Rachel Zoe Sees Her Fashion Line Sitting Beside Alexander Wang And DVF

• Rachel Zoe is seven months pregnant, and in possession of a brand-new fashion line. She has a new assistant, and gets followed around by a team of 20 for her Bravo show. Also, she’s having a boy. But the clothes:

The clothes are ’70s-inspired and very tailored, with a heavy reliance on capes and flared, shoe-eating pants. The line includes accessories and footwear, and it’ll retail for $250-$700. “I’m a Virgo and I’m more — I don’t want to say negative — but I’m the girl who thinks no one’s coming to my birthday party, no one’s buying my clothes, no one’s reading my book, no one’s watching my show — that’s just how I think,” says Zoe. “The same applies to this. I don’t want to let people down.” [WWD]

• Barneys‘ new C.E.O. Mark Lee has removed Simon Doonan from his position as the department store’s creative director. Replacing Doonan is former longtime W creative director Dennis Freedman. Doonan was given the B.S. new job title “Creative Ambassador At Large” to make it seem like he wasn’t being fired, like his friends Julie Gilhart and Judy Collinson, whom Lee canned just before the holidays. [NYPost]
• Racked ran Barneys‘ coldly worded press release: “No one will be speaking further on the record today, the release stands for itself.” Freedman will be taking over Doonan‘s most visible duties: Designing the Barneys window displays. Doonan still has his immensely entertaining Slate column, his books, and his memoir was adapted into a television series, so we’re sure he’ll be all right. But still. [Racked]
• When Tom Ford fell for Richard Buckley, he fell hard. The designer reports, “We did our Christmas shopping together one Saturday, and we spent almost every night together after our first few dates. It was probably a few days before we were saying things like, ‘I think I’m in love with you.’ Now, we say it to each other every night before we go to sleep, and we say it at the end of every telephone conversation, and we write it at the end of every e-mail. Every time you think, I love you, I really believe you have to say it. If you think about holding their hand or kissing them, you do it. I do it all the time.” Awww. That almost melts our cold little hearts. Ford also says: “[O]ften, I’m at dinner parties with very close friends, straight, and they realize that Richard and I have been together 24 years, and the response is often, ‘Wow, you guys have been together 24 years! That’s so amazing. I don’t think of gay men being together that long.’ And I’m, like, ‘Why? What are you talking about?’ Some of the longest relationships I know of are same-sex couples. A lot of my straight friends have married and divorced and married and divorced in the time Richard and I have been together. I think that preconception, from even very educated liberal friends, that being gay is possibly more sex-based than emotionally based, is surprising and shocking in today’s world. I’m someone who likes being part of a couple and always wanted that and always sought that, and it would probably be true for me whether I was gay or straight.” Click through for the meet cute, AIDS, cancer, shopping, etc. [Out]
• Lara Stone‘s second season as the exclusive face of Calvin Klein sees her wearing a white suit for the main line campaign. [Modelinia]
• And Freja Beha Erichsen continues her iron-fisted rule over fashion by booking Valentino. [Design Scene]
• Elizabeth Hurley has been criticized in England — and even drawn the attention of advertising standards regulators — for littering her Twitter account with laudatory references to Estée Lauder, without disclosing her financial relationship with the brand. Hurley says, via Twitter, “it’s hardly a secret” that she’s a paid face of the brand. [ContactMusic]
• Taylor Swift has a new CoverGirl ad out. [StyleList]
• 15-year-old Kendall Jenner and some hideous blue eyeshadow landed a modeling gig for some designer called Marc Clark. [Kim Kardashian]
• H&M is launching another designer collaboration — this time with the Swedish fashion blogger Elin Kling. Her collection is only available in Sweden. Bummer, cus some of it’s quite cute (especially that black leather jacket). Ten percent of the sales go to UNICEF. [Telegraph]
• Céline‘s spring campaign features Daria Werbowy in a variety of sporty outfits. In one shot, she holds an orange skateboard in front of her apparently nude torso. Werbowy, who loves snowboarding, is actually one of the supermodels we find slightly plausible when presented in a “sporty” guise. [TFS]
• Adrian Joffe, the president of Comme des Garçons, has accused Women’s Wear Daily of sensationalizing and “twisting” its recent interview with Rei Kawakubo. Joffe says, “We were rather upset if not shocked by the way they twisted the words of Rei and made it sound like she was dismissive of young designers in general. Everyone knows that Rei respects enormously all-young designers that work hard and believe in creation…She is in no way dismissive of young designers, as she only wants to encourage them to be strong and creative and follow their own vision.” Kawakubo had been quoted as saying that many young designers are too lax with themselves. “She was merely making the comment about a lot of young people in general these days, not just in fashion, as they hope and expect for success too quickly and are too impatient.” And as for WWD saying Kawakubo had submitted to a “rare” English interview, “Rei did at least ten or fifteen interviews in 2010 alone. We did five in Beijing just last week, even though WWD falsely called their particular one ‘rare.’ What nonsense!…She basically doesn’t trust journalists because they often twist what she says and turn it around to make their point. She has very often been deceived by journalists in this way. The scandal-mongering WWD article of last week is a case in point.” Joffe also says that WWD‘s photo of the designer was “completely unauthorized.” And the company is not for sale. “They made it sound that Comme des Garçons is for sale, which it totally isn’t. They called my 100% joke about waiting for an offer, a ‘half joke.'” [Hypebeast]
• There were rumors that Victoria Beckham would be showing her line in London this season. They are not true. She is showing, as she always has so far, in New York. [Vogue UK]
• Jil Sander-the-brand’s first diffusion line — unless you count Jil Sander-the-individual’s excellent +J line for Uniqlo — launches this season. Jil Sander Navy‘s first campaign features Valerija Kelava. [TFS]
• Now that Emmanuelle Alt has been officially named as Carine Roitfeld‘s successor at Vogue Paris, Alt has pledged to stop consulting on the side for what is known in the industry as “major skrill” for brands including Balmain and Isabel Marant. Most designers and photographers, understandably, fairly effervesce with praise for Alt. Not Karl Lagerfeld: “Her style is her big shoulders, long legs, tight jeans, sleeves up to the elbow, one hip out. I personally like her. She’s a handsome French woman. She has a style, but is it enough to make a whole magazine?” Lagerfeld nonetheless allowed that he would have to give Alt the chance to actually preside over an issue before passing final judgment. [WWD]
• The guy who designs Diane Von Furstenberg‘s prints says, “Diane is very particular about color. One time, she spilled beet juice and wiped it up with a paper towel. She brought in the dried-up towel and said, ‘This is the color that I want.’ It was as simple as that.” [WSJ]
• Joe’s Jeans has been ordered to pay $158,952 in back wages to 110 Los Angeles-area garment workers. Joe’s contractor failed to pay the employees required overtime and minimum wages. [WWD]
• Last week, the Irish Independent sifted a two-month-old Fashionista interview with editor Katie Grand for reporting — quite as though the idea that Grand might respect and admire Carine Roitfeld was some kind of new bombshell, and quite as though people didn’t actually read that quote two months earlier, on the Internet. Today, the New York Observer runs a story about the photographer Todd Selby‘s new-ish coffee-table book, headline “Let’s All Marvel At Karl Lagerfeld’s Chic and Well-Stocked Library!” Back in November, the Cut ran a post about Todd Selby‘s then-new coffee-table book, headline “Look At Karl Lagerfeld’s Enormous Library.” Same hed, same story, same newspeg, same angle, same frikkin’ picture. Has the Observer been in a coma for three months, or does it merely think its readers are? [NYObs]
• Sephora is putting out a Glee– branded collection of nail polish in February. [WWD]
• Picking up a bespoke suit in Singapore or Hong Kong is getting more expensive, due both to the rising costs of fabric (cotton and wool prices in particular) and the increasing affluence of those societies/fading glory of the U.S. dollar. The rag trade raises all boats, eventually, we suppose. [WSJ]
• Shoelaces by Marc Jacobs read: “Jacobs by Marc Jacobs for Marc by Marc Jacobs in Collaboration with Marc Jacobs for Marc by Marc Jacobs.” Next up: “Marc Jacobs by Marc Jacobs for Marc Jacobs Eats Itself.” [Racked]
• To celebrate fifteen years of its website, British Vogue is publishing the top-fifteen-noun lists of various famous fashion types — Kate Moss, Diane Von Furstenberg, Tom Ford, Amanda Harlech, etc. Our favorite so far is probably John Galliano‘s, self-promotional though it is. We’d never actually seen a photograph of his graduate collection until now. [Vogue UK]