KAORU KIKUCHI ISN’T KIDDING AROUND.

From a degree in architecture to a passion for education and social business — and now with KOZO, her new fashion line — Kaoru is making meaningful inroads in the world of fashion and life.

MN: As an international entrepreneur, you seem to do a little of everything. You run an ostrich farm in the Philippines, have a language series called Sexy Mandarin, recently performed in a video for a movie called Deep Gold, and were formerly an architect. Does this mean you know a lot of math and calculus? Is there an analytical side as well as a creative side to Kaoru Kikuchi?

KAORU: 

I was actually really good at math and science at school, though! I’ve waited long enough and I think that’s why I can afford to put all my energy toward creativity and keep producing things that I love!

MN: As for the creative, you also do photography, draw cartoons and even do some oil painting. And now you have KOZO, your own line of pearls and lingerie. You strike me a little bit as a female James Bond: international, adventurous, with a bit of a sense of humor. If there was a KOZO movie, what would it be like? Would it have a happy ending? What sorts of things would happen?

KAORU: My new goal for KOZO is to marry my collection with the sensual touch of the water so all my collection would be shot under water. Anyway, the KOZO movie would be cool and sexy but would be more like Mr. Bean’s Johnny English movie rather than the official James Bond. It would be a lot of action underwater with moments of humor.

MN: One of your first adventures was heading to Shanghai, knowing no one there. Why Shanghai, specifically?

KAORU: I actually studied Architecture in the UK, and I just had enough of it. I also didn’t want to go back to Japan after I graduated.

I had no idea what I wanted to do but I must say I had the best life making great friends, partying and shopping everyday, but most importantly, I became fluent in Chinese and that definitely opened up many exciting opportunities for me.

MN: Where were you born? What languages do you speak? Even though you call the World home, what places are dearest to you, personally (not professionally)?

KAORU: I was born in Tokyo, Japan and I speak Japanese, English and Chinese. I would say I personally call Hong Kong home. I got my favorite hole in the wall wanton noodle place next to me, and it’s such a convenient country, where if you suddenly decide you want to fly somewhere, you can hop on a plane with no plan whatsoever.

MN: Where do you want go next? What cities and countries do you want to conquer, and how?

KAORU: I’ve lived all over Asia, and went to university in Europe. U.S. won’t be much of a challenge for me, so I would say India.

MN: What do you want to do for others? Do you have any favorite charities or causes? How will you make the world a better place?

KAORU: I think education is the key to happiness, and would be the best thing you can offer to someone in need.

Often times when you give the parents money, they use it up on food and other expenses and not education, as they obviously need to eat in the short run.

MN: As for KOZO, who is the KOZO girl?

KAORU:

Of course the KOZO girl cannot be just a pretty face, but can work with me in photo shoots and commercials on how these products can be worn and styled up! Our new collection has double meaning; “KNOT Pearl” only uses plastic pearls and lots of ribbons instead of metal clasps. In this way, people can wear a necklace as a bracelet, or even as a belt or headpiece. Lots of creativity needed here from the KOZO Girl!

MN: How do you define success? And what is the secret of success?

KAORU: I think success is not measured by how people perceive you, especially with fame or wealth, but more based on your self-satisfaction when you become proud with what you have achieved. I mean who cares what people think of you?

##

KOZO Website | Facebook | Twitter | Blog

Share/Bookmark

I started modeling in Chicago, and in high school I was with Elite Model Management. After high school I traveled Europe, Canada and US. During all those years I did commercials, editorial shoots for magazines, catalogs. And now I’m living in Beverly Hills.

Vitals

Height: 5’9″ | Bust: 32″ | Waist: 24.5″ | Hips: 25″

Contact on Model Mayhem

##

Share/Bookmark

Vitals

Height: 5′ 10″ | Bust: 31 | Waist: 24″ | Hips: 35″ | Dress Size: 2 | Shoe Size: 9

Contact on Model Mayhem

Share/Bookmark

 
Our home publication Prêt-à-Porter Magazine goes behind the scenes at the world’s biggest fashion show.

##

Share/Bookmark

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be Sui He at New York Fashion Week — or follow her around like an annoying kid sister until she’s over it — here’s a great video from Models.com.

See all of Models.com’s Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2012 News.

##

Share/Bookmark

 
Ever wonder how they prep for the world’s top fashion show?

Take a look at this story at NewYorkFashionWeekLive to find out!

##

Share/Bookmark

Lubov Azria, Creative Director of BCBGMAXAZRIAGROUP, along with Refinery29 will select ten extraordinary women from around the U.S. to be flown to Los Angeles, shot by a renowned fashion photographer and featured on the brand’s social media channels, bcbg.com and in boutiques. The grand-prize winner, selected on Wednesday, May 9th will receive a new head-to-toe wardrobe and become the star of BCBGMAXAZRIA’s Spring 2013 campaign.

All you have to do is upload two photos (a headshot and a body shot in your favorite BCBGMAXAZRIA dress) and/or submit a video telling us why you should be our next supermodel.

What are we looking for? Above all, confidence, individuality and a whole lot of CHIC. See you in LA!

Apply at Talenthouse.com

#

About BCBGMAXAZRIA

BCBGMAXAZRIA is a global fashion house with a portfolio including more than 20 brands. There are currently over 550 BCBGMAXAZRIA boutiques worldwide, including locations in London, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

For more information visit: bcbg.com

About Refinery 29

Refinery29 is the cornerstone of fashion, beauty, and shopping for a new generation. Combining daily local newsletter editions and a website that serves as a global style hub, Refinery29 offers the only 360-degree source for shopping, exclusive deals, trends, beauty news, local hot-spots, and at-home sneak-peeks of fashion’s finest. At Refinery29, great style isn’t just a one-way obsession—it’s a fast-changing world where readers talk, designers, brands, and shop-keepers engage, and great fashion influences everything.

For more information visit: refinery29.com

Share/Bookmark

By Pablo Breton | Music as heard on SPIN

What do I know about cheeses? Not much.

I just hang out trying to get free samples too much, and then sometimes I buy things. Anyway, from less to more adventurous, they are:

LESS ADVENTUROUS (BUT AMAZING)

1) Brillat Savarin – Brillat Savarin is a triple cream Brie, which means, much like Dr. Who’s Tardis, somehow, impossibly, three times as much cream has been packed into the cheese as is possible according to the laws of physics, resulting in a spacetime event in which part of the cream must “fold” into an unseen dimension.

The physics of a triple cream Brie can thus be expressed by this simple, unintelligible mathematical formula:

Alas, no, the Webs told me “triple cream” is just a cheese that “contains more than 75% butterfat in its dry parts, which means roughly 40% fat overall,” meaning you die instantly. No big woop.

Fancy Description
“This triple-cream Brie is one of the world’s richest cheeses. It has a light downy white rind and cuts like butter. Milky aroma with light lemon sour tones.”

Real Description
Like some kind of crazy weird cream that’s somehow better than ice cream AND butter. BE SURE it comes completely to room temperate though (1-3 hours), because otherwise it just tastes like nothing, and you sort of blew it, dude.

2) 3 or 5 Year Aged Gouda – Your cheese fell behind the bedside table, where it sat during the entire 4 years you were in college, and then that 1 horrible year you lived with your bf / gf (until you realized that one of you was neater than the other, and one of you wanted to teach in Japan).

In any other scenario, when you rolled away your bed, you would scream and frantically dial 911 to have someone come remove the food item, but this time you realize it looks much better and delcioius-er than before. This could only happen in the world of cheese.

Fancy Description
“Deep caramel in color, crunchy, flaky, and meltingly smooth on the tongue, a true cow’s milk Dutch Gouda bursts with flavor. The hint of butterscotch at the finish is a signature of this Dutch treat.”

Real Description
Damn it, that sort of nailed it. This is like the nuttiest thing in the world, with carmelized areas that taste like little bits of candy. Crazy. Note: I recommend sampling the 3- and 5-year versions when you’re in the cheese store, and seeing which you like better. Keep asking for samples until they start slanting their eyes, then look offended and split.

MEDIUM ADVENTUROUS

3) Midnight Moon by Cypress Grove – Insane in the Membrane! Wait that’s Cypress Hill, whatever. Lame joke.

My new favorite cheese. Man, I can taste it just looking at it.

The crazy thing about Midnight Moon is that it’s not some traditional French cheese with a storied pedigree stretching across 16 generations of families, toiling away meaningless lives out of a grim sense of duty in the Auvergne — though that would be pretty sweet.

No, it’s just made by some kind of cheese geniuses in California. As much as I appreciate some people being “over” Cypress Grove, fortunately I don’t have the luxury of that kind of cheese sophistication, so I am still gleefully excited by it.

Fancy Description

“Aged six months or more, this pale, ivory cheese is firm, dense and smooth with the slight graininess of a long-aged cheese. The flavor is nutty and brown-buttery, with prominent caramel notes. The wheel is finished in a beautiful black wax. Made in Europe exclusively for Cypress Grove Chevre.”

Real Description

Goat-y, nutty, sweet, creamy: this cheese just has it all.

Midnight Moon is like that shirt that you actually wear because you’re more comfortable in it than your “best” shirt. In other words, there’s your “official” best shirt, and there’s your actual best shirt. This is that actual best shirt.

EXTREME CHEESES

4) Roquefort Papillon – If you don’t like blue cheese, you should probably walk softly around this cheese, in case it notices you. If you do like blue cheeses, you’ll find the blues you once liked were but ridiculous toy cars, feeble facsimiles, and now you’re driving one of those big cars with the stickers all over them, hopefully in Le Mans.

Best in small doses, or tossed in a salad (as I was introduced to it in France), it’s the most “extreme” of blues, a crazy high-speed downhill snowboard into penicillium roqueforti (stuff that makes blue cheese).

Fancy Description

“Produced using the unpasteurized milk of Lacaune sheep which graze on the thin, yet rich grass of the Causses in the heart of France. The curds of this cheese are blended with penicillin molds harvested from rye bread baked specially for this purpose. The wheels are aged on oak planks in natural limestone caves for an average of 150 days. The result is a tangy, complex blue cheese with balanced saltiness and an arresting assertiveness.”

Real Description

Like a blue cheese bomb. Like eating perfume. Sort of scary, but you like it. A little salty, so try before you buy.

5) Bonne Bouche – This one is totally new to me, suggested among others by owner Glenn Harrell of Say Cheese Silver Lake.

This is my new favorite “wow” cheese. And apparently it’s another creation of some U.S. cheese geniuses, this time Vermont Creamery, who I would already know about if I wasn’t so darned ignorant.

I think it’s worth quoting the entire Fancy Description, because it’s quite interesting:

Fancy Description

“This hand ladled, ash-ripened cheese was first introduced in 2001. Bonne Bouche literally means good mouthful and is a French term used to describe a tasty morsel.

“Bonne Bouche is made from pasteurized milk and set in tubs for lactic coagulation for 24 hours. The following day, the cheese curd is carefully hand ladled into moulds and drained overnight. The cheeses are then unmoulded, ashed and moved into the drying room and then into the aging room where the controlled environment is cool and humid. The entire process takes seven to ten days before the cheeses are packaged in their individual micro-caves.

“Bonne Bouche can be enjoyed fresh or aged up to 45 days. As a young cheese, the rind has a distinct geotrichium flavor. The texture is mild yet still acidic like a fresh chèvre. As the cheese ages, it becomes softer and the rind becomes more dry and piquant.”

(Bonne Bouche picture: Martina Hemm, The Foreign Kitchen)

Real Description

Somehow you ended up with a pet goat, and it slept all night long on your shoe. Which you’d worn earlier in the day, when you’d been walking over a field that burned the night before, having your “poet’s meditation.” Oh, and the goat also got into something tangy, chalky and the goat is a wee bit sour (because it’s a goat, bless it).

Then, having ripped up the pages of your latest epic poem in a frustrated poet’s rage, you decided — to express your angst at the vagaries and imbalances of this mortal frame — to try and eat the shoe, even knowing full well the implications.

But inexplicably, it was amazingly delicious, and your faith in the inevitable universal good was restored.

Well, some of those taste points sort of danced through the dim theatre of my mind as I sampled Bonne Bouche at Say Cheese, but I think it had achieved proper temperature and was nicely ripened.

The one I brought home is much tamer, which I’m bummed about, so I’m going to wait a month and then leave it out overnight.

Yes, I will even buy a goat, if necessary.

##

Main picture: Martina Hemm, The Foreign Kitchen

Share/Bookmark

We’re game!

Click to check Net-A-Porter’s countdown to Karl!

##

Share/Bookmark

 
Abby Brothers is a star. Thanks Vision Los Angeles for the pics.

Vision Los Angeles | Blog | Open Calls

Vitals

Height: 5′ 10″ | Bust: 34 | Waist: 24″ | Hips: 34″ | Dress Size: 2 | Shoe Size: 8

For more information, check out the Vision Los Angeles website.

##

Share/Bookmark