Milan Fashion Week kicks off today, and we're ready to swoon over all the molto stylish looks coming out of the Italian city. But nothing gives us a hankering to travel to Italy like its crop of hot, hot Mediterranean men! Whether they are athletes or actors, these famous Italians have some things in common: they are all tall, dark, and handsome. Check these Italian stallions out now. Ciao!
You couldn't blame anyone casually following the Amanda Knox case over the past four years for being confused. But today, the American college student convicted of murdering her British roommate Meredith Kercher after alleged "sex games" gone wrong tried to make it very clear that she is innocent. In fluent Italian, Amanda begged the court to let her go home, saying "I did not do the things they say I did. I did not kill, rape or steal. I was not there." Her appeal, which came after a trial filled with tainted evidence and bizarre behavior by Italian officials and Amanda herself, is coming to a close. A panel of two professional and six lay judges are expected to reach a decision soon on whether her 26-year sentence will stand, or she will be allowed to return home to Seattle. Watch Amanda's final plea with subtitles now, and tell us what you make of it all in the comments.
"Even though I am a little brat . . . 33 girls in two months seems like too much even for a 30-year-old."
— Without compromising his virile reputation, little brat and Italian prime minister Berlusconi argues that he's just too old (74) to have that much sex. He's facing allegations that he had sex with 33 women, including an underage prostitute, at his villa where "bunga bunga" parties were held. As for details involving erotic dancing that turned sexual, Berlusconi said: "The girls were just shaking a leg in the disco — alone, as I've never liked dancing."
Wanna get away? Mario Sorrenti shot the Hugo Boss Spring ad campaign, which features two gorgeous blondes – Raquel Zimmermann and Heidi Mount – in a boat, sunbathing, above a turquoise sea, and hanging with really handsome men. Click through the highlights from the campaign, but be forewarned: you might be inspired to drop everything and hightail it to Italy!
This art piece at Arte Fiera Art First Festival in Bologna, Italy, looks just like Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, if you're comparing it to this recent photo of him looking — how do you say? — corpse-like (but with makeup!). The perpetually tan prime minister has been embroiled in sex scandals, and you don't have to be an art critic to interpret what this artist thinks of him.
The New York Times has just translated wiretapped conversations currently gripping Italy. The tapes feature a range of call girls, reality-TV personalities, and other associates tied to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, but the star is 18-year-old Karima el-Mahroug. Prosecutors are currently investigating Berlusconi, 74, for paying to have sex with Karima (aka "Ruby") when she was a minor. In the recordings, Ruby says she asked the Italian leader for $6.7 million to keep her story to herself, and she says he told her: "Ruby, I'll give you as much money as you want, I'll pay you, I'll cover you in gold, but the important thing is that you hide everything; don't tell anyone anything." Apparently he didn't give her enough.
If Silvio "I'm No Saint" Berlusconi were an American politician, his ongoing sex scandals would have brought him down years ago. There's a chance that these wiretaps, filled with stories of orgies, blackmail, and a minor, will finally lead to his ousting, though he maintains he's not going anywhere. So his ego, and not his power, is probably most under immediate threat. In the recordings being read all over Italy, another prostitute offers her frank assessment: "He's more dead than alive. He's even become ugly. He should just give up. I hope he's more generous."
Shiseido has just signed a three-year deal with La Scala, Milan's famed opera. The entire troupe will wear Shiseido in performance, and the brand is showing an advertising retrospective in La Scala's lobby.
It's unusual to think of a performance venue or theater company having a makeup sponsorship, but it's a really smart move. By choosing an opera, Shiseido has aligned itself with a cultural institution that represents luxury and elegance as well as entertainment, and its ads even feature archival images of legends Maria Callas and Shirley Verrett. Coming on the heels of Make Up For Ever's deal with Paris's Moulin Rouge, it seems high-end makeup and high-end entertainment are teaming up all over. Is this the sort of collaboration you like to see?
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have scooped another diminutive nest for their growing brood in the hills of Valpolicella, Italy, near Verona. The family apparently fell for the country during the filming of Jolie's upcoming project The Tourist and decided to add some Italian real estate to their portfolio of homes in Los Feliz, Malibu, New Orleans, Cambodia, and the South of France. "Some real estate" to be exact is a 18,000-square-foot Palladian-style mansion named Villa Costanza with 15 rooms, eight bathrooms, a home theater, stables, a vineyard, and two swimming pools, which cost the high-paid couple a colossal $41 million.
The property is slightly disheveled and a bit of a fixer-upper. But it's a stunning estate that offers lots of privacy, and the grounds are a perfect place for the young Jolie-Pitts to roam around — and their actor parents to stage a period piece. Check out more photos of the home below.
Source: Flickr User askabir
The first hotel made completely out of garbage opened today in Rome, Italy. Trash was collected from beaches throughout Europe to build the Corona Save the Beach Hotel, and its first guest was model Helena Christensen.
