Reese Witherspoon, photographed by Tesh for Marie Claire US October 2011, styling by Alison Edmond

Today Reese Witherspoon is a Smart Sensuality woman in action — although she still reads a little bit wobbly. Her feature in this month’s Marie Claire is a good example of the Smart Sensuality intersection of style, sensuality and heart.

Witherspoon, Avon’s Global Ambassador, opens the interview in Moscow, where 4,000 Russian Avon ladies have converged to meet her. Some have boarded a plane for the first time to help celebrate Avon’s 125th anniversary and to talk about women’s issues.

Talking about issues — rather than running from them — is the hallmark of a Smart Sensuality brand and the woman (or man).

An hour later, standing onstage, she explains why it’s important to speak up about domestic violence. Russia has no laws against the crime, and Avon is backing a campaign to change that. Witherspoon mentions a new national hotline, then wraps up with an energetic, “Thanks so much for having me!” The Russian women stand and clap, their hands high above their heads.

Reflecting on her private life — in the partial interview that will be on newsstands Sept. 20 — the actor who made $28 million last year, admitted her anxieties on topics from speaking in public, to travel, to her failure as a divorced woman, and a concern that no man would want to marry her with two children.

Remarried to Hollywood agent Jim Toth, the 35-year-old Witherspoon runs her own production company, Type A Films which she launched with Debra Siegel; owns a ranch north of Los Angeles with chickens, goats and donkeys; and calls herself ‘very blessed’.

Miuccia Prada in 1998 and Else Schiaparelli in 1934, via FashionEtc.com

Can New York’s Metropolitan Museum Costume Exhibit possibly top the success of their recently-closed Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibit in 2012? The McQueen show was seen by 661,509 visitors.

It will be ladies night at next year’s Met gala, with the Costume Exhibit’s Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton turning their attention to two highly-influential women in the fashion world: Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli.

Elsa Schiaparelli

Elsa Schiaparelli’s house closed in 1954 over her inability to adapt to post WWII fashion, unlike her great rival Coco Chanel. Schiaparelli’s surrealism-influenced designs included collaborations with Salvador Dali and other surrealist artists, including Jean Cocteau.

The idiosyncratic Schiaparelli was born into an Italian family of wealth and nobility. Believing that privilege stifled her creativity, Schiaparelli moved first to New York City and then Paris to pursue her love of art and career as a surrealist couturier.

As a young woman Elsa Schiaparelli studied philosophy at the University of Rome, where she published a book of sensual poems that shocked her family. The unconventional young woman then went on a hunger strike to protest being sent to a nunnery.

Miuccia Prada