Fashions News

A video of Welch's dramatic drop — a sensation on YouTube — shows her walking the runway at last week's presentation of the fashion line Shadang. She stares blankly ahead, not noticing the gaping hole left where a martial arts performer had cracked open the floor with a flip.
"As a runway model, you have to keep your head up, you know," Welch, a former contestant on "The Bachelor" reality series, told KABC-TV. "So I didn't look down for a hole, particularly."
Then came the plunge. In the video, the crowd is heard howling with apparent shock. Welch, waist-deep in the hole, struggles to lift herself out, and is helped by "Heroes" actor Jimmy Jean-Louis, who modeled at the event. She regains her footing and exits stage left, raising her fist to seemingly signal that she's OK.
The video of the tumble, posted Thursday, had more than 1 million views on YouTube by Monday afternoon.
Welch, now an Internet celebrity, has a good sense of humor about it.
"It is just a really funny mishap. And I hope they're enjoying watching it just as much as I am," she said.

Malaysian designers say Middle Eastern buyers, especially those from the oil producing Gulf region currently flush with petrodollars, appreciate the way the garments match their lifestyle and largely traditional culture, which require women to be modestly dressed in public.
"They are the biggest consumers of fashion," said Sonny San, one of the best-known names in Malaysian fashion, who estimates that almost half the revenues of his "eclipse" label came from its six outlets in the Middle East.
"Now with the oil prices going up to $100 a barrel, the Gulf has the most disposable income," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the Malaysian International Fashion Week in Kuala Lumpur.

Each year, thousands of Gulf Arab families pack the sidewalk cafes and shopping malls of Kuala Lumpur, with many women wearing the trademark black abaya, the flowing robe that covers them from head to toe.
Now Malaysia wants to deploy the fashion industry to help capture these tourist dollars.
"Fashion has the potential to attract big amounts of foreign revenue for the country, especially elements such as batik and Islamic fashion, which are elements that have begun to turn heads around the world," junior tourism minister Donald Lim said at the launch of the Malaysian fashion week
The moderate price of most Malaysian fashion was a key element of its appeal, said Nut Teh, one of eight young designers at the event, as models dressed in her brightly-colored, Pop Art based designs sashayed down the catwalk.
"The big international brand names are for the people who can afford them," she said. "But youngsters are looking to try out new fashions, so I feel they are willing to try out new ideas."