wihu !

Synth punk marauders Is Tropical brought East London’s pub/club The MacBeth last night to the tipping point.

Each member was disguised behind cowboy-style handkerchiefs like a cross between Daftpunk and hooded Hoxton juvies, and together they were a storm of colored lights, sizzling electro, pounding drums and melodic vocals with. Their single “South Pacific” is on French label Kitsune’s new Maison 10 compilation out next month, and they’re pressing on with the Mystery Jets for their fifth UK tour this year. We managed to catch up with the South London trio — Simon Milner, Dominic Alpa, and Gary Barber — over Chinese take-out, sans masks, to talk burkas, touring and long lost family members.

Simon: Want a shrimp cracker? I get a deal from the Chinese place next door because we all used to work here.

ELLE: Yes please! Is playing masked about shifting the focus from yourselves?
Simon: We don’t want to have a face to the music. It makes us a bit more introverted and get into our music rather than reassuring someone that we’re having a good time.
Gary: Masks are a big topic these days, what with the ban on burkas in France and everything. We were told it was illegal to wear the masks after our set in Germany. Though it might have been an obscure German joke (laughs).

ELLE: I first saw you at Truck festival this summer.
Simon: Yeah we liked that festival because there were just as many artists as normal people, everybody was on the same level, it was pretty ego free.

Photo: Is Tropical

ELLE: There were no divides, no backstage.
Gary: Yeah, there was just a bit where the carpet ended and if you went any further back you’d just be in a cowshed.

ELLE: So how did you end up in the capable hands of the Kitsune label?
Simon: We didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a British band and Kitsune gets respect around the world. There’s loads of bands from all over on there.

ELLE: You’re heavy on the touring at the moment, any highs and lows?
Gary: Our laptop got stolen which had four of our new tracks. But the police found it in a crackhouse and so we got it back.

ELLE: Favorite shows you’ve played?
Simon: The show in Berlin was pretty postmodern and we played late which we like.
Dominic: And also I met my long lost sister. Got a message a couple weeks before. And she was there (snickers through the ranks). She’s really small.

ELLE: She didn’t ask you for a kidney or anything?
Dominic: No that comes later.

ELLE: What are you looking forward to next?
Gary: Paris, playing with LCD sound system and HotChip.
Dominic: We’re mostly looking forward to seeing party Pascale.
Gary: In a room of thirty people he knows exactly whose drinks need refilling.
Simon: He’s like the rain man of champagne.

Click here to hear more from Is Tropical and check out their tour dates!

Photo: Victoria’s Secret

Katy Perry’s the latest Victoria’s Secret Angel — she won’t be on the cover of the catalog or shooting on the beach in Hawaii, but she will perform at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show next month.

The show, which relocated back to New York last year after a spell in Miami, will take place in early November and air on CBS the 30th. Perry will sing “Firework,” the third single off of Teenage Dream.  If your musical tastes gear toward something a bit different, Akon will perform, too. (He’ll sing “Angel” off of his new album, of course.)

Adriana Lima will wear the $2 million Damiani diamond bra and the brand’s favorites like Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Behati Prinsloo and Chanel Iman will walk, too.  But now that Heidi Klum’s retired and headliners Doutzen Kroes and Miranda Kerr are very pregnant, there’s room for quite a few new girls to take the runway — paging Ashley Smith?

Photo: ABC

A few weeks into fall’s stellar TV lineup, we’ve checked in with some of our favorite stars to see what’s been fun, what’s been hard & what we have to look forward to. This evening we talk to the always hilarious Christa Miller of ABC’s Cougar Town. Grab a glass (or more) of wine and watch it tonight at 9:30.

ELLE: When Cougar Town show started out, critics wrote it off. And now, it’s beloved. Going into the second season are you feeling vindicated?
CM: You know, the concept of the show changed pretty quickly from Courtney’s character Jules dating hot young guys to an ensemble show about friends drinking and talking about their dirty sex lives. Things have changed, and because it changed, wives were able to get their husbands to watch. I get that a lot—husbands will say, “I didn’t want to watch the show, but my wife made me watch it. And it’s actually funny.”

ELLE: Is there anything in particular that you’re really excited to show viewers this season?
CM: Bobby, Jules’ ex-husband, is finally going to get a girlfriend. I’m very interested to see what that person is going to be like. And I’m interested to see if the Jules-Grayson relationship has legs. What’s going to happen there? We’re filming our fifth episode, and there’s already drama…

ELLE: Your husband Bill Lawrence created Cougar Town and Scrubs. In both shows you play a wife who, well, wears the pants in her relationship.
CM: Isn’t it interesting that he keeps writing about that? But Bill wears the pants at work. I think that’s why he likes working with me, because he endlessly bosses me around at work and I never cause him any grief. Especially when he’s directing, he picks on me the most.

ELLE: Do you ever read a script and say, “Wait a second! This actually happened”?
CM: It happens very often. Like, Bill’s a night owl, and I like to go to bed early. So he made a whole episode where my husband on the show, Andy, walks around the house, has friends over, and has a whole other life at night after I’m asleep. Or I’ll have a conversation with one of my girlfriends and then it’ll be in the show—but much, much funnier. He always gives me credit. “Oh, Christa said that over the weekend.” But I didn’t say it half as funny.

ELLE: What shows are you looking forward to watching this fall?
CM: My favorite show is Dexter. Most of the time when I watch TV, I’m on my computer, reading a magazine, doing something else. But I sit and watch Dexter—I’m just mesmerized. It’s like the crack-cocaine of television for me, and my husband and I are fully addicted.

Leigh Bowery and Trojan. Photo: Johnny Rosza.

“I have two favorite images in my book. The first is the photograph of Leigh Bowery and Trojan,” says celebrity photographer Johnny Rozsa about his debut retrospective, Untouched, which is launching alongside his first New York solo exhibition at Christopher Henry Gallery on Friday.

“When I met them, in the mid 80′s, they were so unbelievably different. They were wandering around London, day and night, looking like Krishna on acid. Looking back now, they were creating an iconic fashion tsunami. They were a huge influence on the biggest fashion designers of the last ten years, because they fused art and fashion, and they broke barriers in hemlines and silhouettes, and in make up as well. Because they looked so beyond outrageous, I felt the best way to capture them was in an Avedon-style bland background, so their uniqueness would jump out. That image has stood the test of time.”

In Untouched, which includes introductory comments by Susan Sarandon, Rozsa (who’s been photographing pop culture luminaries since 1975) shows very private and intimate sides of some the world’s most public personalities. We get a glimpse of Halle Berry mooning the camera, a loving moment between Ryan O’Neal and Farah Fawcett, a freckled Daryl Hannah, and candid, un-Photoshopped portraits of stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jade Jagger, Natasha Richardson, Geena Davis, Whitney Huston, Snoop Dogg, Johnny Rotten and Rick James.

Angelica Huston. Photo: Johnny Rosza.

“The other image I am fond of is the Angelica Huston,” says Rozsa. “She had been a terribly successful model, having been photographed by all the hugest photographers in New York, Paris and London. So I was thrilled to have the opportunity to shoot her in my studio in LA. I emulated the lighting of the great Hollywood photographers of the Thirties and Forties, using huge tungsten lights, to bring out the drama in her unusual, quirky beauty. I wanted to capture movement and drama in stark black and white and somehow present her as the Hollywood Royalty that she has become.”

Mission accomplished Johnny.

Photo: Billy Farrell Agency

Last night, the Ronson family bestowed all sorts of joy upon a group of fashion editors.  First, there was dinner care of Charlotte at the Meatpacking District’s aptly named MPD and then there was Mark’s concert, at Webster Hall.

The latter played with Business International to a crowd packed with equal parts college kid, scenester and fashion insider with shots of fame from Albert Hammond Jr., Jessica Stam and Annabel Dexter-Jones, of course.  Some of them stood still, and some of them danced so much they got escorted out, but every single person went crazy when Q-tip took the stage.  In the middle of the set, a bleached blonde Mark moved to the front of the stage and just DJd for a minute, reminiscing about his early days in New York’s East Village, before making way for covers of songs from Phantom Planet and Lily Allen.

Meanwhile, JCPenney toasted the launch of Mango’s new collection, MNG, at Capitale.  A gaggle of blondes: Tinsley Mortimer, Kelly Rutherford, Anne Heche and Isabel Lucas watched Janelle Monae perform in honor of the new line.  It’s available online now, and in stores this spring.

Photo: CBS

A few weeks into fall’s stellar TV lineup, we’ve checked in with some of our favorite stars to see what’s been fun, what’s been hard & what we have to look forward to. We’ve already hung out with Alison Brie, and talked Dexter with Julie Benz, but today we’re catching up with Jim Parsons, start of CBS’ Big Bang Theory.  Read this, and then watch him tonight at 8PM.

ELLE: This is the show’s fourth season. You’ve come a long way!
JP: I’ve only recently starting getting confused about which episode was in what season. “Oh yeah, Sheldon tried learning to drive. That was in season…well, I have no idea!” I guess it’s sort of like getting old in Hollywood; you start forgetting the names of your children.

ELLE: You’ve moved to Thursday nights this season, which has traditionally been the primetime Mecca for sitcoms. Is that a lot of pressure? How do you feel about moving?
JP: I feel good about it! It was a move CBS made completely out of confidence. I feel like we’ve done more than proven ourselves, and they think we can start this Thursday night of comedy for them.

ELLE: What do you think fans should be looking forward to this season? What do you think is really going to grab them?

JP: We embark on an odd exploration of Sheldon in a relationship with a female. And I mean that in quite the literal terms: he’s literally relating to this other human being on a regular basis. He has protestations about calling her any sort of “girlfriend,” filmed so far, he’s absolutely right in making that clarification. If there’s romance, it’s like no romance I’ve ever seen before.  I don’t know if that blooms into something or not. Like I said for me, there’s been very fun—you know, it’s been over three years now and it seems to be this is as close to another human being that this character has gotten that I’m playing. That’s been a nice change to enjoy the company of another character, instead of putting up with them.

ELLE: What shows are you looking forward to watching this fall?
JP: I’ve really had fun watching The Event. I was a pretty big fan of Lost, so I think that as I get older, I enjoy these kind of ongoing mystery-based shows, instead of being frustrated by them. And I’ve always been a regular viewer of American Idol, so I’m very interested to see what life will be like without Simon. He was the captain of the ship, and I’m in no small group when I say he spoke—though in harsher terms—what I would be thinking about a performance. I know I’ll miss that.

Photo: Nars

Nars is finally getting its first standalone shop this spring.

The cosmetic brand founded by Francois Nars, and fronted by faces like Daphne Guinness and Marcel, will move in next door to James Perse at 413 Bleecker Street.

On the one hand it’s surprising it took them this long to open a flagship store in New York, but on the other a location this prime rarely opens up.  They’ll be smack in the middle of the Marc Jacobs strip and in between a few Ralph Laurens, and nothing makes a $16 nail polish seem reasonable like a $3,000 sweater!

Photo: Nars

Photo: Delvaux

Delvaux, the oldest fine leather luxury goods house in the entire world finally made its way to the United States this fall.

Thanks to an exclusive partnership with Barneys New York, the most crazed handbag fans can finally get their hands on the holy grail of accessories. Each bag from the storied Belgium company, which just celebrated its 180th anniversary last year, is entirely hand crafted by a team of three artisans.  Their six hands work the finest French leathers (from the same tanneries as Hermès) into classic, elegant shapes. It takes tens of hours to create each individual bag — from the leather, to the stitching, to the hardware, not a single detail’s over looked.

Photo: Delvaxu

The Brillant alone, seen above, uses 64 different pieces of leather for every single bag. The ladylike shape speaks well to fall’s trends but the craftsmanship ensures the bag will stand the test of time and makes it a worthwhile investment.

Each bag contains a card with a serial number bearing the signature of the lead craftsman and is guaranteed for life. In an industry where you’re sometimes paying more for a name than actually quality, Delvaux goes against the grain.  And soon, clients will be able to custom-order bags in an array of leathers and exotics.

Sold exclusively at Barneys New York, 212.833.2035

David Hockney, Untitled, May 27, 2009. Photo: Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent

Artist David Hockney has been dormant for the past ten years—that is, he hasn’t had a major exhibition in over a decade.

Just because he hasn’t been mounting exhibitions, however, doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been nurturing his creativity. In 2008 Hockney started playing with the “Brushes” app on his iPhone and in the past two years has created a beautiful bouquet of digital watercolors of flora and fauna (he created some on his iPad too) that he emailed around to his friends, kind of like if Degas had dispensed his dancers in a Daily Candy-like email.

The mere mortals who weren’t cc’d on these original emails will finally have a chance to witness this virtual virtuosity first hand at David Hockney: Fleurs Fraiches, the new exhibition on view from October 20th through January 2011 at the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent in Paris.

Curated by Charlie Shieps and designed by Ali Tayar, the exhibit will present the artist’s digital artwork in three different formats: iPhone, iPad and digital projections, mounted in the Fondation’s two-gallery exhibition space. The exhibition is in keeping with the artist’s original conception for the works: to exist as colored light projections projected from screens.

And as an added bonus, Hockney will replenish the exhibition with new “fresh flowers” throughout the course of the exhibition.

Photo: Pringle of Scotland

The eMagazine’s not quite as sexy as the “short film,” the favored luxury advertisement of choice this year, but Pringle of Scotland‘s raising the bar.

ASOS, H&M, and Topshop each have one, and ACNE has ACNEpaper (which is basically a proper magazine), but Pringle’s will live solely online, curated by people like Terry and Tricia Jones from i-D and featuring editorials shot by Ryan McGinley.  Bands like Franz Ferdinand are interviewed to balance the fashion fare, like a behind the scenes look at their AW10 camapaign starring Tilda Swinton, a peek inside their factory in Scotland and even a How-to-Knit video.  They’ll ask different industry insiders to edit each issue of the magazine.

The editorial content frames the runway collection, as well as the brand’s artist collaborations, both of which are available online for the first time through the site.  So if you still haven’t bought your winter shearling, here’s another chance.