• It's unclear exactly why Karl Lagerfeld presented Britney with a German Bambi award, but that affects the awesome not a whit! Quoth the Kaiser, "[You are] coming back not only as a phoenix, but as a bird of paradise." [New York]
• British fashion writer claims that "judging by the pictures of Madonna's recent outfits...she is in a very dark place indeed. " [Daily Mail]
• Please prevent moddle Kylie Bax from speaking. What is the supposed misconception about Australia she feels needs to be dispelled? “That the Aboriginals are cannibals...They are actually sweet, gentle people.” Glad to have it cleared up, because no one we know was confused about that. [WWD]
• Is anyone else inexplicably psyched for Vogue: The Movie? [WWD]

• American Apparel is a sensation in England; we predict a backlash in five...four...three... [Guardian]
• Dov says they want to become "the urban brand...to the world." [The Street]
• If you think it takes a real sleaze to make Dov look like a choir boy, then you're right! Enter Keith Fink, esq! [Hollywood Interrupted]
• Weirdly, the New York Abercrombie and Fitch has become a big tourist attraction. That's the one that (allegedly) has shirtless hunks as doormen. [NPR]
• Kat Von D on her new cosmetics line: "I never let people see me without makeup. And it's not an insecurity thing. The perk of being a girl is being able to wear makeup and dress up. It's another artistic outlet." [LA Times]
• Akon has, like, four clothing lines! [People]
• Are bespoke Savile Row suits being made on the cheap in Africa? [Independent]
• Why Diana loved her (super-80's!) "caring dress": "She happened to wear that dress when visiting a hospital, and children seemed to clamour round and like it. If you are like the Princess of Wales, who loved children, you don't want a strictly formal suit for a hospital visit. You pick a very informal dress with bright colours, which that dress was. The reaction is one of awe from young children." [Telegraph]
• Marc Jacobs and LV do an homage to Stephen Sprouse: “I proposed putting together a Vuitton version of the Pop Shop, which was Keith Haring’s concept…not reissuing products that we had done with Stephen, but doing things that were similar or new,” says Jacobs. [WWD]
• Wait, what? Hadley Freeman claims that leopard print is Christmas apropos! Is this a British thing? [Guardian]
• Claudia Schiffer, the Hollywood sign's "Y", for YSL. [WWD]
• Stella McCartney steals away Lanvin's business director. Will the faux fly? [Reuters]
• Is "the Bathing Ape" actually a global fashion icon? Rizzoli says yes! [Time]

• Suri Cruise's custom Roger Vivier flats: Cute, or creepy and decadent? "Bruno Frisoni, the creative director of the French luxury label and pal of Tom and Katie, made Suri her very own pair of iconic buckle flats (made famous by Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour)." Oh, and if you want your own toddler to look like a Parisian hooker? Sorry, they were a one-off. [People]
• Paris Hilton continues her career as political satirist with some advice for Sarah Palin: "You've got a hot bod; don't keep it to yourself...Why wear a pantsuit when you can wear a swimsuit? Welcome to the Lower 49, girlfriend." Or maybe that wasn't satire. [New York Post]
• Media reports that Gisele sends moola to her family in Brazil so now the fam are at risk for kidnapping. [Daily Express]
• That Van Cleef & Arpels suit against Heidi Klum's jewelry line has been dismissed. [Sassybella]

• Britney might be a surprise performer at this Diesel party in Brooklyn. Screw that! MIA will be there! [Fashionista]
• Coach's Reed Krakoff, who wrote a book about ultimate fighting, trotted out a bunch of (uncomfy) fighters to Barneys for the event. “I thought they’d just roll us in off a bus, and that we would have dinner with a bunch of suits,” said one. “I didn’t expect all this.” [WWD]
• If you don't mind imposing both puns and political endorsements on babies, you'll like this new line of Obama-wear. "Baby Needs a Change," anyone? [Utne]
• I'm guessing at this point most of us don't want to waste a mouse click on Lauren Conrad's holiday collection. [FabSugar]
• Gap and Abercrombie both down; middle-schoolers obviously hit by recession. [WSJ]
• In fact, Wal Mart's about the only one who's up. [WWD]
• Vanessa Paradis: "The red carpet is not something I really know how to work. It intimidates me. I feel very tiny...I don't have famous neighbours and if I did, I'd avoid them. I don't live the jet-set." Guess she prefers to hole up with Depp. [VogueUK]
• The blouse is back, baby. [ElleUK]
• Marc Jacobs “totally channeled" late artist Stephen Sprouse in his new collection. [Fabsugar]

• Sean Combs's new fragrance, "I Am King" will premiere as a Macy's exclusive in December. 'I Am King is a statement about all men,” said Combs, during an interview at his Bad Boy Entertainment offices in Manhattan. “We are all descendents of royalty — and if we carry ourselves and respect ourselves in that manner and believe in ourselves, then we are all kings." The new fragrance, he says, is "more about sophistication. It’s strong and also sexy, with an elegance and simplicity to it.” [WWD]
• More on how design chief Patrick Robinson is trying to make The Gap cool. Can't they just...you know, carry better clothes? [Business Week]
• Lydia Hearst says she's not like Paris Hilton, ruins it by calling herself a "supermodel." "Don't ever compare New York media heiress Lydia Hearst to Paris Hilton. "Remember: I am a supermodel and have the award to prove it, and she is a celebrity. There's no comparison." [Page Six]

• Oy. Armchair activists Benetton bring their usual brand of asinine commentary to the Beijing Olympics. "Benetton on Friday took out double-page advertising spreads in a number of leading news dailies worldwide, showing a Tibetan monk and a Chinese soldier praying face to face under the word 'Victims.'" They also show pictures of Sichuan earthquake victims (Benetton supports the Red Cross) and explain that their work “attempts to make a small contribution to dialogue and engagement between Tibetan and Chinese people." [WWD]
• Judge awards LVMH huge payout from Canadian counterfeiters. [WWD]
• Bollywood spawn makes like Hollywood spawn, launches clothing line. Riddhima Kapoor, daughter of well known Bollywood actors Neetu and Rishi Kapoor, has names her line"ARA"."My collection makes a girl look hot. It is sensual but, at the same time, it's not at all vulgar. You just have to be yourself in these clothes," [Hindustan Times]
• Philllips de Pury & Co are hosting an auction of "hip hop's crown jewels" including bling "sported by 50 Cent, Biz Markie, MC Lyte, Kanye West and the late Notorious B.I.G and Tupac Shakur." [Fashion Week Daily"]
• The popular kids aren't shopping either! Along with Hot Topic, Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle sales are down. [Wall Street Journal]
• Designers Amy Molyneaux and Percy Parker are dressing phones. "BlackBerry smartphones are now an integral part of everyday life, so it's great to be given the opportunity to add some extra glamour to the way in which they can be carried," explain the design duo, who have taken inspiration from BlackBerry's magenta, silver and midnight blue colour palette."We've taken the stunning colours from the new summer range and really brought them to life through our pouch design. The combination pouch and handset will make even the most stylish fashionista stand out." [VogueUK]
• Andre 3000 has made it. Into The Sartorialist. [The Sartorialist]
• Polo profits up. I guess the rich are different! [WWD]
• And Ralph Lauren is sensitive about his age. [WWD]
• The same people who let all those fashionistas DJ are now letting them make films. "The aim of the project is to give stars of the fashion world the opportunity to show off their clothes and the spirit of their label in any way they see fit. Among the line-up of participants are Pierre Hardy, Peter Jensen, Todd Lynn and Rodarte. Each designer has produced a film between 30 seconds and three minutes long - and judging from the stills that we've seen each promises to be quite a spectacle." [ElleUK]
• Reebok is teaming up with toy co. Hasbro to launch a Monopoly sneaker. I want the thimble. [Fashionista]

1. Television News Anchor. Okay, so this is obvious, but topical, because surely you've found yourself in recent weeks thinking, "What would Tim Russert's female equivalent look like?" And is there a single woman of prominence who looks anything remotely like her? No.
2. Pharmaceutical sales representative. (Or really, most jobs ending in "representative" now that our call centers have all been relocated in India.) Commonly recruited from college cheerleading teams, the practice of hiring hot drug reps probably originated around the time Big Pharma realized it could sell a lot of mood-enhancing pills to people who didn't need them if they took doctors out to dinner here and there. There's been some cutbacks in this industry since the major pharmaceutical companies got so focused on building their sales forces they forgot to develop any new drugs, but I bet being a babe doesn't hurt.
3. Any kind of "Director" that is not "Managing" This is obviously a gross generalization but my sense is that, from publishing to fashion to design to advertising to basically any sector besides film or traffic, "directing" is one of those things that can be done by people with minimal actual skill and therefore they probably got hired because their boss liked looking at them. I'm pretty sure "director" was a popular title at American Apparel, though in that case I might amend that last sentence to just finish reading "naked."
4. Intern When did all female magazine interns start looking like they'd been cast for a reality show? Seriously, when?
5. Italian cabinet member. In a scene in the latest British Esquire, Silvio Berlusconi is giving a town hall meeting and a woman rises from the audience to ask a question about the economy and her career prospects. "Don't worry," he tells her. "I'm sure a woman as beautiful as you can easily find a rich man to settle down with." But wait, it's not so bleak as all that! If she's really so insistent on working, I'm sure there's a spot for her in his cabinet.

Money Honeys [W Magazine]

See, Stuart Miller made all his employees sign up for that Landmark Forum thing.
The Landmark Forum was the invention of a used-car salesman named Jack Rosenberg who changed his name to Werner Erhard after reading a story on some prominent German dudes in Esquire and got all sorts of self-absorbed seventies philosophical narcissists to sign up for his classes before fleeing to the Caymans in the wake of a 60 Minutes expose, after which he left the Landmark "brand" to his older brother for a rumored $1 but an actual multimillion dollar sum. The Forum all but locks people in rooms and uses a time-honored cult regimen of weird jargon, relentless repetition and food deprivation to get them to spill their innermost secrets/fears/insecurities and and shake off their "victim mentalities" but paradoxically convinces everyone who calls it a cult that the Forum is a huge misunderstood victim of societal prejudice and hate.

46. Accounts of EST seminars describe seemingly religious experiences. For example, a former participant described portions of the course as "filled with moans, sobs, whimpers, and cries…an earsplitting scream…writhing and flailing in the air." Plaintiff Glasgow witnessed very similar reactions when he was forced to attend Landmark sessions.

53. When Plaintiff Glasgow expressed this uneasiness, Defendant Miller's only response was that Landmark is "very much the language of the company"

And bondage was the "bondage" of the company!

and that "all of the company's executives, owners, and board members have benefited from taking multiple landmark seminars."

Upon accepting the promotion to the position of Director of Marketing, he even asked Defendant Miller if he could discontinue the Landmark sessions.At such time, Defendant Miller told him specifically that the Landmark seminars were mandatory for company executives and was all part of being a "team player."

But back to the sex. Basically, Scott Glasgow agreed to sleep in Stuart Miller's bed on business trips if he didn't try anything, but then woke up in the middle of the night to find him caressing his head, which was weird, and he moved to the couch. Then Stuart made him dress in drag for a video presentation that subsequently got aired to clients and held an employee retreat where he showed him his ass during a "team building" exercise. There was a bunch of other creepy stuff and finally Glasgow asked to get his own bed on business trips and Miller accused him of being an "anger addict" and told him that he "and everyone else in the company were afraid to work with him." The lawsuit, for your pleasure, is here (click on any image to enlarge):

So what can we learn from this, besides that growing up gay in a family of Fundamentalist Christians fucks you up? I think that American business, from American Apparel and Abercrombie & Fitch to the massive hedge fund that trader sued for allegations that his boss forced him to take estrogen, is dominated by hucksters and frauds who are very good at selling things that, as Vanessa Grigoriadis said of the Forum itself, essentially "come down to the Nike slogan — 'Just Do It,'" or in the words of one Forum teacher, "LIFE IS EMPTY AND MEANINGLESS, AND IT'S EMPTY AND MEANINGLESS THAT IT'S EMPTY AND MEANINGLESS," which is to say, if you repeat something stupid enough times you can probably make a lot of money selling things as mundane as T-shirts and sperm, and your employees, so confused and cash-hungry from years of being barraged with pointless marketing messages, will probably go along with it.

But Glasgow could have made the whole thing up to settle a score with his ex-boyfriend. In which case he is even more awesome.

Suit Against Sperm Bank Firm Claims Sexual Harassment And Cult-Like Behavior [Village Voice]

Stuart Miller — Prayer Warriors — The TRUE Story of a Gay Son, His Fundamentalist Christian Family, and their Battle For His Soul

Related: Pay Money, Be Happy [New York Magazine]

Trader Lawsuit Reveals Secret To $13 Billion Hedge Fund Riches

• Breaking news: a Telegraph profile today inspired me to finally watch the Agyness Deyn music video. It is generic and derivative and cynically targeted at the aging Britpop nostalgists who write blogs and I fucking love it. Oh man, and I don't even hate myself for this. Embedded after the jump. [Telegraph]
  
• Tinsley Mortimer's makeup may look light and natural but it is actually deceptively heavy and high-maintenance! One brave New York writer consumed three hours she will never get back in an effort to emulate the Tinz. And you wonder why they pay her the big bucks. [NY Mag]

• It's intern theme day at Rag Trade! Hockey player Sean Avery just started his internship at Vogue. WWD thinks it's kind of scandalous that he maybe gets to attend the couture shows with Andre Leon Talley. Fashionista thinks it's kind of scandalous that he's actually getting paid minimum wage when "almost every single other intern there not only doesn't get paid at all, but usually ends up actually paying to be there (as I, dear reader, did three times for Conde internships)." We can think of other things involving the minimum wage that scandalize us more, but why discuss the travails of ordinary Americans when...
• We found out the real reason Teen Vogue banned high school interns! A tipster tells us: "so last year, one of teen vogue's interns crashed the met ball in a dress she had borrowed without permission from the teen vogue fashion closet, and then [blogged] about all the celebrities she met and exactly what they said to her... and then Kimball Hastings lost his shit, obviously."
• We had high hopes that a recession would usher in a new era of fashion, but this is somewhat worrisome: retail sales are so dismal that H&M sales fell last quarter for the first time since the Clinton Administration. [WWD]
• And yet! Abercrombie & Fitch somehow continues to thrive. [WWD]
• Which can only be auspicious for the...Ugg clothing line! [FabSugar]

• Prestige magazine has the "world exclusive" of the new Agent Provocateur campaign starring Kate Moss. Note the black models featured also in the shoot! They are slightly less prominent, but no worse fed. [Prestige HK]
  
• And look her! The notoriously tight-lipped Kate Moss granted an actual interview to the Guardian! Does she have anything to say for herself? "After a long pause," the story reveals..."Not really." [Guardian]
  
• More "authenticity" from the trailers of the upcoming Sex & The City movie: It was like being in [NY department stores] Bergdorf Goodman and Saks combined. There was an overwhelming amount of branded product...The characters were defined via their wardrobes and the products they used: Carrie, for example, was a creative, fashion-obsessed writer type, so she used an Apple Mac because of its design value and wore all these crazy clothes.... [FT]
  
• "China is about brand, brand, brand." [NYT]
  
• India "is a fast growing economy and with consumption so robust and with incomes rising, it's a fertile ground for the print media." And all the crap Vogue and GQ would like to sell to them! [Reuters]

• Barney's "plans to grow helter-skelter in a bunch of countries." [WSJ]
• "There may be a global economic slowdown, but Valentino is stepping up the pace of its expansion." [WWD]
• Abercrombie & Fitch's flagship store in London grosses sales of $50 million. Holy fuck that is insane. [Fashion Week Daily]
• There's a new book out tracing Estee Lauder spokesmodels, from one who was "picked from more than a thousand faces on the grounds that she possessed 'that indefinable air known as class'" to Aerin Lauder herself. Who possesses a slightly more palpable sort of class. [Telegraph]
• Portfolio calculates "back of the envelope" that Chanel is worth between $10.3 billion and $14.8 billion. This is meaningful, to someone, not us. [Portfolio]

Abercrombie & Fitch
This probably won't shock you: Abercrombie & Fitch is torn between mindless apathy and pure evil. In the past six election cycles only one candidate has managed to crack a thousand in campaign contributions collected from Abercrombie employees' studiously frayed pockets, and that politician would be — you guessed it! — George W. Bush. The Skull & Bones candidate has raised $5,000 in racist classist Abercrombie dollars over the past few cycles, largely thanks to spokesman Tom Lennox. It is the only retailer whose employees have contributed to the Worst Presidency Ever.

Urban Outfitters
Urban Outfitters founder and CEO Dick Hayne is notorious for his support of that weird Pennsylvania senator who brought home his dead baby and became the first politician to become synonymous with butt sex. But the single largest recipient of Urban Outfitters campaign contributions has been Barack Obama, whose $7,400 collected from various executives — perhaps subliminally influenced by those clever T-shirts? — just tops the $7,100 of Dick's dollars that have lined the coffers of Rick Santorum.

J. Crew
J.Crew is your store if you are into uneasy family reunions! CEO Mickey Drexler has donated nearly a hundred grand to Democratic committees alone, while octogenarian founder Arthur Cinader likes lining the coffers of any fucking batshit Republican who bats an eyelash his away. Cinader has donated to Alan Keyes, Sam Brownback and Malcolm Forbes, but his fave is Phil Gramm, who has received $8,000 from him over the years.

Barney's
Barney's is the place to shop if you like avant-garde design and hate Hillary. Employees have donated thousands of dollars to New York politicians over the past few years — $1000 to Charlie Rangel, $4,000 to Chuck Schumer, $3,000 to Rudy — and a mere five Benjamins to Hills. (Though $250 did come from creative director Julie Gilhart, who is like the Karl Rove of fashion trends. Perhaps she likes pantsuits?)

Forever 21
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the store for your blue-collar budget is the biggest supporter of the Hillary Clinton campaign, clocking in at $11,500. Interestingly, two executives also donated a total of $4,000 to Rudy Giuliani's campaign and another $2,300 to Obama. Everyone knows variety = the spice of Forever 21!

• Europeans are always more progressive than Americans. Rumor is, Italian Vogue may be producing a cover featuring only black models. [Fashionista]
  
• Oh. My. God. High School Musical and Hannah Montana-inspired Crocs, soon available at a store near you. [Yahoo]
  
• Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola will be the next faces of Louis Vuitton's "core values" campaign (the very same campaign in which Keith Richards agreed to participate in exchange for a LV monogrammed guitar case.) What do you think the Coppolas get out of this? An LV director's chair? An LV vinyard? [WWD, 1st item]
  
• "Boyfriend" jackets are big for spring. But Peter Som says the ones he designed for Bill Blass are inspired by Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. [WSJ]

• Elle editor-in-chief Roberta Myers has decided not to assume the role of president of the American Society of Magazine Editors, most likely because she is too hell-bent on becoming a reality TV star. [WWD, 1st item]
• Rumer Willis, Kristin Cavallari, Christina Milian, Josie Maran, Pete Wentz, Corbin Bleu and Wilmer Valderrama have all apparently gotten desperate and all collectively facing Wal-Mart's Op line's latest ad campaign. [Just Jared]
• If you are dying to know what's in Kimora Lee Simmons' makeup bag, well, here's an itemized list. [Marie Claire]
• The rumors are true: Linda Evangelista will be the face of Prada's Fall 2008 ad campaign. [FabSugar]
• Tory Burch refers to her employees as her "family". [WWD, sub req'd]
• Kanye West-endorsed, Damien Hirst-designed t-shirts to benefit Bono's Product (RED)? Oh my. [Chic Report]
• Uber fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone likes chopping vegetables and washing dishes. [WSJ]
• Moby: Wants you to design a t-shirt for him. [USA Today]

MOE: Okay so I am depressed and I hope everyone dies. Especially the commenter who thought I was saying the artists that helped revive Philadelphia on an aesthetic level came from PENN.
MOE: FUCK ALL OF YOU.
MEGAN: Yeah, you should've seen the Obama party last night, it was on the river in a nice location and people didn't even stay to watch the concession but damn were the bartenders pouring with a strong hand,
MEGAN: Also, it was a pain to catch a cab back from.
MOE: And then my train was held over an hour in Trenton, so I not only missed watching the returns, I missed Jenna Bush at the 92nd Street Y. And that's when I got a call from an old friend at the Wall Street Journal, which is rapidly being dismantled by Rupert Murdoch.
MEGAN: Oh, God, Trenton blows.
MOE: The world knows.
MEGAN: Like, of the many things I celebrated about leaving the lobbying profession, the fact that I would never again have to be in Trenton was on the list.
MEGAN: Of course, now that I've said that, I'll get stuck going there some time. Fuck you, Trenton.
MOE: Yeah if you take the regional rail between Philly and New York at night you cannot avoid getting stuck at the train station.

MEGAN: Also, by the way, she raised $2.5 million last night.
MEGAN: Hopefully her next round of commercials will be less lame.
MOE: Okay, you know who gets a special "Fuck you"? The New York Times. I have plenty of dear friends who have taken longer to get disillusioned by Hillary (still waiting on Sinister!) but none of them work for the NYT op-ed page. Drudge is calling it an "un-endorsement" I guess. Ugh. Anyway, I'm annoyed. Because I knew this was going to happen, and I was truthfully worried about much worse margins, but the stupid media set expectations artificially high again, which they keep doing.
MEGAN: I fucking love this quote:

The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.

Perhaps the sheer fact of having to get out there day after day to meet Americans, has humanized her, and helped her learn how to relate to citizens from different demographic swathes than her own narrow one. She may have learned a thing or two from them along the way, about their deeper values. (Barak surely has learned nothing of that.)

MOE: Jenna and Barbara are getting fellated on Fox & Friends right now.
MEGAN: Oh, gross imagery. Thanks for helping my hangover with that.
MEGAN: Also, aren't you supposed to be allowed to vote on a provisional ballot? And Obama took Philly anyway, it's just he lost everywhere else.
MOE: Yeah, I was supposed to be, but I was going to try and figure out where my actual polling place was, near another house I used to live in, and then time ran out. I will state that the folks at my polling place were absolutely totally unhelpful, although very friendly in their unhelpfulness. They knew I was there to vote for my Marxist. Hey, now, I know this is sort of a change of subject, but on the "total obliteration" front does it seem like North Korea and Syria have more going for them mass destruction-wise than the Iraq ever did? Not that that's really saying much.
MOE: So, where was the Obama party last night? What did you do?
MEGAN: The Obama party was at some place I forget the name of, because I'm like that, but the address was 1 Boathouse Road, and it was very nice. The DJ was pretty awesome, but no one was dancing despite the fact that I guarantee you his crowd had way more rhythm than Hillary's, if the crowd I had to push through to get out of my hotel (where her party was) was any indication.

MEGAN: I went, I took pictures for Glamocracy and I drank.
MEGAN: And then I came back to the hotel and went to bed because yesterday was an exhaustingly bloggy day, between writing all the female voter profiles for them. I didn't even finish the glass of wine I had, and that's saying something.
MOE: And while you summon the ability to let me in on that, allow me to clarify my BlackBerry dispatch from yesterday — and to answer commenter B_boy who wondered what I need with a blackberry, the answer is I got sort of dependent on it after September 11 when I was working as a newspaper reporter, and I've never been able to give it up, and at this point it's kind of cheap anyway — but with regard to the artists. There is a real, humble, awesome politically-active, socially aware, iconoclastic, big-hearted, entrepreneurial idealistic group of artsy carpenter types who gentrified Philly for the better. A lot of them are from the area, some of them went to RISD and just needed a cheap place to live, but what you have to understand is that when you gentrify a city like Philadelphia you're not driving anyone away from their houses. The remaining residents do not resent you; quite the opposite. And they're fucking cool. It's hard to explain how it worked down there, but I was always amazed by the willingness of some of those kids to look at bona fide ruins and see the potential for a super functional community.
MOE: And zero percent of them came from Penn, thank you v. much. Although one of them, noted Mummer Sonja Trauss, is getting some sort of graduate degree in economics there now.
MEGAN: Yeah, my editor and I drove along the Baltimore Ave/Pike/Ave the whole way from Penn campus to Media, PA and saw a ton of that kind of respectful gentrification, as opposed to the DC kind where they kick everyone out, tear everything down and put up a condo tower with a Starbucks or a Cosi on the ground floor.
MOE: No one wants to build a fucking condo tower on Baltimore Avenue. I mean, on Baltimore — I used to live on 43rd and Baltimore — it's a little different. There wasn't the block after block of 2/3 bombed out rowhouses. Though there was an controversial crackhouse-cum-anarchist squat that was always an interesting point of controversy for the neighborhood. Like, did they like it more when crackheads ate from their dumpsters? Or the smelly dreadlocked white kids?
MOE: Oooooh, voter disenfranchisement from my friend and South Philadelphia homeowner Ryan Creed.
MOE: Ryantastic: well, it's not all that salacious.
Ryantastic: I voted green in 2000, and I found out I never reaffiliated last year when I went to vote for mayor
Ryantastic: I thought I changed it there
Ryantastic: but apparently it didn't go through
Ryantastic: This is the second damn time in a year that it's happened
MEGAN: Apparently, there's a brew pub now on 50th and Baltimore, so the edges of the gentrification is spreading outwards, according to one of our panelists.
MOE: This happened with a few people actually...they thought they changed their registration, and then they showed up and were told they didn't.
MEGAN: That sounds shady to me, but, then, so does street money and ward captains and shit.
MOE: Ah, the brew pubs. Incidentally, Philadelphia is where Yards beer is brewed, and Yards beer is the best beer in the universe, although I think they might have closed because doing business in Philadelphia is a pain in the ass if you aren't part of the machine. Also there's a near 5% wage tax and some sort of business privilege tax that keeps people away apparently. I dunno. It is an awesome place to live if you aren't the type of person who never looks at your ATM receipt.
MEGAN: I am, personally, physically incapable of not looking at my balance, it's part of an overall level of analness.
MOE: Dana Milbank was good today.
MEGAN: Also, I just have to ask, how exactly did Obama "play the race card" on Bill Clinton again? By pointing out the shit that Bill had already said?
MEGAN: I mean, unless Bill was part of their strategic planning, they couldn't've known-known that Bill would shove most of his right leg into his mouth and give them an opening, right?
MOE: So we have to discuss the nexus of my favorite two subjects, Barry Hussein and Abercrombie & Fitch, happening once again.
MEGAN: Dude, fucking everyone was talking about that shit last night.
MOE: We discussed this yesterday. He played the race card the same way Geraldine Ferrarro was the victim of racism; in his own deluded compartmentalizing triangulating victory-deranged mind.
MEGAN: Oh, right, sorry. I forgot, BUT STILL, why hasn't he shut up about it yet. Obama's all like, dude, I have no idea what he meant by that, I'm sorry.

MEGAN: Also, that's really poor advance work on Obama's staff's part, because don't they know they're supposed to have, like, white middle-aged people in the background to show their support for him? Which reminds me of the thing I'm still really mad I couldn't take pictures of: little old ladies for Obama. There was one on the median outside the hotel in a wheelchair, a little old white lady, with a sign that said "Obama Granny" waving and getting people to honk. Then, at the party last night, there was a little old African-American lady with a cane shaking her groove thing to Mary J and I had to give her a hug but that might've been the wine or the rum.
MEGAN: But on the 'crombie boys, one of them is kind of rocking the gay-face, and they don't look like they're from Indiana to me.
MOE: Well yeah, I wanted to punch them out. I was at a bar talking about the death of journalism, but apparently one of them was talking on his cell phone. I can't tell if it is more sick or absurd. Knowing what I know about Abercrombie, I am sort of torn. And following the biggest race-discrimination payout in...well I have no idea, but I imagine that Abercrombie now has diversity training and maybe those guys were moved by the race speech. I was always fascinated to find that the very employees who enforced Abercrombie's institutional racism were ...not unaware of it. They were sort of tormented by it I guess. Also gays are supposed to vote for Hillary. Yeah, the whole thing is really weird.
MEGAN: Actually, I don't understand the near-universal gay men's love of Hillary, unless it's some sort of diva worship? None of my gay friends who are Hillary fans can really explain it to me particularly well, but it annoys the crap out of my gay friends who support Obama.
MOE: It's totally diva worship. I mean, you know, I get it. I get people who like Hillary. I think she's great! In any other election I'd be so stoked to vote for her! You guys all know this! I'm just super impressed by Barry and I'm amazed how well he's done. And truly, does last night matter?

Under party rules, congressional districts that voted most heavily Democratic in recent general elections get more delegates to the party's national convention in Denver in August. In Pennsylvania, districts that went most heavily for Democrats in the 2004 presidential and 2006 gubernatorial races got the most seats.
All states use a similar formula, which dates to the 1970s and was intended to reward constituencies and voters most loyal to the party, said Democratic strategist Tad Devine. But the effect is most pronounced in states with large and concentrated African-American populations, which tend to be most loyal to the party.

In Texas, African-American votes for Sen. Obama in delegate-rich Houston and Dallas largely offset Hispanic votes for Sen. Clinton in the delegate-poor Rio Grande Valley. Sen. Clinton netted just four more delegates in the primary than Sen. Obama did, despite winning the popular vote by 101,000 votes and 3.5 percentage points.
Pennsylvania posed a similar opportunity. Philadelphia's 2nd Congressional District, where Sen. Obama long has had his strongest support, will send nine people to the national convention. Two nearby districts with similarly large African-American populations will send seven delegates each.

MEGAN: Hey, you know what's fucked up? One of our Glamocracy panelists said she'd definitely heard of Republicans switching to vote for Hillary to keep this going, the way Republicans voted for Hillary in Texas.
MOE: Yeah but Pennsylvanians don't listen to Rush the same way Texans do.
MEGAN: Thankfully.

The truth is that they are keeping me on because they know I am a "loose cannon" and will get myself fired for cause and that Dodai and Anna, being black, will have a fully reasonable case for a race discrimination suit, and they are pre-empting that potentiality with a generous severance package and, one imagines, seats on all Conde-sponsored "Our Hairstyles, Ourselves" panels forever and ever in perpetuity. And Dodai and I will laugh about it and go about our business because the universe is absurd that way. So I am going to make the case for them, since this is my last chance and their logins have been deleted from the system: America is not really a traditionally classist country but it is a traditionally "racist" country, and that racism masquerades as classism in the pages of all the Conde Nast magazines, where we don't see it as being so noxious because "classism" is not endemic here, it seems like some exotic foreign import a la Anna Wintour, and anyway, if you are not black you don't have to think about any of this stuff every day, because enough black people have confronted the obstacles that it feels like progress, and maybe, eventually, it will be.

Barack Obama is powerful and strong and visually charismatic enough to chip away at the likes of Vogue, and the imagery that forms the foundation of our consciousness will begin to salve the wounds to the national soul that has been forged by an economy that has overvalued the superficial for entirely too long. Economic realities beget cultural and societal ones. Slavery was just cheap labor, right? What's more American than cheap labor?

I began hating fashion when I covered retail at the Wall Street Journal and began learning about the hiring practices of Abercrombie & Fitch. Sometime in the early nineties Abercrombie had been recast — under the leadership of the Limited Brands and a bizarre Ralph Lauren clone named Mike Jeffries — as an "aspirational" brand appealing to middle-class mallgoing teenagers, and the centerpiece of this strategy was turning every kid who worked there into a "walking mannequin" for the brand. At first, this was organic; the hot frat boys they recruited found it easy to convince their lifeguard chick ex-girlfriends to come work too. But retail is a drag, and the company was growing quickly, so rules and procedures needed to be established. Every store was given a "target school" — a college university expected to supply some quota of students to the stores. Only Georgetown students could staff the Georgetown store, for instance; George Washington students were forced to take the Metro down to the less-coveted Pentagon City location, etc. etc. Management further isolated fraternities, sororities and sports teams at the schools for recruitment to work at the stores, and sent forth their most attractive and charming brand representatives to woo them in. The idea was that the stores would reflect some sort of idealized form of real life, and they did.

But as the chain continued to grow, exceptions needed to be made. Certain tony prep schools were targeted for recruitment. Exceptionally-attractive staffers were allowed work at the stores of their choosing. Local modeling agencies were sometimes tapped to staff the coveted positions at the front of each store. Target school quotas could be ignored so long as each store was hot enough.

But each store was never hot enough. District managers pressured by regional managers pressured by the constant pressure for increased profits assured to that. Weekly, they would monitor the stores, admonishing the manager for allowing Jeremy to work the register in last month's clothes, or letting Rick wear white shoes, or allowing Melanie to wear red lipstick when that wasn't "brand-positive," or ever hiring Melanie in the first place because, at 130 pounds she was horrifically obese. Uglies and fatties and people who didn't "get it" were cast out; new kids came in; the stores devolved into constant chaos and somewhere in the middle of the constant hire-purge-hire cycle a few too many minorities slipped in.

And that is when things really got nasty. Where the few token black people who had worked at Abercrombie in the nineties felt generally comfortable with the culture, blatant, stomach-churning racism gradually supplanted whatever the company's "culture" ever was supposed to be. In my investigation — and you must understand, as a 24-year-old reporter I took my "investigation" of Abercrombie & Fitch very seriously and interviewed literally hundreds of employees — a regional manager told me the VP of stores had referred to a Latina employee in a Texas store as "the maid," and his South Street Seaport store as "the Asian Invasion" and finally, a New Jersey store with an offensive quantity of black employees as "The Jungle."

Now, if I may offer you the chance to link this thing with that thing and chuckle at the irony, ha ha ha.

I got fired — well, resigned — before I could write that story for the Journal. It all happened because I emailed a copy of the draft to a "source," for fact-checking, and then he emailed it to someone else, and emailed it to someone else, and eventually it made its way into the hands of the Crisis Communications PR firm Abercrombie had hired to deal with all these race discrimination charges. That is a big no-no, chiefly because Wall Street Journal stories are considered tradeable information, which I wasn't really thinking about because I was too worried about getting my facts right and avoiding an unfair association with another sloppy young recently disgraced newspaper reporter named Jayson Blair, even though I, being white, was not an affirmative action hire like Jayson Blair, but anyway my career might have survived if not for the taint of Jayson Blair, but as it was the story never ran and I left newspaper journalism.

The coloreds eventually got some reparations from Abercrombie & Fitch, in the form of a $50 million cash settlement. I was disappointed. $50 million is a lot for a race-discrimination lawsuit, but Abercrombie makes a 20% operating on nearly three and a quarter billion dollars in annual sales, thanks to its still-potent cocktail of "aspirationalism" and sweatshop labor. I wanted "It's a jungle in there" on TV somehow. Talk to suburban high school students sometime; everyone knows someone who got fired from Abercrombie. From their dumbshit $6 an hour job at Abercrombie where they were required to spend the entirety of every paycheck on the latest outfits just to keep the job in the first place. It's the odd business story that could have captivated the nation's youth, you know? It's a business story that offered a pretty neat metaphor for the kind of Orwellian perils of allowing the American economy to become addicted to the satisfaction of manufactured desires and false, immediate wants. Of course, I can name about ninety other case studies that could do the same thing, at least one or two involving Conde Nast publications, but I don't work in journalism anymore, because I made a stupid slip of the keystroke and hit "send" on something without thinking, and come to think of it, I probably shouldn't be telling you this story since the terms of my resignation from the Journal were that I wasn't required to, that I left on my own volition, but the difference between losing my job five years ago and losing it now is that I have done it already, and I really don't give a shit. So fire me, Conde Nast motherfuckers! There is no more effective diet strategy than being POOR.

• Commenting on an Eliot Spitzer whore scandal is vaguely as exciting than reading about the intricacies of trade negotiations — and also, somewhat less important — but I had to point out this quote from a source close to Kristin "Billie" Davis (who "hails from a rough-in-tumble California trailer park.") "She personally interfaced with Spitzer a number of times." Wow, "interface." That used to be corporate jargon for "talked to" and now it is being used to denote... bareback anal. [NYP]
  
• "His sex appeal lies in being a successful businessman and politician. Women like a guy who is in control, and a man who knows what he wants." That's the editor-in-chief of Playgirl on why she'd like to land Eliot Spitzer for a cover shoot incorporating a young woman in a Girls Gone Wild T-shirt. I know; you're creaming just thinking of interfacing with it right? [US]
  
• Wait, speaking of: raunchy outtakes from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog are now being sold as a $200 "art" book. [NYP]
  
• Wait, no, really speaking of, Barack Obama was interviewed by Maria Bartiromo, who tried to paint him as some sort of Hugo Chavez character by baiting him with a question about the Fed's bailout of Bear, to which he said, "Well, I wasn't privy to Bear Stearns' balance sheet." He doesn't sound like a socialist! [CNBC]

• A fifteen year old in the UK has been found guilty of beating a woman to death because she was goth. [BBC]
• Oh, great, now the enemies decide to register their discontent with the our invasion of the Iraq in a peaceful manner? What's next, hunger strikes? [NYT]
• Foreigners on the election: Germany wants the "Black Kennedy" because they are "romantic" that way; Mexicans like Hillary because NAFTA was good for them, Chinese like HIllary because NAFTA was good for them too, Israelis distrust Obama and Muslims in the Middle East think he can't win because "his middle name is like mine." [WSJ]
• What cocktail will be the Next Cosmo? The cognac industry is hard at work on it. But it won't be easy. "Brand promotional pamphlets and in-house recipe books are cemeteries of forgotten drinks." Ah, life. It is such struggle. [WSJ]
• Gubernatorial corruption etc.: now also in Puerto Rico! [NYT]
• So that was "ten days that changed capitalism," we just don't really know how exactly. [WSJ]

• Anna Wintour on being called a "puppet" by French Vogue editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld in New York Magazine: "Maybe you should ask Carine. I have no comment." [Frillr]
  
• But you should ask her about it if you happen to be at Oxford University today, where La Wintour will be speaking about her "media career and extensive charity work." If you are there please email us with details from her chat! [Vogue UK]
  
• "Ashley was surprised. The women were really chic. A lot of them had such great style. And we didn't expect there to be so many women like that." That's Rae Miles, commercial director of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's clothing line, The Row, about her and Ashley's visit to Dallas to promote the line. Because clearly no one outside L.A. or New York knows how to dress themselves! [WWD, sub req'd]

• Krazy Karl Kwote OTD: "I live in my own little world, sketching and drawing. I'm told what to do every day. I didn't even know where this [party] was till I came here." [WWD, 2nd item]
• Vivienne Westwood has chosen model Ajuma Nasenyana to front her Spring 2008 ad campaign. Nasenyana is not just a tall beauty, she's also (OMG) not white! [Sassybella]
• And in other brilliant Vivienne Westwood news, she invited a bunch of seven-year-olds to "collaborate" with her on her fall/winter 2008 collection. [Yahoo]
• Jill Scott (yes, the Grammy award-winning singer): Now making bras. [Reuters]
• "I think [John] Galliano is the best designer in the world. After that, there's Anna Molinari," says, um, designer Anna Molinari. [WWD, 1st item]
• Who knew? Agnes B. is one of the foremost funders of cutting edge global warming research. [Yahoo]
• Tomorrow the exhibit marking a collaboration between Chanel and award-winning architect Zaha Hadid opens in Hong Kong before continuing to tour for another two years across the globe. [IHT]
• For their one-year anniversary in London, Abercrombie & Fitch is celebrating with, well, pictures of nakeds. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Daughter of Ralph/candy scion Dylan Lauren writes to her seventh grade self: "Dear Dill Pickle, Am I fat? Would he like me better if I were thinner?" Um, yeah. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Banana Republic cares about the environment! Or, um, a little about the environment. In honor of Earth Week, one percent of in-store sales up to $100,000 will be donated to the Trust for Public Land. Wow: Way to go whole-hog with your philanthropy, folks. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Bobbi Brown: Embracing inner Miley Cyrus with glitter lip glosses. [BellaSugar]
• Robert Lee Morris: Doing a jewelry line inspired by Andy Warhol's drawings. [Sassybella]
• Model Erin Wasson: Doing a jewelry line that seems to be inappropriately overpriced. [Sassybella]

• Now the face of Versace menswear, Patrick Dempsey has started referring to Donatella Versace as his "Italian mother." [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• Model Erin O'Connor musing on the end of another fashion season: "...yes I'm howling, oh how woeful I was when the mini cab rocked up early Sunday morning to collect the regal attire, literally stripped from my back to be sent back to each designer. Kind enough to donate for the week I hear you mutter? Jees, and Cinderella thought she had it bad? Hark, where for art thou my four-door Sports Series Maseratti? Not even a pumpkin post-shows for this lowly creature, just her own two spindly legs to get her from A to B..." [Vogue UK]
  
• The Herve Leger dress that Victoria Beckham wore to the Marc Jacobs show last season is now on sale at Intermix. Er, maybe not? So many people tried to buy it online that the Intermix website crashed. [Fashionista]

• Why was this not a challenge on Project Runway this season? Clothing made from plastic bags is the new recycling. [Guardian UK]
• Alessandra Facchinetti debut collection for the Valentino label: Hitting the runway on Thursday! [FT]
• Fashion folk: Mainly computer illiterate. [IHT]
• Jeffrey Kalinsky of luxe boutique Jeffrey, is giving Nordstrom a "makeover." Jeffrey, if you have never had the distinct pleasure of being abused there, is known for its infamously bitchy salespeople. [WSJ]
• Yves Saint Laurent's Stefano Pilati wants shoppers to feel like they've been taking opium when visiting the new YSL store in Paris. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Oscar de la Renta has just inked two licensing deal for handbags and small leather goods, finding more and more ways to put a little O in your life. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Escada's got a new CEO and he's ready to whore out the company by focusing on money-making world of accessories. Didn't we just read like fifty-thousand stories on the death of the It Bag? [WWD, sub req'd]
• I will mock my boyfriend ruthlessly if he ever wears a robe like this. [Chic Report]
• Recession? What recession? Women's apparel prices areon the rise. [IHT]

• The facts speak for themselves: Heidi Klum is designing a capsule collection for Jordache, for which she has been modeling over the past year. Think she'll offer hair extensions to cover nipples as well? [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Kathy Hilton just released her own perfume. It's called "My Secret." We don't really want to think about what Kathy Hilton's secret might smell like. [BellaSugar]
  
• Gloria Steinem would not approve: Georgina Chapman, Marchesa designer and wife of Halston co-owner Harvey Weinstein, was named "Georgina Weinstein" on her front row seat at Halston yesterday. Only, as Chapman herself put it, "I didn't change my name, they did it for me." [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Jimmy Choo's CEO Tamara Mellon thinks that boyfriend Christian Slater should take a more active, or acting, role in fashion. Mellon says Slater would be "perfect" to play Halston in any upcoming biopic on the designer. [WWD, 1st item]

• One last Halston item! Rachel Zoe, who sits on the label's creative advisory team, wasn't at yesterday's debut show. A rep for the label was quick to issue a statement that Zoe has not been fired. Um, the lady doth protest too much? [WWD, 2nd item]
• Does the fashion industry hate the Bush Administration? Laura Bush is having a luncheon next week for all the designers who participated in this year's The Heart Truth's Red Dress Collection but Nicole Miler, Donna Karan, Carmen Marc Valvo, Tracy Reese, and Marchesa designers Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig have all said that they won't be able to attend. [WWD, 3rd item]
• Is anyone else depressed that Naomi Campbell and Andre Leon Talley collaborated to star and style in a SoBe "Thrillicious" commercial? [Fashion Week Daily]
• Burberry faux-fur parkas actually use dog fur. Fun! [UPI]
• Charges have been dropped against the manager of the Abercrombie & Fitch store in Virginia Beach, who was scapegoated by a cop whose delicate sensibilities were offended by A&F ads. [MSNBC]
• The latest item up for sale under Bono's (Product) RED line: The Mulberry Roxanne bag, done in sweatshirt material (red, naturally), for the Gap. [Sassybella]
• Count Fergie in as the latest face of MAC Viva Glam lipstick. [WWD, 2nd item]
• Brittany Murphy on Mr. and Mrs. Max Azria: "They're a very nice family, with great morals, very grounded. Plus, they'll even invite you over for Shabbat dinner. Who would turn that down?" [WWD, 4th item]
• Model Caroline Trentini has declared that she will be donating a percentage of her earnings from New York fashion shows to the Center of Support of Underprivileged Children with Cancer in her native Brazil. [WWD, 5th item]
• Is model/First Lady of France Carla Bruni pregnant with a son? [Vogue UK]
• Just what the world needed: Chocolate Armani Easter eggs. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Avon profits have dropped by 30%. There is no time for beauty in a recession. [Breitbart]

• Is there anything Chloe Sevigny can't do? Playing a polygamist's wife, designing a clothing line for Opening Ceremony, acting as style adviser to British ELLE, and now, designing hand-crafted steamer trunks for Samsonite. [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Sevigny reportedly laughed loudly and openly at last night's Miss Sixty show. From the front row, no less! [NY Mag]
  
• Several models were burned by faulty lighting used during a shoot for Marc Bouwer last week. Says a rep for Bouwer, "No one knew the lamp was giving off that much heat until the shoot ended. If they had known, they would have stopped right away." [Page Six]
  
• Fashion victim! A Cosmopolitan fashion editor is suing a slew of people, including Diane von Furstenberg, following the 2005 incident in which she was injured by falling lights from the fashion runway. [UPI]

• The manager of an Abercrombie & Fitch store in Virginia Beach was ticketed by police for displaying overly "racy" A&F posters in the store. [UPI]
• Adam Lippes, formerly the designer of AdamPlusEve and now head of his own eponymous collection, is taking on a design collection with Spanish-based chain Mango. The Adam for Mango collection will feature 15 looks each for men and women and will be in stores for the Spring 2009 season. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Carla Bruni: Married to Nicolas Sarkozy while wearing Hermes. [WWD, 1st item]
• "This is worse than the Stones concert in '72!" That would be photographer Mick Rock, on the ill-behaved crowds outside the Rock & Republic show on Saturday night. [WWD, 2nd item]
• People will always need underwear: Hanesbrands' profits rose by 103.9% in the last quarter. [WWD, sub req'd]
• The Prada party taking place Thursday night in New York is sounding more and more like cheap porn: The short film created by Prada, Trembled Blossoms, will be screened and rock band CocoRosie will perform. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Have the designers at ThreeAsFour been reading Jezebel? The theme of their show this past weekend was "The good, the bad, and the beauty." [Fashion Week Daily]
• Heidi Klum and I have similar feelings about Valentine's Day: "If you're only in love once a year, that would be very sad!" [Chic Report]
• Costume designer Patricia Field on the look of the upcoming Sex and the City movie: "One might be dressing older, one might be dressing richer. There's always a blend of old and new because they don't change." [FabSugar]
• Former congressman Harold Ford Jr.'s fiance Emily Threlkeld pays her bills by working in business development for Carolina Herrera. [Washington Post]

• The new Marc Jacobs ads featuring Victoria Beckham have finally been made public. And they're awesome. Also: We seem to remember a certain Glamour magazine beauty editor who took to doing this with a Gucci bag. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Madonna swears that the Fox News reports aren't true and that she didn't screw Gucci over and trick them into hosting a fundraiser for the Kabbalah Centre of Los Angeles. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Giles Mendel's thoughts on Project Runway after serving as a guest judge on Wednesday night's episode: "OK...The authority of a TV show might not be good enough at the end to make a successful fashion house. That's a different ball game." Whoah — he didn't just question The Greatest Show on Earth, did he? [WWD, 5th item]

• Donna Karan on her experiences as a fashion student at Parsons: "Failed typing, failed draping, you know. I had a little ADD problem. Sewing? Oh, forget it. I burnt my dress. They told me I would never make it as a fashion designer at all." Oh, kooky Auntie Donna! It all worked out now, didn't it! [Page Six]
• Abercrombie & Fitch is launching a lingerie brand under a separate label, Gilly Hitch, and separate stand-alone stores. Given as A&F catalogs are supposed to be selling clothes and in reality, show models in their underwear, we can only assume that Gilly Hitch catalogs will feature models fucking each other naked. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Is it wrong that we're pulling for the success of the Joan Rivers makeup line? [BellaSugar]
• (Faux) rocker Bryan Adams is everywhere nowadays: He shot Tia Cibani's Ports 1961 presentation at the Chateau Marmont on Wednesday. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Betsey Johnson is starting up a separate line of outerwear. Lots of tulle and a corset on a raincoat, please.
• Narcisco Rodriguez's line is turning 10, and to celebrate ,the designer is doing a limited edition collection featuring 20 pieces celebrating the best of the line's history. [Chic Report]
• Fashion designer Bella Freud will be showing her upcoming collection via a short film. We're sure that great grandpappy Sigmund would have made some joke about screen memory. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Sign that Daria Werbowy is actually a good model: Even looks good in ad campaign for Pepe Jeans! [Vogue UK]
• Phillip Lim: now designing kiddie clothes. Which, to our dismay, makes us like Phillip Lim a tiny bit less. [Fashion Week Daily]
• The Missoni Spring 2008 ads: Scary. [Sassybella]
• Katherine Hamnett's "Clean Up Or Die" bags: Sure to be the next "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" bags. Sadly. [Vogue UK]
• Though it declared bankruptcy in 1999, Fruit of the Loom's insurance company had to cough up $42.5 million after the company got slammed with charges from the Environmental Protection Agency in regards to four of its factories. [UPI]
• Fruit of the Loom may be bankrupt, but the luxury underwear market's never been bigger! [Telegraph]
• St. Ives, they of the dorm-fave Apricot Scrub, has decided that maybe it needs to expand its brand and reach the oldies. Hence it's new line for "aging" women, named "Elements". Aging = women age 29 and up. Ouch. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Armani: now doing a skincare line for men! We wonder if the brand will find a way to tie the face of David Beckham into this one, too. [WWD, sub req'd]
• It saddens our hearts that there's already a waiting list for the Burberry Warrior Bag. Also, if you don't feel like shelling out $23,000 for it in it's croc skin glory, you can get a plain leather one for a mere $3,150. [WWD, 3rd item]

• Holy Aryan Smut Closet Case Pride, the A&F Quarterly is back and under the same old management? Have you ever looked at this catalog? Click to see enlarged Heidi Klum!
  
• ...anyway, I'm not sure it was possible to actually purchase clothes with it, because there didn't even seem to be any clothes displayed in it. (Also missing: Black people.) But there were a lot of naked tits and weird date-rapey advice columns and stuff until CEO Mike Jeffries decided he was "bored" with the stale pornyness of it all. Big mistake! Look at American Apparel! [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• Hannah Montana is an icon of neo biker chic style. [NY Times]
  
• To attract men — and one assumes, Jezebel editors! — beauty salons are offering free Sam Adams, gin and scotch and pool tables. [WSJ]
  
• Blind item guessing game, Arden WOHLcat edition. "Which socialite and vague designer was so high on ecstasy on New Year's Eve that she fell out of her cab on her way to a tiny, exclusive, and smoke filled tavern in the West Village? She might not have even remembered the next day, if it weren't for the massive bruise on her..." [Fashionista]

• Plastic surgery tourism: could it save the African economy? [CNN]
• Citizens of Humanity, Seven For All Mankind, True Religion, Denim For Immortality — it was a great Christmas for all the companies that want to save the world and restore peace to society institute utopia, etc. etc. [WWD]
• Lacoste is suing a dentist it claims is using its logo to advertise dental surgery. [Guardian]
• "A $1,500 bag festooned with logos and showy geegaws — especially if it gets knocked off to the point of ubiquity — will look dated soon." That's Teri Agins, veteran Wall Street Journal fashion reporter, in her latest "Ask Teri" column. Will someone "ask Teri" what's a "geegaw"? [WSJ]

It's Fashion Week, and we know how much that means to you all, but we thought we'd throw a bone to Jezebel readers who'd trade their newfound understanding of Vena Cava for a decent glass of vino. This is the story of Hollister, a powerful branch of the Abercrombie & Fitch youth retail empire and the sort of work environment and probably middle America's closest approximation to working in fashion. All through the country, thanks to retailers like Hollister, average heartland American teenagers are trading wages for status, obsessively attuning themselves to tiny aesthetic tics, throwing themselves into the insecurity-superiority spirals and learning to hate bread. And the tiny crop of straight dudes smart enough to plant themselves in the middle of it is getting unjustly and prodigiously laid. Meet The Douche. His name might have been Scott. Reader Christine has blocked it out. He was her first retail boss, and he was verrrry good at preparing his charges to meet Joe Francis. Welcome back to "I Work Retail," the Jezebel column about the only industry more depressing than women's magazines.

Photo via Slagheap [Flickr]

My memory seems to have permanently replaced the name of my first retail boss with the title "King Of All Douches," but it will never forget his hair. Long and straight with professional golden highlights and a distinct flip at the end, it was an endless source of fascination to me: did he achieve the look with a hairdryer alone? Or did he use an actual straightening iron? Douche King had been dispatched by a retail empire to open one of the first in a new chain of stores that desired to impart a "cool, young, beachy surfer vibe through clothing." Apparently, the Douche had once been a surfer. Now in his mid-thirties, his pastimes seemed to be limited to patronizing tanning beds and teenage girls' beds. He was a l