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NEW YORK (Reuters) – In the middle of New York Fashion Week, typically filled with skinny models in slender garments, it was a celebration of the full figured and fabulous when lingerie maker Bare Necessities launched Bare Plus — a new line catering to the rising numbers of plus-size women.

“The new American woman,” says Jay Dunn, chief marketing officer for Bare Plus, noting that more than 60 percent of American women wear a size 14 or higher.

“They are no longer the minority. You would never know that by looking at media, advertising and entertainment, but they really are the majority,” Dunn said.

Weight and questions of what constitutes a healthy and attractive body image have been flashpoints in fashion for years, of course. After two anorexic Latin American models died in 2006, countries including Italy and India banned underweight models from the catwalk as part of an effort to promote a healthier image of beauty.

France did not, but the style-conscious country did introduce an awareness campaign. Yet critics still say the fashion industry contributes to eating disorders in young women.

Bare Plus champions the idea that size 8 or 10 is average. Indeed millions of American women who are considered plus size fit into clothes often not found in many stores — usually size 14 and up.

Away from fashion week’s main runways, a mini catwalk of Bare Plus’ lingerie showed off many animal prints, as well fabrics of lace and satin. Designs by Hanky Panky, Calvin Klein and DKNY will also be available through Bare Plus.

The lingerie collection will soon be part of a “Curvy Fashion Show,” at the next New York Fashion Week in September. That show will include six individual designers and feature apparel, sleepwear, swimwear and lingerie.

“There are millions of plus size women around the world who have a voice and a style that up until today nobody has heard or seen in the proper light,” said Jeff Grinstein, the Curvy Fashion Show’s creator.

In the audience of the Bare Plus event were several plus-size women who said they liked what they saw.

“Plus-size fashion has been the step-child of Fashion Week and of fashion in general for just too long,” said Maryellen Kernaghan, a 53-year-old blogger who has been working as a plus-size model for several decades.

“A plus-size woman, just like any other woman, wants to feel great. And lingerie really does support a woman in more ways than one,” said Kernaghan, adding she fully intends to purchase some of the under-garments ahead of Valentine’s Day.

(Editing by Christine Kearney and Bob Tourtellotte)

Story By: by The Associated Press

Pope Benedict XVI waves as he arrives to preside over a consistory in St. Peter’s basilica at the Vatican on Saturday.

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday brought 22 new Catholic churchmen into the elite club of cardinals who will elect his successor, in a greatly simplified ceremony that took account of evidence the 84-year-old pontiff is slowing down.

Benedict presided over a ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica to formally create the 22 cardinals, who include the archbishops of New York, Prague, Hong Kong and Toronto as well as the heads of several Vatican offices.

Preparations for the ceremony have been clouded by embarrassing leaks of internal documents alleging financial mismanagement in Vatican affairs, and reports in the Italian media of political jockeying among church officials who, sensing an increasingly weak pontiff, are already preparing for a conclave.

None of that was on display Saturday, however, amid the pomp of the consistory that brought to 125 the number of cardinals under age 80 who are thus eligible to vote in a papal election.

That said, each of the new cardinals did make a solemn pledge to keep church secrets upon accepting their new title, ring and three-pointed red hat, or biretta, from the pope.

Reciting the cardinals’ traditional oath of loyalty, each one pledged to remain faithful to the church and to “not to make known to anyone matters entrusted to me in confidence, the disclosure of which could bring damage or dishonor to Holy Church.”

Benedict was wheeled into St. Peter’s Basilica aboard the moving platform he has been using for several months to spare him the long walk down the center aisle. Benedict, who turns 85 in April, spoke in a strong voice as he told the cardinals they will be called upon to advise him on the problems facing the church.

In remarks at the start of the service, Benedict recalled that the red color of the three-pointed hat, or biretta, and the scarlet cassock that cardinals wear symbolizes the blood that cardinals must be willing to shed to remain faithful to the church.

“The new cardinals are entrusted with the service of love: love for God, love for his church, an absolute and unconditional love for his brothers and sisters even unto shedding their blood, if necessary,” Benedict said.

Benedict has been slowing down recently. His upcoming trip to Mexico and Cuba, for example, is very light on public appearances, with no political speeches or meetings with civil society planned as has been the norm to date. Even Saturday’s consistory was greatly trimmed back to a slimmer version of the service used in 1969: only one of the cardinals actually read his oath of loyalty aloud, while the others read it silently to themselves simultaneously. A reading was cut out, as was a responsorial psalm.

At the end of his remarks, Benedict said: “And pray for me, that I may continually offer to the people of God the witness of sound doctrine and guide the holy church with a firm and humble hand.”

Of the 22 new cardinals, seven are Italian, adding to the eight voting-age Italian cardinals named at the last consistory in November 2010. As of Saturday, Italy will have 30 cardinals out of the 125 under age 80.

That boosts Italy’s chances of taking back the papacy for one of its own following decades under a Polish and a German pope, or at least playing the kingmaker role if an Italian papabile, or papal candidate, doesn’t emerge.

Only the United States comes close, with 12 cardinals under 80, including New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan and Cardinal-designate Edwin O’Brien, the former archbishop of Baltimore who is now grand master of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, which raises money for the church in the Holy Land.

The consistory class of 2012 is heavily European, reinforcing Europe’s dominance of the College of Cardinals, even though two-thirds of the world’s Catholics are in the southern hemisphere. All but three of the new under-80 cardinals come from the West, along with a Brazilian, an Indian and a Chinese.

Story By: All Things Considered

Clay Violand, a junior at Virginia Tech, says he stayed under his desk as Seung-hui Cho unleashed gunfire on his French class Monday morning. He says he thinks he is the only person in his class to emerge unharmed from the mass shooting.

The next thing I know, there’s this gun coming through the door, followed by a man. I catch a glimpse of him, and he’s an Asian man. I thought he looked like a student. He looked younger, and he had a utility belt on for ammo. I dove under a desk, and kind of prepared to die, I guess.

Virginia Tech junior Clay Violand was in French class on the second floor of Norris Hall on Monday morning when students in his classroom began hearing gunfire. Then, Seung-hui Cho entered the classroom and began shooting.

Eleven out of the 22 students enrolled in the class died. Their professor, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, was also killed.

Violand, a 20-year-old international studies major, says he doesn’t understand how he escaped being shot by Cho, who returned to the classroom repeatedly, and that he believes he is the only person in the room who was not shot.

Below are edited highlights of Block’s interview with Clay Violand and his father Chuck.

Clay Violand: The next thing I know, there’s this gun coming through the door, followed by a man. I catch a glimpse of him, and he’s an Asian man. I thought he looked like a student. He looked younger, and he had a utility belt on for ammo. I dove under a desk, and kind of prepared to die, I guess. He just started picking people off with the gun. I heard it more than I saw it. I just expected after every bullet, I just prepared myself for the hit. But it never came for me. Then he left the room, and the room was pretty silent — except for some sounds, some cries and some pretty gruesome sounds. I told everybody to stay quiet and play dead. I remember saying that — especially to this girl that was next to me. She kept crying for her friend, and I told her to stay quiet and play dead. And then the gunman came back. He started shooting again, and I’m assuming he just unloaded another round into everybody, even people who had already been shot. He must have unloaded three rounds because he stopped to reload, and then he’d do it again. And I just never got hit. And at the end of it, when the cops came, I think they said if you can get up, get up and put your hands up. And I was the only one initially to get up. And then the girl next to me got up, too. She had gotten shot in the back. I think she’s OK, but I’m not sure yet. But she walked out with me.

Melissa Block: Do you have any idea how that it was you were not hit? Was it that you were under a desk?

Violand: I was under a desk. I have no idea. He shot the person to my left and to my right. He didn’t shoot me. I don’t understand. There’s a possibility he didn’t see me, but I doubt it. Maybe just in the chaos of the moment, he just skipped over me. I don’t know. But he skipped over me repeatedly, which is what I don’t get.

Block: When you got up to leave that room, you were seeing what had happened for the first time. Can you describe that?

Violand: I didn’t look around when I got up. I kept my eyes fixed on the police. I was just in amazement. I don’t remember looking around at the room when I got up, but I remember putting my hands up and asking them if I’d gotten shot. I didn’t know what it felt like. I remember assuming I got shot at one point and thinking, this really doesn’t hurt so bad. And the girl I was with was really brave. She didn’t cry the whole time. I know she got shot in the back, and I was looking at her in the eyes most of the time when we were under those desks, just, kind of, staying human. I didn’t even know her name, actually. I didn’t talk to her much in class, but we just kept eye contact a lot of the time, and they sat her down and looked at her gunshot wound, and I remember they said it’s superficial and she’ll be OK. I was just really glad to hear that and I gave her a hug.

Clay Violand thinks he was the only one in his class to emerge unscathed. He talked to police, made his way to a phone, and called his mother, Sandy, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. His first words: “I’m OK.” She called her husband, Chuck Violand, and soon he was in a car — speeding the more than 250 miles to Blacksburg to see his son.

Chuck Violand: I took off, and I get down to Virginia Tech in an hour less time than I normally would. I burst into the room. Clay was obviously surrounded by — there were incredible numbers of people here. I burst in and gave him a hug — and that’s the experience. It was just unbelievable. And it’s been several days of comfort and sorrow and support and emotion and happiness and sadness. It’s indescribable.

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Roland Martin, the CNN commentator who was suspended by the cable news outlet earlier this month for a pair of homophobic tweets he sent out during this year’s Super Bowl, has received a thumbs-up from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) for his on-air apology on Sunday.

GLAAD had earlier called for Martin’s firing over the tweets.

During his “Perspectives” segment on his show “Washington Watch,” Martin recalled his February 14 meeting with GLAAD’s Herndon Graddick over the tweets. Martin characterized the meeting as helpful and said that he’s sympathetic to many of GLAAD’s stances.

“ronically, I have historically supported many of the issues important to the GLAAD agenda, such as ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy; gay adoption; and including gays in hate crimes laws. Those, folks, are facts.”

He went on to note that he believes all people have a right to be heard.

“f you’re gay or straight, your voice matters. If you are a pastor or activist, your voice matters,” Martin said. “I have no plan to abandon my goal as a truth-teller on a variety of issues; and, yes, that includes those that may be on the LGBT agenda. I am confident that this table can serve as an example of Dr. King’s ‘table of brotherhood,’ and I and this excellent team will do all we can to advance the dialogue so we all can learn, grow and prosper together.”

GLAAD was quick to applaud Martin’s statements, calling Sunday’s “Perspectives” segment an “important step” in mending the hurt caused by his tweets.

“Martin today took another important step, acknowledging that his words had a negative impact, and making it clear that he understands how serious the issues of anti-LGBT bullying and violence are,” the organization said on Sunday. “This incident, along with recent incidents of violence directed at LGBT people, sparked a national dialogue centered around why the issue of anti-LGBT violence needs to be taken seriously.”

Martin caused an uproar with his Super Bowl Sunday tweets, which seemed to advocate violence against gays.

“If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!” Roland said in one of his tweets.

Another of Martin’s tweets read, “Who the hell was that New England Patriot they just showed in a head to toe pink suit? Oh, he needs a visit from #teamwhipdatass.”

The commentator had also earned GLAAD’s ire by defending Tracy Morgan after the “30 Rock” star said in a standup routine that he would “pull out a knife and stab” his son if he were to find out he was gay. (Morgan also met with GLAAD after being publicly chastised by the group over his comments.)

“Morgan is keenly aware of what society actually thinks, and he simply said it onstage. Isn’t that what comedians have always done?” Martin wrote of the controversy of Morgan’s statements.

(Editing By Zorianna Kit)

New York: Fashion’s tastemakers and trendsetters started packing up on the eighth and final day of New York Fashion Week Thursday as shows began in London, followed by Milan and Paris.

But as the runway previews of fall looks continue in Europe, some early trends have emerged.

The most popular looks to grace the runways over the past eight days include leather, military — and menswear-inspired tailoring and an overall sultriness that finds its allure in the mystery of the woman sheathed in high necklines and leather leggings instead of bare skin or overt sexiness.

Some of the best looks at Ralph Lauren’s show on Thursday were borrowed from the boys in a collection plucked from a closet of a British aristocrat.

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