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Mater Dei All-County wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown committed Saturday to USC during an announcement at the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio.

“Fight on, baby,” St. Brown said during his announcement.

https://t.co/hCmENUj0nj

— Dan Albano (@ocvarsityguy) January 6, 2018

St. Brown had narrowed his college decision to USC, Stanford and Notre Dame.

In picking the Trojans, he charted his own college course. His brother, Equanimeous, played wide receiver at Notre Dame and recently declared for the NFL draft. His brother, Osiris, plays wide out at Stanford.

St. Brown followed his Mater Dei quarterback JT Daniels, a USC commit who reclassified to join the class of 2018.

St. Brown and Daniels are arguably the best quarterback-wide receiver duo in O.C. prep football history. Daniels is the county’s all-time leader in passing yards and touchdown passes while St. Brown owns he county mark for TD receptions.

And just for good measure, Daniels tossed a 17-yard touchdown pass to St. Brown during the all-star game Saturday. St. Brown finished with four receptions for 93 yards and one touchdown. Daniels completed 7 of 13 passes for 115 yards with a touchdown. He was intercepted once.

Almost every new mother faces the baby-budget challenge: All that stuff, does it all need to be new? Here’s a look at where you can save and where spending more is worth it:

Buy new
Car seats: A car seat is an essential requirement; each state requires infants and children to ride in one when in a car. And although new car seats are expensive, it’s worth your peace of mind to buy one new. First, car seats have an expiration date (typically six to nine years after their manufacture date). Second, if they’ve been in a car accident, they are not safe to reuse.

Cribs: Rules on cribs (as with much baby furniture) are constantly in flux, but on June 28, 2011, the government ruled that drop-side cribs are dangerous and should not be sold in the United States. Crib bumper pads also are problematic; the American Academy of Pediatrics says bumper pads can put a baby at risk for suffocation and other injuries. If you can’t afford a new crib, buy a new portable crib, which is less expensive and safer than a used crib. You should also stay away from used crib mattresses, which have been through enough wear and tear, and possibly exposed to mold and bacteria. Buy a new mattress and don’t risk your baby’s health.

Infant formula: Many mom boards and secondhand sites sell infant formula, which, new, costs about $20 a pack. Aside from the obvious risk (you could be buying tainted formula!), even if the person you’re buying the formula from is trustworthy, there’s no way to know whether the formula has been stored correctly. If formula isn’t stored in a cool, dry area (from 55 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit), it could degrade and lose nutrients.

Buy used
Strollers, if made after 2007: Ten years ago, the safety standards for strollers were amended to fix impact, stability, and shoulder-strap safety issues. If you’re buying a stroller used, watch out for broken, loose or missing parts. Put your child in it and take them around the block to make sure the ride is smooth and sturdy. Lastly, check the make and model for a manual you can access online, and make sure there have been no recall issues.

Formal baby clothes: If you’re heading to a wedding or celebrating Easter or Christmas (and taking photos!), look for used clothing. Formal jackets and dresses are generally used once or twice. Kids grow out of them so fast that they often don’t suffer wear and tear. When dealing with designer outfits as used commodities, you don’t have to spend a ton to make your kid look like North West or Blue Ivy. (Same goes for nonformal wear and baby shoes!)

Rocking chairs and changing tables: As gently used baby furniture goes, changing tables or rocking chairs are pretty standard. If they don’t have peeling paint, missing or chipped parts, you should be OK buying used. After all, changing tables have about a nine-month lifespan; after that, your baby will be moving around so much that you’ll probably decide to change him or her wherever you can. Do, however, buy a new changing pad or cover.

Baby tub: Some baby tubs are incredibly cheap; even so, buy them used at garage sales. Clean it inside and out with bleach and then rinse it in hot water, and it will be good as new. After all, all they are for is storing soapy water. Many parents eventually end up bathing babies in the sink, or bringing their kids in the tub with them. How dirty can babies get, anyway?

Baby gear such as bouncers and rockers: As long as they have not been recalled and aren’t broken (look up the specific product name before you buy) these baby distractors are great. These jumpers/rockers are lifesavers when you need to set a baby down and relax, or go to the bathroom or cook dinner. But because your baby will need it for only four to five months (maybe six, if you’re lucky!), buy them used. These items are such obnoxious monstrosities that once parents realize they’re not needed anymore, they try to get rid of them ASAP, and rarely look used.

Lil Lovinus is a writer, editor and mom of two kids and a kitty.

After spending half the season as UCLA’s top tight end, redshirt junior Austin Roberts declared for the NFL draft on Saturday, becoming the fourth draft-eligible junior from UCLA to announce he is leaving school early.

“From waking up at 5 a.m. to run and lift with my teammates to staying up til 4 studying for an exam to making players under the Rose Bowl lights, my time at UCLA has been a blessing,” Roberts wrote on social media. “Along with graduating, I’m blessed to say that I am taking the next step and putting my name in the NFL Draft!”

Had a few typos on the first draft😅 but thank you UCLA!🐻🐻 pic.twitter.com/o9MwVs5FUe

— Austin Roberts (@youseela88) January 6, 2018

Roberts, who was on the preseason John Mackey Award watch list for the nation’s top tight end, took over as the team’s No. 1 tight end option after redshirt sophomore Caleb Wilson suffered a Lisfranc injury in the fifth game of the year. The redshirt junior from Hollywood, Fla., had 19 catches with 220 receiving yards and two touchdowns in 10 games.

Roberts appeared in only 24 career games for the Bruins after redshirting his true freshman year.

With Wilson expected to return from the injury that halted his promising season and transfer Devin Asiasi now eligible after sitting out last year, UCLA still has a deep group of tight ends. Redshirt sophomore Jordan Wilson had 16 catches for 155 yards and two touchdowns, while the Bruins also have freshmen Moses Robinson-Carr, who played mostly special teams, and Jimmy Jaggers, who redshirted.

Roberts’ father Alfredo was a longtime NFL tight ends coach before taking over running backs for the Chargers this season.

Quarterback Josh Rosen, receiver Jordan Lasley and offensive tackle Kolton Miller have also declared for the draft with the Jan. 15 deadline still one week away.

Murray chooses UCLA

Mater Dei offensive lineman Chris Murray committed to UCLA during the U.S. Army All-American Bowl on Saturday, giving the Bruins a much-needed recruiting boost.

The four-star recruit chose the Bruins over Stanford and Notre Dame, saying on the live NBC broadcast that he thought his athleticism would lend itself perfectly to head coach Chip Kelly’s system.

Murray is UCLA’s 11th known verbal commit for the class of 2018 and second offensive lineman, joining Etiwanda’s Alec Anderson. Eight players have already signed national letters of intent.

UCLA recently lost a coveted pledge from cornerback Olaijah Griffin and before Murray’s announcement, the Bruins had the seventh-best recruiting class in the Pac-12, according to 247 Sports’ Composite Rankings. Murray’s commitment bumped UCLA up to fourth in the Pac-12.

Brendan Radley-Hiles, one of the top cornerbacks in the country, had UCLA in his final four, but instead chose Oklahoma during Saturday’s all-star game.

By Marcia Dunn
The Associated Press

Legendary astronaut John Young, who walked on the moon and later commanded the first space shuttle flight, has died, NASA said Saturday. Young was 87.

The space agency said Young died Friday night at home in Houston following complications from pneumonia.

NASA called Young one of its pioneers — the only agency astronaut to go into space as part of the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programs, and the first to fly into space six times. He was the ninth man to walk on the moon.

“Astronaut John Young’s storied career spanned three generations of spaceflight,” NASA administrator Robert Lightfoot said in an emailed statement. “John was one of that group of early space pioneers whose bravery and commitment sparked our nation’s first great achievements in space.”

Young was the only spaceman to span NASA’s Gemini, Apollo and shuttle programs, and became the first person to rocket away from Earth six times. Counting his takeoff from the moon in 1972 as commander of Apollo 16, his blastoff tally stood at seven, for decades a world record.

He flew twice during the two-man Gemini missions of the mid-1960s, twice to the moon during NASA’s Apollo program, and twice more aboard the new space shuttle Columbia in the early 1980s.

His NASA career lasted 42 years, longer than any other astronaut’s, and he was revered among his peers for his dogged dedication to keeping crews safe — and his outspokenness in challenging the space agency’s status quo.

Chastened by the 1967 Apollo launch pad fire that killed three astronauts, Young spoke up after the 1986 shuttle Challenger launch accident. His hard scrutiny continued well past shuttle Columbia’s disintegration during re-entry in 2003.

“Whenever and wherever I found a potential safety issue, I always did my utmost to make some noise about it, by memo or whatever means might best bring attention to it,” Young wrote in his 2012 memoir, “Forever Young.”

He said he wrote a “mountain of memos” between the two shuttle accidents to “hit people over the head.” Such practice bordered on heresy at NASA.

Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who orbited the moon in 1969 as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked its surface, considered Young “the memo-writing champion of the astronaut office.” Young kept working at Johnson Space Center in Houston “long after his compatriots had been put out to pasture or discovered other green fields,” Collins wrote in the foreword of “Forever Young.”

Indeed, Young remained an active astronaut into his early 70s, long after all his peers had left, and held on to his role as NASA’s conscience until his retirement in 2004.

“You don’t want to be politically correct,” he said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press. “You want to be right.”

Young was in NASA’s second astronaut class, chosen in 1962, along with the likes of Neil Armstrong, Pete Conrad and James Lovell.

Young was the first of his group to fly in space: He and Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom made the first manned Gemini mission in 1965. Unknown to NASA, Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich on board, given to him by Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra. When it came time to test NASA’s official space food, Young handed Grissom the sandwich as a joke.

The ensuing scandal over that corned beef on rye — two silly minutes of an otherwise triumphant five-hour flight — always amazed Young. Sandwiches already had flown in space, Young said in his book, but NASA brass and Congress considered this one a multimillion-dollar embarrassment and outlawed corned beef sandwiches in space forever after.

Two years later, with Gemini over and Apollo looming, Young asked Grissom why he didn’t say something about the bad wiring in the new Apollo 1 spacecraft. Grissom feared doing so would get him fired, Young said. A few weeks later, on Jan. 27, 1967, those wires contributed to the fire that killed Grissom, Edward White II and Roger Chaffee in a countdown practice on their Cape Canaveral launch pad.

It was the safety measures put in place after the fire that got 12 men, Young included, safely to the surface of the moon and back.

“I can assure you if we had not had that fire and rebuilt the command module … we could not have done the Apollo program successfully,” Young said in 2007. “So we owe a lot to Gus, and Rog and Ed. They made it possible for the rest of us to do the almost impossible.”

Young orbited the moon on Apollo 10 in May 1969 in preparation for the Apollo 11 moon landing that was to follow in a couple months. He commanded Apollo 16 three years later, the next-to-last manned lunar voyage, and walked on the moon.

He hung on for the space shuttle, commanding Columbia’s successful maiden voyage in 1981 with co-pilot Robert Crippen by his side. It was a risky endeavor: Never before had NASA launched people on a rocket ship that had not first been tested in space. Young pumped his fists in jubilation after emerging from Columbia on the California runway, following the two-day flight.

Young made his final trek into orbit aboard Columbia two years later, again as its skipper.

Young’s reputation continued to grow, even after he stopped launching. He spoke out on safety measures, even before the Challenger debacle.

“By whatever management methods it takes, we must make Flight Safety first. If we do not consider Flight Safety first all the time at all levels of NASA, this machinery and this program will NOT make it,” he warned colleagues.

As then chief of the astronaut corps, Young was flying a shuttle training aircraft high above Kennedy Space Center when Challenger ruptured. He took pictures of the nose-diving crew cabin. The seven Challenger astronauts never knew of all the dangerous O-ring seal trouble leading up to their flight. “If I had known these things, I would have made them aware, that’s for damn sure,” Young wrote in his book.

Young noted that even his friends at NASA considered him “doom and gloom,” and that a shuttle launch “always scared me more than it thrilled me.”

He always thought the probability was there for a space shuttle accident, he observed in his autobiography, given that it was “such an incredibly complex machine.”

“It wasn’t pessimism. It was just being realistic,” he wrote.

Yet Young maintained that NASA and the nation should accept an occasional spaceflight failure, saying it’s worth the risk.

“I really believe we should be operating (the shuttle), flying it right now, because there’s just not a lot we can do to make it any better,” Young said in 2004, a year after the Columbia tragedy. Another year passed before shuttle flights resumed.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Young maintained the United States should be doing two to three times the amount of space exploration that it was doing. NASA should be developing massive rockets to lift payloads to the moon to industrialize it, he said, and building space systems for detecting and deflecting comets or asteroids that could threaten Earth.

“The country needs it. The world needs it. Civilization needs it,” Young said in 2000, adding with a chuckle, “I don’t need it. I’m not going to be here that long.”

In his book, Young noted that his “relentless” stream of memos about volcanic super-eruptions and killer asteroids was aimed at scaring and educating at the same time. Humans need to start living off the planet in order to save the species, he stressed again and again, pointing to the moon. “Some folks surely regarded me as a crackpot,” he wrote. “But that didn’t stop me.”

Young spent his last 17 years at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in management, focusing on safety issues. He retired at the end of 2004, seven months shy of NASA’s return to space following the Columbia accident.

Young was born Sept. 24, 1930 and grew up in Orlando, Fla. He became interested early on in aviation, making model planes. He spent his last high school summer working on a surveying team. The job took him to Titusville due east of Orlando; he never imagined that one day he would be sitting on rockets across the Indian River, blasting off for the moon.

He earned an aeronautical engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1952 and went on to join the Navy and serve in Korea as a gunnery officer. He eventually became a Navy fighter pilot and test pilot.

Young received more than 100 major accolades in his lifetime, including the prestigious Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1981.

Even after leaving NASA, he worked to keep the space flame alive, noting in his official NASA biography that he was continuing to advocate the development of technologies “that will allow us to live and work on the moon and Mars.”

“Those technologies over the long (or short) haul will save civilization on Earth,” he warned in his NASA bio, almost as a parting shot.

Dunn reported from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

In the first few years of life, a child’s brain is a living map, with more than 1 million new neural connections being formed every second.

Imagine roads and highways reaching out toward the sprouting rooftops of distant towns and cities, mountains pushing up, oceans unfurling like cloth, sparkling and blue. As an infant grows, this profusion of industry becomes more regulated.

In a process sometimes called “bloom and prune,” the brain trims connections and streamlines circuits, creating more efficient sensory pathways. These will be the sturdy conduits for vision and hearing and, later, language and higher cognitive functions. With more than 90 percent of a child’s brain development occurring before age 5, it’s a period of exuberant connection and infinite possibility. There are many ways for parents and caregivers to play an active role in helping to ensure optimal brain health and development.

“Environmental stimulation is crucial for the developing brain,” says Dr. Jonathan Auth, of Sea View Pediatrics in Irvine.  “And this begins immediately after birth.”

In the early months of life, the boundaries of a newborn’s world are drawn by the arms of his or her parents or guardians. Numerous studies, including one headed by Dr. Tallie Z. Baram at UC Irvine, find that touch provides not only comfort, but also promotes cognitive function, builds resilience to stress and improves memory.

To work on what is called the “serve and return” relationship between parents or caregivers and children, it’s important to take time to be attentive to an infant’s needs. They have limited ways of getting your attention, so be an emotional detective, alert to even the smallest of cues. Respond to their sounds with sounds of your own. Attend to signs of distress and soothe with cuddling, gentle rocking, massage and direct eye contact. These simple, loving actions not only deepen the parent-child connection and ensure a sense of safety, but also spark brain growth.

“I encourage parents to talk and sing to newborns right away,” says Dr. Auth, “And get in the habit of keeping up an ongoing narration of daily activities.”

Dr. Mary K. Fagan, assistant professor at Chapman University’s Crean College of Health and Behavior Sciences, explains that “although word knowledge and development build across the lifespan, early delays in the number of words an infant hears can affect vocabulary development throughout childhood and later in life.”

Reading aloud is a great way to advance language development and increase I.Q. Because comprehension is not the issue, read poetry, novels or (cheerful) stories from the newspaper. When you’re changing or bathing the baby, talk about what you are doing. Explain why you’ve chosen one brand of soap over the other, point out the difference between two pairs of pajamas. Pose questions to your infant, even though they won’t be able to answer. This sets up the idea of conversational rhythm and will serve them later in life.

“Allow time for infants to babble,” says Fagan, “and then respond to their early word attempts.”

Tired of talking? Sing to your newborn. Make up tunes about your day or dredge up the lyrics to every classic rock ballad, campfire ditty and Broadway showstopper you somehow know by heart and sing, sing, sing.

“Because an infant’s visual acuity is still developing in the months after birth,” Dr. Auth says, “choose stimulating toys with bright colors and high contrast.”

Before the retina has fully developed, an infant has limited ability to detect different shades of color. Toys, books and other items that feature simple black, white and red patterns help exercise the visual center of the brain and strengthen the optic nerve. Hold the item 8 to 12 inches from a newborn’s face and allow them time to focus. Use what the website www.askdrsears.com calls “quite alert time” to briefly engage your infant with toys, but don’t worry if they don’t seem too connected to the object. You, as the parent or caregiver, will be the baby’s main focus point and there is nothing they love better than your face.

Around six to nine months, move toward more active play using high contrast blocks to create towers for knocking down or work together to turn the pages in a soft book. Los Angeles-based child therapist, Wesley Stahler, LMFT, ECMH, RDT, recommends the website www.zerotothree.org, where you’ll find lots of ideas for exercising infant thinking skills.  Use toys in different ways and start to experiment with cause and effect.

Make your child’s environment safe to touch and encourage exploration. See what kinds of sounds different toys make, stack items together to see how they fit and introduce new textures. Describe the scratchy carpet or the soft teddy bear. Make your child the main character in an ongoing story.

As your child grows stronger and more independent, include role playing games and toys that mimic household chores such as cooking, cleaning or using the phone.

Sand, water and bath toys help the brain work on improvement of fine and gross motor skills and problem solving. Continue to play the role of tour guide, narrating your experience and explaining each new encounter.

To keep up with all this activity, a nourishing diet is essential. If possible, in the first six months, follow the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics and breastfeed exclusively.

“Breastmilk is rich in long chain Omega fatty acids such as DHA and ARA,” says Dr. Auth. “While modern-day formulas have been inclusive of these good brain-developing fats, it’s believed that breastmilk alone offers superior benefits for the developing brain.”

These good fats contribute to the brain’s production of myelin, the protective insulation surrounding nerve fibers. Myelin makes it possible for information to be carried from one part of the brain  or body to another. If you are breastfeeding, you can boost your baby’s nutrition by boosting your own. Avoid sugar and alcohol and aim to add three weekly servings of high DHA foods such as salmon, grass-fed beef, Omega-3 enriched eggs, walnuts or chia seeds.

Once you introduce your baby to solid foods, stack his or her menu with a higher concentration of fat to support those rapidly expanding brains. Dr. Auth recommends whole milk for children under two years of age along with meats, avocado, peanut butter and olive oil as well as regular consumption of fish.

Early parenthood is a time of exhaustion and mental fatigue. Some days it’s hard to come up with ideas for dinner, let alone research brain science, but don’t worry: help is out there. The app “The Wonder Weeks” provides ways to track your infant’s growth and developing skills and offers numerous tips and games to promote neural connectivity. “Vroom,” an app created by the Bezos Family Foundation, offers a variety of age appropriate brain building activities that can easily piggy-back onto the existing schedule of dressing, bathing, feeding and traveling. “Vroom” provides downloadable worksheets and simple, scientific explanations. The app “Nuryl” trades on studies showing the brain building value of complex music, such as classical and jazz. A subscription to Nuryl provides parents with an hourlong playlist, listening time-tracking tools and ideas for engaging with the music together.

While these websites and apps can be extremely helpful, it might be best to avoid screen time while in the company of your child. A 2016 study conducted by Dr. Tallie Z. Baram at UCI’s Conte Center on Brain Programming, found that fragmented and chaotic maternal care can disrupt proper brain development. “We might wish to turn off the mobile phone when caring for a baby,” she says. “And be predictable and consistent.”

Phones and other screens can be distracting, but they can also shift our gaze away from infants and children. Recent findings by researchers at the University of Cambridge point to the brain-building benefit of eye contact. The study found that infants vocalized more when their caretaker or parent was looking directly into their eyes. In addition, the eye contact seemed to create a “joint networked state,” that could increase the transfer of information and boost early communication and learning.

Dr. Auth and the American Academy of Pediatrics suggest keeping phones, tablets and computers turned off for children under two years of age. The only exception to this rule is the participation in brief “Face Time” with distant family members.

“We actively try to discourage screen time,” Dr. Auth says, citing studies that link excessive screen time to expressive language delay and risk for ADHD in older children. In addition, screens can disrupt sleep which is crucial for brain growth.

The developing brain is a complicated system, but the simplest of actions can nurture growth. Be present, available and loving. These early years are fleeting and the quality time you spend together will create wonderful memories and help make your child’s brain healthier stronger and ready for the challenges ahead.

“St Elmo’s Fire” and “The Breakfast Club,” those pivotal Eighties films about the struggle into adulthood, inspired Karl-Oskar Olsen and Brian Jensen’s strong fall 2018 collection for Wood Wood.
A cast of young adults projected angst in clothes that drew on American collegiate style. For the men, there were varsity and denim jackets, preppy chinos and classic woolen coats with detachable nylon hoods.
A cropped jacket in a snappy red, white and navy check – worn over a turtleneck T-shirt and paired with a pair of white trousers – was especially cool and had a privileged frat boy charm. Tough black boots added a grunge edge.
Wholesome patchwork blankets were subverted and reinterpreted into silk prints that looked great in a slouchy tracksuit in dark colors.
The women’s wear offering saw tan corduroy – a nod to Molly Ringwald’s prim character in “The Breakfast Club” – deployed in a jeans jacket and matching pants, and in a button-front mini that was worn with a striped knit, socks and boots.
A nice wool pantsuit in a muted green check came with a violet turtleneck, and was the Wood Wood girl’s most adult moment, tempered with trainers, lest her disdain for grown-up conventions be unclear.

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A chance encounter between Joe Casely-Hayford and an enigmatic young man walking down the road in his north London neighborhood was the inspiration for this collection which was filled with lots of urban attitude and fine tailoring.
Although Casely-Hayford never spoke to the stylish stranger, he said he was struck by his sense of confidence and individuality. Wearing a reversible trench coat and blocky heels, the stranger embodied “the definitive 21st century London Boy,” according to the designer.
Charlie Casely-Hayford, who designs the collections alongside his father, Joe, said he wanted to capture that sense of individualism and to define a “new” masculinity. “We wanted to mix feminine accents with more masculine ones in order to move away from the strict parameters” of traditional male dress.
Tailored pieces came in loose silhouettes and were matched with block-heeled brogues – created in collaboration with Christian Louboutin – while sportswear pieces such as sweaters in bright colors, parkas and fluid capes were made from a technical, ultra-light wool-neoprene fabric.
Standouts included oversized herringbone wool coats slipped over cape-like sweaters with high collars. “We wanted to give tailoring a more relaxed attitude – and formalize sportswear,” added Charlie Casely-Hayford.
As well as embracing the shifting attitude towards masculinity, the father-son duo is also

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This high-energy show was filled with luscious fabrics – velvet, corduroy and nubby wool check – whipped into slim-fitting workwear shapes that looked just as good on the women as they did on the men.
He was thinking about Bryan Ferry and the early Seventies, a “very louche, very relaxed and intrinsically  rock ‘n’ roll” time, said Spencer, adding that it reminded him of today. “There was a lot of political uncertainty like there is now, and out of that creativity comes.”
The show opened with a lineup of models striding fast down the runway to the beat of Ferry’s “Love is the Drug” and wearing luxury separates: Velvet trousers – some rolled at the ankle; slim, tailored corduroy jackets, or loose turtlenecks in navy or rust with contrasting rectangles at the front.
Suits were laid back and came with check wool jackets that had patch pockets and elasticized waists. Other, bomber style jackets were done in soft, toffee-colored leather, while long and slim checked wool toppers had fur-trimmed hoods.
The palette was full of comforting Seventies earth tones such as light olive, saffron, chamomile, cream and navy, and the show also marked the first time that Spencer used female models – Jade Parfitt,

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Edward Crutchley went on a cultural – and religious – expedition for fall. “I was thinking about how different cultures look for spirituality and guidance from other places, and I was looking at Journey to the West, which is a Chinese tale of looking to India for Buddhism. I was also thinking about western culture and the ancient Celtics.”
Crutchley continued to work with oversized silhouettes – for both men and women – in this sporty luxe range that felt clean and modern. He teamed with Emoji on prints – mixing people, animals and different shapes to create abstract patterns – and with Kopenhagen Fur’s ateliers. His earthy palette took in brown, khaki, blue, yellow, rust and black.
A male model wore a soft, cropped fur coat over a cream knit and silky, printed high-waist trousers with a tapered leg. A silky top covered in an abstract print was paired with a brown zoot suit, while on the sportier side, a white hoodie came with roomy khaki pants and a brown printed jacket. The spiritual element came through in the form of an ankle-length gown with full sleeves that resembled a monk’s robe.
The designer also played with proportion on jackets and outerwear, adapting some of his

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There was a sharp, sinister edge to this collection by the boxer-turned-designer Arashi Yanagawa, who is based in Tokyo and who’s been showing in London for the past three seasons. He said he wanted to show “two sides to one person,” with inspirations from films such as “Twin Peaks,” “Taxi Driver” and “Natural Born Killers” — to mixed results.
The strongest looks were the more formal, tailored ones: A sharply-cut olive topcoat, a brown one with contrasting green lapels and a long plaid topper with extra-wide shoulders. Another terrific coat with a leopard pattern looked as if it had been yanked straight from the closet of Grace Jones, circa 1986.
A fuzzy purple sweater with one gray arm and dark green leather biker pants added a jolt of brightness – and humor – to this lineup which often traveled to the dark side – unsuccessfully – in the form of long black coats or vests done in black leather, and split-personality jeans with one denim leg and another in dark leather.

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