In our book Alexander McQueen can do no wrong (as long as he stays out of Target). His 2010 S/S show wowed us with a mix of reptilian sea mammals, created with computer generated prints. Our favorite piece, however, from the Lady Gaga-inspired show, was this hot little leather gladiator skirt. Leave it to McQueen to get us off of gladiator sandals once and for all, and wow us again with his apocalyptic couture. It's the perfect gift for your little vixen.

Check out a less-expensive option after the jump.

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Of course you can get your woman a practical gift like a computer case or an espresso maker. But if you really want to show your love, you're going to have to get her a piece of jewelry. So ditch the Circuit City circular and pick up our handy Luxist jewelry gift guide for the holidays. Whether a gem, crafted enamel, or a bracelet with a mission, a piece of jewelry is a guarantee to make your lady happy. Read on to find our top holiday picks, some low-end, some high-end, some classic, some nouveau, something guaranteed to fit any fashion personality.

We're forever mesmerized by Temple St. Clair's new Geocentric Pendant, which was inspired by 1st century astronomer Ptolemy's hypothesis that our humble planet was the center of the universe. The rotating pendant is set in multicolor sapphires.

$22,500 18K Large Tolomeo Pendant

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Temple St. Clair is a nominee for a Luxist Award in the Best Jewelry Line category.

Have you ever walked through the Renaissance halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and wished you could create some of the gorgeous earrings and pendants featured prominently in the portraits? Designer Temple St. Clair has been doing that for over two decades. St. Clair was exposed to jewelry-making while earning her masters in Italian literature in Florence. After her visiting mother left her with an ancient coin and a sketch to turn into a ring, she ventured to the ancient Palazzo dell'Orafo of Florentine goldsmiths, where she fell in love with the centuries-old art of Italian jewelry making.

St. Clair began making pieces for herself, which led for family and friends to ask for their own unique pieces. She was discovered by a Barneys scout in 1986, who invited her to show her collection in New York to the Pressman family, who still owned Barneys at the time. She returned in the fall with a collection, starting both the jewelry department at Barneys, and her own career as a jewelry designer.

"It was really exciting because they'd never had any fine jewelry," St. Clair tells Luxist. "And of course I was completely new to this. And at the time I was starting to come back and spend more time in New York, so I was sort of spending my time between here and Italy. And they would call me every time something sold." While St. Clair started at the original Barneys on 17th St., her collection moved with them uptown and even when they opened a store in Tokyo. Today the Temple St. Clair collection is based in New York and sold at Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, as well as at over 100 retailers worldwide.

Her various collections still draw from history but also from a wealth of other sources, drawing on myth and legend in astronomy, mermaids, celestial and astrological. Ever since her start in the 80s, when Candice Bergen rang her up, Temple St. Clair has been sought out by celebrities who want to personally buy pieces to wear. From Nicole Kidman to Naomi Watts to Renee Zellweger to Janet Jackson to Anjelica Houston, her collectors are as diverse as her collection. Temple St. Clair designs for strong, individual women who choose pieces to complement their own style.

"I like unusual materials, because I think in jewelry in particular, so much jewelry has become mass marketed, to the point where for me it's not even really a true jewel anymore," St. Clair tells Luxist. "A true jewel has great craftsmanship, and really great, unusual material, so that it becomes an individual piece for someone, and really a collector's item." What sets the Temple St. Clair's jewelry collection apart from other lines is its focus on individual craftsmanship and rare, exotic gems in gorgeous colors. St. Clair does not produce in mass quantities, but rather creates one-of-a-kind pieces that will become family heirlooms.

Vote now for your pick in the best of breed for luxury jewelry at http://www.luxist.com/awards-vote/accessories-awards. Readers' Choice Awards for jewelry will be announced on December 31st.

Katharine McPhee tries on a headpiece from Carolina Rodriguez.

As time runs out to get your shopping done, consider giving two gifts in one. With VH1 Save the Music Foundation's "Big Shopping" online shopping experience, it's a cinch. Browse the amazing group of retailers, and shop guilt-free knowing that a portion of your purchase will be donated to this amazing charity.

Behind the Music has been fighting to restore music education in public schools for over ten years. To date, the foundation has restored and sustained over $45 million in new musical instruments, reaching 1.4 million public school kids in 1,700 public schools in 100 cities across the nation. Research shows that music programs help students develop critical thinking and self-discipline skills, and increase their self-esteem, SAT scores, and even school attendance. As more and more programs are cut across the nation, now is the time more than ever to support Behind the Music. And with the VH1 Big Shopping event, it's never been easier.

We stopped by the gifting suite pre-launch event at the W New York – Times Square, and saw celebs out in full abundance to support the cause.We spoke to the gorgeous Katharine McPhee, whose new album drops January 5th, about why she decided to support the event. "I think it's really important to keep the arts in our society, and it starts with children," she tells Luxist. "I've always been a fan of VH1's Save the Music program, and what they do for keeping music in schools." Although McPhee's new album is very lush and very grownup, she's still all about the kids, and recently came back from teaching a songwriting course to schoolkids in Arkansas.

We spotted Nigel Barker pick out some jewelry from ShopTwigs.com for his wife, and fellow America's Next Top Model pal Miss J try out some firming eye gel ads from skyn ICELAND, scents from Demeter, and nail polish from Zoya. And how could we miss Twilight's Billy Burke try out the luxurious sheets, from the W Hotel's new bedding collection. He was having trouble pulling himself away from the soft new bedding, designed exclusively for the hotel by Anki Spets.

Click through the gallery below to discover some of the highlights of the sale, and then head to www.vh1bigshopping.com. From a studded messenger bag to a kid's DJ deck, it's a one-stop shop to get all of your holiday shopping done.



Disclosure: I was invited to attend the gifting suite and sample some products for the purposes of this review. Opinions in this article are 100% my own.

As New Yorkers pull out their sleeping bag jackets to weather the biting cold, and now the wave of winter rain, at least one friendly standby is here to mark the passage of the new season: the reopening of Park Avenue Winter. The decor of this New York institution, with crystal and glass chandeliers, white lacquered moldings, and lighting integrated with sparse birch branches, is one of the few things that can warm us up coming in from the cold. Add a fine vodka to your dinner, and you'll be set for the season.

Double Cross Vodka has teamed up with Park Avenue Winter to celebrate the restaurant's arrival. The gorgeous bottle reflects the restaurant's design: an icy white frost with silver snowflakes. But we really love what's inside: Double Cross is one of the purest spirits available on the market, expertly distilled seven times and filtered seven-times. This singular vodka is produced in the Slovak Republic, sourcing local winter wheat and mountain spring water, and distilled in a 13th century village in the foothills of the Tatra Mountains.

For the first time ever, Park Avenue Winter will offer a Tableside Ice Bar, featuring the exclusive winter bottle served with winter mixers: Citrus-Lemongrass, Bartlett Pear, and Lychee Elderflower. This exceptional bottle is the perfect complement to your wintertime meal, and the best way we know how to enjoy the chill.

Park Avenue Winter
100 East 63rd Street at Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212.644.1900 for reservations

There's classical music and then there's Classical Music. Yo-Yo Ma defined the latter, carving out best-in-class recordings for the entire history of classical music. Now fans of this musical genius are given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own the definitive collection.

Yo-Yo Ma 30 Years Outside the Box, out now from Sony Music, features a mind-blowing 90 CDs, every original album Yo-Yo Ma has recorded to date (including 15 Grammy award winners) and two bonus discs featuring the first release of John Williams' Suite from Memoirs of a Geisha for Cello, all entirely re-mastered with DSD technology. The limited-edition, numbered set comes packaged in a velvet-lined cello box complete with a beautiful hard-bound book full of rare archival photos, essays and more.

Yo-Yo Ma created modern classical music, collaborating with artists from Bobby McFerrin to Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer, to recording his interpretations of an entire genre of music, with his groundbreaking Obrigado Brazil record. Throughout his career he has worked to bring classical music to young people. Such an extraordinary collection only befits such a legendary man. Give the music lover on your list this amazing collector's set, and trust us, they'll be set for life.

The entire collection retails for $789.98 and is available from Amazon.

We're giving away one lucky Luxist reader a selection of our top five favorites (total value $98.93):

Brahms: The Piano Quartets

Beethoven: Complete Sonatas for Cello and Piano, Vol. 1

Bolling: Suite for Cello and Jazz Piano Trio

Mozart: Divertimento, K. 563

Yo-Yo Ma Plays the Music of John Williams

To enter, leave a comment below on your favorite composer Yo-Yo Ma has recorded. Hint: It's basically all of them. Winners will be randomly selected. Contest ends Friday, December 18th at 7 PM EST. Good luck!

Some other important details:

* To enter, leave a confirmed comment below.
* The comment must be left and confirmed before December 18, 2009 at 7:00PM Eastern Time.
* You may only enter once.
* One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
* One winner will receive five albums from the collection, a total value of $98.93.
* Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia.

See complete contest rules here.

The contest is now closed.

This holiday season is all about the bling. While last year may have been the year of the silver, this year is all about the gold. A fabulous gold bag can liven up even the dreariest of outfits. It's the one accessory you're going to need all season long. We present to you two fabulous gifts one on the high end and one on the low end.

Nothing says you mean business like a gold python tote from Carlos Falchi. This bold accessory would equally fit a couture getup or a pair of jeans and heels. Falchi has mastered the art of handbag geometry. We love the classic framed top and extra-long top handles. It's the perfect bag to make you shine this season.

Retails at Bergdorf Goodman for $2675.

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Temple St. Clair has been afflicted with wanderlust her entire life. A southern girl who grew up spending summer vacations in Morocco and Bavaria, went to an International Swiss boarding school for high school, and received a masters in Italian literature in Florence, St. Clair has been traveling her whole life. Her vast knowledge of art and mythology coupled with her travels to the ends of the world to find rare gems makes her process and collection entirely unique.

We spoke with St. Clair, who still retains her charming Southern accent, about the inspiration for her stunning and elegant jewelry collection. The Temple St. Clair line is not for every woman. It's for a woman who doesn't follow the rules, in fashion or in life. It's for a woman with an endless search for knowledge and adventure, a woman with an innate sense of class and elegance, a woman a lot like Temple St. Clair herself.

When did you know you wanted to be a jewelry designer?

It wasn't a clear-cut decision. It was something that sort of evolved in my life. I lived in Italy for about twelve years. I started living there after I'd been living in Italy in the 80s and I started having a few pieces made for myself. My background is in Italian Renaissance literature, Italian art history, and I was inspired by the things I was studying that were around me in Florence. My goal was to make a few things for me and then other people started seeing them and friends and family asking me to make things for them. And it grew from there, and supported me continuing to live in Italy and travel and study. It wasn't an exact moment that I decided. Life decided that for me.

What were your early influences?

I had my masters in Italian Renaissance literature so I was reading Dante and Boccaccio, so I was spending a lot of time in the museums there. So early on I was looking at everything around me in Florence. I would say early inspiration was certainly Mediterranean. I was traveling a lot in Turkey and North Africa and of course all around Italy, so definitely the early influences came from there.

Who is your ideal customer?

I think my ideal customer, it's not like, I can describe to you what kind of woman is attracted to my collection. My customer has certain characteristics, typically, and they usually are very confidant women, very secure in their own individual styles. They don't let fashion dictate to them. They like to put their own mark on things, and put things together for themselves. And my collection lends to that. And you know, that's how I feel about fashion and life in general. You know I prefer to be more of an individual and I guess that translates through my jewelry and attracts that kind of woman.

Your collections feature a lot of really unusual stones. How do you source materials and pick different stones?

I've become known for my use of really beautiful and unusual color and fine gemstones. I do use a lot of different colors of sapphires. I do use a lot of different aquamarine and tourmaline and really rare pieces, which really are quite difficult to work with, because sometimes I can only get one stone of a certain kind. So that very much differentiates what I do from a usually jewelry manufacturer that might be making everything in colored quartz for example, where you can get all you want.

So the sources for these materials are widely distributed around the world. I work with cutters in Germany. I work with Indians. I work with Australians. I have people bringing stuff out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is particularly difficult these days, as you could imagine. I work with really beautiful tourmaline coming out of Mozambique, minerals coming out of Madagascar, just really, really interesting unusual material. One thing I always say is, it certainly doesn't make it easy when you're working on some new pieces, just sourcing materials is very, very difficult, but that's the way I like it.

Is that what sets you wide apart from other lines?

I think so in many ways, because otherwise it's just too difficult. It's not a practical business model, let's say. But I think I come to things from a more artistic perspective, and a more historical perspective where I sort of see myself in the history of jewelry. If you look back at important jewelry, things weren't produced in multiple, multiple pieces. You have one special piece, pieces like Elizabeth Taylor has collected, that were owned by some great European monarch who collected centuries before. Those pieces weren't made in the dozens. So I think a little bit, I work in that way, that I'm really creating these treasures to be passed down. A lot of people refer to them as modern classics. I like that. These are pieces that will stand the test of time.

What's your work process like once you have an idea to the time that it's actually being created?

I work on a fashion schedule. I present two collections a year, a spring and a fall collection. At the same time, as I find interesting stones, they'll be other pieces that I'll add in during the year. Typical these days I'll be working on a seasoned collection, nine to twelve months ahead of time. That doesn't necessarily mean that's how long it takes a design to happen. I am constantly working on different designs. And if a scene comes along that strikes me, I'll go in deeper on a particular design.

I have a few different collections that are somewhat thematic. One that's celestially inspired, that takes into account some old drawings of constellations and have some astrological motifs, old almost pagan motifs from studies of astronomy and astrology. I love myths and stories and legends, so I'll go in deep and not only read the stories, but look at old drawings and things.

I find inspiration, just out of my imagination, and you know references already existing in the world. So it depends. Some times something hits you and it's very fast, and other times it's something you're sort of working on over a period of time. So, it works both ways. And sometimes it's just I'll get a beautiful stone and everything will come from that stone. I'll just be motivated to set it a certain way.

Is there one piece in your collection that you think every woman should have?

In my collection, typically the most signature, iconic piece is my rock crystal amulet. And that tends to be the piece that, if someone is just getting to know my collection, that's the piece that they tend to be drawn to. That's the piece that I encourage as a starting collectible because it is so versatile. It can go with anything, and at the same time, with the rock crystal amulet, I add several new ones with each new collection. So there are many to choose from. So it goes back to that idea of the customer wanting her own personal individual item, and she can find that with her choice of the individual rock crystal amulets.

To read more about how Temple St. Clair's worldly life influences her gorgeous designs, check out her expansive book Alchemy: A Passion For Jewels. It's a must-have addition to any art book collection. Click through the gallery to view more amazing pieces.

From Peter, Bjorn and John to Pete Yorn, W Hotels have presented themselves as the premier rock curator this year, with a series of events throughout their nationwide hotels. It's been an amazing year for rock fans to get up close and personal with some of today's hottest acts in intimate W Hotel settings. And if it's not enough to be within arms reach of your favorite acts sipping signature W cocktails, each show is photographed by legendary music photographer Mick Rock. They're ending the year with a bang with an amazing live performance from the Gossip at the W San Diego. Music for Men is one of our favorite albums of the year, and we're insanely jealous of anyone who gets to see this sure-to-be unforgettable show.

While access to the show is strictly limited to VIP invites, you can be one of those guests with an All Access Package starting at $229, which includes a Fabulous Room, two tickets to the show, a meet and greet with Gossip, an exclusive Wonderlust giftbag, and a late checkout 3PM checkout (you're gonna need it!). Upgrade to a mere $299 for a Cool Corner suite. This is a once-in-a-lifetime rock-and-roll opportunity that is sure to sell out quickly.

Head to the W Website for more information on this killer package.

Friday, December 11, 2009
8 PM
W San Diego
421 West B Street
San Diego, CA

Luxury fragrances make some of the best holiday gifts. Finding a unique scent that becomes your lady's signature scent can become a gift you both enjoy throughout the year. We sniffed, viewed, and sampled some of the hottest new scents out this season, some traditonal, some non, and some simply divine, to bring you the absolute best gifts for the holiday to satisfy any variety of perfume wearing personalities.

Juliette Has a Gun

Romano Ricci knows a thing or two about perfume. The grandson of Robert Ricci (creator of the cult classic L'Air du Temps) established his own name after creating four killer scents under his Juliette Has a Gun line, the sexiest thing to come out of Paris in a long time. Created for a woman who wants a more masculine perfume (yes, please!), the newest bottle in the collection, Calamity J., is inspired by Calamity Jane, the first cowgirl to act, drink, and shoot like a man. This decadent scent, however, is made without the hesperide or dihydromircenol, which are present in 90% of men's fragrances. Actress Lou Doillon (below), daughter of singer Jane Birken and director Jacques Doillon, serves as the perfect muse for Calamity J, the perfect scent for a strong, fierce woman. Fans of the line will love Juliette's other decadent fragrances: Lady Vengeance is a sultry sweet musk made of Bulgarian Rose, Patchouli and Vanilla. For a lighter scent, Miss Charming has notes of Morrocan Rose, Musks and wild fruits, and Citizen Queen, which focuses on the delicate rose, harps on the elegant classicism of perfume of the 1950s. Juliette Has a Gun scents are truly deadly and not for the faint of heart. One spritz will make you swoon. Be careful because a little goes a long way.



Available from Henri Bendel, Studio Beauty Mix stores, and beautyhabit.com.

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