Victoria Beckham has designed the ultimate one-off gift to be snapped up for Christmas - a unique crocodile skin handbag.

However, the white bag will be off the scale for most budgets, with a price tag of £8,995.

And the luxury item is certain to upset animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), which has criticised Victoria for her use of exotic skins on her designs.


Feeling generous? A one-off crocodile skin handbag designed for Selfridges Christmas collection by Victoria Beckham has a price tag of £8,995

The bag was among the items unveiled by upmarket store Selfridges today - and are thought to be the hottest for this Christmas.

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'Knights' bring foam swords into fashion

When Knights of Badassdom is released next year, it could just be the best movie ever about live-action role players summoning a succubus from hell.

The first scary hilarious (or hilariously scary?) trailer went over like gangbusters to the Comic-Con crowd, as did its geek-friendly cast: True Blood's Ryan Kwanten, Firefly's Summer Glau, Community's Danny Pudi and Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage.

The movie follows Joe (Kwanten), who winds up putting on some chainmail and grabbing a foam sword to hang with his LARP-loving roommates (Steve Zahn and Dinklage) after his girlfriend Beth (Margarita Levieva) dumps him. He meets the lovely Gwen (Glau) in "the fields of Evermore," but when the group runs into "cleric" Lando (Pudi) and perform a spell over a pentagram, they mistakenly unleash a she-demon — in the form of Beth.

"Blood and guts start appearing randomly, and he's forced to pick up the pieces," Kwanten said of his character. Added director Joe Lynch: "Lots and lots of pieces."

Knights mashes up action, horror, comedy and drama, but at its heart it's an adventure, said Lynch. "The adventure film genre is one that combines chills and thrills and spills. Look at The Goonies or Ghostbusters – even Conan the Barbarian. There are some laughs in there, not at Conan's expense.

"It's everything I loved in films I grew up with. And heavy metal."

Dinklage earned an Emmy nomination for his shrewd and calculating Game of Thrones character, Tyrion Lannister, but in Knights his Hung (the origin of that name? "Wait for the DVD," he suggested) is quite the opposite.

"He's completely miscalculating," Dinklage said. "These guys really live for the LARP and my guy's maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He takes it too seriously sometimes, and tries to help with narcotics."

The cast filmed in Spokane, Wash., last summer, and Lynch coordinated a "LARPing boot camp" that consisted of learning the rules and being outfitted with foam swords.

"They said, 'Go spar!' Peter Dinage smoked every single cast member in one fell swoop. It was amazing," Lynch recalled. "He was like, 'Boop. Boop. Boop. Narnia.' And he just walked off. The Dinklage conquered us all."

"It's made of foam," Dinklage deadpanned. "It doesn't have to be safe. There's no safety meeting."

Levieva also developed a penchant for devouring fake hearts — made of a sweet, gooey substance — voraciously during her monster scenes. "The prop guys were like, 'What happened to it?' 'Well, I ate it!' " she said.

"When Margarita came out as Succubeth, she was like, 'More blood. Put more blood in my mouth now.' It was awesome," Lynch said.

The director understands that LARPing is a culture that some people look down on and not everyone will embrace, especially on a movie screen. At the same time, though, they reached out to LARP guilds on the west coast for authencity and to bring in some LARPing ringers.

"They're bringing their own costumes," Lynch said, "and I remember Ryan came out one day and saw it and said, 'That's nice!'

"If one person grabs a foam sword after the film, we've done our job."

 

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Femme Pimp Fashion

With the feather fedoras, floor-sweeping fur overcoats and eccentric styling, no one can deny that there is a definite pimp theme to the Alana Zimmer Vogue Russia photo spread. Yet instead of taking on the darker side of this urban persona, this editorial is fun and lighthearted, focusing on the playful styles rather than developing this unlawful character Zimmer portrays.

Shot by fashion photographer Ben Toms for the magazine’s August 2011 issue, the Alana Zimmer Vogue Russia photo spread has stylist Katie Shillingford to thank for the amazingly eclectic ensembles. With a particular concentration on vibrant hues and animal prints, these outfits will certainly inspire women to dress more daringly, experimenting with what they already have in their wardrobes and perhaps indulging in some atypical pieces that they don’t yet have.

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