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Mitchell Baker has won the Aenne Burda Prize 2010.

It is great to see more red-heads in the tech world emerging for excellence. As the leader of the Mozilla Project, Mitchell Baker organizes and motivates a massive, worldwide collective of employees and volunteers who are breathing new life into the Internet with the Firefox Web browser and other Mozilla products. Watch the video interview here.

First you could design your clothing online, rendering the designer in you to go wild. Now you can fulfill any one of your foot fetishes with Shoes of Prey. What would have Imelda Marcos done had she had the power to design online? She could have become the next Manolo. With all the freedom of customization that is happening in the gaming world, it's interesting to see not only virtual goods are a promising market, but virtual goods turned real goods.

"Whether you're poring over a glossy magazine, clicking onto your favorite fashion blog, or lusting after a girlfriend's most recent stiletto purchase, we all know that the spark of shoe-desire takes just a moment to take hold, and then the need to find that perfect shoe is intoxicating. The journey to find the perfect shoe is often a long one that ends in compromise - the kind that makes you contemplate making an offer to the girl at the next table to sell you the shoes right off her feet." states their website.

Looks like Shoes of Prey intend to turn those shoe nightmares into sunny dreams.

I recently interviewed the the fabulous Marian who is a stylist, writer and blogger in London! Her blog is a real inspiration for me and she is always sending others sweet messages and advice about fashion. She is really talented and starting to post more behind the scenes photos of her work. Her style is fun and playful. She is always naming her shoes and wearing big chunky chunky bangles. Her blog is a must read! Check it out asap!

A: How did you get interested in fashion?
M: I always was, I honestly cannot remember a time when I was not interested in fashion. It was a natural extension of my interest in Art. Creativity was encouraged at home as my mother is an artist and so was her mother.

M: As a child I used to help my mum throw her outfits together and would forcibly style my younger sister too :O).Sorry Abi!
Then at about 15, I accidentally styled a friend friends mother for a business party she was hosting. It was totally unplanned but she ended up looking great and the rest is history.

A: When did you start blogging?
M: In January 2008 but did not start blogging regularly till September 2008.

A: What was your favorite project to work on?
M: Wow that is a great question. The most memorable would have to be styling the friend's mother when I was 15. She had bought a great outfit but the proportions were totally wrong for her. She had twenty minutes to the arrival of her guests to her business cocktail party. So some safety pins, a pair of scissors,a few adjustments and a some accessories later she looked like a whole new woman. That experience taught me the true power of styling. Fashion industry?
M: Learn as much as you can formally or informally about both the business and creative ends of fashion. Be ready to work hard sometimes even for no remuneration. Keep your eyes open for opportunities and always be ready. Success is when opportunities meet preparation. M: The fearless experimentation! London is always on the fore front of the new and bold. In the Sixties it was Swinging London and Mary Quant's mini skirt. Then in the mid Seventies it was the anarchy of Punk. Now Brit designers like John Galliano Alexander McQueen, Christopher Kane, Gareth Pugh, Giles Deacon, Louise Goldin, Chris Brooke of Basso & Brooke, Luella etc are leading the way.

Read this entry on Clothes Line Finds.

   Valentino: The Last Emperor, directed by Matt Tyrnauer, is a feature-length movie that takes the viewer inside the singular world of one of Italy's most famous designers, Valentino Garavani. The film documents the colorful and dramatic closing act of Valentino's celebrated career, tells the story of his extraordinary life, and explores the larger themes affecting the fashion business today.

   In production from June 2005 to July 2007, the filmmakers shot over 250 hours of footage with exclusive, unprecedented access to Valentino and his entourage. "We were let in to the inner circle, but we had to stick it out for a long time, practically move in, to capture the truly great moments," says Tyrnauer. "Valentino is surrounded by a tight-knit family of friends and employees, but, eventually, their guard came down and they forgot there was a camera crew in the room. The scope of Valentino's wealth and the elaborateness of his global lifestyle put him on a level with emperors, kings, and queens. It is a world of villas, chateaux, yachts, fine art, and Meissen porcelain treasures.

  Valentino: The Last Emperor looks at a majestic life from the inside, but the movie is not a simple story of shallow glamour. It is the saga of a family--though not a traditional one--and a meditation on the creative process. It's also the story of a soon-to-be-forgotten lifestyle at the twilight of haute couture. It is also, in the words of Valentino's longtime business partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, "not a story of money or fashion; it is a story of love."

   To know Valentino is also to know Giancarlo Giammetti, widely considered to be one of the most brilliant businessmen of his generation in Italy, and certainly one of the great business icons in the history of fashion. He and Valentino began as boyfriends in the early 1960s, and ended up as life business partners who, with great ambition and talent, have built a billion-dollar fashion business from the ground up.

   Anchoring the film's narrative is the arc of Valentino's last two years at the helm of the fashion house he created. Still at the top of his game after 45 years, the designer began with only a dream. A little boy from a middle-class family growing up in a small town outside of Milan, early on Valentino recognized his calling: to dress the stars he saw in the Hollywood movies his sister brought him to see at the local cinema. His talent for fashion presented itself at an early age--as did his iron will. As a schoolboy, he demanded that his mother take him to the local weavers so that he could get his sweaters custom-made to his own designs.

   At 17 he set out for Paris and worked as an apprentice alongside other ambitious wouldbe couturiers (Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, among them). Living in a garret apartment in Paris, he drew elaborate fantasy dresses (Lana Turner being his greatest inspiration), and then, one day, decided to strike out on his own. He was instantly recognized as a prodigy in the field of high fashion by certain ladies at the top of society. After a time in Paris, he took his talent to Rome (then a fashion capital equal to Paris) and began a journey unlike any other in the world of design. There were hundreds of names in high fashion in Rome at this time. Today there is only Valentino.

 While following the creative process, and seeing Valentino bring a full couture collection to the Paris runway, the camera captures the extraordinary relationship of Valentino and Giammetti. With access to the private world of our two main characters, we see how they love each other deeply, but can also fight with equal passion--in three languages: Italian, French and English.

Not only have the two men altered the world of fashion, they have also redefined the idea of family, building an elaborate court of many loyal friends and workers, who help them run their global operation, carefully plotting which Oscar-nominated actress will wear which Valentino dress for the red carpet. The camera sees the inner workings of this amazing nomadic family, which moves around together from the places where Valentino and Giammetti maintain homes: Rome, Paris, London, Gstaad, Tuscany, and New York. In summer, they sail the Mediterranean aboard Valentino's 152-foot yacht, the TM Blue One.

   The film opens backstage in February 2007 at Valentino's spring prêt-a-porter show, when media speculation about Valentino's retirement, his possible successors, and the future leadership of the company is reaching a crescendo. Rumors are swirling and emotions running high among his longtime staff--their futures are just as uncertain as Valentino's.

   We flash back a year earlier and join Valentino in his studio designing the elaborate couture dresses that made him famous, and his dozens of seamstresses--many of whom have worked for him for 35 years or more--bringing his visions to life in the Rome headquarters' three ateliers. There are many dramatic moments as everyone rushes to complete the collection in time for the Paris show. During this first act we meet Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino's business partner and companion of 50 years.

Sonny Vandevelde, world traveller, blogger, photographer, 360Fashion Member, is competing to win an around the world ticket for photography! Rate his video as top so that he can win and blog around the planet!

Click here to vote for him! Check out his blog here.

360 Fashion speaks with Gregor Clemens about his work, the passion behind his work, in particular the extravagant diamond dress, and about the relationship between technology and fashion.

Created in 2007 by evil mastermind and designer Jimmy Ho, OMyJimmy is a clothing label for ladies and gentlemen with a flair for adventure. Presenting the narrative adventures towards world domination of its creator, the offerings are stylishly cut in the latest materials (bamboo, lyocell...) and adorned. Our fearless reporter cornered the evil mastermind in a hot tub to ask him some questions.
Grab the key, open the door...

360Fashion catches up with Marissa Mayer from Google Search talking about how important fashion is in her role as a tech icon, in search technology, and in attracting women into technology.

• Chrome is out of beta
• Searchwiki "on" is likely to remain the default option. It's more about personalisation than another part of PageRank, but if tens of thousands of people downrank a result...
• Video search is a challenge. Two likely routes: speech to text and face recognition. Speech to text is more advanced, and we might see it next year
• Time-based searching is another thing we're likely to see in the default search next year.

Contexture is a multidisciplinary design firm composed of three complimentary departments: workshop (product design and fabrication), studio (graphic art and design), and fieldwork (landscape design and illustration). Founding partners Nathan Lee and Trevor Coghill are graduates of the University of British Columbia's Landscape Architecture program. The design duo's work emphasizes simple, elegant and sustainable design, and is often inspired by reclaimed materials with historical, cultural or environmental significance.

Contexture's Nathan Lee kindly answered a few questions about the duo and their projects among which the New York Times anointed "Coffee Cup".

How did Contexture come to be?

Trevor and I have been friends for a while. We met in high school, and eventually both ended up in the Landscape Architecture program at the University of British Columbia. We worked together on a couple of summer projects while finishing our degrees, and ended up moonlighting as designers while we held down non-design related day-jobs. Our creative interests broadened and we applied our design skills to new projects in different media. We both ended up quitting our desk jobs days shy of our 30th birthdays to officially start a career in design and we haven't looked back.

Why repurposed material? What's the message behind?

With our background in Landscape Architecture, the concept of sustainability has always come second nature to us. We approach design with that in mind, but for us the materials themselves have always proved to be an important source of inspiration, particularly if they have historic, cultural or environmental significance. The message of upcycling is always there, but we think of it more in terms of waste and unused potential than "green design". Like in the dustbowl of the Great Depression people found uses for the things around them, not because it was sustainable, but because every object had potential and if it couldn't be used for it's designed purpose, it could be used for something else. Throwing things away wasn't really an option and waste was a dirty word.

What has been your most rewarding moment so far?

Having our Coffee Cuff featured in the New York Times Style Magazine was a pretty rewarding. We didn't want to jinx it, so we hadn't told a lot of people that it was coming out. My dad had recently gotten a subscription to the Times and had taken up the hobby of flipping through the design section looking for stuff to show me so he could say "you should make something like that!" It was his way of being supportive. I remember getting a phone call from him when he came across our work. That was a pretty great moment.

Among your projects, do you have a favourite, one that has special significance to you?

This is a tough one, I like them all for different reasons.

"As the Crow Flies" hanging mobile is our newest product so we're still in the honeymoon phase of our relationship. I like this project for its simplicity; at the same time it conveys a complex idea. Crows create a surprisingly emotional family portrait. They mate for life, live in family groups, and even though their offspring may travel the country and live in other cities, they often return to visit. We used maps from across the continent as a building material to reflect the universality of this phenomenon and the distances these birds travel.

The Coffee Cuff has been very good to us. It's a cheeky product, I guess that's what I like about it. It's great seeing someone pick up this sculptural item and watch the pieces fall together as they try to figure out what it's for. Is it a handmade coffee sleeve? Is it jewelry? You can actually see it on their faces when they realize it's both.

I'm a fan of 45 iPod cases because the materials are so appropriate. There is an obvious connection between 7-inch records, cassette tapes, and iPods as music media, but they are also very similar in proportion. For example, the clickwheel of an iPod is exactly the same diameter of the hole in a 7-inch record. The similarities don't end there.

What is the most challenging aspect of your work?

Reclaimed materials are a source of inspiration, but they can also be a source of frustration. It's always challenging finding a reliable source of materials that are available on the scale that gives a project longevity. It takes a much more hands-on approach to manufacturing because everything has to be hand-picked and there are often inconsistencies in materials. Not all cassette tapes for instance are made of the same type of plastic, and all plastics behave differently. It's challenges like this that can keep our production scale modest. That being said, the materials are where all the ideas come from, so it's a bit of a trade off.

What are your plans for the next few months?

We're always working on new stuff. We've got a few projects under development that we'd love to see released in the next year, but in the meantime we're looking forward to a busy holiday season.

Why did you put your shoe size on the site? Are you on the market for shoes?

One of our first projects was "hockey's". We were taking a Canadian icon, old leather hockey skates, and rebuilding them into street boots. They never made it into production, but when it came time to post our bios we figured our boots were a good place to start. They said as much about us as anything else so we thought some stats might flesh things out a bit. Thankfully, the stats ended there.