To some parents, he's the headmaster from hell. Matthew Munro is meeting fierce resistance as he introduces a strict new policy on uniforms and untidy hair at Breda Academy.

It's not surprising, the new principal wants change. Breda Academy is an amalgamation of Knockbreda High and Newtownbreda High, and both schools' academic results were poor.

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Coming in 188th of our 204 secondary schools, Knockbreda High was in the relegation zone. Only 28% of pupils secured five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths, according to recent figures.

Newtownbreda High was a little, but not a lot, better, coming in at 140th in the 204 school league table.

It looks like Mr Munro, an Englishman, was the outsider brought in to shake things up. He clearly wants improvement and his no-nonsense approach involves a strict dress code for his pupils.

Skirts must be worn to the knee, only unpatterned tights are allowed, and body piercing and heavy make-up are banned. Nails can be painted one colour only. Hair may be dyed but only natural colours - not blue, purple, plum or bleached white. And dip dyeing isn't allowed - there should only be two blended colours at a time.

Why these regulations are needed in the first place is beyond me. It sounds as if some pupils were dressing to go to a nightclub, not school.

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The new principal is asserting that students are there to learn, not to make fashion statements.

It's footwear and hairstyles which have caused the greatest outcry. Black leather shoes must be worn, not trainers, and coloured laces and high heels are banned. The minimum hair length is a number two razor.

This all sound perfectly reasonable to me. Mr Monro wants the school to be smart. His logic - that a lax dress code and an absence of regulations can encourage low standards in every area of school life - is understandable.

What's difficult to comprehend is why so many parents are furious. They're saying the headmaster has turned the school into "an army camp", but maybe discipline is exactly what was required.

Parents have taken to social media to protest. Launching a Facebook campaign against the new principal seems a rather juvenile way of dealing with any perceived problems.

But the big question is why those parents up in arms about Mr Monro's changes aren't equally incensed about the real outrage - both schools' previous poor academic performances.

It's fighting for better results, not hairstyles and hemlines, on which Breda Academy parents should focus.

In today's harsh economic climate, when even those with first-class qualifications struggle to find work, what chances have school-leavers with none?

Matthew Monro's 'crime', I suspect, is to have high hopes for his pupils: to believe they are capable of better results to improve their life chances.

The new principal isn't ushering in a return to Dickensian times where teachers on power trips sadistically humiliate children.

He knows Breda desperately needs tough love if it is to perform better academically and regain that all-important sense of pride. A weak, wishy-washy headmaster who just wanted to go with the flow and be friends with everybody would be disastrous for this school.

It seems that it's the parents, not the pupils, finding Mr Monro's new rules most difficult. Children adapt quickly but adults often resist been taken out of their comfort zone.

Remember the backlash when TV chef Jamie Oliver had school dinners in Britain revamped and some parents gathered outside to pass junk food to their children so they wouldn't have to eat healthy meals.

Let's hope the mums and dads in Breda are more sensible than to engage in similar sabotage against Mr Monro's regime. They should give it a chance - for the sake of their children.

Paris. New York. Melbourne?

You betcha. 

Expensive and elegant Australian-made couture was rolled out in superb style during the Melbourne Fashion Week opening gala on Tuesday evening and it was enough to make a fashionista weep with pride. 

In the charming old-world surrounds of Town Hall, model ambassador Ashley Hart, dressed in floor length white lace Thurley, joined designers, VIPs, media and the fashion forward to celebrate the first day of spring with a captivating showcase of high-end, ultra extravagant couture.

Creative producer and Melbourne fashion identity Valentina once again delivered a dramatic and visually stunning show - models glided down the LED lit runway while opera singers Christina Russo and Emma Muir-Smith and contemporary electronic cellist Benjamin Skepper performed live.

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We have selected the top six looks of the evening.

Enjoy. 

Craig Braybrook Couture with jewelled head dress by premier artist Jeanette Maree. The Melbourne based wedding guitarist opened the show with next-level designs in luxe-gold threads, red and black brocade and flowing silks. Simply stunning. 

Again, Craig Braybrook Couture wowed with a "Wedded Wonderland" bridal ensemble. The black headdress lent the look an certain edge, adding a luxurious oriental twist to the showing. 

Sigh. As pretty as the cherry blossoms popping up over the city and more delicate than a soft breeze, Nevenka's collection was romantic, ephemeral and lust worthy. A series of pink and cream confections were off-set with quirky footwear, handmade pink and gold brogues. 

Designer Jason Grech combined with milliner Richard Nylon to create the Gladiator Woman collection and the pair delivered in frightfully good fashion. Billowing black silk gowns, tough edgy headwear and fierce models pushed this collection near to the top of our all-time favourite lists. 

Aurelio Costarella once more showed he innately understands the female fashion psyche with a series of exquisitely tailored and structure evening gowns. The man does not disappoint. Ever. 

Akira. One word, one man, so many ways to describe his brilliance. The Japanese born designer channelled the ethereal beauty of Kyoto's famed spring blossoms throughout this collection, each look styled with bunches of fresh blooms. Models adorned the runway like so many unfurling flowers. A genuinely theatrical performance and a stellar way to close the show. 

POKE ME: New York Fashion Week attendees are readying for the event by piling on the armor. According to East Village-based piercing artist and jewelry designer J. Colby Smith, the fashion industry is preparing themselves with piercings. Smith — whose work at New York Adorned has earned him more than 13,000 Instagram followers and loyal fashion-inclined fans including Sky Ferreira and Emily Weiss — says that he experiences a 40 percent spike in business prior to the shows. Smith said that fashion week is his busiest time of the year, even more so than the holiday season. He likened his visits to “getting a haircut or getting your nails done, it makes you feel special.”

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Last week, Smith posted to Instagram: “Attention New York Fashion Week-ers, if you would like work done, plan ahead as time is booking up fast.”

Speaking to WWD, Smith says that he typically books between 30 and 40 appointments per day, three to four days per week,  but during fashion week he extends his hours to 10 days of straight bookings — seeing everyone from editors and designers to makeup artists. The appointments, which book up fast, leave many fashion professionals clamoring for favors via text message, drop-ins and incessant phone calls, he said.

On average, each of Smith’s patrons spend between $200 and $1,000 — amounting to more than $200,000 in pre-fashion week piercings alone.

Said Smith: “I have to take a big breath before [fashion week] because I know it’s coming and I can feel the energy changing —‚ I know it’s about to hit like a waiter before a 5 p.m. shift.”

Though it is a tenet of contemporary pop culture that fashion is a crucial component of pretty much every awards show under the sun, the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday proved an exception to the rule.

There were lots of memorable moments, from Taylor Swift and her cool girl entourage (high school, we can’t escape you) to Kanye West’s 2020 presidential declaration, Justin Bieber’s emotional comeback and Nicki Minaj’s calling out of Miley Cyrus, the host. But fashion — which is to say runway-ready garments with some level of carefully calibrated aesthetic ambition — didn’t provide any of them. The designer Jeremy Scott may have been the creative director of the evening, but the emphasis was on costume, and clothes.

And of costume, which is to say, exaggerated garments donned to make a statement over Instagram, there was plenty, much of it courtesy of Ms. Cyrus, who changed outfits a mind-boggling eight or more times (I lost count), and whose guiding sartorial principle seemed to be X-rated Betty Boop-meets-Barbarella.

Indeed, the recent movement toward being naked-while-clothed, begun by Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez at the Met Gala, was the single biggest trend of the night among the female attendees — whether it was Ms. Minaj in her sheer gold mermaid gown with strategically placed beading by La Bourgeoisie, or Britney Spears in her cut-out metallic gold ultramini, or Chrissy Teigen in her sheer black Marchesa with strategically placed ruffles, or FKA twigs in her sheer corseted Atelier Versace with strategically worn undergarments. (You get the idea.)

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If Barely There Black Tie was the unofficial dress code for women, Barely Bothered was the dress code for men, including Mr. West in baggy T-shirt and matching sweats, Big Sean in shredded denim jacket and Pharrell Williams in more denim. The exception was Nick Jonas, head to toe in brown Versace leather.

It was all so extreme, one way or another, that when someone showed up in actual Vogue-like fashion, they looked … well, dull by comparison.

Karlie Kloss in long sleeveless tangerine Louis Vuitton? Nice, but easy to overlook (and Ms. Kloss is normally anything but easy to overlook). Emily Ratajkowski in gyspy-esque Altuzarra? Quietly elegant. Emphasis on the quiet. Hailee Steinfeld in a white Stella McCartney jumpsuit? Vanessa Hudgens in flowing floral hippie-deluxe Naeem Khan? Lovely — for the Golden Globes. Even Cara Delevingne in a star-spangled Saint Laurent mini seemed practically sedate in this context.

The brand names that stuck out did so because their looks were way off their signature style zone: Vera Wang, for example, who made Rita Ora’s lavishly feathered black skirt and peekaboo top, which transformed Ms. Ora into nothing so much as a provocative ostrich, and Atelier Versace, which created three looks for Ms. Cyrus.

To be specific: the jeweled apron-and-silver-strap — you couldn’t really call it a dress; body accessory, maybe? — that Ms. Cyrus wore on the red carpet; the Pepto-Bismol pink lamé pants and matching pasties; and the white cut-away milkmaid-in-space mini-dress that she wore during the broadcast.

They were very Miley, but also totally unlike anything I have seen in a recent Versace collection. In fact, I’d never have guessed the designer if I hadn’t received an email from its office claiming credit.

Which makes me wonder, cui bono?

The numbers are compelling: an estimated 20 million men were active members of affair-seeking site Ashley Madison. I crunched the numbers (see bottom of post for details), and estimate that about one in six married men in the United States were on the site. You know six married men. I know at least six married men. At least one in six of them was on Ashley Madison. Of course, there are a zillion other ways to find sex or romantic companionship with someone who is not your wife. I don’t need to spell them out, because you are an adult, and you live in the real world where everyone knows that people cheat, all the time. And yet, when we hear figures like half of men cheat, or 15 percent of married women cheat, as New York Times bestselling therapist M. Gary Neuman told me for this article about Ashley Madison and the impending divorce boom, we all exhibit shock and awe and skepticism at these very high numbers.

We can mark that all up to quaint American Puritanism (which has always barely veiled our very naughty ways), but there is real financial fallout from women choosing to ignore the facts about how fragile their marriages really are. Despite the fact that divorce rates have remained relatively steady at about 50 percent for decades, women continuously fail to safeguard the financial futures (and therefore that of their children, since the two are statistically intertwined) by abandoning their careers, failing to maintain financial autonomy, and banking on lifetime alimony.

As devastating as infidelity is to the individuals involved, and nearly always ends the marriage, and according to Neuman, the sheer vastness of the Ashley Madison hack should be a powerful wake-up call for women who tell themselves that their marriage is fail-proof, and they don’t have to take responsibility for their own financial wellbeing . They’re wrong. Here’s how to turn that around:

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Never, ever abandon your career. Sure, you might want to scale back or slow down when you have your kids. But technology and the nature of the economy means it is more critical than ever to maintain your hard-earned skills, network and certifications. Plus, when you put 100% of your entire family’s financial eggs in their husband’s basket, you increase risk of financial woes two-fold. Critical to note: couples that depend on a single income are twice as likely to divorce, according to one study, and couples in which both partners are happy at work are more likely to be happy in their marriages. Further, opting out of the workforce puts you at very high financial risk in the very likely chance that you do divorce. Cheating and divorce are extremely likely. You buy life insurance in the teeny tiny likelihood that you should die before you kids graduate college. What are you doing to safeguard your financial future in the very real chance your husband will cheat, or you will otherwise find reason to want out of the marriage?

Never assume alimony will support you in the event of divorce. Increasingly, judges limit alimony payments in term of time and amounts paid, and expect women to work for their livelihoods, as I wrote about here. Remember: more and more judges are women — women who worked while their kids were growing up and have little sympathy for women who expect men to support them indefinitely. Plus, if your husband looses his job or becomes disabled, no more alimony. Sorry.

Be actively involved in the family finances. One financial planner specializing in divorce told me: “It amazes me how often women have no idea what is going on with the family accounts.” You should have bank and investment accounts in your own name, and together with your husband keep a close eye on household finances. That way you know if hundreds of dollars (or more) each month are flying out the window on clandestine dinners, hotels and dating sites via secrete credit cards, or joint accounts you choose to ignore. Plus, in the event of a split, you will be in a better position to support yourself and your kids while the finances are sorted out, and have a lower chance of your ex blowing through joint funds or ruining your credit.