Saturday, June 7, 2008

Alexander Frei Swiss footballer

Alexander Frei (age 28) was born 15 July 1979 in Basel. He is a Swiss footballer.
Within the first half of the opening match of Euro 2008, Frei was injured while captaining the Swiss team. Frei is likely to miss the rest of the tournament due to the injury.
This photo by Author Benutzer:Cooper at de.wikipedia (c) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Alex_frei.jpg
Frei played for Switzerland at Euro 2004 and at the FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany. He scored two goals in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, one in the match against Togo and a controversial goal against South Korea. Until now he has been capped 58 times for his country (as of June 2008).
Frei is Switzerland's all time top scorer with 35 goals.
During Euro 2004, in a group match against England, Frei was caught on camera appearing to spit at Steven Gerrard. Although no action was taken at the time, Frei was later charged and given a provisional 15 day suspension by UEFA. Despite this, he was subsequently cleared of the charge on appeal and atoned by agreeing to take care of a llama.
Frei signed a 4-year contract with Borussia Dortmund on 29 June, 2007. Dortmund paid a transfer fee of approximately 5 million euros for him. From the end of the 2006–07 season he has been continually linked with Celtic, whether this move will materialise however is in doubt after Borussia Dortmund released a statement insisting that Frei would go nowhere, even if a club offered 25 million euros.
Frei was the highest goalscorer in the French league for the 2004-05 season with 20 goals, playing for Rennes and was named Swiss Footballer of the year the same season.
He has recovered from a long-term injury this season at current club Borussia Dortmund to score six times in his last eight appearances and prove his fitness for the forthcoming European Football Championships - for which the Schweitzer Nati will be co-hosts along with Austria.
Info (c) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Frei
EURO 2008, Group A, Switzerland, Alexander Frei injury

El Maximo goleador de la liga francesa 2004/05

Monday, June 2, 2008

Fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent biography

The best Fashion designer died in France.
Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent (aged 71)
was born August 1, 1936 and died June 1, 2008.He was a French pied noir fashion designer, and was considered among the greatest of the 20th century.
In 1985, in his book, Couture: The Great Fashion Designers, Caroline Rennolds Milbank wrote, "The most consistently celebrated and influential designer of the past twenty-five years, Yves Saint Laurent can be credited with both spurring the couture's rise from its Sixties ashes and with finally rendering ready-to-wear reputable". The son of an insurance company president, Yves Saint Laurent was born on August 1, 1936 in Oran, in what was then French Algeria. Saint Laurent left home at the age of 17 to work for the French designer Christian Dior. Following Dior's death in 1957, Yves, at the age of 22, was put in charge of the effort of saving the Dior house from financial ruin. Shortly after this success, he was conscripted to serve in the French army during the Algerian War of Independence. After 20 days, the stress of being hazed by fellow soldiers, led the fragile Saint Laurent to be institutionalized in a French mental hospital, where he underwent psychiatric treatment, including electroshock therapy, for a nervous breakdown.

In 1962, in the wake of his nervous breakdown, Saint Laurent was released from Dior and started his own label, YSL, financed by his companion, Pierre Bergé. The couple split romantically in 1976 but remained business partners. During the 1960s and 1970s, the firm popularized fashion trends such as the beatnik look, safari jackets for men and women, tight pants and tall, thigh-high boots, including the creation of arguably the most famous classic tuxedo suit for women in 1966, Le Smoking suit. He also started mainstreaming the idea of wearing silhouettes from the 1920s, '30s and '40s. He was the first, in 1966, to popularize ready-to-wear in an attempt to democratize fashion, with Rive Gauche and the boutique of the same name.
He was also the first designer to use black models in his runway shows. Among his muses were Loulou de la Falaise, the daughter of a French marquis and an Anglo-Irish fashion model; Betty Catroux, the half-Brazilian daughter of an American diplomat and wife of a French decorator; Talitha Pol-Getty, who died of drug overdose in 1971; Catherine Deneuve, the iconic French actress; and the Guinean-born Senegalese supermodel Katoucha Niane, the daughter of writer Djibril Tamsir Niane. Ambassador to the couturier during the late 1970s and early 80s was London socialite millionairess Diane Boulting-Casserley Vandelli, making the brand ever more popular amongst the European jet-set and upper classes.
In 1983, he became the first living fashion designer to be honored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2001, he was awarded the rank of Commander of the Légion d'Honneur by French president Jacques Chirac.
Saint Laurent retired in 2002 and became increasingly reclusive. From then until his death he spent much of his time at his house in Marrakech, Morocco.
He also created a foundation with Pierre Bergé in Paris to trace the history of the house of YSL, complete with 15,000 objects and 5,000 pieces of clothing.
He died on June 1, 2008, at home in Paris after a year-long fight against brain cancer.
YSL fall/winter 2007/08 backstage (fashion inside)