Bulgari shows off Liz Taylor's gems

It isn't easy sometimes to be an ordinary person in Los Angeles, so near to and yet so far from the city's glamorous events.

You hear about the grand Oscar parties, but you will never be invited. The award ceremony may be taking place minutes from where you live, but you watch it at home, on TV, in your sweat pants — and you might as well be in Dubuque.

Rodeo Drive too can make you feel like a scrap on the cutting room floor. As you stroll the wide and immaculate sidewalks of Beverly Hills' iconic shopping street, you pass by boutiques you'd feel self-conscious walking into. In the windows are baubles and trinkets you could never in three lifetimes afford.

Which is why it is rather nice to be invited to make a private appointment at the house of Bulgari, the fine Italian jeweler that opened its doors in 1884.

Elizabeth Taylor loved Bulgari jewels. Richard Burton, whose torrid affair with her began during the filming of "Cleopatra" in Rome, accompanied her often to the flagship shop on the Via Condotti. He liked to joke that the name Bulgari was all the Italian she knew.

So it is fitting that starting Oscar week, the jeweler is celebrating the Oscar-winning star with an exhibit of eight of her most treasured Bulgari pieces.

They are heavy on diamonds and emeralds — of rare size, gleam and value.

And Bulgari knows their value well.

After Taylor's death, it reacquired some of the gems at a Christie's auction. One piece, an emerald-and-diamond brooch that also can be worn as a pendant, sold for $6,578,500 — breaking records both for sales price of an emerald and for emerald price per carat ($280,000).

That brooch, whose centerpiece is an octagonal step-cut emerald weighing 23.44 carats, was Burton's engagement present to Taylor. He followed it upon their marriage (his second, her fifth) with a matching necklace whose 16 Colombian emeralds weigh in at 60.5 carats. Bulgari bought the necklace back too, for $6,130,500.

They are in the exhibit, along with Burton's engagement ring to Taylor and a delicate brooch — given to her by husband No. 4, Eddie Fisher — whose emerald and diamond flowers were set en tremblant so that they gently fluttered as Taylor moved.

The jewels are not for sale.

On Tuesday night, actress Julianne Moore wore the Burton necklace, with pendant attached, at a gala for Bulgari's top clients. At the dinner hour, guests were escorted along a lavender-colored carpet to a nearby rooftop that had been transformed into a Roman terrace.

Those honored guests, of course, got private viewings of Taylor's jewels.

But so did Amanda Perry, a healer from West Hollywood who arrived the next morning for one of the first appointments available to the public.

Someone had emailed news of the collection to the 35-year-old Taylor fan. She walked in off the street Tuesday, when the exhibit was open only to press — and Sabina Pelli, Bulgari's glamorous executive vice president, fresh from Rome, was taking sips of San Pellegrino brought to her on a silver tray between back-to-back interviews that started at 5 a.m.

The camera crews were long gone when Perry came back Wednesday. She had the exhibit, and handsome sales associate Timothy Morzenti of Milan, entirely to herself.

In a black suit, still wearing on his left hand the black glove he dons to handle fine jewels, Morzenti whisked Perry off via a private elevator to the exhibit on the second floor. The jewels stood in vitrines mounted high off the ground. Behind them were photos and a slide show of Taylor, bejeweled.

"Which piece would you like to see first?" Morzenti asked her as a security guard stood by. "I personally love the emerald ring."

Then he proceeded at leisure to explain Bulgari-signature sugar-loaf cuts and trombino ring settings, while tossing in occasional Taylor stories.

Read More..

India Ink: A Personal Nightmare of Assault in India

In a hotel in southern India, in the midst of a dreamless sleep, I awoke inside a nightmare. I heard someone screaming. I’m not sure how much time passed before I realized that it was my scream.

I had traveled to India on behalf of a U.S.-based organization to film a documentary about political street theatre and how art is used as a tool for social change. It was the continuation of field research that I had begun as a William J. Fulbright Scholar. As a second-generation American born to parents who emigrated from India, I felt a sense of pride that I could use my role as a filmmaker to serve as a cultural ambassador between the two largest democracies in the world.

But I found myself awake in this nightmare, with a man violently gripping my mouth shut, attempting to rape me. I was biting and kicking, using every ounce of my energy to fight for my life. My mouth was badly bleeding and in the struggle we fell to the floor. He continued to violently grab my face, and said, “Shalini, don’t shout.” He knew my name. I recognized him as the hotel waiter who served my dinner that night.

I continued to scream and fight incessantly, until finally he relented. He picked up his lungi and said, “I’ll leave. Don’t tell the manager.” Then he ran out and shut the door. Did he really think he could try and rape me in my sleep, without protest and that I wouldn’t tell? Yes. He did. He counted on the fact that he lived in a culture that blamed the victim — that the stigma associated with sexual assault would force a woman to keep quiet. And although I had escaped the worst-case scenario, and prevented a rape, the nightmare was far from over.

In the days that followed, bruised and battered, with excruciating body pain, I managed to shuttle to and from government hospitals to be examined and police stations to file reports. I was well acquainted with India’s bureaucratic process, and in spite of my injuries, I wanted to make sure I had filled out all the paperwork correctly to obtain “justice.”

For several weeks, I tried to get a response from several American and Indian bureaucracies, but they all responded the same way: by doing nothing. Despite my formal complaints, in which I detailed the attack in full, these institutions offered no assistance – not even a single follow up call. I was devastated. I traveled to India on part of an American organization, and received no mental, physical or emotional support. As someone who has committed my life to artistic expression and social justice, I have never felt so voiceless.

Rape and sexual assault are not isolated incidents in a woman’s life. The physical wounds can heal, but the psychological and social stigma associated with rape can keep a woman from reaching her highest potential. My mother had always raised me with the idea that I could lift myself up from my bootstraps and follow my dreams. But in the years following the sexual assault, I suffered the worst depression that I had ever known. I finally sought out a free clinic for survivors. The counselor explained to me, “You have something called post-­‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). You have the stuff soldiers have coming home from a war.” Had I not found someone who could diagnose me with PTSD, and tell me this was a real and treatable condition, this assault may have held me back for life.

The recent gang rapes in India are a reminder to all of us that the rapists are not the only persons who are guilty. The onlookers, the institutions that turn a blind eye, and fail to implement comprehensive policies to address sexual assault are complicit in the violence. When these crimes are swept under the carpet, it perpetuates a culture of silence, a culture that blames the victim.

In the mainstream coverage of the recent gang rape in India, there is a kind of colonial mentality to view these men as savages, and to see India as a place that oppresses women. But looking at figures in the U.S., every two minutes a woman is sexually assaulted. One in four American women suffer rape or attempted rape by the time they reach college.

When I first started to share my story, I was astounded by just how many women began sharing their stories with me. It was like a common secret that we were all hiding. And I grieved not just for my own loss of innocence, but also for just how ordinary my story is, for the invisible war that is happening against women everyday. Sexual violence against women is ubiquitous. It happens to women everywhere, however educated, however empowered, across boundaries of race, class, and nationality.

We can longer wait for the death of another woman to break the silence of so many victims of sexual violence. U.S. and Indian institutions must move quickly to implement comprehensive policies regarding education, training, and support as well as clearly defined medical and legal protocol to deal with women who are sexually assaulted at home and abroad.

Healing from this traumatic event has been a journey towards deep compassion for myself, for my attacker, and for the people and institutions that betrayed me in my time of need. This story is for the courageous women who have been betrayed by the institutions they loved and served. This story is for the 40,000 women in India who are still waiting for justice for sexual assault. My case is among them. And in the silence, I can hear their scream.

Shalini Kantayya is the director of 7th Empire Media and a 2000 Fulbright Scholar.

Read More..

What's Next for Mindy McCready's Two Young Boys?

By Steve Helling

02/19/2013 at 07:00 PM EST

Mindy McCready's apparent suicide on Sunday has left her two young sons in custodial limbo.

The boys – Zander, 6, and Zayne, 10 months – had been in state custody since Feb. 7, when McCready called police to ask for help in making her father and stepmother leave her home. When police arrived, McCready appeared to be intoxicated, according to a Department of Human Services report.

In a subsequent petition, the singer's father, Tim McCready, asked the court to order her to undergo mental health and substance abuse evaluation and treatment, alleging that his daughter, who had recently lost her boyfriend, "hasn't had a bath in a week ... screams about everything ... [is] very verbally abusive to Zander."

After a judge granted the petition, the children were quickly removed and placed into foster care. Although McCready was released from treatment, the boys remained in state custody.

At the time, Zander's father, Billy McKnight, requested custody of his son. "My son needs me," he told PEOPLE on Feb. 8. "I'm married, working and successful. I'm on the right track and proud of it. I've been sober for years. I just want my son."

But McCready's mother and stepfather, Gayle and Michael Inge, also want custody of the children – and authorities seem to agree.

In a proposed order sent to Circuit Judge Lee Harrod, the Department of Human Services proposed that the Inges might be a better fit for the children, claiming that they have "a substantial relationship." The Inges had custody of Zander for much the past few years, during McCready’s rehab and jail stints.

With McCready's death, the judge will have to determine what is in the children's best interest. A custody hearing has been scheduled for April 5.

Read More..

Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year

CHICAGO (AP) — Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.

"The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.

In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.

The report appears in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

It details which drugs were at play in most of the fatalities. As in previous recent years, opioid drugs — which include OxyContin and Vicodin — were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths.

Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs.

They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.

Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010.

Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.

The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010.

Some experts believe these deaths will level off. "Right now, there's a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they're safer than street drugs like heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, director of the chemical dependency institute at New York City's Beth Israel Medical Center.

"But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers," he said.

Frieden said the data show a need for more prescription drug monitoring programs at the state level, and more laws shutting down "pill mills" — doctor offices and pharmacies that over-prescribe addictive medicines.

Last month, a federal panel of drug safety specialists recommended that Vicodin and dozens of other medicines be subjected to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine. Meanwhile, more and more hospitals have been establishing tougher restrictions on painkiller prescriptions and refills.

One example: The University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora is considering a rule that would ban emergency doctors from prescribing more medicine for patients who say they lost their pain meds, Zane said.

___

Stobbe reported from Atlanta.

___

Online:

JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com

Read More..

L.A. Community College District chancellor to resign

The chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District announced Tuesday that he will resign his post, leaving behind a system grappling with poor graduation and transfer rates and daunting budget cuts.

Daniel LaVista made his announcement in a districtwide email in which he extolled the progress made in strengthening accountability and bringing better coordination to the nine-campus district but acknowledged the challenges that lie ahead.

"Even with a healthier FY14 budget proposed for the state's community colleges, there are no quick fixes," LaVista said, for increasing student success, addressing accreditation problems and completing the multibillion-dollar building program.

"The chancellor who leads this remarkable albeit challenging district must take the long view and make a long-term commitment, something I'm unable to do," he said in the email.

LaVista was not available for comment. In the memo, he said he would pursue "other opportunities that combine my professional and family interests." LaVista, 69, became chancellor in August 2010 and earns an annual salary of $370,000.

His resignation is effective June 30, giving the Board of Trustees time to recruit a new or interim chief, he said.

LaVista presided over the colleges as the state was mired in a severe budget crisis, with public higher education systems especially hard hit. California's 112 community colleges operate in a decentralized system of 72 districts governed by boards of trustees; those boards appoint chancellors.

The two-year colleges play a vital role in California's higher education system, training large segments of the state's workforce and typically sending large shares of students to four-year schools. But the system has strained under the pressure of nearly $1 billion in funding cuts and has seen enrollment drop by more than 500,000 students in recent years.

The colleges have struggled to move students more quickly toward graduation and transfer to other universities. Gov. Jerry Brown and others have offered proposals to prioritize enrollment, change funding policies and require orientation and counseling.

The Los Angeles district serves about 240,000 students each year but has lost about $100 million in state support since 2009 and has slashed more than 1,500 class sections. It received harsher scrutiny after a 2011 Times investigation uncovered poor planning, questionable spending and other flaws in a $6-billion campus rebuilding project. And two campuses — Harbor and Southwest — were placed on academic probation last year.

The chancellor initially rejected criticism of the building project, financed with bonds, calling the program "well-managed and effective," and dismissed Times articles as "one-sided" and "sensationalist." But he subsequently committed to reviewing construction practices.

LaVista steered a steady course, establishing a strong working relationship with his Board of Trustees and centralizing oversight of the building program, board President Steve Veres said.

"He fought to keep the institution focused on the mission and on a steady track and that's really critical when the money isn't there," Veres said. "He set us in a strong positive direction."

Veres said LaVista had recently undergone an annual performance review that was satisfactory and that the decision to leave was entirely his own.

"The board as a whole has a high regard for him and believes he's done a good job at the district," he said.

Brice Harris, chancellor of the California community colleges, said in a statement that under LaVista's leadership, the district "survived severe cutbacks forced on it by the recession, improved operations and accountability throughout the district and brought heightened focus on improving student success."

The board is scheduled to discuss the search for a new leader at its meeting Wednesday, Veres said.

Three of the seven board seats will be contested in the March 5 election. One incumbent, Nancy Pearlman, is running, while Tina Park and Kelly Candaele did not seek reelection. Veres said he will ask LaVista to help orient new board members before they take office July 1.

LaVista replaced interim Chancellor Tyree Wieder, who took over after the June 2009 departure of Chancellor Marshall Drummond. A native of upstate New York, LaVista previously served as executive director of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and executive director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, as well as president of two community colleges in Illinois.

carla.rivera@latimes.com

Read More..

India Ink: Kalyan Anand, the Sadhu From Madhya Pradesh

Why do millions of Indians, sometimes entire villages, brave the crowds to attend the Kumbh Mela? India Ink interviewed some of the estimated 100 million pilgrims who traveled to this year’s Kumbh Mela at Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, a 55-day pilgrimage during which Hindus take a holy dip in the Ganges River to wash away their sins.

Kalyan Anand, 46, a sadhu from Chitrakoot town of Madhya Pradesh was one among them. This is what he had to say.

Why did you come to the Kumbh Mela this year? Is this your first time?

I have been coming to the Kumbh for 20 years now. I have gone everywhere there is a Kumbh – Ujjain, Nashik, Haridwar and Allahabad. The purity of River Ganges never ceases to fascinate me. I come to each Kumbh to try and make myself as pure as Mother Ganges.

How have you found it so far?

This one is particularly crowded. They have significantly restricted the bathing area for the sadhus to accommodate the common folk. That is a disappointment. But otherwise, the energy in a Kumbh is always infectious.

Describe your journey to the Kumbh. Did you travel alone? How long did it take?

I travel with my ashram wherever I go.

What does religion mean to you? Do you consider yourself a religious person?

Internal cleansing – that is the basis of religion. Our ancestors strived for it. We should all too. It becomes our inherent responsibility. When everyone on this earth is conscious of his sins, imagine how pure the world will become? Just the mere knowledge will ensure you don’t err in the future.

Who do you think is going to win the 2014 election? Have you ever cast a vote?

We are people who are beyond these things. I haven’t cast a vote all my life.

(The interview was translated from Hindi.)

Read More..

Mindy McCready: Under Police Scrutiny at Time of Suicide?

By Steve Helling and Mike Fleeman

02/18/2013 at 06:00 PM EST

Mindy McCready and David Wilson

Courtesy Mindy McCready

When Mindy McCready talked to police in recent weeks, her account of how her boyfriend came to be found with a fatal gunshot wound to the head concerned police, a law enforcement source tells PEOPLE.

"At first, she said she hadn't heard the gunshot because the TV was too loud. Then she said she had heard the gunshot," the source says. "So obviously there were a lot of questions, and the Sheriff was asking for clarification."

But before investigators could re-interview her, the long-troubled country singer also would die under eerily similar circumstances, her body discovered at the same Heber Springs, Ark., house just feet away from where David Wilson died.

McCready's death was blamed on what "appears to be a single self-inflicted gunshot wound," the Cleburne County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

This differed from how the sheriff characterized Wilson's case. His cause and manner of death still have not been established by the coroner. It was McCready's publicist, and not a law enforcement official, who announced that Wilson had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

After Wilson's death, McCready, 37, spoke to investigators three times, but they didn't feel as if they were through with her.

"At no point did [police] tell her she was a suspect, and she wasn't officially one," says the source. "But she knew that some of her answers didn't stand up to questioning. She was very cooperative, but she just wasn't making a lot of sense."

Read More..

Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women

CHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.

The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models of hip implants perform best in women, even though women make up the majority of the more than 400,000 Americans who have full or partial hip replacements each year to ease the pain and loss of mobility caused by arthritis or injuries.

"This is the first step in what has to be a much longer-term research strategy to figure out why women have worse experiences," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Research Center for Women & Families. "Research in this area could save billions of dollars" and prevent patients from experiencing the pain and inconvenience of surgeries to fix hip implants that go wrong.

Researchers looked at more than 35,000 surgeries at 46 hospitals in the Kaiser Permanente health system. The research, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

After an average of three years, 2.3 percent of the women and 1.9 percent of the men had undergone revision surgery to fix a problem with the original hip replacement. Problems included instability, infection, broken bones and loosening.

"There is an increased risk of failure in women compared to men," said lead author Maria Inacio, an epidemiologist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in San Diego. "This is still a very small number of failures."

Women tend to have smaller joints and bones than men, and so they tend to need smaller artificial hips. Devices with smaller femoral heads — the ball-shaped part of the ball-and-socket joint in an artificial hip — are more likely to dislocate and require a surgical repair.

That explained some, but not all, of the difference between women and men in the study. It's not clear what else may have contributed to the gap. Co-author Dr. Monti Khatod, an orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, speculated that one factor may be a greater loss of bone density in women.

The failure of metal-on-metal hips was almost twice as high for women than in men. The once-popular models were promoted by manufacturers as being more durable than standard plastic or ceramic joints, but several high-profile recalls have led to a decrease in their use in recent years.

"Don't be fooled by hype about a new hip product," said Zuckerman, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the medical journal. "I would not choose the latest, greatest hip implant if I were a woman patient. ... At least if it's been for sale for a few years, there's more evidence for how well it's working."

___

Online:

Journal: http://www.jamainternalmed.com

Read More..

Restorer of vintage farm equipment could pull in big prize

TULARE — At this year's annual World Ag Expo there was a star exhibit: a young man and an old tractor.

Ryan Haas, 19, of Devine, Texas, a two-time national grand champion at the Delo Tractor Restoration competition, is at the top of a hotly contested field largely unknown to urbanites.

But in rural places that aren't color-coded blue versus red, but rather green versus orange — as in big green John Deere tractors, or smaller, sunny-colored Cases — tractor restoration is an obsession.

Youth participation in restoration competitions is growing especially fast in struggling agricultural areas. It's deep rooted in drought-plagued Texas and gaining momentum in California's Central Valley, where the dairy industry has been pummeled by high feed prices and low milk prices.

More than just a symbol of hanging on to a slipping heritage, the competition requires the skills needed in modern agriculture jobs: engineering, budgeting, marketing and social media. There is also the allure of big cash prizes at fairs and stock shows and the chance to make a profit selling a vehicle to a wealthy collector.

Haas' restored beauty, a 1970 Case tractor— its vintage "Desert Sunset" and "Flambeau Red" paint gleaming in the Central Valley sun — took two years of long nights and $12,000 to rebuild and restore.

His earliest memories are of being in a tractor. His father would go out to plow and use a wooden pallet on the floor of the tractor's cab as his son's playpen. Later on, his older sister drove her date to a prom in one of the family's tractors.

Haas was 10 when the drought first got so bad that his family mostly stopped planting wheat and sorghum. They parked their tractors and turned to cattle on land the family had farmed near Devine since 1872.

Both of Haas' older siblings competed in the national restoration competition. By the time they got to this last year of eligibility for the youngest sibling, all of their father's and grandfather's oldest, retired tractors had been restored.

The youngest Haas wanted to try to restore something with more complicated mechanics anyway. A family friend bought a ranch and found the abandoned Case with a diesel engine.

"My dad and my granddad both ran Case, so pretty much anything you needed to know, they knew," he said.

There is a strong possibility that father and son bear a striking resemblance, but it's hard to tell for sure with them both in straw western hats pulled low and Tony Haas adding a handlebar mustache and sunglasses. Sometimes in hours and hours of tearing apart and rebuilding, the two would bump heads over the best way to go about the work. How did they settle disputes?

"Well, ma'am, I reckon it was whoever gave up first," Ryan Haas said.

He is majoring in business administration at a local college and wants to open a diesel performance business — specializing, of course, in tractors.

The trade may have a promising future. Tractor-love is spreading, with experts pointing to the earth-churning behemoths as the next high-end collectible.

"Tractors are an up-and-coming trend. Many collectors remember riding in a tractor with their father or grandfather. But a lot of others just think they're cool," said Tabetha Salsbury of Hagerty Insurance, the world's largest insurer of collector vehicles. She is the only other two-time winner of the Delo competition.

In addition to the Delo, which is sponsored by Chevron's brand of oil and lubricants and is considered a Super Bowl of tractor restoration, there's also a tractor restoration Web series ("Tractor Fanatic," with episodes available in a two-DVD set) and Midwest tractor shows that draw thousands of fans each summer.

Dennis Rupert, a national tractor restoration judge, said this may be a moment in the sun for old tractors. But there are a couple of challenges: size and weight.

"You're restoring 20 tons. It's not like those TV shows where they're restoring a pedal car or a Coke machine," he said. "Still, there is something nostalgic that hits home. If it's Uncle John's tractor you oughta see the tears flow."

At the ag show, teenagers posed for photos in caps resembling pink cow udders, the smoky smell of Portuguese linguica drew long lines to a food court and folks hurried to a hay and forage seminar, but one farmer stood stock still in front of Haas' Case.

"This is the best tractor in the whole place," Don Adams, 62, said with a look of delight usually associated with a child opening a birthday present. "Sure brings back memories."

Haas hopes to sell his restored tractor for twice what he spent on it. But if he doesn't, he won't treat it like a museum piece.

"I'd rather see it running than sitting," he said. "It's a tractor."

diana.marcum@latimes.com

Read More..

India Ink: Modern in Mumbai

Cecilia Morelli Parikh is still a woman on a mission. Nearly two years ago, with Julie Leymarie and Aurélie de Limelette, she opened Le Mill, a multibrand fashion and home store, in a converted warehouse in a gritty section of Mumbai, India, which brought a contemporary Western aesthetic to an affluent Indian shopper. Last November, Morelli Parikh and her co-founders (Leymarie is a former L’Oréal executive; de Limelette has designed numerous displays for Hermès) rolled out a second store, this one in the city’s decidedly fancier Breach Candy area. Morelli Parikh describes the first store’s location as the equivalent of New York’s “meatpacking district, 30 years ago,” while the new store’s surroundings are “the Upper East Side.”

At 1,900 square feet, the second Le Mill is much smaller than the 15,000-square-foot flagship store (which, as of next month, will carry only home products, including the store’s own furniture and tabletop lines, designed by de Limelette, as well as European brands like Carl Hansen & Son, Gervasoni and Gubi). In contrast to the flagship’s industrial look — the name Le Mill refers to the building’s early life as a rice mill — the new store is “more polished,” Morelli Parikh says. The entry floor is painted in a gray and white abstract geometric pattern; the cashier’s desk is a shipping container painted glossy white. It’s the perfect backdrop for the store’s sharply focused fashion offerings — from contemporary labels like 3.1 Phillip Lim, Alexander Wang, Erdem and the Row — as well as jewelry by Mawi, En Inde, Shourouk and Tom Binns, among others, and gift items and tableware.

This spare but sensual look — in design as well as fashion — is what Morelli Parikh and her co-founders want to bring to the Indian luxury goods market, which still lags well behind that of, say, China. It wasn’t that long ago that Indian women began to abandon traditional dress for Western fashion, and even then they often chose flashy over fashion-forward. Add India’s high import duties and the fact that affluent Indians, who travel frequently, prefer to shop in London, Dubai and New York, and the women behind Le Mill had their work cut out for them.

But none of this fazes the American-born, London-raised Morelli Parikh, who, after working at Bergdorf Goodman, married Rohan Parikh — who runs the real estate and construction branch of his family’s shipping company, Apurva Natvar Parikh Group, or A.N.P.G. — and settled in Mumbai two years ago. She noticed a lack of multibrand stores, and realized that while many Western fashion and home products are made in India, with its traditions of craftsmanship, those goods — and their contemporary aesthetic — were generally not available there. So she, Leymarie and de Limelette set about “bringing that heritage into the 21st century,” away from heavy and ornate toward a lighter, more modern take on tradition.

It is no surprise that the apartment that Morelli Parikh and her husband share, in an Art Deco building on Marine Road (which has one of the largest concentration of Art Deco buildings in the world), embodies her “more natural, raw, delicate” outlook. The 2,400-square-foot space’s monochromatic restraint is leavened by contemporary Indian artworks and luxurious touches like the master bedroom’s inlaid marble floor. The furnishings are a mix of de Limelette’s understated pieces for Le Mill, Western classics like a Carl Hansen & Son lounge chair and contemporary works like dining chairs by BDDW in New York (available by special order at Le Mill). The look is comfortable and stylish, but modern.

And that is exactly the direction that Morelli Parikh is taking with Le Mill’s second store. Now that younger, less mainstream designers have proven to be successful, Le Mill has introduced fashion from what Morelli Parikh calls “even edgier” labels like Peter Pilotto and Mary Katrantzou. Still, Morelli Parikh explains that there’s a market for more classic clothing, so this month Joseph will join the store’s designer roster. But its biggest move to date will be the addition of Azzedine Alaïa in March. Morelli Parikh explains that the designer already has a following among the store’s core customers, about 50 women who represent a good 60 percent of Le Mill’s ready-to-wear business. “Alaïa is sexy, but it’s so chic,” she says.

Le Mill is forging ahead with plans to open stores in other prosperous Indian cities, like Delhi and Bangalore, and an e-commerce site will make its debut next month: “There is lots of wealth in third- and fourth-tier cities where there are no shops,” Morelli Parikh says. Being a tastemaker in a brave new world is “incredibly challenging,” she adds, “but really fun.”

Read More..