Lillian Wong's Blog

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Barbie's New Adjustable Ankles Mean That She Can Finally Wear Flats

She's coming down to Earth!

After spending her entire existence in high heels, Barbie will soon have the option of rocking flat feet, which means she'll also be getting a whole new line of flat shoes to choose from, Mattel announced on Thursday, June 4.

The iconic, hourglass-shaped doll, who made her debut in March 1959, has always been known for her impeccable sense of style. (Bob Mackie, Versace, Burberry, Kate Spade, and Louis Vuitton, to name just a few, have designed threads for the blonde stunner.) But her permanently pointed toes have forced her to stick to heels, sandals, and boots.

Saturday, May 30, 2015

How Jessica Alba Built A $1 Billion Company, And $200 Million Fortune, Selling Parents Peace Of Mind

It's Kombucha Thursday at the Santa Monica headquarters of The Honest Company, which means that groups of young, stylish workers gather at communal tables in a converted toy factory to slurp fashionable fermented tea. Jessica Alba, Hollywood star and company cofounder, sits in the adjacent room. She'll join her troops shortly, but for now she's transfixed by a box of tampons that looks more like it holds an expensive candle than Kotex. "Dope!" she declares, approvingly.

Monday, May 25, 2015

Expensive art owned by tech billionaires

Last week, a Picasso painting called "The Women of Algiers (Version 0)" fetched $179.4 million minutes before a bronze statue by Alberto Giacometti called "Man Pointing" sold for $141.3 million.

The buyers were anonymous, though a recent New York Times article narrowed the potential Picasso buyers down to 50 suspects — some of whom made their fortunes in tech.

Tech titans have a taste for expensive art. We've rounded up some of the biggest purchases here.

'ARTillery' explores gun imagery, through 8/16 in Mesa

It may be true that Americans love their guns, but Annie Adjchavanich, curator of the "ARTillery" exhibit at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, notes that the fascination with weaponry goes back to the hunting spears painting on cave walls tens of thousands of years ago.

With works by nearly three dozen artists, most from California and Arizona, "ARTillery" explores guns and other sorts of firepower both as physical objects and cultural symbols. Images range from paintings of soldiers and outlaws to an assault rifle gussied up in Hello Kitty pink.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Surprise! Women trump men on CEO pay

What glass ceiling? The gender gap appears to be closed: At least when it comes to CEO pay.

So far, 21 of the 22 current female CEOs in the Standard & Poor's 500 have reported their latest compensation, including Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Marissa Mayer, defense contractor Lockheed Martin's (LMT) Marillyn Hewson and CEO Carol Meyrowitz of retailer TJX (TJX), and they were paid an average of $18.8 million during their latest fiscal years, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ and Bespoke Investment Group. That far exceeds the average $12.7 million paid to the 455 current male CEOs in the S&P 500 that have reported compensation data for the same time period.