degrees, and as the steam rose around us I got into conversation with Aleksandra, a young woman who had lived in Reykjavik all her life. We talked about the runtur, that weekend pub crawl that appeared ludicrously expensive to me. To Aleksandra, too, it seemed.

"We stock up at the liquor stores and drink at each other's homes. We go to the bars later to see our other friends," she explained. "But then you have more drinks?" I enquired. "No of course not. We just go from bar to bar and meet up with everyone." The bar owners tolerate their premises acting as community centres. It seems that even with the economy on the edge of an abyss, some people are prepared to drink, and therefore bankroll the whole operation in a country where the banks have rolled over.

What really makes dogs dangerous?

Terror is a small, stout creature. She has a dull brown coat and a white patch on the ridge of her nose. Apart from this marking, she looks much like every other Staffordshire bull terrier you pass in this part of north London, where the affluent streets of Islington meet the Hackney border. Terror's owner, Jethro, has agreed to meet me here, in a small, shaded park, to talk about his experience of the use of dogs for violence and terror, which he has come to accept as a harsh but unavoidable reality of "life on the street". Unlike the reponsible dog owners pictured on these pages, Jethro describes a world in which "a dog ain't a pet no more. A dog is your muscle".

In the past two years, the RSPCA has recorded "a huge increase in the number of calls regarding 'dangerous dogs', dog-fighting on the street, or the use of dogs for intimidation or as weapons". RSPCA inspectors, meanwhile, have noticed a massive rise in the number of "tough-looking" varieties in urban areas – particularly Staffordshire bull terriers, mastiffs and the illegal pitbull terriers. The problem of dogs being used for aggressive purposes has now reached epidemic proportions in some parts of Britain. So what has been going wrong?

For years, laws designed to tackle the issue of antisocial animals have been in place. And for years they have failed. In 1871, the Dogs Act stated that any person may make a complaint to a magistrates' court that a dog is dangerous, or report the matter to the police. But there is no power of immediate seizure accompanying this legislation. A court has to be satisfied that the dog is "dangerous and not kept under proper control" before action can be taken, making this a complicated and time-consuming process.

Arctic summer may be ice-free in 30 years

The frozen ocean of the Arctic might disappear far sooner than scientists have previously predicted with the first ice-free summer occurring within the next 30 years – three times earlier than estimated.

A study of computer models of the Arctic region has found that the vast expanse of floating sea ice that covers the region is far more vulnerable to rapid melting than earlier studies had assumed. The latest analysis found that virtually all the sea ice in the Arctic will have melted during the summer months by 2037, and that it may even disappear as soon as the summer of 2020. Previous studies had suggested that this was unlikely to happen until at least the end of the century.

An ice-free Arctic would spell disaster for the polar bear which uses the summer ice pack to hunt seals. It could also increase regional temperatures because open ocean absorbs more heat from sunlight than the reflective surface of the sea ice.

The latest study was carried out by scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Washington in Seattle using the six most sensitive computer models of the Arctic region.

The findings, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that the ice cover was likely to melt rapidly in the next couple of decades, culminating in an open sea, except for a band of ice bordering the shores of northern Canada and Greenland.

"The Arctic is changing faster than anticipated. It's a combination of natural variability, along with warmer air and sea conditions caused by increased greenhouse gases," said James Overland of NOAA, who carried out the research. The scientists estimate that by the end of summer 2037 there will be about 1 million square kilometres (about 620,000 square miles) of sea ice left in the Arctic region, compared with the 4.6 million square kilometres (2.8 million square miles) today.

Much of the remaining ice is likely to be blown by the prevailing winds against the shorelines of Canada and Greenland where it will be forced into thick layers that could remain frozen despite the increasing temperatures.

Much of the ocean will become easy to navigate in summer, raising the prospect of the exploration of the sea bed for is wealth of minerals and oil. "But it could also cause an eco– system upheaval," a spokesman for the NOAA said. The six models used by the NOAA scientists were taken from 23 analysed by scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who predicted a slower melting rate for the Arctic sea ice. All six showed that once the ice at the end of the summer melting period drops to 4.6 million square kilometres, there is a rapid increase in the rate of further melting.

Scientists fear that this "tipping point" may already have been reached given that in 2007 the summer sea ice fell to an all-time record of 4.3 million square kilometres, and in 2008 it reached 4.7 million square kilometres – the second lowest on record.

Is there anything more uplifting than the arrival of spring?

For those of us fortunate enough to spend significant parts of our leisure quartering the same nature reserve, almost on nodding terms with every tree, spring starts in small ways.

First, perhaps, February's coltsfoot, its flowers like yellow chimney-sweeps' brushes; then the buttery little salad bowls of lesser celandine; followed, amid the brown skeletons of last year's growth, by the ferny leaves of cow parsley, looking like a Victorian pot-plant transplanted from front parlour to outdoors. And, any day, comes that early morning when bird voices start answering each other – not yet a dawn chorus, but an increasingly confident rehearsal.

Soon, seen from valley tops, is that curious effect of trees beginning to leaf: an Impressionist green haze on the distant branches which makes you think, at first glance, your eyes have lost focus. There's blackthorn bushes in pioneering flower (to be marked and remembered for sloe-collecting in the autumn), the departure of Brent geese from the harbour mudflats, and, on a stone wall, a partridge expectantly surveying the scene, as if it has just arrived on a longed-for vacation. It is the beginning of things.

And, from these small signs of promise, come big things: the spectacles of a British spring. Our shows of bluebells, so dense and shimmering they seem a mirage, are the finest in the world. Upon coastal breeding colonies, millions of seabirds descend, with all the suddenness and aggression of an invading army. In semi-natural spaces, such as London's Bushy Park, horse chestnuts light up with lanterns of flowers. On moorland, hen harriers skydive each other in a dance as sexual as any tango. And, in lowland trees, herons nest in an ungainly clatter.

Yet, if you listened to professional pessimists (some wildlife hotheads, and those who turn their press releases into dismal headlines), you would think spring a doomed enterprise. A warming climate, we are told, has fooled with the internal clocks of so many species that, instead of an orchestrated renewal of life, we have anarchy. Frogspawn in Pembrokeshire by December, oaks leafing and hawthorn blooming 10 days earlier than a few years ago, orange-tip butterflies more than a week ahead of schedule – a world of insects, food plants, mating and migration all chaotically out of sync. And then there are those incessant reports of species in decline. Take all this gloom at face value, and spring seems an exercise in futility: nature, like a bumblebee trapped in a greenhouse, banging its head against an obstacle it neither sees nor understands.

The week of Easter, a festival of life imposed on an older one of rebirth, seems a good time to offer an alternative view, one that credits nature's strength rather than bemoans its vulnerability. Take earlier springs and the differing reactions of species to warming climate: is it really possible that the corrective mechanism of evolution, which has worked reasonably well for millions of years, will somehow be permanently disabled by a slight rise in temperatures? Will birds dependent on caterpillars really continue, to the detriment of their species, to hatch eggs in defiance of the new date for the emergence of their young's food supply?

And wherever came the idea that the nature we should have is the nature we once had? Many of those poignantly pretty flowers that illustrate news stories on our "failing flora" are period pieces: opportunists of uncleaned cereal seeds of yesteryear, such as corn marigold, and pheasant's-eye; or, like snake's head fritillary and ragged robin, inhabitants of wet meadowland, a habitat whose time has largely passed. They are as much a feature of a countryside gone by as yokels in smocks. And who decides that the species we have lost are worth more than those we have gained?

Spring is a testament to the powers of recovery at work. Rabbits, 99 per cent of whose 100m population was killed off in the 1950s by the man-made plague of myxomatosis, have now regenerated to about 40m. The peregrine, reduced in the early 1960s by shotgun and pesticides to a few dozen pair, are now up to about 1,000 couples. Even some rare orchids are recovering. The early spider orchid has turned up in counties such as Suffolk, where it hasn't been seen for centuries, and bloomed in its thousands in Kent on spoil ' from Channel Tunnel diggings. And more can be achieved with a little human help. Special projects have brought the stone curlew, otter, Adonis blue butterfly, sand lizard, ladybird spider and others back from the brink. And the red kite, a bird once exterminated to the point where there were more members of its preservation committee than birds in the wild, now circles over Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire in such quantity that to see 20 in a Chilterns sky is commonplace.

Then there are those mysterious spreadings of species' range: the collared dove, a tentative arrival in the mid-1950s but now a haunter of all but the smallest gardens; rosebay willowherb, a rarish wild flower 120 years ago, but which took off, smothered Second World War bomb sites, and, aided by its ability to produce 80,000 seeds per plant, became ubiquitous; and the fulmar, a seabird which in the 19th century began to extend around our coasts from its northern fastness, and is now established wherever there are cliffs, thanks in part to its habit of vomiting an oily substance over any intruder.

And there are those adventurous escapees which, once over the wall, found things to their liking: ring-necked parakeets occupying an arc across Surrey and west Kent; buddleia, the Chinese coloniser of waste places; Oxford ragwort, an Italian native seemingly more at home beside our railway lines; and Verbena bonariensis, a lilac-purple perennial from Brazil, once plant du jour for fashionable gardeners, now the feral décor of 1,000 London pavements.

All those biodiversity reports, and donations to this trust and that, are also paying off. Heathland has been shepherded back to health and is now expanding: we have more tree cover than at any time in the past 150 years, and the area under management for wildlife has never been greater. In 1972, the Woodland Trust had two woods; now it has more than 1,000. Britain's 47 county wildlife trusts have gone, in 80 years, from nothing to the creation of 2,234 nature reserves. Some of the most striking are on land once thought of as permanently ruined by industry: former gravel workings, opencast mines, military airfields, an old coal depot, coking works, on-shore oil field, railway marshalling yard, sewage works, and an explosives factory. Here is renewal that goes on all year. Thus, we are better placed than ever before to see the spectacles of spring, the best of which, courtesy of our leading wildlife organisations, we give on pages 14-15.

Yet, it is not just nature's more theatrical performances on specially curated reserves that can spellbind. Almost everywhere are displays of rising sap and happy hormones. Any coppice can harbour a blanket of wood anemones, its white flower far more beguiling than the tricked-up blue and pink variants sold in garden centres. From damp banks in May sprout the starry flowers of ramsons, its other name of wild garlic betrayed by the merest crushing of its pungent leaves. And there are spring sights for which you do not even need to stop your car: a patch of primroses on a Devon slope, the pink-flushed faces of lady's smock on a Sussex verge, and that most modern performer of our roadside flora, Danish scurvygrass. A coastal rarity just 25 years ago, it has thrived on the remnants of winter saltings spread on A-roads, and, in April, makes long ribbons of kerbside grass look dusted with chalk.

Of the birds, those inhabiting water reward us the most, their young soon in evidence, not hidden away until ready to fly. The bolshie little grebe, trailing in its busy wake a team of chicks desperately waggling to keep up; a swan with its crocodile of cygnets following obediently behind, like prep-school pupils on some improving outing; and the squawk of little egrets on the nest, a startling noise that makes you think a Donald Duck impersonator has hidden himself in the trees. And, for those not near water, try standing in a field of unkempt long grass on a muggy day in May as the swifts scream and swirl around you. The sights go on: a common blue butterfly sunning itself on a knapweed, its wings the colour of a china doll's eyes; the flicker of mustard yellow as a brimstone butterfly happens by; a leveret up on its hind legs to investigate a bramble; and, above all, by late May, the green of chlorophyll everywhere, so forceful you can almost taste it. Spring is not a season; it is the season.

Kyrgyzstan: In the hall of the mountain kings

'Asian ibex, Marco Polo sheep, Siberian deer." The elderly German trophy hunter was unashamed as he reeled off his wanted list. "No snow leopards then?" I asked facetiously. "No, no. We cannot. They are shy creatures." He leant towards me conspiratorially. "There are gold mines as well, you know, up there in the ice."

We were sitting in the restaurant of the Silk Road Lodge in Bishkek, eating toast and cheese fossicked from a most curious breakfast buffet, discussing the Tien Shan, the "Celestial Mountains", which dominate Kyrgyzstan's topography and represent this relatively anonymous country's best tourist-pulling card.

I had just arrived in Kyrgyzstan and the Tien Shan were taking on semi-mythical proportions in my mind, populated as they were by giant sheep with unfeasibly long horns named after a roving Italian who had been dead eight centuries. The hunter could have told me that there were hobbits in those mountains and I'd have believed him.

Wandering Bishkek's wide, empty streets later that day, I caught glimpses of the Tien Shan's peaks, tantalisingly close, beyond the gloomy cityscape of functional grey Soviet architecture. In true Soviet style, Bishkek is a city of monuments. In Ala-Too, the main square, a winged lady with flowing skirts and pigeons in her hair holds aloft the centrepiece of a yurt. This symbol of Kyrgyz freedom stands where Lenin did until three years ago.

Later I saw a real yurt in the centre of Bishkek, among the brightly lit department stores and Italian restaurants and expat bars. It was bound with neon cords, as though paying lip service to its urban surroundings. I sat down outside at a plastic table and an overweight oriental woman in an apron served me puffy fried bread and a bottle of vodka for the price of a British Sunday newspaper. Opposite sat two grey-haired men who smiled warmly at me when I looked over. Though they wore modern suits, a tall embroidered hat made of white felt, traditional Kyrgyz headgear, was balanced on each man's head.

Those semi-mythical mountains turned out to be nearer than I had imagined. Half an hour's drive from the capital city brought me to Ala-Archa National Park. The scenery in this alpine wilderness was lovelier than I could ever have anticipated: steep rocky slopes decked with russet trees; bubbling ice-blue streams. There was a wishing tree near the entrance, its branches hung with scraps of coloured cloth, each representing a human desire. Picnickers were camped for the day along the river-banks, barbecuing kebabs and drinking beer in the September sun. A group of excited students stopped gathering wood for their fire and crowded round me, eager to have their picture taken with a tourist.

"Go to Karakol," I'd been told by Ben, an Australian backpacker I had met in Osh Bazaar back in Bishkek. Ben had hiked through the Tien Shan and camped in the mountains. I'd told him that I wanted to see the traditional Kyrgyz mountain life that I had read about: nomads and horses and patterned felt carpets. "You can watch them playing polo with a headless goat and sleep in a yurt if you want."

The road to Karakol was dotted with Muslim cemeteries and racks of dried fish. Roadside cafés took the form of yurts and served bowls of fizzy fermented mare's milk. Horses pulled ploughs in the fields. For much of the way, the road followed the shores of Issyk-Kul, an enormous salty lake some 110 miles long that never freezes, even in the icy winters.

Eye-blue and sparkling in the sun, Issyk-Kul looked as vast as the sea. I stopped at Cholpon-Ata, a crumbling Soviet-style resort with sandy beaches and ancient pedalos rusting in the water. The beach bar was constructed out of a bright pink tarpaulin stretched over a frame, its fridge powered by cables that ran exposed over the sand.

The man who sold me beer was a young Kyrgyz. "The trouble," he said in careful English, "is that Kyrgyzstan has no leader." He looked past me to the white powdered mountain peaks that towered over the lake. "We thought that things would change after the revolution, but they did not." The Kyrgyz transition from Communist state to nominal democracy was not bloody, yet neither was it smooth. Their 2005 revolution was dubbed the Tulip Revolution. "The Kyrgyz people do not like trouble," he explained. "We carried flowers instead of guns."

The streets of Karakol were dusty and windswept. Only the main roads were sealed. Carcasses of cars were piled outside wooden houses. At the market, women in headscarves and tracksuits sold bread out of prams. I spotted other Western tourists for the first time, drawn here, like me, by the proximity of the Tien Shan.

Behind some dreary concrete apartment blocks stood a brightly coloured mosque decorated with dragons and flowers. The roof curved upwards at the eaves like a Buddhist temple. An imam wearing long dark robes plucked a pear from a tree in the garden and handed it to me. "The Dungans were religious refugees from China who came here a century ago. They built this," he pointed to the wooden mosque, "without using a single nail."

On the other side of town was the Russian Orthodox church. Its exquisitely carved wooden walls were topped with a green roof that was crowned with golden onion domes. I half expected to find Hansel and Gretel inside.

My lodgings were modern but the electricity intermittent. A fair-haired girl with green eyes knocked on my door to give me candles. The guesthouse was owned by her parents. "My father is Ukrainian. My mother is Russian and my stepfather is Uzbek," she told me. "Many Russians have left since we became independent." I asked her if she ever considered leaving. "Kyrgyzstan is my home," she replied. "Where would I go?"

In the beautiful valleys to the south of Karakol I found what I'd been looking for. I bathed in the hot, sulphurous water of a rock pool cut into the side of a gorge and listened to the rush of meltwater a hundred feet below me. I watched a flock of sheep being herded over a rickety wooden bridge by a shepherd driving a Lada. I got lost in an alpine meadow and knocked on a yurt door for directions. A family invited me into their tent and fed me potatoes. On the inside wall of their yurt hung a tush kiyiz. Embroidered on it was a grinning fox running on two legs through a field of mushrooms with a chicken tucked under its arm.

I saw horses grazing in a pasture, watched over by a man wearing dark glasses and carrying a shotgun that looked too rusty to function. He spoke no English, so I pointed at his horses and wrote some numbers on a piece of paper. In this manner, we settled a rental price. He saddled up a grey gelding and I cantered towards the snow-clad mountain peaks. The sun clouded over and it began to rain. I turned back when the rain turned to hail.

Returning to Karakol in the dusk, I caught a lift in a minibus ferrying locals home. The mood in the vehicle was jovial. They passed round biscuits and vodka and the women sang Kyrgyz songs in gentle voices and made jokes about the old man sleeping on the back seat. When I got out in the town centre, someone handed me a piece of paper: photocopied, handwritten Russian letters that I didn't understand.

"It is a poem," said my hostess when I showed it to her later at my lodgings. She read it to me in English. It spoke of birds and apple blossom and wished the reader luck, prosperity and love.

There's no Mercy for Madonna as court blocks adoption

Madonna's ambition to adopt a second African orphan has been blocked by a court in Malawi. The decision suggests that the impoverished African state has heeded warnings that another high-profile adoption could encourage child-traffickers to scour the country's orphanages looking for children they could sell to Westerners.

The American superstar had offered a permanent home for a three-year-old girl, Chifundo James (her first name translates as Mercy), who has lost both parents. The child is from the orphanage that previously cared for David Banda, the boy Madonna adopted in 2006. Her application was rejected yesterday by a judge, Esmie Chondo, at a private hearing in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe.

The judge is understood to have ruled that Madonna does not fulfill a requirement that prospective adopters should have lived in Malawi for 18 to 24 months, a rule that was waived when she made her previous application in front of a different judge three years ago.

Echoes of Kennedy as Obama embraces Europe

Pushing out the horizons to his agenda for change, Barack Obama stood before an audience of young Europeans yesterday and reached out to proclaim a renewed transatlantic partnership. He dangled the most daring ambition of all: the forging of a "world without nuclear weapons".

As Nato leaders gathered for a summit co-hosted by France and Germany in Strasbourg, Mr Obama paced the stage of a city sports stadium, and called for an end to "tensions" between America and Europe. "Our fates are tied together," he said.

With its cement floors and echoing rafters, the venue offered no grandeur or pomp. But as Mr Obama introduced himself to mostly French and German school students with a "bon après-midi" and launched into a speech more sweeping than anyone had anticipated, the occasion evoked the "Ich bin ein Berliner" moment of John F Kennedy nearly five decades ago. If Europe wants to be in love with Mr Obama, he will not resist.

In his frankest terms yet, the President admitted that relations across the Atlantic had been marred in part by America's dismissive "arrogance" towards Europe. But by the same token, he went on, Europeans had been guilty of "casual" and "insidious" anti-Americanism. "America is changing but it cannot be America alone that changes," he warned. The President then dropped a taster of a speech on nuclear non-proliferation he will make tomorrow in Prague. It was as brief as it was theoretically stunning. "I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons," he declared to rapturous applause.

After two days of diplomatic theatrics at the G20 in London, Mr Obama showed that he understood his audience, playing up changes and promises in new American policy almost guaranteed to please here, from the planned closing of Guantanamo Bay to the forswearing of torture and the re-enlistment of the US in the global warming fight.

If, in his European tour as President, Mr Obama is revelling in not being George Bush, he is getting ample help from his hosts. "It feels really good to work with an American president who wants to change the world," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said earlier, adding that the new US leader "understands that the world does not boil down to American frontiers and borders". From the French public too, the reception was rapturous. Cries of "Formidable!" and "Il est magnifique!" rose up from a crowd that had massed outside the towering, gothic spires of Strasbourg's Notre-Dame cathedral as the presidential Cadillac roared up. "C'est le plus grand président du monde!" clapped a five-year-old schoolgirl.

A war veteran wept as Mr Obama stopped to shake his hand. "I arrived here at 8am and waited for four hours but it was all worth it," he said before extending his own hand to people around him. "He shook my hand, come and shake mine."

But just as Mr Obama used the G20 to emphasise that the burden of combating the economic crisis must be a shared one, in Strasbourg he expanded that message into the sphere of security, in particular with reference to fighting al-Qa'ida and bringing peace and security to Afghanistan. America's request for more help from its allies is expected to dominate the Nato summit this morning.

"This is a joint problem and it requires a joint effort," Mr Obama said, before heading for a working dinner of Nato leaders in Baden Baden. That the events of the gathering were being held at sites on both sides of the Franco-German border was designed to stress the achievements in European unity. Nato, he said, was "one of the most successful alliances in modern history". Standing next to M. Sarkozy in the courtyard of Strasbourg's pink-stoned Rohan Palace, Mr Obama went so far as to suggest that "because of proximity", the countries of Europe were more likely to be the targets of future attacks by al-Qa'ida than America is.

It was back in the basketball arena that he rehearsed his views on what was partly to blame for a souring of transatlantic ties in past years. "There have been times when America's shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive," he began. Yet in Europe, he said, "there is an anti-America attitude that seems casual but can also be insidious. America can be unfairly blamed for many problems. On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise".

He built on a theme about a new America ready now to lead by example. If Europe is to respect the US, the US must respect it back. Thus, he also argued, the US must learn to reduce its carbon footprint if developing countries are to be expected to restrain emissions as they seek to grow their economies.

Following the same thread, Mr Obama also acknowledged a point long made by critics of the US (and of Britain and France) that reducing its nuclear arsenal will give it "the moral authority" to ask other nations, including Iran, to abandon their own nuclear weapons ambitions. On the eve of the G20 President Obama announced that he intended restarting denuclearisation talks with Russia. He offered no details on how he envisages achieving a nuclear-free world.

He did invoke however, the lurking danger of nuclear warheads getting into the wrong hands. "Even with the Cold War now over, the spread of nuclear weapons or the theft of nuclear material could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet," he said.

Mr Obama also issued a robust warning to North Korea which is threatening to blast a long-range missile into orbit over Japan this weekend. He excoriated Pyongyang for responding in a way that was proving "not just unhelpful but resorted to the sort of language that has led to North Korea being isolated from the international community for a very long time".

Alain Robert: Climb every building...

The thousands of protesters who descended on London this week used various tactics to attract the focus of one of the most global media spotlights of recent times. There were the men who arrived in an armoured vehicle, the stretcher-bearers who carried a giant dead canary, the man in a beanie hat who was also Russell Brand, and the chap whose hand-written placard read, simply, "Down with this sort of thing".

But one man rose above the swarm of demonstrators on Thursday to deliver a message that, thanks to his audacious ability would be heard louder and longer than his ground-bound counterparts.

Alain Robert, the French climber and self-styled "spider-man" took just 30 minutes to scale the north face of the Lloyd's building in the City, pausing at the ninth floor to unfurl a banner highlighting the threat of climate change. The morning after, Robert is typically modest about his efforts. "It's an easy building to climb and not that tall," he says of the 90m edifice known as the "inside-out" building. "It was fun. I saw some people on the inside when I was going up; they were happy snapping some pictures."

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Those who watched Robert's climb close-up will have seen the veins rippling under his distinctive mullet and the sinewy muscles in his wiry arms but they will not have seen a drop of sweat. For a man who has scaled some of the tallest buildings with only climbing shoes and a bag of chalk for grip, Thursday's feat was little more than a promenade au parc.

Robert, 46, was a gifted rock-climber before he swapped granite for glass and steel. After cutting his teeth as a young boy on the rock-faces around Valence, his hometown in the south of France, he took on bigger challenges. He dispensed with the safety devices employed by most climbers – harnesses, ropes, pitons – preferring the frisson and freedom of solo ascents including, in 1993, one of the world's hardest, a record-breaking climb in Provence's Verdon Gorge.

Robert has never put a foot wrong on a building, but in 1982, he fell 15m while rappelling from a cliff, breaking both forearms, his elbow, pelvis, and nose. He fell into a coma for five days and emerged with epilepsy and vertigo caused by a damaged inner ear. Doctors declared him "60 per cent disabled" and said Robert would never climb. He defied the doctors, too.

In 1994, having reached the height of his sport, Robert seized on the opportunity to do something different. He flew to Chicago with a climbing film maker who wanted to swap cliffs for skyscrapers. "It would have made more sense to cycle up Mount Everest," Robert writes in his autobiography, With Bare Hands. "In the shadow of Chicago's cityscape, it occurred to me that I had probably agreed to one of the most stupid proposals that had ever been made." Nerves soon vanished as Robert inched his way up the 42-storey Citigroup Centre, using ledges, window frames and sheer strength to scale the unforgiving structure. He wrote: "The city of Chicago had just opened a door to a whole new universe, a range of mountains of steel and glass."

Since then, Robert has conquered more than 85 buildings, including the Canary Wharf tower, both Petronas Towers in Malaysia, Taiwan's Taipei 101 and the Four Seasons Palace in Hong Kong, when he almost fell after a woman inside screamed and fainted at the sight of a human spider 60 storeys high.

The attentions of the law have helped create Robert's image. "We are living in a world where everything is based on security," he says. "There are a lot of rules and sometimes doing the forbidden can be nice." Robert happily lives up to his superhero status, a cross between Spider-man and Robin Hood (who he says he admires). He has worn Spider-man suits on more than one occasion and his email address includes the word "spiderman". He is a showman who often pauses to wave at rapt crowds, and ends his climbs by looking down and raising his fists in triumph. This has led to comparisons to Philippe Petit, the man whose tightrope walk between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Centre was retold in last year's Oscar-winning documentary, Man on Wire. "In that very French sort of way, he has turned something extreme into an art form," says British climber Leo Houlding. Robert dismisses as "bullshit" the suggestion that he and Petite share what he calls a "French craziness gene".

But Robert cannot deny that his willingness to publicise himself and, more recently, causes from climate change to Aids awareness, sets him aparty. "He's well respected as a climber," Mr Houlding says. "He has soloed routes as hard as anyone else and those skyscrapers are not easy, but it's a different kind of respect. There are those who see arrogance in what he does but I'm not one of them; he's inspirational."

As Robert waits to hear whether he will be required to return to Britain for a court appearance, he is eyeing his next target, the 818m Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building. Not bad for a man with vertigo. "When I was young, I was so afraid of heights so getting to the top and looking down is like a reward," he says. "I won't say I'm dominating a height but at least I am capable of dominating my fear."

It's so last year: Vanity Fair abandons the 'green issue'

Spring has sprung, and everything is going green. Everything, that is, except Vanity Fair, which has decided to ditch its annual "green issue". For the past three years, the monthly glossy has made much of dedicating its May issue to the environment: from Leonardo DiCaprio posing on an iceberg to last year's open letter from Robert Kennedy Jnr to the next president calling for action on global warming. This year, the incipient tradition has been quietly dropped.

Condé Nast, publisher of Vanity Fair, argues that the environment has become so integral to the news agenda that there is no longer a need for a dedicated issue. "Vanity Fair remains committed to covering the environment, and we'll spread our coverage throughout the year, instead of relegating the bulk of it to a specific issue" a spokeswoman says.

But others interpret the move as a sign that the environment is slipping down the agenda, overtaken by the economic crisis. This theory is backed by new research showing that coverage of the environment has fallen significantly. The latest figures from TNS Media Intelligence, a research firm, show that national newspaper coverage of environmental issues – including climate change, global warming, green consumerism and sustainability – fell by 27 per cent in 2008. In the first quarter, there were 3,866 articles published on green issues, compared with 2,811 in the final quarter.

Vanity Fair admits that the recession has had a bearing: "With so much else going on relating to the global financial crisis, we have been focusing on that of late". Environmentalists are concerned that the decision may have an unwelcome effect on the perception of green issues. "It is vital that green living is not treated as a trend that comes and goes, but that it becomes part of the way we live," says Colin Butfield, head of campaigns at WWF.

For other magazines, the environment remains, for now, an important issue. Prospect, the cerebral monthly, recently launched a section dedicated to science in response to a readers' survey, and, says a spokeswoman, the environment is "more important to us than ever". Reader's Digest is launching its own "eco" issue in June, featuring a piece by Prince Charles on how to save the world. And even within Condé Nast, other titlesremain committed to the environment, although none has had a green issue. This, according to Nicky Eaton, the head of publicity for Condé Nast UK, "was always a concept owned by Vanity Fair".

Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair's redoubtable editor, may have been encouraged to drop the green issue by the release of TNS's figures, which were published around the time when the green issue would have been planned. But it is more likely to have been the whimsy of the fashion world that affected his decision – three years is a long time for any trend.

Vanity Fair may just be doing what it does best – staying one step ahead of the times. But in PR terms, axing the green issue could be an own goal. "Reducing the coverage of green issues would be extremely disappointing," says Andy Atkins, the executive director of Friends of the Earth. "The media has a vital role to play in the efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change – we need accurate and incisive reporting to press for real environmental solutions and to expose the ineffectiveness of phoney fixes such as carbon offsetting."

The argument that the economy is now of greater concern than the environment does not wash with some. "Maybe it [Vanity Fair] sees green issues as a luxury to be dropped in these tough times. If that's why, then it has misunderstood the nature of the crisis, and the things we need to do to solve it," says Zac Goldsmith, a former editor of The Ecologist and prospective Tory MP. "The recession makes the environmental cause more, not less relevant. We can emerge from this recession with a green economy where green choices currently available only to the wealthy become available to everyone."

For now, Graydon Carter continues to be popular with environmentalists. On Wednesday, he attended the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) "Forces of Nature" gala dinner in New York, mingling with environmentally conscious celebrities including Paul McCartney and his daughter, Stella. But if his magazine has sparked an unwelcome trend across magazine publishing, he may find life on the wrong side of the green lobby rather less rosy.