Marcello Lippi became the darling of Chinese football last month when he led Guangzhou Evergrande to triumph in the final of the AFC Champions League over FC Seoul, thereby securing the country’s first Asian title in 23 years. The legendary, cigar-smoking coach, 65, had an unspectacular career as a player but went on to lift the World Cup as manager of his native Italy in 2006, having previously claimed the Uefa Champions League with Juventus in 1996. In an interview with Guangzhou TV earlier this year, he told fans his idol was the American Warren Beatty …
The actor-turned-director jointly wrote, directed, produced and played the lead role in Heaven Can Wait, the 1978 comedy Lippi named as his favourite film. It tells the story of a backup quarterback who leads the Los Angeles Rams American football team to the Super Bowl. Beatty – whose transgender son, Stephen Ira, currently features in a public service film in the United States championing health care access for transgendered people – came to prominence in the 1960s, starring in such movies as Kaleidoscope, a 1966 British crime drama that was the film debut of Jane Birkin …
The British actress, director, model and singer-songwriter is probably best known for a 1969 pop duet with her lover, Serge Gainsbourg, “Je t’aime ... moi non plus” (“I love you ... me neither”). The song was banned from radio in Britain and five other European countries on its release due to Birkin’s heavy breathing (or apparent orgasm) in it. Birkin is also a fashion icon and was the inspiration for the Hermès Birkin bag, designed by Jean-Louis Dumas …
After a conversation with Birkin on a plane from Paris to London, in which she complained of the difficulties in finding a leather weekend bag, the chief executive of Hermès sketched the outline of a black supple leather bag on board. It would became the “it bag” of the century. Taking over the helm of the luxury house in 1978, Dumas turned his family firm into a global multibillion brand by hiring daring and talented designers such as Veronique Nichanian …
Known as “the woman behind the men” in the fashion industry, Nichanian is one of very few female designers in the menswear realm. When Dumas called her, in the summer of 1987, asking her to come and work for the French maison, she thought it was a prank call. “He laughed, assured me it was not and said he wanted to meet me,” she recently recalled. “So I said, ‘OK – I will bring croissants’.” The Hermès menswear H belt is well known to Chinese netizens after a picture was posted on Sina Weibo last year of the pricey accessory adorning the waist of property developer Xu Jiayin .…
Xu was spotted walking into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing wearing his H belt during the annual Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The photo went viral online, sparking discussion over delegates’ lavish attire that ultimately led to a Weibo anti-corruption campaign. Since the outcry, Xu seems to have focused his spending on the soccer club he owns. This year he showed up at the Great Hall wearing a belt from Septwolves – a cheap Chinese menswear brand; in May, however, he had appointed a new coach at Guangzhou Evergrande, pledging a rumoured HK$100 million a year for the services of Paul Newman-lookalike Marcello Lippi.