Sideswipe

Glam Slam competition winner Sera Lilly, with her outfit modelled by Andrea O'Kennedy. Picture / Richard Robinson

Anyone for jousting? Already, fashion design student Sera Lilly has won a prize and she's adeptly mining historical references in that John Galliano/Christian Lacroix style.

Her short, floaty outfit won the Glam Slam Young Designer Competition at the ASB Classic last week, and Sera says it is all down to Henry V made modern.

The 20-year-old Auckland University of Technology student beat 12 other finalists to take the $3000 prize with her four-piece outfit featuring a sports bra, halter-neck top, underpants and skirt.

"The skirt is pretty short so that's what the undies were for," she says.

"I had been studying a lot about Henry V and the tennis outfits they wore back then and there were a lot of pleats so that's where I got it from."

And she's also practical, planning to pay back her mother the $800 cost of the outfit.

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Nicola from Epsom writes: "After the prizegiving of the 2004 Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge thousands were dismayed to find the Super Loo had closed for 'business'. One would have thought 10,000 people might have justified it staying open a tad later. The now 40c price-tag doesn't even come with a smile from the attendant. What a rip-off!"

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Boy George explains his new clothing line, B-Rude: "B-Rude is my emotional rage - vicious optimism with a dash of tongue-in-chic in fashion form. I design clothes for those who like their reputation to arrive in the room ahead of them..."

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For all the tennis fans: Spotted at 9am yesterday at the bottom of Stanley St, the parking attendant removing the $7 a day parking sign and replacing it with one saying $20 a day.

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Making some new words and phrases legit, even if they are lame: the American Dialect Society will nominate the already-tired "wardrobe malfunction", along with the stupid "Poddict" (frequent user of iPods) and "Google-aire" (one who gets rich by investing in Google), for its word of the year - the word that best sums up our times. Last year's winner, "metrosexual", should have got the gong for the most overused word. Before that, technology terms dominated.

Past winners include: "weapons of mass destruction"; "9-11"; "Y2K"; "millennium bug"; "mom" - as in soccer mom, the type of voter courted by both candidates during the US presidential campaign; "EQ" - emotional quotient - the ability to manage one's emotions, seen as a factor in achievement; "cyber", "morph" - pertaining to computers and electronic communication, and morph, to change form; "mother of all" - the greatest; and "bushlips" - insincere political rhetoric.