Methodist church plans Four Chaplains service

The worship at 10:45 a.m. Sunday at Central United Methodist Church on School Street will host a Four Chaplains Day service by the American Legion. This moving ceremony honors four Army chaplains who died after giving their life jackets to fellow soldiers on Feb. 3, 1943, when the USAT Dorchester sank after being torpedoed.

The chaplains were a Methodist minister, a rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a pastor from the Reformed Church in America. The four were posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, Distinguished Service Cross, and the Chaplain's Medal for Heroism.

The youth groups will not meet this Sunday. They donated $140 from funds raised to support the Heifer Project by buying a sheep and a flock of chicks to help a poor family become more self-sustaining.

In addition to the United Methodist Women's meeting on Feb. 8, various groups in the church plan a Souper Supper fundraiser, a family game night, a family movie night showing Soul Surfer on Feb. 23, a 24-hour famine, and a summer congregation campout.

Methodists are invited to join Bishop Weaver and others from the New England Conference for workshops: Nurturing Passionate Spirituality: "No longer my own, but Thine." Contact Pastor Ernest Farrar to register for this and other workshops from 9 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 8.

An advanced course, Leading in Prayer, will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in South Yarmouth on Feb. 11 and 25.There are tons of canada goose jacket discount around nys. Registration for this closes tomorrow.

Rising Star Katie Ermilio: The Cannon Canon

The first time I met Katie Ermilio, she greeted me with such spunk and I was blown away by her tailoring and craftmanship. It's very rare to see a young designer with such a fine tuned aesthetic. I was instantly drawn in. I love her dresses and collection — it is modern, classic, and retro all at the same time.

Cannon: The impression that I got when I first saw your collection was of a modern Grace Kelly before I read your bio...

Katie Ermilio: Well, I grew up with pictures of her on the piano when I was practicing and they were all over the house. It was osmosis, maybe. I was influenced by them before I even knew that my grandfather designed clothes for her.

C: Tell me about the how you were influenced by your grandfather.

KE: My grandfather [Anthony Ermilio] died when I was super young. The main influence he has on my clothes now is basically the traditions that my dad carried on. My family has been super strong in the tailoring tradition. My dad [Bob Ermilio] keeps everything by the books. I'm doing this wild and crazy thing by doing womens ready to wear. The company is still heavily rooted in custom clothing. My grandfather's company Ermilio Clothier & Specialty Shop was founded in 1897 in Philadelphia and it started in menswear, bespoke suits, and military uniforms. There was a huge cult following, practically from day one, and I think my familiy's business projected and mirrored what was going on in Philadelphia at the time. Even today, the men are in blue blazers and Stubbs & Wootton flat shoes, there's this certain type of style that comes out of Philadelphia. I think my grandfather designing Grace Kelly's clothes was just an extension of that.

C: Does your family still use the same factories? Did you visit the factory growing up?

KE: No, you should listen to my dad talk about the union. But we did have a huge industrial space underneath the store in Philadelphia and there were literally 20 cutting tables. When he pared down, my dad moved the shop to Haverford, Pennsylvania, that's by appointment only. I grew up going to the store. On Saturdays after my soccer games I would go to the store and work. I would tear out old styles in the swatch books and watch the seamstresses hemming dresses and the coat maker making jackets and sit in on fittings.

I guess the design bug just crept up and got me.

C: There's something so great about bespoke and having something custom made for you. So many designers are doing fittings, it's a more personal experience. Tell us about what inspired your personal collection.

KE: That's the only reason I have one. I started 100% in custom, I started designing things for myself. My dad would take them back to his store in Philadelphia and women would buy them. He is a very traditional Italian man. He would tell me I have to come back on Saturday, that I had appointments. I would be the obliging daughter and get on the bus and meet with these women and it was very organic. That's how I developed my process with a custom clientele. It got so big that I decided that going into ready to wear was the next step because stores could reach so many more women than I ever could on my own.It truly is one of our tallest and appears great all of the signature bank canada goose cheap jackets logo design. So that's how I began.

C: When I see your collection, I see pieces of Caroline or pieces of Oscar and Jason Wu. Your design aesthetic is very neat and modern.

KE: OMG, thank you! It is. I think that's a marriage of my heritage and my background and this custom clothing style that is the 1930s and 40s, that's something that my grandfather used to do, married with my personal aesthetic. People look at the collection and they can't figure out if it's designed for a younger girl or an older girl and I take it as a compliment. I believe it's in the way you wear it and style it. I just kind of go with it, its not premeditated.

C: When was you're aha moment, this is really happening?!

KE: I'm still there. I think any designer will tell you it never really ends because you can't shut your brain off. So your always thinking and coming up with new ideas. But the first moment that I knew, I was working at Teen Vogue and I had found my dream job before I graduated from college. One of my jobs in the PR department was going through the tabloids and I was going through Us Weekly and there was a picture of Julianne Hough in one of my dresses on a trend page. I had a client who gave the dress to a stylist in LA and it was this convoluted, serendipitous thing. I thought, OK, this is getting bigger, for me it was just a passion project and a hobby and I loved designing clothes. I didn't think it would turn into anything, but now maybe this is something I can support myself with.

C: How integrated is your family in your business now? Does your dad give you tips, is he your assistant pattern maker (laughing)?

KE: That's the big joke — he says, "I'm working for Katie now!"

I always go to my dad when I need a real structure in the classics. Any painter will tell you that in order to paint the abstract you have to be able to paint like DaVinci. When I need to get back to my roots, I'll sit in on a fitting like I did when I was home over Christmas. I sort of get back to the craft. Which is why I am a designer today. I get the understanding of how to build clothing from the inside out just being in his tailor shop. Just seeing my clothes that I reference and the techniques that I use to make dresses, he's very helpful in that way.

C: There are a lot of designers that don't know how to build clothing from the inside out. It's such a gift in itself.

KE: Definitely. Because I didn't graduate from fashion school, I couldn't do it if I didn't grow up with it. You can't just walk into anyplace on 7th Avenue with a drawing and get a garment back in a week and have it be exactly how you imagined. For me, every designer's process is different, I do start with construction techniques and I don't just think of the style, but how is it physically going to be made? Where am I going to put the zipper, how is she going to get into this? I take it all into account. Just yesterday after you left, I went to one of my factories and the pattern maker yelled at me, "You are too detailed Katie, I'm always going to disappoint you!"

C: So it is like you were going to Fashion college after school....How is it now when you visit your dad's shop?

KE: It's fun, he has the same seamstress and coat maker from when I was a little. It's a funny dynamic, they have known me since I was this big, coming into the store moaning that I didn't want to be there, I wanted to play with my friends. It's really nice to go in there, there are my first pieces and my prom dresses and it's good to see them and see how I started and it reminds me of how much bigger it has gotten in such a short period of time than I could have imagined. Even though we are still pretty small, it's come a long way.

Chazen: UW alum and fashion mogul reviews history of iconic clothing company

When Jerome Chazen was studying economics at UW-Madison nearly 60 years ago, he never dreamed he'd one day lead the Liz Claiborne clothing company, write a book about the clothing industry or have his name on a campus art museum.

The tome is called "My Life at Liz Claiborne: How We Broke the Rules and Built the Largest Fashion Company in the World."

Back in 1948, Chazen was a World War II vet just finishing his undergraduate degree in economics. A native New Yorker, he said he was attracted to UW-Madison by its progressive reputation and inexpensive cost.

"As an out-of-state student, my tuition was $100 a semester," he said. "That wasn't bad. And then another $48 for fees, which included basketball and football tickets and health coverage. So it was doable. And I never regretted it."

After Chazen left UW-Madison, he got a graduate degree in finance from Columbia University and went to work on Wall Street. But a close friend from his Wisconsin student days, Alan Glen, urged him to come to work for Rhea, his parents' apparel manufacturing company in Milwaukee.

At first he declined, but the Glens convinced him to give the clothing business a try.

So Chazen and his wife Simona, a New Jersey native he'd met at UW-Madison, moved to Milwaukee. He stayed with the company for two years and never looked back.

"It was an interesting kind of new life for me, getting a feeling for the fashion industry," he said. "And from that point on, I never wanted to do anything else."

After leaving Rhea, Chazen worked on the retailing side of the clothing business for 16 years, "paying my dues." During that time, he moved from Milwaukee to New York to Detroit and then back to New York.

In 1976, he and some partners -- including designer Liz Claiborne, a fellow Rhea alum -- started the clothing company that would bear her name. (Claiborne died four years ago of cancer.)

"We named the company after her because our modus operandi at the time was to take the ways in which designer companies operated and translate those into apparel at affordable prices.

"When we started, designer companies were named after people like Anne Klein, Calvin Klein, Oscar de la Renta and Perry Ellis," he said. "And they were all making much higher-priced clothing."

Liz Claiborne sold its clothes for less expensive prices and in the process revolutionized the industry as women began heading back into the workforce in huge numbers.

"That avalanche hadn't taken place yet," he said. "But when it did take place, and all these women had to get clothes to go to work, Liz Claiborne became the designer of choice."

Chazen said one of the biggest rules his company broke was how clothes were displayed in department stores.

"In that era, they were set up by classification in women's apparel," he said. "There was a sweater department, skirt department, slacks, blouses and so on. Our concept, besides being a designer company, was to create a complete designer line of clothing ... dressing consumers from head to toe."

Liz Claiborne also led the way away from dresses,Search for cheap canada goose in Jewellery for Lucknow. which women then wore for all occasions.

"We decided that our company was going to manufacture separates, which were skirts, pants, blouses, sweaters and jackets. On the theory that women would like to have the opportunity to put their own outfits together. If you bought a skirt and two blouses, you automatically had two outfits. That is what we did and how we set up the company."

Department stores, however, didn't know what to do with Liz Claiborne collections. But Chazen pushed the issue and got them display pants, blouses, jackets and skirts together.

"We said you can't separate our line and put jackets in jacket department and skirt in skirt department and so on. So breaking that rule and convincing those stores to do it the way we wanted to do it was certainly, at the beginning, the most important contributor to our success."

Dunlop winter wear

With Lee Westwood also clad in their gear, the image of a company who provide equipment for the club handicapper has been replaced by one of a brand that attempts to cover all bases.

Indeed, I was the embodiment of that image when sent out to test their winter wear on a Leeds golf course in the coldest corner of January.

Underneath, I wore their winter roll neck, picked up for just 10 from a local sports shop. If you've never tried one of these things I warn you: do so in the company of those you're close to, as I very nearly needed help getting it off afterwards.

On top of that was a Dunlop Lee Westwood Acute polo t-shirt, again picked up cheaply, and over these the products I was meant to be testing: the Dunlop Pro Golf Jacket and accompanying waterproof trousers.

I had two versions to pick from, opting for the overhead jacket as opposed to one with a full-length zip, and the first impression is that it ticks the box for being lightweight.

I'm an average golfer at the best of times, but the main reason I've spent many winters hacking around without feeling in my arms and hands is that once I adorn a heavy-duty wind-cheater or waterproof jacket, my game goes to pieces.

Not so in the Dunlop gear. It's light, comfortable and slightly oversized, which is exactly what it should be. Not only that, you can really feel the difference in a biting wind.

Essentially, I wanted the product to keep me as dry as possible when it rained, so it was a massive bonus that it took the sting out of the air too. With the winter roll neck enough to keep my lower arms warm, I chose to remove the lower half of the 100 percent polyester jacket's sleeves.

If there is a complaint, it's that doing so wasn't as easy as it might be and I needed a companion assist, which isn't ideal for those of you who like to play the game on your own from time to time.

The jacket has two very deep zip pockets, ideal for taking that precautionary second or third ball with you to the tee box,Search for cheap canada goose in Jewellery for Lucknow. and a breathable lining meant that during the sunny second nine I wasn't in a rush to remove it.

The trousers are simple in design and nature, and do exactly what they're supposed to, impressing in keeping water out. The jacket isn't strictly speaking a waterproof one, but in light showers it was more than enough to prevent me resorting to the Dunlop Waterproof Jacket.

Of course, I tested that too, and found it to be heavier and slightly more restrictive around the chest. However, adjustable cuffs and a secure zip meant that I really was able to protect myself from the worst of the weather, which is always the target in any such item.

Police Blotter

Downtown rape charge
A woman, 24, told police on Sun. Jan. 22 that she was visiting a man in his apartment at 83 Baxter St. near White St. at around 6 a.m. when he held her down on the bed and raped her despite her repeated pleas to stop and her vain efforts to push him off. The suspect, Lambert Benichou, 24, was arrested and charged with first degree rape. He pleaded not guilty and was freed on bail pending and an April 25 court appearance.
Pregnant teen shot
A 16-year-old girl two months pregnant was shot in the elbow around 2 p.m. Mon., Jan. 30 in the hallway outside her family’s second floor apartment at 210 Stanton St. near Pitt St. The victim and her unborn baby were described as being out of danger after she was taken to Bellevue. The shot was believed fired during a scuffle with her boyfriend, according to reports that identified the victim as Kimberly Velasquez. Police on Monday night said an arrest was imminent.

Seek burglary suspects
Police are seeking suspects in a series of burglaries in Soho on Thompson, Prince, Spring and Wooster Sts between Dec. 28 and Jan. 23. The entries were made through windows on fire escapes.
Two apartments on Prince St. were the targets, one on Dec. 28 and the other on Jan. 23. On Dec. 28 a burglar made off with a laptop computer and a necklace valued at $500 from one Prince St. apartment. The same day a laptop was taken from a Thompson St. apartment while the resident was out. On Jan. 23 another resident of Prince St. returned home from a vacation to find that jewelry with a total value of $23,000 had been taken while she was away.There are tons of canada goose jacket discount around nys.
Teen marauders
A group of between 10 and 12 males between the ages if 18 and 20 walked into Angelina’s Clothing boutique, 448 Broome St. near Broadway around 7 p.m. Tues., Jan. 24 grabbed 22 women’s sheepskin coats from the racks and fled without paying for them, police said. The coats were valued from $950 to $1,150 each. There were no arrests.

Cell phone snatches
A Soho resident was talking on her cellphone while walking home around 6:35 p.m. Thurs., Jan. 26 when a mugger came up behind her in front of 111 Sullivan St., snatched her phone and then grabbed her bag and fled, police said. A passerby chased the thief and was able to retrieve the victim’s cell phone, police said.

Another woman was talking on her cell phone while at the northwest corner of Mercer and Prince Sts. around 6:30 p.m. the same day when a short young man wearing a gray jacket, blue jeans and sneakers came up behind her grabbed the phone and fled north on Mercer St.
Subway phone snatches
A transit cop saw a suspect picking a cellphone from the pocket of a sleeping passenger at the Whitehall St. subway station around 5 a.m. Sat. Jan. 28. The officer arrested Jimmy Davis, 29, and charged him with larceny. Police said Davis “is known to the department,” indicating previous similar arrests.

A woman waiting for a C train on the Brooklyn-bound platform of the Fulton and Nassau St. platform was on her cell phone around 9:30 p.m. Wed., Jan.25 when a man about 18, snatched the phone from her hand and fled.
Photo shoot theft
A photographer shooting an event at 7:30 p.m. Fri., Jan. 27 in an 11th floor studio in 250 Hudson St. near Dominic St. asked a man he thought was an employee where he could leave one of his cameras and a lens. He returned to the designated room two hours later and discovered the camera and lens, with a total value of $4,249, had been stolen.
Car break-in
A Greenfield, N.J. woman, 20 parked her car at the corner of Vandam and Greenwich Sts. around 10:30p.m. Fri., Jan. 27, and went to a nearby club for three hours. She returned to find a rear window had been smashed with a brick and her bag, with her wallet, driver’s license, checkbook and credit cards, stolen.

A Conversation With Designer Dennis Basso

Any woman who dreams of owning a fur coat covets a Dennis Basso original, or at least one of the faux fur pieces he designs for QVC.There are tons of canada goose jacket discount around nys. But while Basso is the go-to designer of socialites in need of luxury fur coats, he also produces a ready-to-wear collection of fancy cocktail dresses and statement-making gowns. He also recently launched a bridal line.

Last November, Basso married his partner Michael Cominotto at The Pierre in New York attended by the couple's friends like Ivana Trump, Alina Cho and Tory Burch.

Below, Basso talks about being in love, the importance of friends, and why a great haircut is a must-have whether you are a woman or a man.

Two 10-Year-Olds Give Up Birthday Presents to Help Others

In a world where there is so much bad that is reported and documented on, I just wanted to give kudos to two kids that truly deserve it.

My daughter, Kate McCrackin, for the past four years has done a community service project each January. Her birthday is January 10, 2012. She turned 10 this year. It started out, that as parents, we suggested since her birthday was so close to Christmas and that she had many blessings to be thankful for, she do something for someone else in lieu of receiving presents for her birthday.

At first, she was a little skeptical,There are tons of canada goose jacket discount around nys. because what kid wants to give up gifts and do something for someone else, right? This is our fourth year now that she has done a "birthday community service project." We have collected food for food banks twice, and last year we collected coats, hats, and mittens for Eve's House, which is located in Lansing, and is the local domestic abuse shelter for women and children.

All three of these community projects have been a great success and have taught Kate valuable lessons in giving to her community. We learned last year that one of the greatest ongoing needs at the shelter is toilet paper. Right away she knew she was going to do this for this year's community service project.

For last year's community project (the coat, hat and mitten drive) a friend joined her. Her name is Carlee Payne. Her birthday is also on January 10. The girls are best of friends at Bath Elementary. This is Carlee's second year in joining our birthday project efforts. This year both girls opted to collect toilet paper in lieu of receiving gifts for their birthdays. What a project it has been.

They both decided to set the goal at 1,000 rolls for the shelter. Not only did they reach their goal, they far exceeded their goal. They collected 1,645 rolls of toilet paper to be delivered to the local shelter. They had a great time doing such a fun project. With the help of their parents and their parents' co-workers, friends, neighbors, teachers, and fellow girl scouts in the community the birthday toilet paper drive was a huge success.

We even received four cases of toilet paper from 3 different people (and total strangers) while we were waiting in the checkout line at Sam's Wholesale, while as a family talking about this project. People were amazed that two 10 year olds would be generous enough with giving up gifts per se for their birthdays. We, as parents, think they have received a far greater gift that will enrich their lives long-term by doing these projects.