Katie Holmes Dreams Of Mood Lipstick. Seriously.

Katie Holmes and stylist Jeanne Yang hit up Barneys yesterday to promote their incredibly expensive clothing line, Holmes & Yang. (A $325 camisole is the cheapest item.) They say they are working on some kind of a perfume, which would be, says Holmes, “temperature-triggered.” Then Holmes mused about creating a lipstick that could change color based on the wearer’s mood. “That would be funny,” she said. And if everyone knew purple was code for a bad mood, well, “it would be a nice warning when you walk into the room.” Yes, but what color would signify, “Send help, Scientologist husband”? [WWD]

• Jessica White rejected a plea deal that would have seen her sentenced to two days community service and two days of anger-management counseling. White, whom you may recognize from her frequent appearances in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and on the Victoria’s Secret runway, was arrested and accused of assaulting a woman outside a Manhattan nightclub last November. She and her lawyer think they can beat the charges, so the trial date has been set for May 17. “She’s a nasty, angry person,” White’s lawyer said of the alleged victim. “Video shows she was running after my client from behind. She recognized she was Jessica White, and was shouting, ‘You’re a celebrity. I’m going to take you down.’” This should be interesting. [NYPost]
• Finally, someone in fashion with a discernible moral compass! And one whose arrow swings quickly away from people who say things like, “I love Hitler, people like you would all be dead.” Tell us what you think of John Galliano, Isaac Mizrahi: “It can’t be tolerated. I guess I’m the wrong one to talk to, because I never really liked sort of what he did so much. I liked better what McQueen did. I liked better what Vivienne Westwood did. So now I don’t like it, and he’s a Jew hater? I was like, buh-bye.” And why is it so dangerous for what Galliano said to be tolerated within the industry? “I don’t really think about him. But they do, they think about him a lot, the fashion cognoscenti — they think of him a lot. And so it’s a dangerous situation…I don’t think he’ll work again. I hope not. I hope he doesn’t work again.” [The Cut]
• Chicken pot pie is “Anna Wintour’s favorite dish,” says her private chef and caterer. “Because it’s quick to serve and moves things right along.” Ah, so it’s her “favorite” to serve. Not to consume. It’s fashion. Got it. [NYTimes]
• British Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman took to Twitter yesterday to answer reader questions and share such wisdom as “Fashion and style are different – one constantly changes and the other is more of a lasting notion.” And to tell blatant, bald-faced lies like “Most people with jobs at Vogue didn’t know someone but they did work hard to get the job.” And to admit that people basically don’t listen to her: “Many designers replied to my size0 letter but sample sizes are still ridiculously small.” [@vogue_london]
• Gap is pushing its 1969 denim sub-brand — hard. [WWD]
• Uniqlo and its founder, Tadashi Yanai, are donating some $17 million to the Japanese earthquake appeal. In addition, Uniqlo is giving $8.6 million worth of clothing to earthquake survivors directly. [Time]
• Naomi Campbell is opening a pop-up store at Westfield Mall in London that will sell clothing, including some she has worn, to benefit the Prince’s Trust charity. [Telegraph]
• At a recent London shoot, a stylist asked Lara Stone if she had breast implants: “I was being tied up with rope for a fashion story. Apparently if my boobs were fake they might have exploded under the pressure.” [Models.com]
• Liya Kebede stars in the adaptation of Somali model Waris Dirie‘s excellent memoir Desert Flower. The thing that you should know about this film right off the bat is that it features a scene in which Kebede‘s character undergoes a particularly horrific form of FGM. Dirie is an anti-FGM activist, her book (and the several, more investigative and less personal, follow-ups she has written on the topic) deals extensively with the social, cultural, and religious dimensions of FGM, as well as its terrible impacts on women’s health. And so you spend virtually the whole length of this overall light-hearted slip of a movie about a Somali refugee who gets discovered by a fashion photographer dreading that flashback to that scene. (At the screening I attended, about a half-dozen people walked out. Some were quite upset.) “It’s a wonderful story about being a girl, overcoming things,” says Kebede, a sentence which has to be in the running for Understatement Of The Year. Kebede also soft-pedals the political overtones of the film’s subject matter, rejecting the idea that the movie could be seen as in any way “feminist.” “It shows a lot about the courage of an individual,” she says. “I mean, yes, it’s about a girl, but really, it’s about anyone.” That’s sort of the problem with this adaptation of Desert Flower in a nutshell: some important and even interesting ideas are raised, but the main players — including director Sherry Horman, who can’t seem to make up her mind whether this should be the kind of movie that has montages set to pop music where the main character wears a lot of different outfits, or the kind of movie that has a minutes-long scene where a four-year-old gets held down, screaming, while an old lady cuts off her clitoris and labia minora with a rusty razor blade and stitches up her labia majora with thorns, and is then left bleeding profusely and screaming in the desert — don’t seem inclined (or even able) to rise to them. [The Cut]
• The founders of Lucky Brand have apparently launched a new project: a line called Civilianaire. [WWD]
• Emmanuelle Alt says that the next issue of Vogue Paris includes an haute couture shoot with Kate Moss, by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. [Telegraph]
• Fredericks of Hollywood has signed a deal with an Abu Dhabi-based company to open at least ten new stores in six Middle Eastern countries. [WWD]
• Gareth Pugh says it took him “four or five seasons” worth of showing his collections before he made any sales to stores. “There was a point a couple of years ago, right before a show, when I barely had enough money to get my team over to Paris. But I think it’s like Alcoholics Anonymous: Take every day as it comes.” [Vice]
• The C.E.O. of J.C. Penney made $13.1 million last year. How ’bout you? [WWD]
• Vena Cava relaunched its website. Surf on over — the water’s fine. [Official Site]
• United Colors of Benetton‘s 2010 profits fell by 16% from 2009. Last year, the company made $134.6 million. The year before, it had made $169.6 million. [WWD]
• Wow. Details magazine used to be awesome. [Racked]
• The nation of Lithuania has formulated a national scent. The perfume is being distributed to Lithuanian soldiers serving overseas, and to foreign ambassadors in the capital, Vilnius. It’s also for sale at the country’s airports. Notes include bergamot, wild flower bouquet, raspberry, red berries, lily of the valley, lilac, rose, amber, and musk, and many of the ingredients are indigenous to Lithuania. [WWD]