Malaika, Mugdha or Lisa: Take Your Pick?

We got a sneak peek into the Blender's Pride 6-city Fashion Tour this week. Take a look at these exclusive pics of the designers, their muses and some uber haute fashion.

I can't get enough of the flowy canary yellow dress worn by Lisa Hayden. Of course, it spells Wendell Rodricks sans his signature white. But the designer could have done better for his own look. Don't you think :p?

Malaika Arora Khan looked simply stunning as always but we can hardly say the same for her leopard printed drape dress with navy blue sequin detailing designed by Surily Goel. But the diva that she is, Malaika managed to pull this one off and actually made it look quite chic.

And then there was Mugdha Godse. Designer Gavin Miguel certainly outdid himself with this black gown. What with that elegant drape and sequin work. Definitely a winner! The only put off though was Ms Godse's tacky pink nail paint. Can someone please tell her that shade went out last season and if she really must, then how about on a deserted beach island?

Some other celebs we just had to mention...

Shazahn Padamsee looked great in a sequined halter jumpsuit designed by Nandita Mahtani and so did Bruna Abdullah in an assymetrical Asmita Marwah dress.

Vikram Phadnis decided he couldn't wait for Navratri and went all out with a blast of festive colour. But his muse Perizaad Zorabian didn't seem to mind.

As for Sushma Reddy's ensemble... Neeta Lulla, what were you thinking? Well, let's keep our fingers crossed and hope we see something better from this otherwise fab designer when the shows are on from September 3 to 5.

Some secrets out but Mona Lisa smile mystery

Paris: The enigmatic smile remains a mystery, but French scientists say they have cracked a few secrets of the Mona Lisa.

French researchers studied seven of the Louvre Museum's Leonardo da Vinci paintings, including the Mona Lisa, to analyze the master's use of successive ultrathin layers of paint and glaze -- a technique that gave his works their dreamy quality.

Specialists from the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France found that da Vinci painted up to 30 layers of paint on his works to meet his standards of subtlety. Added up, all the layers are less than 40 micrometers, or about half the thickness of a human hair, researcher Philippe Walter said Friday.

The technique, called "sfumato," allowed da Vinci to give outlines and contours a hazy quality and create an illusion of depth and shadow. His use of the technique is well-known, but scientific study on it has been limited because tests often required samples from the paintings.

The French researchers used a noninvasive technique called X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to study the paint layers and their chemical composition.

They brought their specially developed high-tech tool into the museum when it was closed and studied the portraits' faces, which are emblematic of sfumato. The project was developed in collaboration with the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble.

The tool is so precise that "now we can find out the mix of pigments used by the artist for each coat of paint," Walter told The Associated Press. "And that's very, very important for understanding the technique."

The analysis of the various paintings also shows da Vinci was constantly trying out new methods, Walter said. In the "Mona Lisa," da Vinci used manganese oxide in his shadings. In others, he used copper. Often he used glazes, but not always.

The results were published on Wednesday in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, a chemistry journal.

Tradition holds that the Mona Lisa is a painting of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo, and that da Vinci started painting it in 1503. Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century painter and biographer of da Vinci and other artists, wrote that the perfectionist da Vinci worked on it for four years.