Dana Thomas

Making the industry's 80 billion garments per year requires huge amounts of water and toxic chemicals. It employs every sixth person on Earth—most in dangerous conditions for very little money.

Huet's shots of soldiers slogging through rivers and casualties strewn in the mud show not only the trauma and destruction of the war but also, at times, the poetic beauty of a ravaged land.

Despite recessionary bruises, the luxury jewelry house stages a glittery 125th-birthday retrospective.

LVMH's Bernard Arnault has an insatiable appetite for luxury brands. Now the 'wolf in cashmere' is licking his chops over one of the last family-controlled companies in the business: Hermès. Will he win, and turn class to mass?

How much longer can Chanel's indefatigable designer keep going?

When columnist Robert Novak unveiled Valerie Plame as a CIA undercover operative in his syndicated column in 2003, Plame reportedly confessed to a friend, "I didn't plan for this day."

The son of a London cabbie became a designer phenom before taking his own life. A look back at his life and legacy.

How the House of Versace went from rags to riches—and back again.

Valentino's designs are as suitable today as when Audrey Hepburn and Jackie O wore them.

For most of its 45 years, it's been known as a discreet retreat for the wild and famous: Courtney Love wrote a song about the place, Brad Pitt moved in when he and Jennifer Aniston split and, most famously, '60s rock icon Janis Joplin spent the last year of her life there.

Saïd Taghmaoui may be the most unlikely movie star ever to come out of France. The youngest of 10 children of Moroccan immigrants, he grew up in la Cité des 3000, the notorious ghetto in Aulnay-sous-Bois, the poor Paris suburb and flash point for France's race riots in 2005.

Ambience: Located near the 1,000-year-old clifftop Pura Luhur Uluwatu temple, the Bulgari Bali is a sprawling posh resort of 59 private villas accessed by chauffeur-driven golf carts.

American couturier James Galanos talks about how fashion has changed, and dressing Nancy Reagan.

Celebrating the golden age of couture at the V&A.

In March 1955, the teen drama "Blackboard Jungle" hit U.S. movie theaters, with a rollicking tune called "Rock Around the Clock" played during the opening credits.

Quick: name the designer for Yves Saint Laurent. How about Gucci? Céline? Givenchy? Chloé? Seven or eight years ago, the answers were easy: Tom Ford, Tom Ford, Michael Kors, Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney, respectively.

In his ten years as creative director of Gucci, American-born designer Tom Ford not only turned luxury fashion into a hedonistic fantasy, he helped take it global and mass-market.

In the old days, ladies traveled to Paris to attend the couture shows in the ornate salons of the designers' headquarters. Afterward, they met with their personal vendeuses—or saleswomen—to try on the creations they desired.

On Sept. 30, 1956, a beautiful young Algerian revolutionary named Djamila Bouhired planted a bomb in an Algiers bar that killed 17 people. The bombing was the turning point in Algeria's fight for independence from France.

For the first time in as long as anyone can remember, the film that critics and audiences felt should win the Cannes Film Festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, actually did.

"I'm an auction whore!" cried Sharon Stone, slithering across the stage in silver lamé at amfAR's 14th annual Cinema Against AIDS dinner at the famed Moulin des Mougins restaurant in Cannes on Wednesday night.And indeed she was.She raised the stakes on a luxury yacht cruise, replete with a Chanel surfboard and other choice goodies, by offering a kiss by George Clooney to the winning bid right then and there.

For the past 60 years, the Cannes Film Festival has been a veritable cirque du cinéma: topless starlets line the beach, crowds fill the streets and protests, parades, and all-night parties make headlines.

Samuel Beckett is best known for his perennially reprised 1953 play "Waiting for Godot," about two men expecting someone who never arrives. But there is far more in the Irish Nobel laureate's canon, and as a new show at the Pompidou Center in Paris sets out to prove, his influence on other artists has been profound. "Samuel Beckett" (through June 25), explores the writer as a lasting cultural force by presenting an excellent mix of memorabilia and portraits of him, as well as works inspired by...

David Lynch is standing in the basement gallery of the Cartier Foundation in Paris, sipping a big cappuccino as he oversees the installation of "The Air is on Fire," a retrospective of his work (through May 27).

For 20 years, the name Christian Lacroix has stood for two things in fashion: complicated clothes and capital losses. But that's about to change. Three American brothers who bought Lacroix from the French luxury group Moët Hennessey-Louis Vuitton (LVMH) two years ago are using their no-nonsense business acumen to reinvent the label.

Photographer William Klein has always been a rebel. When he started shooting fashion in 1955, he says, he wanted to "invent and find new ways of doing things." By putting models in real life setting and printing the images in extreme black and white contrast, he radically changed the way clothing was presented in the glossies.

Henri Loyrette promised a new and improved Louvre when he took over as president and director of the august Paris museum four years ago and, step by step, he has delivered.

Niobe, the wife of one of Caesar's soldiers, wanders down a crowded cobblestone passage in the filthy, overcrowded slums of ancient Rome to make amends with her scorned sister, Lyde, a butcher.

On a frisky Friday night in September, Paris's chic and hip flocked to the rooftop restaurant of the Centre Pompidou to celebrate fashion's coolest new collaboration: Karl Lagerfeld and H&M.

On a frisky Friday night in September, Paris's chic and hip flocked to the rooftop restaurant of the Centre Pompidou to celebrate fashion's coolest new collaboration: Karl Lagerfeld and H&M.