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Call it the Lady Gaga effect - the red carpets of 2009 saw some of the wildest, most inventive and daring looks of the decade.

While Lady Gaga led the way in outrageousness, wearing everything from face-obscuring headgear to dresses constructed entirely out of Kermit the Frog dolls, R&B chanteuse Rihanna was hot on her tails with some inventive wardrobe choices of her own. She looked like a walking origami paper sculpture in a black and white laser cut dress at the American Music Awards, while her penchant for exaggerated sleeves and shoulders was fully realized in a Viktor & Rolf tuxedo she wore earlier in the year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute Ball.

The Costume Institute Ball was the site of other creative couture, like Madonna, who proved that age isn’t an obstacle to wearing over-the-knee boots or floppy bunny ears, as long as they’re designed by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton.

Other stars used footwear to make a statement. 2009 was the year of the skyscraper heel, which Shakira boldly embraced at the American Music Awards in November, donning crystal encrusted sandals with towering wooden platforms.

Then again, not every event-goer braved the carpet with how-do-they-wear-those heels on their feet. Funny woman Sarah Silverman paired her evening gown at the 2009 VH1 Critic’s Choice Awards with a pair of classic Converse Chuck Taylors, using her feet as a punchline. Actress Kristen Stewart must have taken some style cues from rocker Joan Jett, the teen version of whom Stewart plays in the upcoming 2010 biopic “The Runaways,” when she wore her Converse high tops with a chic mini-dress to the 2009 MTV Movie Awards.

Whether the audacious red carpet moments of 2009 were more question marks than exclamation points, it was nonetheless fitting that so many stars pushed the fashion envelope in a year that saw Sacha Baron Cohen do his own shocking send up of fashion and celebrity in “Bruno.” As shocking as his character Bruno’s fashion choices might be, there were plenty of real-life fashion plates like Lady Gaga already one step ahead.

The first big-name orchestra and world-renowned conductor to grace Beijing in 2010 is the London Philharmonic Orchestra and its guest conductor, Christoph Eschenbach. Chinese fans of classical music are waiting with bated breath.

In January 2008, as the first Western orchestra to play at the newly open National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA), the London Philharmonic Orchestra gave an unforgettable concert. As for German conductor Eschenbach, he is loved as much for his outstanding musicality as for discovering Chinese keyboard star Lang Lang at the Ravinia Festival in the summer of 1999.

This time, the 69-year-old conductor has two programs for Beijing fans. Tonight, at the NCPA, it will be an all-Dvorak program, including Carnival Overture, Symphony No 8 in G major and Symphony No 9 in E minor.

“I love Dvorak very much. He is a genius of melodies and a typical Bohemian musician. His music features rich Bohemian passion,” the conductor told China Daily over telephone last week.

Tomorrow’s concert will offer Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture to Romeo and Juliet and Francesca de Rimini, Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite, and Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, to fit the holiday mood.

Like many classical maestros, Eschenbach learned the piano before he took up the baton. Now as a sought after conductor, he still plays the keyboard sometimes. Conducting and playing the piano, he says, are two very different things but finds it hard to say which he enjoys more.

“A piano soloist focuses on his own playing while a conductor must listen to all the parts of the orchestra and help them to cooperate well,” Eschenbach says. “To the audience, of course, piano recital and a symphonic concert are also two very different experiences. So after achieving something on the piano, I would like to interpret my understanding of music through an orchestra and deliver it to the audience.”

In 1999, when Eschenbach was artistic director of the Ravinia Festival in the US, he met Lang Lang for the first time in a dramatic way. The meeting was intended to be an audition of no more than 20 minutes, but it turned into a recital, leaving Eschenbach to remark in wonder. “I was fascinated by his talent and still am. He is a complete musician, not only technically gifted, but above all, immensely musical.”

Two days later, Lang Lang took the place of the sick pianist Andre Watts to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the festival. His triumphant performance wowed the orchestra and the audience, and made him a star overnight.

“I am always willing to discover and help young talents. It’s my responsibility I think. Lang Lang actually was not the first and will not be the last, either,” says the maestro.

“Nowadays, there are many players with super technique but not many have real gift and natural instinct of music. I know more and more Chinese musical talents are emerging and they are the hope of the new century.”

Vietnam will hold the first golden cashew festival on March 20-23 in the southern Binh Phuoc province which is home to Vietnamese cashew, according to an official website report on Monday.

The festival will create a chance to highlight trade promotion for the country’s cashew industry and share experiences in applying science and technology in cashew cultivation.

The festival will include art and music performance, competition and trade fairs.

In 2009, Vietnam exported 177,000 tons of cashew, earning 849 million U.S. dollars, up 7.2 percent year-on-year in volume, down 6.8 percent year-on-year in value, according to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam.

In 2010, Vietnam’s cashew sector targets to join the country’s “one billion export items club” with export volume between 170,000and 180,000 tons.