italian fashion designer Mila Schoen dies at 91

Fri, Sep 5 07:15 PM

Milan, Sep 5 (DPA) Italian fashion designer Mila Schoen known as the 'Lady of Elegance' for the stylishly stark and simple tailoring of her clothes, has died. She was 91.

Schoen died Thursday night, according to a spokeswoman for Brand Extension, the company that owns the Mila Schoen label.

'She was a woman who valued work and good taste,' designer Mariella Buriani told television news channel Sky TG24.

Born as Maria Carmen Nutrizio in 1917 to aristocratic parents in Dalmatia - now part of Croatia - Schoen moved to Italy's fashion capital Milan following her marriage to luxury goods merchant, Aurelio Schoen.

Schoen held her first fashion show for some friends before establishing her own fashion house in 1958, when she began attracting wide attention for her designs and fabric combinations.

By the 1960s she was presenting her collections in the United States, and in 1971, Schoen launched her men's line and a women's ready-to-wear collection.

While many of her designs were aimed at affluent, private customers, Schon also created uniforms for airline staff: Italian carrier Alitalia in 1969 and Iran Air in 1972.

In 1992 the Mila Schoen label was licensed to the Mariella Buriani Fashion Group, but Schoen still had a say on the style of clothes bearing her name.

In 2007 the label was sold to Brand Extension, by which time the veteran designer had retired from the fashion world.

NYT: Obama to dispatch female surrogates

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain , dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and creating a rapid-response team to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said on Thursday.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign event in Florida, her first for Mr. Obama since the Democratic convention last month, will include a forceful response to the searing attacks and fresh burst of energy that Ms. Palin injected into the race with her convention speech on Wednesday night, Obama aides said.

With the McCain-Palin team courting undecided female voters, including some who backed Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Obama aides say they are counting on not only Mrs. Clinton but also Democratic female governors to criticize their Alaskan counterpart, Ms. Palin — and, by extension, Mr. McCain — including Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

McCain: End ‘the constant partisan rancor’ Republican nominee says Obama doesn’t have a record to run on

By Alex Johnson

Reporter

MSNBC

updated 11:57 p.m. ET Sept. 4, 2008

Sen. John McCain of Arizona accepted the Republican presidential nomination Thursday night with a dual message: Sen. Barack Obama does not have the judgment to govern the nation, whereas he himself can reach across party divisions to “get this country moving again.”

In an address at the party’s national convention in St. Paul, Minn. — briefly interrupted when three yelling anti-war protesters were hustled out of the hall as delegates chanted “U.S.A., U.S.A.” — McCain promised to “reach out my hand to anyone to help me.”

“Americans want us to stop yelling at each other,” McCain ad-libbed as he called for delegates to ignore the disruption.