Gwen Stefani Tries To Pass Off Michael Angel Dress As Her Own Design

Gwen Stefani claimed this Michael Angel dress was her own L.A.M.B. design. Not so, says Michael Angel! The dress in question, which the star wore to an AIDS gala in Cannes, was auctioned off for charity. It was billed as “a creation of her own, by L.A.M.B.” Stefani herself said, “When choosing [a dress for the gala], we just said, ‘Let’s make one.'” Designer Michael Angel was credited as a “stylist.” But Angel says that the black dress was not by Stefani or L.A.M.B., it was a custom design he did for Stefani. Angel even pointed out that the black lace on the gown’s neck was the same fabric he used in a 2010 collection. [The Cut]

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Karl Lagerfeld, Lady Gaga, Victoria Beckham, and Alber Elbaz are among the people who have designed t-shirts to raise money for the Red Cross‘s earthquake relief efforts in Japan. The shirts will be sold through Uniqlo. [Vogue UK]

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• The hair extensions for Queen Latifah‘s Queen line for HSN will be made of real human hair — and though they aren’t priced yet, they will be expensive. [Racked]
• This may shock you, but a swimsuit model says that she felt “ugly” during her adolescence. Candace Swanepoel: “For a very long time I was really, really skinny — I was like that for most of my life. And it wasn’t until I was 17 that I started getting curves… I had braces, the whole lot. I was an ugly swan before.” [Fox411]
• Tyra Banks says after the success of her “short” season cycle, her “high fashion” season cycle, and her upcoming “all-stars” season cycle, there will be no more “normal” seasons cycles of America’s Next Top Model. There were “normal” seasons? [ONTD]
• Elle fashion editor Joe Zee‘s reality show, All On The Line, has been renewed for a second season. [WWD]
• Jacques Séguéla, the man who introduced Carla Bruni to Nicolas Sarkozy at a dinner party, says the couple is expecting a boy. [Telegraph]
• Here is Dree Hemingway‘s commercial for Justin Bieber‘s perfume. Just imagining all the Dree Hemingway-focused freaking out that must be going on all over the sector of the internet devoted to Bieberiana RIGHT NOW is making us tired. [YouTube]
• Listen up, Americans! Jessica Clarke is going to try and tell you about a secret game we play in the Commonwealth. It’s known as “netball.” (Yes, that’s one word, Women’s Wear Daily. Like basketball.) “I use [sic] to play Net ball, which I know you don’t have here. It’s basically like basketball except you can’t dribble the ball and there’s no backboard so you have to have pretty good aim. It’s the main sport in New Zealand for women. Before modeling, it was my focus. I played seven days a week.” [WWD]
• Here’s a little story about a lawsuit. Yves Saint Laurent designed some shoes last season. The shoes came in green, purple, blue, black, and red. The purple shoes had purple soles. The green shoes had green soles. And the red shoes, they had red soles. A designer named Christian Louboutin, who founded his shoe line in 1991 and has produced all his shoes with red soles since 1992, asked Yves Saint Laurent not to produce its shoes in the red-on-red colorway. Yves Saint Laurent refused. So Christian Louboutin sued Yves Saint Laurent for $1 million, saying that red soles are his signature design feature, that nobody had put red soles on high-end footwear before him, and that two luxury brands with red-soled shoes would hurt his business and confuse customers. Yves Saint Laurent‘s lawyers say today that Louboutin is wrong. “Red outsoles are a commonly used ornamental design feature in footwear, dating as far back as the red shoes worn by King Louis XIV in the 1600s and the ruby red shoes that carried Dorothy home in The Wizard of Oz. As an industry leader who has devoted his entire professional life to women’s footwear, Mr Louboutin either knew or should have known about some or all of the dozens of footwear models that rendered his sworn statement false.” [Vogue UK]
• Manolo Blahnik is not happy with the state of shoes today: “They look more like furniture.” [Fashionista]
• Cotton prices have fallen in India and Pakistan over the last four weeks. But the volatility of the price is still affecting the apparel supply chain. [WWD]
• Chloë Sevigny is holding a runway show for her Opening Ceremony line. It will be the first time Sevigny’s collection is presented on the runway, as opposed to at a static presentation. [Vogue UK]
• Heidi Klum‘s AOL site launched today. [Heidi Klum]
• Comme des Garçons still invited Women’s Wear Daily to the party they held for their new collaboration with Matt Groening, despite that hotly contested interview with Rei Kawakubo they ran in January. That’s nice. [WWD]
• Nicola Formichetti is opening a pop-up shop in New York City this September. [@nicolaformichetti]
• Three things that will allegedly make your swimsuit “last forever”: wash it immediately after use, consider paying more for a suit made of better-quality fabric, and consider buying a suit intended for, you know, actual swimming (as in the sport). Those tend to last longer. (It’s not on the list, but we would add: don’t buy a $1050 swimsuit with a care tag that reads “To get the best from your Hervé Léger beachwear we advise you do not wear it in water.“) [MSNBC]
• Profits at Giorgio Armani SpA rose 80% between 2009 and 2010. (2009, you may recall, presented certain challenges to luxury brands.) Armani made $212.5 million last year. [WWD]
• The average woman owns seven handbags. Sixteen percent of women agreed with the statement, “My handbag is a security blanket.” [SMH]