The way Stone is talked about in this Vogue story — cover line "When Size 4 Is Too Big: A Curvy Model's Struggle To Fit In" — you'd almost think she was a plus-size model instead of a girl with the highly typical (for a straight-size model) measurements 33"-24"-35". Writes Rebecca Johnson:

'What they say is 'curvy,' but you know they mean fat," says Lara Stone, who is Dutch and so soft-spoken, you have to lean forward to hear what she's saying. However, she enunciates that word — fat — clearly and forcefully, as if it were caught at the back of her throat. The word hovers over the din of the hotel lobby where we are seated in downtown Manhattan, laced with irony and just a tinge of bitterness.

So that's 11 rather straightforward words from Stone, and 59 words from Vogue about what Stone said. (I guess when a word, having at last dislodged itself from the subject's throat, literally flies out of her mouth and floats in the air of a hotel lobby, it requires special treatment. Did she fling her arms in the air, too, Vogue? Because limb amputation sounds almost as painful as reading that sentence!) Anyway:

Worse than being called fat is a gaggle of stylists whispering in a corner after you've been trying on clothes for ten minutes. "That," she says, "is when I know I'm about to be canceled."

And even now that her position in fashion's firmament ought to be secure, given she has earned Karl Lagerfeld's favor, worked with the world's top photographers, and been on multiple covers of British, French, and American Vogue, she still encounters narrow-minded folks who make her feel like "the odd one out." "I was on a shoot just last week," Stone told Johnson, "and the stylist took out this tight corset dress and said, 'Here, put it on,' and I was like, 'Who are you kidding?' There was no way, so that was very rude of her. It's like, come on, she's a woman; whether you're buying jeans at the mall or wearing couture, you know what it's like for clothes not to fit. It's not an easy kind of rejection, because it's very personal. It's you, your body. You take it to heart."

What I guess a lot of people don't realize is that modeling is just manual labor with fancier clothes. The work is deeply bodily, and therefore the division between you and your work dissolves: everything you wear, how you present yourself, how you walk, every product you put on your face, every haircut, and, mostly, everything you put in your mouth, impacts your career. It is automatically a professional choice, not a personal one. There is no meaningful work/life balance, because your body is your work. Of course, women outside of the modeling industry have long been told that their bodies need to be their "work," too: that we all need to obsess over our arms and abs and thighs and do 30 squats on our lunch breaks and always take the stairs and use the Shake Weight and join gyms and buy athleticwear and Lose 12 lbs Before Sunday. It's just that for models, these imperatives are professional. Living is work. And that can kinda mess with your head.

Stone herself, being unable to budge from what must be her set point weight range with diet and exercise, began taking pills to lose inches. "But they made my heart race," she reports. So she started drinking. Nobody noticed, and her work didn't suffer, but soon she was waking up with the shakes. Stone did a month of rehab in January — the longest she'd spent in one place at a stretch in the two years since her career kicked into hyperdrive, she told British Vogue — and has not had a drink since.

What is elided in these kinds of stories that trumpet Lara Stone's "curves" and proclaim her to be a size 4 — because we all know clothing sizes are meaningful and consistent nation-wide standards, oh wait — is that Stone differs so barely, so incredibly tinily merely, so very little, from the accepted size standard for fashion models. She is slightly shorter, at 5'7", than most runway models, and her measurements are well within fashion's preferred range. While it's undeniable that she has a slightly different body shape than most models, her size is entirely typical of the industry. (Technically, her stated hip measurement, 35", is about 1" larger than the 34" it "should" be for her to model, but there are dozens of other models who have worked, and done the show circuit, with hips of Stone's size.) It's all well and good to call her the "curvy" model, and it is obvious from her runway work and every nude shoot she's ever done that Stone has breasts. When she slings one hip out, like for the photo accompanying this Vogue story, sure, she can indeed look kind of voluptuous. (When she doesn't, she doesn't: Would you call her the "curvy" one in this Givenchy campaign?) These stories never make clear that Stone veers from the accepted modeling standards only every so slightly, and that booking her for a shoot or a campaign is not some revolutionary act of body diversity. If anything, the fact that she is seen as a different kind of model for her size is the ultimate indictment of the fashion industry's standards. But Vogue would never make that point.

An item on Fashionista this morning points to two actual plus-size models, Crystal Renn and Amy Lemons, who are both busy working in Europe. Renn — whose struggle with anorexia and exercise bulimia is documented in her recently released memoir, Hungry — apparently went blonde for a shoot for Italian Vanity Fair, and Lemons, who also began her career as a straight-size model, is working for French Elle with the photographer Tesh. Her spread is apparently over 30 pages, and includes cover tries. Lara Stone is a fantastic model. I love a lot of her work. But seeing a plus-size model on the cover of a major fashion magazine, now that would be a real sign of change. Yes, plus-size models are still models, and the fashion industry still makes its money presenting women with images to aspire to that are, for most, unattainable and unrealistic. But if we can change the parameters of the beauty standard even just enough to accommodate tall, enviably proportioned young women who don't have 23" waists, then I'd still call that progress of a kind.

Fittingly, Fashionista asks: Italian Vanity Fair and French Elle are great, but where are the U.S. magazines? Aside from Glamour's admirable commitment to using plus-size models consistently in fashion spreads from issue to issue, and V's forthcoming January special issue, what is going at American Vogue, Elle, and Harper's Bazaar? Will we see a plus-size model in a fashion spread in an American magazine that isn't trudging through the clichés of its obligatory annual Love Your Shape issue? I have a feeling — call it blogger's intuition — that it might happen sooner than you think.

Hello, Gorgeous [Style.com]
The Tides Are Turning [Fashionista]

Earlier: Model Crystal Renn On Self-Acceptance, Size, & The Fashion Industry

• Beyoncé's first perfume, Heat, launches in February. She says, "Red is one of my favorite colors, as is gold." And the bottle is intended to look antique, because her mother had so many old perfumes when she was little. [WWD]

• Whitney Port, of The Hills/The City fame, says, of fellow fashion-designing show alums Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag, "I put myself in a different sort of realm as them." Port's biggest fear with her label is "people not understanding your point of view, not being able to get it. But I think my biggest competition is myself." [WWD]
• About 200 Chanel employees picketed the company's headquarters just outside of Paris. Workers who make less than €3000 a month have been offered a 1% pay raise; instead, they would like a raise of 2.5%. [WWD]
• Charlize Theron embroidered a baobab tree on a pair of red Toms shoes for her limited-edition collaboration with the eco-friendly, ethically managed company. Ten thousand of the shoes will be distributed free to children in her native South Africa, and the profits from the $54 slip-ons will benefit Theron's charity. [People]
• According to Jimmy Choo, Madonna thinks his shoes are better than sex. "Madonna told me that buying a pair of my shoes is more satisfying than having sex with a man. At least you know they are going to last for ever!" [OK!]
• Tory Burch is growing overseas. The designer recently opened a flagship in Manila, and her first Tokyo store, which just fêted its launch, will be joined by 30 more outposts across the country over the next few years. [WWD]
• Check out the decade in Olsen style, from distressed denim and tube tops to Chloé wedges and studded Givenchy jackets, via the notorious NYU bag lady period. [Style.com]
• Ever since Barack Obama identified his wife's pin, on Oprah, as one he had purchased for her at Garavelli on their anniversary, people have been buying Garavelli jewelry like it's going out of style. [WWD]
• Lady Gaga curated a selection of goods for sale at the site Not Just A Label. You can snap up her fringed lace half hat from the video for "Bad Romance" for a surprisingly reasonable £92, should you feel the need to dress like a deranged Spanish widow from 2078. [NJAL]
• Malls in Dubai still seem busy, despite the debt crisis there. [WWD]
• Hilary Rhoda will be in next year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Friend-to-Jezebel Liz Glover recently interviewed the model and asked her about her shoot for last year's issue. "For a model, it is a major achievement and a business tactic to widen my fan base," said the Chevy Chase native, over e-mail. "I work out every day, and to have a strong body instead of something frail like in fashion magazines, that's something to look up to." Rhoda, of course, sometimes does appear in the pages of fashion magazines — she once made the cover of American Vogue. Could her athletic look gain high-fashion acceptance? We can dare to dream. [Washington Times]
• Model Jamie Bochert recently ran 12 blocks to get her purse back from a robber. Now that's an athlete. Also she is in the new Lanvin campaign. [WWD]
• Christian Siriano says his maternity line includes party dresses because, "When you're pregnant you still do the same things that you would normally do — go to events, baby showers and weddings. Not every brand does sweet, fun party dresses like this." [People]
• Says Carmen Dell'Orefice, whose name this time Page Six spells correctly: "Sympathy I don't need. Another ad campaign would be great." Dell'Orefice lost most of her fortune in Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme. [P6]
• More details have emerged about the fashion business incubator program launching soon in New York. Twelve lucky designers will be given the opportunity to rent studio space in the heart of the garment district for under market rates — around $1500 a month. The program is underwritten by a $200,000 grant from the New York City Economic Development Corporation and operated by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. The tenant designers will be announced this month. [FWD]
• Because of dismal sales, Ben Sherman is shuttering its women's line. The company earlier this year stopped making children's wear. [WWD]
• Nike's quarterly results for the period ended November 30 were only slightly down on last year's. Profits and sales at the world's largest sporting goods company each fell by 4%. [WSJ]

• Cyndi Lauper and Lady Gaga's M.A.C. Viva Glam ad is out. Gaga looks...surprisingly normal. [FWD]

• Helena Christensen protested in Copenhagen this weekend. In quieter times, she reads the dictionary to expand her English vocabulary. And she's one of those people about text messages: "I get obsessed with spelling. I make every text message I send correct in punctuation," explains the Danish supermodel. "I am super-fastidious about certain things." [Daily Express]
• Phil Knight is standing by Tiger Woods. The scandal-plagued golfer's endorsement deal with Nike is worth a reported $30 million annually; Knight admitted doing a background check on Woods before signing him. "He came out clean," the company founder said. [Reuters]
• It has been confirmed that André Leon Talley is a new judge for the whole next cycle of America's Next Top Model. Kimora Lee Simmons is only a guest judge. It's puzzling that Vogue would want to touch anything in Tyra Banks' smizing empire with a bargepole, but it'll be great to see André's judicial robes on nighttime television. (Also: I would leave New Zealand only for Tyra et al. to set off there. They are shooting the CoverGirl challenge today in Half Moon Bay, apparently.) [TVNZ]
• Christian Lacroix has designed new uniforms for 20,000 French railway employees. They are grey and purple. Few more of these gigs and he'll have his couture business back in no time. [WWD]
• "I've struggled with it! I've struggled with that. I've struggled with that," says Tom Ford, on the luxury culture of insatiable accretion, and charging $75 for socks."Just because one is spiritual doesn't mean one doesn't like crocodile, cashmere. We live in a material world." [TDB]
• To produce its fashion show, Victoria's Secret allegedly filled half a city block with noisy generators that ran 24 hours a day for over a week. This disturbed the sleep of nearby residents, including those at a home for people with HIV. Michael Musto's anonymous source claims that the company, which coincidentally finally broadcast its show on World AIDS Day, had to offer the residents a cash settlement. [Village Voice]
• Serena Williams returns to the Home Shopping Network to sell her line of clothing today. Last time the tennis star did the HSN rounds, her goods sold out in under three hours. How? "Everything in the collection is under $100," Williams explains. "And everything you get from me [is] great quality. I think for those prices and [this] quality, it is a no-brainer." Do you hear that? A no-brainer. It's not buying her clothes that really defies explanation. [People]
• The family that owns Salvatore Ferragamo bought a decrepit estate with a vineyard in Tuscany in 1993. The restoration process now complete, Ferragamo is now introducing four wines into the U.S. market, ranging in price from $15-$80 per bottle. They do not carry the family name trademark, because that would be so vulgar. [BW]
• Project Runway alumnus Rami Kashou has been dressing Queen Rania of Jordan. His spring collection is partly inspired by Frank Gehry. [LATimes]
• Knitwear designer Carmen Colle's lawsuit against Chanel has been thrown out by a Paris court. Colle's company, World Tricot, which designs new knitting and crochet patterns for various designer clients to incorporate into their runway looks, sued Chanel in 2004 when she spied a Chanel coat made from what she alleged was a World Tricot crochet pattern that Chanel had rejected, and never paid for. But it wasn't all bad news for Colle. World Tricot also sued for breach of contract, after Chanel abruptly stopped patronizing the house. Chanel countersued for besmirching its good name by bringing the suit at all. The court found World Tricot was owed €400,000 for the breach of contract, and it also found that Chanel was owed €200,000 for "commercial prejudice." World Tricot may appeal the forgery ruling. [WSJ]
• Jason Wu was asked if he was for or against brunch. "Pro, but only if it's after 1:30," the designer responded. Who the hell is against brunch? [TFI]
• Christopher Kane clarifies his earlier statements about not liking fashion blogs because designers have little to no control over what they publish. Now he says blogs can be fine, so long as they're not "critical" or "negative": "You're allowed to say what you want but sometimes the blogs that you read are really negative and that's what I meant to say really. Sometimes it's too negative for my liking and I think maybe they could give someone a compliment or say something nice. But bloggers nowadays seem to be a bit negative...but when it gets to someone's work and they're being critical, it's like ‘Give them a break'." [Grazia]
• Unilever has suspended its relationship with a palm oil supplier after Greenpeace alleged that the supplier was not harvesting its oil sustainably. Palm oil is a key ingredient in many cosmetics, but deforestation and environmental destruction can result when farmers slash and burn forests to plant palms. [WWD]

You know the score here already: this is one of Grace Coddington's patented fairytale shoots, wherein familiar stories from childhood are re-enacted by teenage models in $15,000 outfits for the amusement of all. Sometimes these spreads have an enforced sweetness, like saccharin; always they make one wonder just what Bruno Bettelheim would have to say about a publication made by and for adult women finding so much material in sanitized re-tellings of Grimm, with 4" Fendi heels.

But this one hits all the right notes. Actor Andrew Garfield, as Hansel, is the perfect foil to Lily Cole's Gretel; the sumptuous costumes (look at those tree men!) come courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera, where Richard Jones' production of Hansel und Gretel takes the stage next month. (Let's hope it will be better than Tosca.) But only Coddington's styling could rise to such extraordinary surroundings.

And after Hansel and Gretel fall asleep in the forest...

...the wicked witch appears! In the form of Lady Gaga.

Coddington reports Gaga turned up at the shoot "stark naked except for her white rubber raincoat and some very, very high heels!"

Did Vogue just do something...edgy?

Naturally, Gaga's plan to fatten up the wily siblings fails. "Gaga was so bubbly and chatty and enthusiastic and excited to be alive," raves Coddington. Too bad she ends up in the oven, dead.

So the little ones who were made into gingerbread come back to life, here portrayed by Grace Church's Junior Choristers.

So there are quibbles anyone could make with this shoot. Annie Leibovitz, with the sense of treacly ponderousness she brings to every shot, wasn't the most exciting choice of photographer; one imagines what someone of Tim Walker's or Paolo Roversi's aesthetic sensibility could have done with this kind of material. And in a few too many shots, Lily Cole is caught in fake-looking poses; there's no intentionality, not even any tone to her arm, when she is supposed to be holding shut the oven door for dear life. Instead, she looks like she's sort of blankly resting against it. But casting Lady Gaga as a wicked witch was inspired. Whoever did that deserves a promotion.

Lady Gaga Joins Lily Cole And Andrew Garfield In A Recreation Of Hansel & Gretel [Style.com]

• Today in pointless clothing lines of the stars: Miley Cyrus and Max Azria's Wal-Mart collection! The digs look well worth every penny of their sub-$20 price point. [Lucky]
• Now, even the Kings of Leon has one. [Blackbook]

• Lady Gaga wants in on the action. On starting a clothing line, she told Flare magazine, "At some point, I will. Right now, I'm more concerned with using my fame to promote young designers such as Gary Card, an artist who designed a piece I used on stage." Why would she do such a thing? "There hasn't been a commercial artist lately that has embodied avant-garde and couture so insistently as myself." [ONTD]
• Gaga has one new position to console herself with: M.A.C. Viva Glam AIDS fund face. Cyndi Lauper will co-star in the campaign to sell lipstick and raise money for research. [WWD]
• The British Fashion Council and British Vogue are launching a fashion prize to encourage young talent, somewhat along the lines of the American Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund awards, which kicked off in 2003. £200,000 will be awarded to one UK designer who can demonstrate he or she has international stockists, a media profile, and demonstrated need of the money. [Telegraph]
• Angelina Jolie and Shiloh are apparently fans of Stella McCartney's line for GapKids. [Radaronline]
• That Christian Louboutin made his first public appearance in Washington, D.C., under Obama's watch is no coincidence. "For eight years I was invited, but I never wanted to come before. I never wanted to come with Bush," says the shoe designer. "I'm looking forward to coming back — at least for four years." We really want to make a crack about voting with your feet here. [WaPo]
• Roberto Cavalli: "All over the world people don't treat me like a fashion designer; they treat me like a rock star… I can't walk down 5th Avenue without being treated like a rock star. In fact, maybe it's more… Many times I've walked down 5th Avenue with rock stars and nobody pays attention to them. It's very strange." [FWD]
• Gisele Bundchen passed the written exam portion of her pilot's license. Although heavily pregnant, and "Almost too big to fly," according to her instructor, she's still making supervised practice flights up to three days a week. [People]
• Karolina Kurkova has given birth to a baby boy. [People]
• Kelly Osborne: Fan of Spanx. [People]
• Christian Siriano says his new reality TV show will reflect the best of several recent high-profile fashion documentaries. "It's very like The September Issue, very Valentino [The Last Emperor]. We want it to be as cool and as real as possible." Apparently, September Issue director R.J. Cutler wouldn't touch the project, but he did advise Siriano "just to be real." [The Cut]
• Sadie Frost's clothing line with Jemima French, FrostFrench, is opening its second store in London's Soho. [WWD]
• A real ad man of the 1960s has some bones to pick with Mad Men's treatment of the brand London Fog. So an employee of an industry that manufactures fictions objects to a fictional show's fictionalizing history? We shake our heads at the irony. [AdAge]
• JC Penney is being sued for trademark infringement by the retailer New York & Company. New York & Company says Penney's new "NYC Style" slogan is too close to its "NY Style" advertising tag line. [WWD]
• Can Sir Philip Green conquer America? [Bloomberg]
• Polo Ralph Lauren reported a 10% rise in second-quarter profits. [TS]
• Bata shoes was, before Communism, an international brand headquartered in Slovakia. The company town isn't doing so hot right now, with the economic transition and the competition from Asia. [BussinessWeek]
• Liz Claiborne may have had seven consecutive quarterly losses, with the announcement of an eight expected next week, but C.E.O. Bill McCombs doesn't have to worry about one thing: his job security. McCombs recently had his contract renewed for another three years. It's not an unusual strategy: only 38 companies in the S&P 500 have replaced their C.E.O.'s in the year to September 30, down 10 on the same period last year, despite the trying economic times. [WSJ]
• Not so lucky is Missoni's general manager, Massimo Gasparini. He has been let go and his position will not be filled. [WWD]

• Stella McCartney's collection for GapKids is pretty damn adorable. [KanyeUniverseCity]

• Prince Charles toured the new Burberry headquarters yesterday. Designer Christopher Bailey and C.E.O. Angela Ahrendts showed him the 160,000 square foot building, and gave him a peek at the unreleased Burberry social-networking venture. [WWD]
• J. Crew creative director Jenna Lyons, whose salary is $1.9 million annually, received a hefty $1 million bonus this week — with strings attached. If she leaves the company within two years, she must repay it, and if she leaves during the following two years, she has to repay half. J. Crew has been cutting costs aggressively since the economic downturn began; in February, it instituted a wage freeze, fired 95 employees, and ceased matching 401(k) contributions. [WSJ]
• Kiwi model Rachel Hunter recommends see-to-be-seen spot The Standard Grill for dining in New York. She also recommends closing the curtains, should you rent a room at the hotel. [TDB]
• Demi Moore is a big supporter of designer Prabal Gurung. After she wore one of his dresses, his Twitter followship jumped from 50 to over 1,000. Why this story merits the tabloid header "Should Ashton Be Jealous of Prabal?" is inexplicable. [Style.com]
• Lara Stone may have missed out on the next Chanel campaign, but being the spring face of Louis Vuitton must be some consolation. Hopefully the brand won't Photoshop her into a waxy, corpselike likeness, à la Madonna fall 2009. [WWD]
• Sexy designer Yigal Azrouël is running the New York Marathon this weekend. Joining him — and nearly 40,000 other people — will be supermodel Veronica Webb. Model Anne Vyalitsyna has volunteered to guide a disabled runner along the course. [The Cut]
• There are paparazzi shots of Georgia May Jagger on the Leicester Square set of her new Rimmel ad. Yeah, she has her dad's mouth. [Daily Mail]
• Christian Dior, Chanel, and dozens of other French labels are collaborating on a Chinese website that will feature lavish, 3-D photographs of their products. And then not allow anyone to buy them online. Sounds like a counterfeiters' cookbook if ever we heard of one. [AP]
• Kenneth Cole cracked puns shared his sobering thoughts with students at FIT on Wednesday: "People say that things will get better in a few months, but to be honest, I don't think it will get better for years. The key is to go out in the world with a sense of contest....Find out where you can offer value as a designer and create something that people will desire." [WWD]
• Then at FIT on Thursday, fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo took to the stage to talk about his new Penguin Classics cover designs. And his day job. Toledo says despite having his work featured in a plethora of international editions of Vogue, he hasn't cracked American Vogue because "they're a bit too safe." [The Fashion Informer]
• Alexander Wang's fall collection includes $395 bike shorts. He defends them thusly: "People look at that and go 'Oh, those are biker shorts.' But the yarn we use is from Italy, the technique is digital weaving, there's a lot that goes into product development that the consumer doesn't necessarily always understand. And for the people that do understand it, they do get into it, they buy it, and those are the people I'm speaking to. And there will always be people that don't understand what you're doing, but I'm not here to satisfy everyone." Do you get that? Those are the people he's speaking to. He's selling $395 bike shorts to the $395 bike short-people. And only them. The rest of you peons can buy your non-Italian yarn, loomed bike shorts at Target. [The Cut]
• You could buy two styles from Tory Burch's new sunglass range for less than the cost of Wang's shorts. (And they're still overpriced!) Though there's one pair of folding aviators that's kinda nifty. [Style.com]
• Crystal Renn is in the latest campaign for Evans, the UK plus-size high street store. And she looks great. [Daily Mail]
• Pics are out of Nicole Richie's footwear for her House of Harlow brand. The shoes, which will go on sale in the spring, feature some Navajo-inspired embroidery. Sounds like Richie's been taking a leaf from the Navajo-Pocahontas-at-the-disco stylings of Kelly Bensimon. [FabSugar]
• Christian Siriano "designed" a Starbucks gift card for the holidays. It differs from the regular gift cards thus: it is smaller (which is noticeable) and "chic-er" (not really noticeable). [FWD]
• "There's nothing more American than a pair of blue jeans," says a worker at one of the last remaining denim mills in the U.S. Actually, blue jeans are a French product — serge de Nîmes dyed with indigo imported via Genoa, or bleu de Gênes — that was reinvented in the American West by Eastern European Jewish immigrants. But close enough! Boo to those Mexicans who are now making our products! [CNN]
• Michael Kors is doing a makeup collection for Estee Lauder. It'll go on sale in January, and it's named Very Hollywood, to match Estee Lauder's recently launched Very Hollywood perfume. [WWD]
• Estee Lauder's profits for the quarter ended in September rose to $140.7 million dollars. Last year during the same period, the company made a paltry $51.1 million. [AP]

"I read about that girl!" said the woman. "It's like, I think she was anorexic, and then she gained all her weight back, but she's still a top model." Crystal's agent, Gary Dakin at Ford, smiled wryly.

Crystal and the other two models in Lane Bryant's current campaign were at the store to film, viral-video-style, a snippet of a segment of them all trying on clothes and shopping. "Do you Twitter?" asked Gary, of a sales assistant. "Tell them to Twitter that the Lane Bryant girls are all at the store getting new clothes."

They did many takes of the trio stepping out of the dressing rooms in new ensembles, and styling each other's outfits: jumpsuits with belts, lingerie, and boyfriend blazers over long t-shirts. Crystal was on her way to catch a flight to Canada to shoot for Elle magazine, and of course the video shoot was behind schedule. So when it came time to talk, we jumped in a cab to her neighborhood, Williamsburg, so she could pack. Five o'clock traffic gave us plenty of time to talk — about her experiences starving herself to be a straight-size model for years, the point at which she broke down and had to enter recovery, and the amazing ignition of her plus career, all of which is chronicled in her new memoir, Hungry, co-written with Marjorie Ingall.

After returning to her natural size, Steven Meisel booked Crystal for American Vogue — the "Shape" issue, of course, because American Vogue still fails to feature plus models any other month of the year — and then, the famous photographer shot her for an editorial in Vogue Italia. Since then, she's worked with photographers like Patrick Demarchelier, Arthur Elgort, Ruven Afanador, and Ellen Von Unwerth. She's walked the runway for Jean-Paul Gaultier, been in campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana, and she's made the covers of international editions of Elle and Harper's Bazaar.

A handful of other models have gone from disordered misery at straight-size, to self-acceptance and a new career at what the modeling industry calls plus. (Kate Dillon and Carré Otis are notable examples.) But perhaps most importantly, Crystal seems to be slowly helping the notoriously sizist industry change its ideas of what a plus size model can be: she rarely looks like the typical friendly, smiley, approachable stereotype of the larger model. Although she can look adorable styled as a pin-up, she's also booked for jobs that require a confrontational look, an overt sexuality, or a darker kind of beauty — it's probably no coincidence that she says she was a high school goth, and that when we met, she was wearing complicated black paper-bag-waisted pants, a deconstructed black t-shirt, and a cropped black vest with serious shoulder pads. (She particularly likes the designer Rick Owens.)

Crystal and I played a long round of model geography, locating mutual friends and photographers we'd worked with. We compared everything from childhood hobbies — collecting unopened Barbies, bottlecaps, and Star Wars figurines (her), collecting Kinder Surprise toys and not swapping stickers with the other girls at primary school (me) — to favorite kinds of chocolate ("I'm very particular about my chocolate," says Crystal) before we started bonding by swapping industry horror stories.

CR: But you know what: I made a decision to do this job. Nobody tied me to a treadmill.
JS: It's true, it's true.
CR: Or locked me in a closet, and forced me to not eat. Although — I got a contract to go to Japan, and I refused it, because this model told me, They locked me in a closet for three days…So I mean, I'm sure somewhere, maybe someone is being forced.
JS: Japan can be really brutal. I never worked there, because I heard similar kinds of horror stories. A friend actually told me that she got off the plane, and she was immediately booked on four jobs in one day. That was Day 1. She got to sleep for five hours, and then she was booked on another three jobs. That was Day 2. No client had any food, because they were all booking her in four-hour increments, with no obligation to even let her take a break. By Day 3, he'd had basically nothing to eat since arriving, and she collapsed on set. She had to be taken to hospital, and as the EMTs were putting an IV in her arm, the client was trying to stop the ambulance from leaving, and screaming into his cell phone to her agency, ‘I'm going to charge you for the time your model is wasting!' While she was being taken to hospital.
CR: That's so gross. That's incredible...I actually heard something similar the other day, I was at a studio and this client said, ‘Oh my God, I booked this girl for all this money, and she's outside crying into her phone. Ugh!' I'm thinking, well, why can't you guys shoot one half of the story now, and her part later? I mean, who knows. Maybe the girl is like, ‘I didn't get enough drugs and I'm freaking out.' That's the stupid reason — but maybe something serious happened? Maybe someone passed away? And this woman, as opposed to going up to this girl asking, ‘How are you?' she was screaming down the phone to her agency about how unprofessional the model was.
JS: And the poor girl has to walk back in there, try and recover from whatever personal crisis she's been dealing with, and—
CR: Because if you're a model, you're not a person, and you can't have feelings.
JS: It's true, it's true. Some people in the industry, it's just like they're missing an empathy chip.
CR: Right! Some people. Not everyone, there are good people.
JS: Oh, absolutely. Not everyone. But there's an attitude that's like — it's girls to order. You pick one out of the lineup, and you want that one, and you want her to do these poses, and you want her to wear these clothes.
CR: Right. And you're going to get her exactly how you want — like she's a doll. You have to remember there's a soul and a heart in that person, and feelings…

Crystal shares a story about a time on a shoot when, after telling the client that she was dealing with a personal crisis, instead of being understanding or thankful that Crystal had still turned up ready to work, the client promptly made a private situation into a huge deal, and loudly questioned her professionalism. Crystal complained to her agency, and they talked to the client. Which, in modeling, is exactly how the system is supposed to work: Model is treated unfairly, model contacts her representative, representative deals with situation appropriately.

JS: There are these people who are going to take some kind of an ‘In' that you gave them, and use it against you. As some kind of leverage.
CR: Definitely missing the empathy chip. Totally missing it. Did you have any experiences like that?
JS: I did, actually. I told a story of when, during the sad break-up of a long relationship, I went to work for the first time in a new market, having gained a few pounds above my fighting weight. And I got to Milan, and the agency was upset. Extremely upset. The woman — it wasn't my booker, my booker was great — but the woman who was in charge of doing all the measuring, was viciously unkind. You know, it's your first day, you're on your way home from the airport and they whip out the measuring tape to see where you're at.
CR: It's so uncomfortable.
JS: You're standing there naked in front of strangers. After stepping off your long flight, it's the first thing they want to do. And this woman said, ‘Ugh. These hips…' And I made the mistake of telling her the basics of what was going on. I made sure to say, But I am getting back on track! She just looked at me and said, ‘We had another girl who just broke up with her boyfriend, and she's not been eating at all. It's strange how some people react.'
CR: Are you serious?
JS: Yep. She was like, Shame you aren't one of those girls who stops eating during times of emotional strife! Because we'd really prefer that!
CR: We would prefer you to handle stress in a different way, Jenna! Can you manage to change your way of handling stress? And depression? Can you do that? Yeah, that makes sense. Wow.
JS: It was ridiculous. I can laugh about it now, but at the time I just wanted to cry.
CR: Of course…I can't even believe people are like that. I remember being on this shoot once, and this was when I had put on the weight, you know, after starving for so long.
Crystal is talking about the period when, while still working as a straight-size model, her metabolism slowed and she started, slowly, gaining weight even despite her extremely disordered eating and near-constant exercising. Crystal used to maintain two gym memberships to avoid detection as a compulsive exerciser.
CR: I was working on a commercial with this girl who was 6' tall, and there's me, who's 5'9". We wore the same bathing suit, and the stylist said...‘Oh honey, it's OK. You just have a fat ass!'
JS: No.
CR: That's what he said. So I go into the bathroom. I have a fucking fit in the bathroom. I am so angry, I'm like — steaming hot tears are pouring down my face. I'm like, this freaking guy, has just pushed my wrong button.
JS: Let me find your weak point and jam it in there!
CR: You just have a fat ass.
JS: That's disgusting. That he would say that. To anyone.
CR: I just remember being like, dying inside. And then I had to go be on camera in a bathing suit. I have never felt so disgusted with myself or with everyone around me.
JS: That's terrible.
CR: That rubbed me the worst. And that was right before I made the decision to stop what I was doing. I was like, What do you want? What do you want from me? I am doing everything I can. There's no food. There's exercise only. And I am still not the size that you want.
JS: I think it's — I think the relationship that you have with your own body is the thing that's most under threat when you're modeling.
CR: Yeah. Yeah!
JS: Because you're forced to analyze your body, as if from a third-person view.
CR: Totally. I love that you know that…You're an object.
JS: You objectify yourself...You know, when I was reading your book, I was just struck with the thought, How is it possible that your old agency never noticed that this girl had an eating disorder. They asked you — they told you — to lose a vast amount of weight. Like, 40% of your body weight.
CR: I don't think they really understood what they were asking. I want to think that they didn't really understand what they were asking me, a 14-year-old girl, to do. I mean, [when someone is asked to diet down to a certain measurement] nobody knows for sure how many pounds that will actually be.
JS: It's so fucking naïve though. And, Jesus Christ, when you're dealing with such young girls, irresponsible.
CR: I think so. They have certain requirements, and I don't think they want to think about how the girl meets those requirements…A lot of girls never come forward to their agencies and say, Hey, I starve myself to maintain the standards that you've set for me.
JS: Yeah.
CR: You know, they're not going to do that. I'm one of the only ones. And that's the reason I got a book.
JS: True. And congratulations.
CR: They're literally unaware. And that's, I think, what is the problem. People look away. They are unaware. Not only of themselves, but of the wider problems.
JS: It's true. Everyone sees some little piece of it, but nobody — yet — has stepped forward to take ownership of the problems in fashion in any kind of a holistic sense. I'm curious, how did that feel to walk in to your old agency — after taking that last set of Polaroids, and them still wanting you to lose weight after having an eating disorder for years — how did that feel to walk in there, and say —
CR: I literally had a breakdown. I was like Really, Really? I started to get hysterical. You think I should ‘Maybe go on a diet?' Oh, maybe! Maybe I should go on a diet! Let's see, what am I doing: Eight hours, twice this weekend. Sixteen hours in the gym. Maybe go on a diet! I am eating only vegetables. Maybe go on a diet! What do you think I should do, because I would like to know! Tell me what I should do that I am not doing already! Because I think I have gone above and beyond what any normal person would do for their job! Please, tell me!
JS: Jesus.
CR: Right! Tell me! So that's when my old agent said, Well, you have two options. That's when she understood — she realized, obviously I had done everything…So then she obviously offered me the two options: do commercial work, or do plus size modeling. And she wasn't too keen on the idea of plus size modeling. She was like, It's for old women.
JS: (Laughs)
CR: And I'm thinking, but I can be any size I want and still model!
JS: (Laughs)
CR: (Laughs) Do you know what I mean? Settle for commercial work and still starve myself to be this size?
JS: Plus, she was basically asking you to give up the dream of modeling. Which is that you might book that job with Steven Meisel.
CR: That was exactly it. That was 100% it. I didn't want to lose the dream. Because they would have never supported me in sending me to those people. And I would have been still miserable, in a horrible emotional state, still looking terrible, still starving, and for no dream…Choosing the unknown, but still the dream, was of course the option. I'm not going to lose my life. Wonderful! I know it sounds so casual to say that —
JS: But it was a real concern.
CR: It was a real concern! Where do you go from there? If I'd continued eating as I did even for another couple of months, I would have been in a hospital. I was really starting to be sick.

(Here, having arrived in Williamsburg and sat down outsider her building, we were interrupted by one of Crystal's elderly neighbors, who wanted to warn us not to sit on the curb, and also to tell us to eat at a certain Italian deli around the corner, where he once brought "someone from the Governor's office — because we know all them people." He talked for five minutes.)

JS: (Laughs) That's a real piece of Brooklyn right there.
CR: That's the guy on the block. And he tells me about the same restaurant every time. He'll say, ‘You know that restaurant over there…' And I'm like: I already know what you're going to say. Yes, I know the restaurant. And Armando says, ‘Hello.'
JS: (Laughs)
CR: It's sweet, but like, the twentieth time…
JS: Retirees, man. You move away from Florida [where Crystal grew up, before moving to Clinton, Miss.], and you think you're out of the woods.
CR: In Miami, it's more — you see these kids walking around at the malls. And they wear these really skimpy outfits, and I — cus I told you, I was the Goth girl, wearing my huge glow-in-the-dark JNCOs—
JS: When I read that part of your book, I felt such recognition. Because I used to make my own pants, in high school. I was after that whole silhouette of the road cone. My friends and I were all into sewing and just making whatever we could...we would make these pants with hems out to here.
CR: That's cool. That's really cool! I would have to say that I liked people like that in high school. Who would do interesting things, as opposed to — I guess ‘conforming,' and wearing the same old Gap sweater. Nothing wrong with Gap, Gap's great — but everyone having the same sweater? Really? You and I would have been great friends.
JS: I think so, too. One of the things I always loved about the fashion industry was that sense that it was all the high school misfits, put together in one room.
CR: Totally! Yeah. I actually feel, weirdly enough, now that I'm my normal size, that I'm actually more accepted now than I've ever been in my entire life.
JS: That's really heartening.
CR: It's true. Because, God, I was so uncomfortable in high school. I felt like I was — just a complete outsider…Now that I have accepted myself, and I'm in the fashion industry, I totally feel more accepted by others.
JS: What a wonderful irony!
CR: I think that I've found my place. That's why I'm so happy — the people I work with, my peers, are accepting of me. I came into the industry and I was pulled apart because of my weight, but now, I don't have to worry about such things anymore. I'm in the best, most magical place that can be. It's great.

And then she went inside to pack her suitcase and go to the airport.

Hungry: A Young Model's Story Of Appetite, Ambition, And The Ultimate Embrace Of Curves [Amazon]

Roitfeld, the editor of Paris Vogue, is the subject of a fawning profile by Lisa Arnold in today's Times of London. "The Ultimate Style-Setter" traces Roitfeld's immense influence over the look of the coming season, from the high street to fashion's top lights. Not only are designers Roitfeld champions personally — like Christophe Decarnin at Balmain, and Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy — experiencing success, writes Arnold, but chain stores like Marks & Spencer are imitating Roitfeld's signature style.

It almost goes without saying that they are all pushing big shoulders and a whole lot of black.

Then there is the British high street. From Oasis's fitted dresses and Mango's outlandish furry coats to Topshop's leather jackets and Miss Selfridge's strong-shouldered blazer, white shirts and leather leggings, they are all referencing her. Even M&S is at it, juxtaposing sequins, leather and Roitfeld's trademark smoky eyes.

Roitfeld, who was rumored briefly late last year to be in the running to take Wintour's job, once compared Wintour to "a puppet" in the pages of New York magazine.

Anna Wintour is known not to love the press, and will likely retreat happily into her fortress of solitude on the 12th floor of the Condé Nast building as soon as the ink is dry on her contract. (Should, of course, the negotiations be successful.) What we've seen in recent months, with the public events and the film promotions and the television appearances, is the charm offensive of someone who is neither naturally very charming, nor easily charmed. Roitfeld could have merely looked on while her rumored rival twisted in discomfort; but instead, she made sure the Times of London just happened to have all these lovely things to say about her.

Because the thing is, this whole people-imitate-Carine thing is not news. We've read this very story before. So why did Roitfeld make sure this piece ran right now, the week of The September Issue's release?

Carine Roitfeld: The Ultimate Style Setter [ToL]
The Anti-Anna

Earlier: Anna Wintour: "I Reckon That Makes Me A Lukewarm Royalty From Outer Space With A Whip"
Being Anna: "Sometimes You Don't Love The Press"
3 Reasons We Hope The Wintour/Roitfeld Rumor Is True

• Model Liskula Cohen has confronted the woman revealed as the author of a hate-blog directed against her. Cohen told the woman that she forgave her, but the blogger did not apologize — probably because a defamation suit is pending. [P6]

• Brett Favre is going to be the new face, and presumably butt, of Wrangler jeans. [WWD]
• Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone are reportedly eloping to Massachusetts this weekend. [P6]
• Elisabeth Moss, who plays Peggy Olsen on Mad Men, is sick of wearing mustard, says costume designer Janie Bryant. [W]
• Stella McCartney's perfume, Stellanude, will launch as planned, because Ali Hewson's court bid to prevent it has failed. Hewson runs a company called Nude Brands, and markets a line of skincare under the Nude trademark. [Telegraph]
• The headline — "David Bailey: Still Snapping Away At 71" — might as well just read "David Bailey, Amazingly, Still Alive." But the legendary British photographer actually has plenty to say on the topics of retouching and American Vogue: "D'you know any model over the age of 23 has to be touched up these days. Twenty-three? It's fucking ridiculous but that's what you have to do for American Vogue and it's getting to be the same over here." [ToL]
• Anna Wintour personally approves every photo published by Vogue's blog. [The Cut]
• Meanwhile, sources say that Vogue attracted early attention from the consultants McKinsey because they believe it is a model of a larger Condé Nast title, and that the lessons learned from studying Vogue will be applicable to other magazines. Vogue, representative? More likely it drew the money-savers' eyes first because of its legendary profligacy. [NYObs]
• Michelle Obama's principal hairstylist says, "I believe hair is a language, if it's not moving it has no voice." [W]
• Meanwhile, is there any reason Simon Doonan might be measuring the White House drapes? Or shall we just assume the Obamas have hired the wittiest interior designer ever? [VF]
• Ed Hardy designer Christian Audigier says there will be no Jon Gosselin clothing line. And we were so hoping. [E!]
• Sex-era Vivienne Westwood punk clothing is so popular that people are counterfeiting it now, a generation later. Three people were arrested in London and charged with fraud for allegedly selling clothing they claimed had come from Malcolm McLaren and Westwood's infamous store. [WWD]
• If you want to be an It Girl, Refinery29 created a handy charticle for your edification. It helps if you have the Cobrasnake's number. [Refiner29]
• Mario Grauso, the president of Puig Fashion Group, which owns Carolina Herrera and Nina Ricci, among other houses, is rumored to be resigning. [WWD]
• This fashion blind item is kind of generic, but anyway: "Which designer won't be showing in the Tent this year, like he usually does? Rumor has it he'll send his gorgeous gowns down the Salon's runway instead." Could be almost anyone, in this economy. But perhaps it's Zac Posen? [Fashionista]
• Earlier this month, the Michael Kors boutique on Prince Street in SoHo was burgled. A man distracted the security guard at the neighboring Apple store and made off with $13,000 worth of merchandise. [Villager]
• Pop-up stores are barely news these days, but if Rodarte is doing one at Colette in Paris this October, and selling DVDs of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and stuffed knit animals, that actually sounds cool. [WWD]
• Two men have now been arrested in connection with the $66 million jewelry robbery at the Graff store in London. [NYTimes]
• The Humane Society wants the FTC to investigate Bergdorf's and Neiman Marcus for allegedly mislabeling fur products. The Society alleges that both stores sold Manolo Blahnik boots made from ocelot fur, an endangered species. [WWD]
• The Limited's second quarter profit declined by 27% on last year's numbers. [WSJ]
• L.L. Bean is shaking things up with a new creative director, Rogues Gallery's Alex Carleton. [NYTimes]
• The Buckle has continued its trend of positive results, despite the recession. The last quarter saw its profits rise 12% on the same period last year, to $25 million. [WSJ]

• Australian Vogue's September cover is out, and it features a stunning illustration of Cate Blanchett. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, Fashion Week Daily is reporting on a rumor that Victoria Beckham might be American Vogue's October cover model. [FWD]

• The Kanye West-Gap intern story is back, this time as written in the Chicago Tribune. But no sources are named — doubly so where the rumor-within-a-rumor that West is looking to launch a clothing line with the retailer is concerned. But it would be so perfect! Amber Rose could model it. [ChicagoTrib]
• Jessica Simpson, on her new lingerie line, produced by a licensee of a licensee: "Of course I love lingerie. What girl doesn't? My lingerie reflects the way I'm feeling when I wake up and helps me set the tone for my day." [WWD]
• Takashi Murakami for Louis Vuitton stuffed animals: no celebrity artist megabrand collaboration should ever be this goddamned cute. [FWD]
• French street style photographer Garance Doré has a new gig expanding her blogging coverage for Paris Vogue. [WWD]
• Balenciaga returned to Jennifer Connelly for its fall ads — and then had Steven Meisel photograph her very awkwardly. [SassyBella]
• Jean-Paul Gaultier, for his part, booked Raquel Zimmerman and Raquel Zimmerman for his fall campaign. Raquel Zimmerman plays the girl role and the boy role and looks mighty good doing it. [FWD]
• Gaultier's collaboration with Doc Martens — available only in France, hélas — features boots with perforated leather in a grid. And, as Fashionista points out, you could totally make a DIY version. [Fashionista]
• Roberto Cavalli's house involves significantly less leopard print than we might have imagined. [The Moment]
• Naomi Campbell may have attacked a paparazzo with her handbag on holiday in Sicily. [Daily Mail]
• Designer Paul Smith, on photographing his own ad campaigns: "The whole idea of a designer doing photographs is sort of pretentious: ‘I do everything, you know.' Like Karl whatshisname. I'm a snapper, not a photographer. I'm not Mario Testino. But my lot have been saying, ‘You take pictures; you do it.' So I thought, ‘Let's have a go.' My creative director and the marketing guy and the press people are all pleased with them." [ToL]
• Amber le Bon is to be featured in an upcoming issue of (British?) Vogue wearing her mother Yasmin's vintage clothes. [Daily Mail]
• Late on Friday, fashion writer Diane Pernet published an e-mail exchange between the stylist for "a well-known singer of color" and a PR representative for designer Alexander Wang; the PR was denying the singer's request to wear Alexander Wang clothing, and when the stylist wrote back intimating that the denial was based on her client's race, the PR seemed to agree, and said she was quitting her job. Although Blackbook originally reported on the story, both it and Pernet have pulled their posts about it — did Wang threaten legal action? — but Blackbook's Facebook note publicizing its post is still visible, and Homo Neurotic has reprinted the full text of the e-mails. [Facebook and Homo Neurotic]
• You can now count Yves Saint Laurent designer Stefano Pilati among the thundering horde descending on London Fashion Week in September. Pilati will be in attendance because of his mentor relationship with the label Veryta. [Vogue UK]
• The fashion industry's huge waste is a serious environmental hazard in the third world countries where most of our clothing is made. [UPI]
• A particular jean factory in Lesotho, which produces denim items for the Gap and Levi's, exposed locals to burns and chest infections because of its toxic fumes. [CBS]
• Juicy Couture's higher-priced line, Bird, is now hitting stores. Anyone who had her eye on Rachel Zoe's recommended leather leggings, now is your time. [LATimes]
• Emma Watson, despite her professed abhorrence of celebrity clothing lines, is rumored to be in the process of launching one with the London fair trade organic brand People Tree. There's a Mischa Barton coke joke in here somewhere. [Daily Mail]
• New York is still an attractive place for overseas tourists to go shopping, since the dollar is slightly lower again. London, where the exchange rate has only recently become more favorable, has seen a 4.7% increase in retail sales over last year for the month of June. [WWD]
• Astoundingly, teenagers in America are spending on average 14% less on clothes than they were last year. [NYTimes]
• Christian Dior's profits were down 27%, to $943 million, in the first six months of this year. [WWD]
• A collage of snippets of fabric used in the late Princess Diana's wedding dress is available on eBay for £15,500, if anyone wants it. [Daily Express]
• 13,300 Burlington Coat Factory boys' hooded sweatshirts are being recalled because their cords pose a strangulation risk. [UPI]

Yesterday morning, the Council of Fashion Designers of America held a private town hall style meeting to discuss the future of fashion week — but the meeting soon mushroomed into a general debate on the serious issues the industry is facing. And nothing is off the table. The entire industry superstructure — how fashion is produced, shown, and sold to the consumer — was hotly debated by everyone from Anna Wintour, to Francisco Costa, to Diane von Furstenberg.

CFDA president von Furstenberg made the case for change by drawing attention to the disconnect between the shows — which receive so much press that customers would probably buy items from the collection then and there — and the actual produced goods, which don't reach stores for another six months. By then, the hype may have gone flat — or as Jack McCollough of Proenza Schouler put it, "It's on blogs; magazines pull straight from the runways; and by the time it's in stores, it feels sort of old." Von Furstenberg ventured a solution in a split fashion week: "Maybe there can be a Fashion Week that says trade and another one that says shop?"

Other designers have decided that sales are the enemy. Donna Karan fingered early delivery dates — the well-known problem of winter coats arriving in stores in July, which is, if we're talking this so-far dreary summer, about the time you might start thinking about buying a new swimsuit — as a motivator for stores to mark down in-season clothing, hurting margins on the items most likely to actually sell. "The consumer has been trained to buy on sale," said Karan.

"Everyone had been too greedy, and everyone thought the party was forever," said von Furstenberg. "We wanted more merchandise, and more of this and more of that, and expect 20 percent increases every month, and at some point it just became too much of everything. I realized that what we all have to do is reduce the offerings and create the demand."

Elie Tahari said his company has seen success since it started making smaller, but more numerous, shipments of in-season goods to retailers. "It's about shipping clothes that you can buy and wear right away," said the designer, who compared discounting to "a virus."

American Vogue's fashion news and features editor, Sally Singer, laid blame at the inelastic production structure. "There's been an overproduction which has led to the 40 and 60 and 80 percent off. If we produce less, the consumer will have more confidence in the product."

But Anna Wintour's proposed solution really takes the cake. The Vogue editor stood up to offer, "Could someone lead a committee that would make ground rules for retailers of when the discounting starts, and then all the retailers can agree to it?" Von Furstenberg interjected that that was illegal — in fact, if the big department stores had any such agreement, it would amount to price-fixing and collusion, an anti-trust lawsuit in the making. "Is that something we can change?" asked Wintour. "We have friends in the White House now!"

Von Furstenberg stressed that none of the proposed ideas will be in effect for the shows this September — she is looking for solutions that can be put in place by September 2010. So which will it be? More frequent deliveries sounds dangerously close to the kind of permanent-new-collection madness that swept us into this mess; some of the big houses already do 12 collections a year. Restricting the volume of clothing produced is a sure-fire way to artificially inflate sell-through rates, but to what end would a successful business actively seek fewer customers when it has enjoyed more in the past? What nobody was apparently willing to address was that fashion became, during the long recent boom, simply too expensive: there are not enough good designers willing to make a beautiful dress that costs not a few thousand dollars but a few hundred dollars. True designer fashion will never be available at Wal-Mart or H&M prices, but why can so few people manage to make a dress that a member of this country's middle-class could actually, in a good month, splurge on and wear with enjoyment? Sales are not the enemy: sales are the message that what designers are doing is not working. And idle talk about lobbying the Obama administration to create loopholes in the nation's competition laws doesn't further anyone's business interests.

Betsey Johnson, for her part, supports von Furstenberg's idea of a more consumer-driven fashion week to vacuum up some of the hype away from the trade shows. "I would love to show at Madison Square Garden!" she said. "I wish Fashion Week for the public can be like Christmas, and maybe we'll put up green and pink lights everywhere. I could completely have my showroom open to the public. I could run around that week. I could celebrate in the stores."

As the New York Observer notes, her statement was met with silence from the room. A pity — I'd go to Johnson's public show in a heartbeat.

CFDA's Forum Debates The Fashion System [WWD]
At CFDA Town Committee, Wintour Proposes Discount By Committee; DVF: "That's Illegal!" [NYObs]

• New lows in celebrity sartorial publicity: Dior would like everyone to know that Madonna was wearing its sunglasses when she visited the victims of her stage collapse in Marseille, which killed two workers and left eight injured. [WWD]

• A Tracey Emin etching of Kate Moss is among artworks for sale via raffle - tickets are just £1 - to benefit Mothers4Children. [Telegraph]
• For some reason, Levi's decided to give its Fall '09 lookbook a jailbird theme. Since, at least before orange jumpsuits, denim was the fabric of life in the big house, the lookbook features models styled for mug shots, and photographed through bars. (The bars appear to actually be...a fire escape.) File under Annals of Idiocy, subsection Stupid High-Concept Lookbooks. [HighSnobiety]
• Levi's has also just acquired its own footwear and accessories licensee for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, DC Co. The company wants to strengthen its presence in those markets. [WWD]
• An American Apparel store in Silver Spring, Maryland had its window broken, allegedly because the window display featured the company's "Legalize Gay" gay rights t-shirts. A threatening telephone call was also received by another area store after the attack. The company took down its window displays - "We just don't want a broken window," explained the Silver Spring store manager, Kassandra Powell - but released a statement affirming its support of gay rights, and its intention to continue running "Legalize Gay" ads in Washington, D.C., area media and providing its t-shirts to local activist groups. [The Sexist]
• Angie Everhart is eight days away from giving birth as a single parent. Her worst pregnancy cravings were for egg salad. [People]
• Jerry Hall's advice for modeling (and life?): "Be nice to everyone, even if you don't want to. Just be nice and gracious. And don't show your bum." [WWD]
• That's one way to multi-task: Alexandra Richards had a hotel minion perform a pedicure while she deejayed. "Stuff that you can't do while getting a pedicure" seems like as good a definition of "actual professional labor" as any; this anecdote therefore proves beyond all doubt that deejaying ain't a real job. (But doing pedicures sure is.) [P6]
• Bar Refaeli's new campaign for Rampage is predictably hot. [People]
• Gloria Vanderbilt told model Kiera Chaplin, Charlie and Oona Chaplin's granddaughter, that she was the spitting image of her gran. "Oona and I were often mistaken for being sisters," explained the newly minted erotic novelist. [P6]
• Top model Du Juan is being sued by the Chinese agency New Silk Road for allegedly violating her contract with them when she signed with international powerhouse agency IMG in 2005. New Silk Road wants a portion of Du's IMG earnings, and an approximately $439,000 fine. [China Daily]
• Erin Wasson is joining Swiss skateboard company Doodah's line of naked supermodel boards. Isabeli Fontana, Lara Stone, Toni Garrn, and Edita Vilkeviciute are already featured on individual skateboards, wearing shoes they could not actually skateboard in. [The Cut]
• Naomi Campbell is featured in a similar state of undress for a new D&G perfume campaign. Which motivated the Sun to write the pun, "breast assets." [Sun]
• French fashion house Cacharel is re-launching itself at Paris Fashion Week this September. [WWD]
• Scott Schuman's book, The Sartorialist, is rolling off the presses now, even though the official release date is not until August 12. The cover features stylist Julie Ragolia. [The Sartorialist]
• American Eagle's "Artist" jean, which was a best-seller until it was discontinued last year, has been brought back after a redesign. The new cut is intended to be more flattering to a lady's rear. The jeans will retail at $39.50; the two kinds that have "destroyed details" cost $10 more. [WWD]
• American Vogue's Sarah Mower writes that fashion this fall is going to be a grown-up affair - that clothes will no longer worship at the feet of youth. The girl in the photo illustrating this story looks to be about 14. [Telegraph]
• Steve Madden, which produces watches through a licensee, allegedly found fakes for sale on eBay. Imagine! But when they asked the site to remove the items, eBay didn't comply, so the company is suing. [Reuters]
• Stylist Patricia Field designed an Ugly Betty-inspired Diet Coke bottle. It's pink. Will people seriously buy anything? [Fashionista]
• Charlotte Russe announced a 4.9% drop in third-quarter profits, to $6.3 million. [WWD]
• Avon has announced it will be laying off 1,200 people, or 2.8% of its workforce, over the next four years. [AP]
• Escada's bond exchange, which needed an 80% acceptance rate from bondholders in order to save the company from bankruptcy, has only met with approval from 37% of the company's creditors. So it has extended the exchange period until August 5, and implemented an exchange of stock to raise additional cash. [WWD]
• 1.4 million pairs of children's shoes are being recalled. The shoes, shaped like racecars, have wheels which can detach and pose a choking risk. Buster Brown & Co.'s eight different styles of shoes were sold at retailers including JC Penney, Famous Footwear, Meijer, Sears, Target, and Wal-Mart, and can be returned for a full refund. [WWD]

We decided to resurrect some early gems, like this Versace campaign, shot by Richard Avedon, and co-starring (who else?) Naomi and Linda.


There is an entire cultural studies thesis about power dressing and the representation of women as authority figures and "having it all" latent in this picture from 1987.


Isn't it strange that this one, though it dates from almost ten years later, seems so passive by comparison? Calvin Klein had Turlington on a very restrictive exclusive contract until the early 1990s, when she was dumped by the brand for cutting her hair without consulting them — a relationship, and a reaction, that has always struck me as emblematic of a deep paternalism.


Herb Ritts, for Versace, makes Turlington look here like a piece of Surrealist art.


You just know there's a hipster in Williamsburg itching to wear this, a coat so ugly even Irving Penn couldn't make it look appetizing, right now.


Pressing questions: what is going on with the crotch of those pants?


Oh, man, remember film grain?


Since it seems inevitable that we're heading back to the 90s, would it be totally unrealistic to hope that we might return to these 90s?


Because I, for one, do not relish the thought of going back to these ones.


Ah, that's better.


Irving Penn contributes so very rarely to Vogue these days — which is understandable, given his advanced years. But this picture, and the next one, help show why he is missed.


Seriously, how long has it been since we've seen the actual shape of a human body, unaltered by Photoshop, in the pages of American Vogue? All the twists and overlaps are what make this picture — like the bulge in her arm that proves its supporting her weight, and the indentation the protrusion of her heel makes in her ass. And you can easily imagine these being among the first features that would be smoothed and tightened away under today's aesthetic regime.


Like they are here, in this otherwise striking cover from 2002.


Someone should make pumps like these again. They're not stupidly high, they have that perfect not-too-pointy toe, and the classic tapering heel. No hidden platform, no witchy long vamp, no 4" stiletto to negotiate walking in — just cute proportions and cute prints. Linda is saying, "Fuck yeah!"


Meisel in the 80s doing Avedon in the 50s isn't the most original of themes, but I'm a sucker for shots of women putting on their makeup and jewelry. Something about those moments of feminine toilette is so intimate and fascinating.


Shoulder-grazing ear-rings and 3 lb necklaces are fun to wear! Whee!


Never one to shy away from the unusual, for a 2006 campaign for her Puma line Nuala, the supermodel had artist Alex Katz paint her.

Christy Turlington is, of course, a lot more than a model these days. She quit the industry at the age of 25 to study comparative religion at NYU, and is currently a graduate student in public health at Columbia. Now 40 and a mother of two, Turlington is making a documentary about maternal health in developing countries. She's financing it with the money she makes from her occasional gigs, like being the next face of YSL. "I can talk about things that people in the field are afraid to bring up," says Turlington, "because their funding is tied to administrations and policy."

25 Years of Christy Turlington in Vogue [Style.com]
Beauty And Soul [Style.com]

• Michael Jackson has settled on a costume for his upcoming tour: an ensemble made entirely from Swarovski crystals. His wardrobe uses 300,000 of the sparklers. Of course, this is the man who once wore a gold-plated jacket. [WWD]

• Meanwhile at Glastonbury, the band Florence and the Machine had its outfits designed specially by Topshop. [Telegraph]
• Anna Wintour is said to have instructed Vogue petty officers to create sockpuppet accounts on Facebook to monitor fan page comments about The September Issue. [P6]
• Bucking the trend of British fashion designers returning to London Fashion Week for its anniversary, Giles Deacon has announced he'll show his Spring 2010 collection in Paris. [WWD]
• Eva Green read what you wrote about her on the Internet, but unlike Anna, she just doesn't care! "I want to wear something that I wouldn't wear every day, I like to be a bit eccentric and I know lots of people say 'Oh my god blah' but I don't care, I want to have my style, I like to try something new," said the actress, who also pines for Topshop when she's in France. [Mirror]
• 50 Cent unveiled his new fragrance, Power, at a private party in New York. While unspecific about its target audience ("Everyone human...breathing...") he did manage to shove a journalist out of his path. The way she writes it, she didn't seem to mind. Power indeed. [The Cut]
• This week sees the official previews of two dark, "intellectual" fashion ranges, heavy on the strange shapes and deconstruction, and costing around $300-$600. One is by Juicy Couture ("There is...one pair of very expensive leather leggings", but we knew that already). The other is by Comme des Garçons. Odd! [Racked] [Racked]
• Council of Fashion Designers of America menswear award winner Band of Outsiders' Scott Sternberg (who tied for the award with Calvin Klein's Italo Zucchelli) was good enough to answer some of W magazine's questions. To "Waverly Inn or Monkey Bar?" he sagely responded: "No." Asked, "Jon or Kate?" Sternberg said: "Who?" Also, Paris Hilton better not ever ask to borrow his clothes. We like him even more now. [W]
• Christy Turlington, who bagged the spring campaign, too, is coming back this fall as the face of Bally. Mario Sorrenti shot the ads. A number of fashion houses have made the choice to stick with their spring casting choices for fall. Versace re-shot Gisele in virtually the same position and dress as before, and Louis Vuitton re-hired Madonna. [WWD]
• Bar Refaeli is now the new face of Garnier Fructis. [SassyBella]
• Speaking of, L'Oréal has been found guilty of racial discrimination in French court. To market its Fructis shampoo in supermarkets, the beauty giant hired a sales staff — and was caught giving instructions in writing to a temp agency to employ only white women aged 18-22 who wear a French size 38-42. L'Oréal and the temp agency, Adecco, each have to pay fines and damages of €60,000. [Times of London]
• Models of color did not fare well at Milan menswear week. Even reliably diverse clients, like DSquared2 (which last year used an all-black cast) had virtually no faces of color on their runways. Check out these pictures to see the practically all-white casts for yourself. [FashionBombDaily]
• An Australian retail chain called Diva has ripped off a wide variety of jewelry by indie designers. [ShanaLogic]
• Let me say this again: Male modeling is just like modeling for women. Only even more poorly paid. (This article quotes 500 Euros to several thousand Euros as a typical rate for men who work the shows in Europe — and says that it's lower than what women models get. Why do reporters never keep in mind who they're asking? In this case, it's a pair of twins who started out by booking campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana. Nothing about their experience of the industry is average.) [Telegraph]
• Project Runway's Leanne Marshall wrote on her personal blog that she was unhappy with a business opportunity gone sour — but one which it was too late to pull the plug on. Discontent with retail partner Bluefly is the only logical conclusion. [Racked]
• Ex-model and PR whiz Carlos Souza has returned to the house of Valentino to try and repair its damaged reputation. Since Valentino's departure, the brand has suffered through the embarrassing ousting of the talented successor Alessandra Facchinetti, and lackluster collections designed since then by two of Valentino's former assistants. [FWD]
• Vena Cava now has a blog. [Viva Vena Cava]
• Philippe Starck has launched a new clothing line, which he describes as "non-photogenic." It's made of waterproof cashmere and designed to last a long time, which is still enough to prick our interest. [UnBeige]
• Dress Barn announced plans to buy Tween Brands Inc., which operates the Limited Too and Justice. [WSJ]
• Nike, which cut 5% of its global workforce, some 1,750 jobs in May, saw sales for the fourth quarter decline to $341.4 million, from $490.5 million the year before. Orders for the next few month are also down 12%. [AP]
• Troubled Jones Apparel Group is betting on the Asian market. It just bought a 15% stake in the Hong Kong-based retail distribution group GRI, upping its total stake in the company to 25%. [WWD]
• H&M's sales are up by 6.4% in the quarter just ended. Revenue climbed 23%. [WSJ]
• Uniqlo is talking about buying the Gap. [Independent]
• The company that owns Lacoste has chosen the former head of the European supermarket chain Carrefour to lead the brand. [WWD]

Everyone wants to know what exactly goes on around the 12th floor of 4 Times Square. As the trailer states, one in ten U.S. women will get Vogue's September issue — which is a fantastically broad reach for a fashion title. How the sausage is made is a question that R. J. Cutler's documentary will, one hopes, answer in full. What we can tell from the trailer is this:

Wintour's legendary editorial nit-picking is not an exaggeration. In addition to replacing stylists, trashing finished shoots (including one with Hilary Rhoda and Chanel Iman, which never saw the light of ink), pre-approving all styling choices, and demanding a full, un-edited selection of shots from the photographers Vogue works with, she nay-says fonts. "This type seems so large, and pretentious," she mutters. "It looks like it's for blind people."

The trailer also makes clear that Wintour's interventions do not always redound to her title's benefit. The camera lingers over an image from stylist Grace Coddington and photographer Steven Meisel's 1920s-themed shoot, which Coddington reports her boss killed and re-shot at least three times.

Even in grainy online video, this double-page picture — a witty take on "Déjeuner dur L'herbe", with picnicking models in pageboys and flapper dresses — looks better than what actually made it into the magazine nearly two years ago.

As for the actual September, 2007, issue, it mostly sticks out in my mind as the point at which Vogue basically ate itself. In addition to relying on model Caroline Trentini, a perennial Wintour favorite, to do three editorials, there were numerous other embarrassing juxtapositions that proved the paucity of Vogue's ideas. For instance, accidentally publishing a shot-by-shot re-make of a David Sims editorial which had been perfect-bound by the magazine only seven months before.

That's Patrick Demarchelier's September, 2007, story with Trentini, "Brights! Camera! Action!" on the left, and Sims' February, 2007, story with Gemma Ward, "Park Avenue" on the right. In case you couldn't tell them apart.

And Raquel Zimmerman appeared for a Craig McDean edit in a head-to-toe Balenciaga runway look, which was also identical to the David Sims-shot Balenciaga campaign of that season, starring Anabela Belikova.

Advertising and editorial images which are not just indistinguishable, but actually mirrors of one another — just a few pages apart.

I suppose that kind of overlap is the risk you run when all your styling decisions are taken straight off the catwalks of six months prior, and your inch-thick magazine is 87% ads, anyway. To date, the September, 2007, issue remains the biggest Vogue ever printed — a monument to pre-recession thinking, advertiser largesse, and hamstrung creativity that we may never see surpassed.

The September Issue [Yahoo! Movies]

Earlier: The September Issue Less Than Flattering?

• One of the hazards of dating a rock star: When, mid-fight, you want to throw some of his stuff into a pool, there's a slight risk that he might have unreleased, non-backed-up new songs among his personal effects. [Mirror]

• "I used to bring pies to the office," says amateur baker Peter Som. "I can't eat them all myself." How did that dude ever get fired? [WWD]
• Thus spake Lacroix: "Don't tell anyone, because I'm not allowed to do this, but we absolutely are going to have a show in mid-July, during Fashion Week –- and it won't be a funeral: it'll be a fightback." Since Christian Lacroix's fashion house, owned by the U.S.-based Falic group, entered bankruptcy, the fate of the couture show has been in serious doubt. "It can't cost us a single Euro to put this show on, because I'm not having my workers lose a penny from their pockets, but so far, it looks like thanks to other people's kindness — friends and suppliers working for free — it might happen. I can't stand the idea that people think I am to blame [for the bankruptcy] but to a certain extent I am paying for not having done what everyone else did, with their logos and It-bags. I never went down that route." Lacroix has been working for free for 18 months, and is owed 1.2 million Euros in back pay. [Telegraph]
• Model Lily Cole earned a first in her end of year art history exams at Cambridge, one of only three students to receive the top grade. [Mirror]
• Yigal Azrouel, whose relationship with Katie Lee Joel is rumored to have brought about the end of the latter's marriage to Billy Joel, romances a lot of ladies. (He is an attractive, straight man working in fashion. Duh.) One rumor alleges Azrouel sleeps with editors at magazines to further his career. [P6]
• Chanel and Burberry model Emma Watson is said to be launching a clothing line for children and teens to benefit Unicef. [Hindustan Times]
• Usher says his men's fragrance really "represents the growth I've had in the last two years." VIP, which he's set to launch this September, is a "tool of engagement for seduction...made for a man but for women to enjoy." [WWD]
• Uh-oh. Sales of perfumes fell 6% overall in 2008, and 7% during the first quarter of 2009. Estée Lauder's fragrance division said the last three months of 2009 saw sales fall 20%, and another perfume company executive said anonymously that he believed sales for this year were down 15-20% because distributors are not restocking after selling to retailers. [NYTimes]
• "I don't want to do 'Adele by Adele' perfume!" says Adele. [LATimes]
• A judge refused to dismiss gourmet butter distributor Clint Arthur's lawsuit against Louis Vuitton for selling off-cuts of fabric as art prints. [P6]
• You really know you've hit the event horizon of aspirational shopping when someone from a company that makes plastic shoes describes her products as "affordable luxury." [LATimes]
• Robin Givhan at the Washington Post sees in H&M's just-announced collaboration with Jimmy Choo the end of luxury as we know it. "There's something about cheap Jimmy Choo shoes that doesn't feel right," writes the critic. "Women's shoes have been sold on a centuries-old mythology that makes the discovery that Jimmy Choo can produce a desirable pair of shoes for less than $50 as jarring as when Dorothy pulled back the curtain on the Wizard." [WaPo]
• Actually, the cheapest offering from Jimmy Choo's H&M collection will retail at around 40 Euros, or $55. The 12 women's styles and four men's models will range in price from there up to 200 Euros, or $138. Bags will cost up to 200 Euros. It all goes on sale in select H&M stores on November 14. [WWD]
• Cool looking Missoni-printed Converse Chuck Taylors will also be a thing you can buy, starting next summer. [WWD]
• Prince William's girlfriend Kate Middleton is, according to rumor, sitting on an offer for a year-long internship at American Vogue from Anna Wintour. Middleton, a former fashion buyer, could take her pick of either working in New York or Los Angeles. [Hindu]
• Jason Wu anticipates $4 million in sales this year and sees a men's wear division in his future. The 26-year-old enjoys spending his Sundays browsing at the Strand and playing poker with a $20 buy-in, "just enough to take it seriously but not enough to feel bad when you lose." [NYTimes]
• The Fall Calvin Klein Collection and CK Calvin Klein ads have leaked — they feature Monika "Jac" Jagaciak and Jourdan Dunn and Sigrid Agren, respectively. The Collection campaign was shot by David Sims and CK by Craig McDean. [Fashionologie]
• Isaac Mizrahi is opening a store for his namesake label in August. It'll be 1500 square feet and located on the Upper East Side. [WWD]
• Cashmere prices have fallen so drastically that many herders of cashmere goats have had to sell their animals for meat. Orders for winter cashmere sweaters from the West have fallen by up to 30%. And get ready for a cold season: the garments being made are using less cashmere. "They are too small — half the breast is outside the sweater," said one factory's sales manager. [NYTimes]
• Jil Sander is on the comeback trail in a big way. The German designer, who lost the use of her name to Prada when the Italian company bought out her house and fired her, has just announced a fine jewelry collaboration with Damiani. This is in addition to her new position as a creative director of Uniqlo. [WWD]

Anna Wintour has this dress which she just loves to talk about. At every public appearance, she relays the story of how Steven Meisel wanted to photograph it, but when she found out the masterpiece retailed for a lot of money — sometimes she says $50,000, sometimes she says $25,000 — she, the fashion magazine editor with a conscience, and a firm grasp of what regular people are prepared to pay for their few, hard-won items of luxury during These Economic Times, took her protégé kingmaker fashion photographer in hand, and told him (sternly, we imagine, and also very arch and British-ly) No!

And also the dress was very little. She publicly compared it to the size of Graydon Carter's shirt. And a Wall Street Journal reporter who also was treated to the Saga Of The Sequined Dress came away with the impression that it might have been just "a bedazzled shrug," so attenuated was Wintour's gestural representation of its size.

So knowing what we do about this dress, we A) Really want to figure out what it might be, and which designer experienced the snub and B) Wish Wintour would just let Steven Meisel shoot it, so everyone at Vogue could quit mourning the lost opportunity and find something new to talk about. (Like weight loss by the "bulk-heating" method, which we hear is totally now.)

Only one of those things being within our particular bailiwick, we set our minds (and our mice) to tracking down The Dress. Let's peruse the possibilities!

Balenciaga featured this dress in its spring campaign, and it costs $65,000. (But it's on sale for $35,000.)

And this one runs to $52,000. (It's currently reduced to $27,000.) Both would, naturally, be well above the $50,000 figure Wintour originally gave for her dream dress; and we know the editor loves to feature Nicolas Ghesquière's work. (Frequent Vogue cover girl Keira Knightley wore an all-Balenciaga look on the front of the all-important September issue last year, to give just one example.) These are strong contenders.

Plenty of readers pointed to Balmain as a leader in both the provision of embellishment-encrusted dresses and outrageous prices. ("$2500 for a pair of bleached jeans"!) While basically all of the label's Fall/Winter 2009 collection would qualify in the size and the sequin measures, none of it would have been available for Steven Meisel to photograph in December, 2008 — because, of course, the collection didn't exist yet. Limiting the search to the Spring/Summer 2009 samples, which would have been out for editorial consideration in the Fall of '08, two obvious choices emerge. Both are shinier than just about anything else we've seen. But this one is tinier.

And this one is getting a lot of attention — Jennifer Connolly wore it to the premiere of He's Just Not That Into You, and Vogue-owned Style.com has it currently up as one of its banner ads.

Is a Style.com banner ad a likely consolation prize for being cut from an editorial in the magazine itself?

Brian Réyes, thanks for playing. But nothing you make costs $25,000. (And thank God for that!)

This is certainly the one of the briefest of the entrants our little search attracted. We couldn't find pricing information for Hussein Chalayan's clothes anywhere online — but a lack of U.S. stockists is a sure sign of outrageous prices. We'd consider this little number a distinct possibility. Nobody at Jezebel can recall ever seeing a Hussein Chalayan campaign in a magazine — it would be easiest of all for Wintour to cut a non-advertising designer from an editorial.

Frankly, to get into $25,000-$50,000 dress territory, you have to strongly consider couture. Chanel's spring couture runway, a tipster notes, was full of sequins and sparkling embellishment. Although couture is made-to-measure and therefore POA, this little handmade baby could easily cost 25 large. Or a lot more.

Ditto this one.

Colette Dinnigan, an Australian designer who traditionally shows in Paris, used an inordinate amount of sequins in her Spring/Summer 2009 collection.

These are just four of her many tiny, shiny, and pricey dresses.

But would Dinnigan really have the name recognition necessary for consideration in a Meisel shoot for Vogue?

We find that proposition doubtful.

Marchesa specializes in extremely expensive, beautifully crafted, red-carpet-ready gowns, most of which are so expensive and limited in production that, like couture, they don't even make it into department stores. An embroidered silk organza dress by the label costs $6,600 at Neiman Marcus; rest assured that was probably the very cheapest item from the whole collection. This piece, with its extensive beading and sequins, could well enter $25,000+ territory.

Peter Som's dresses mostly retail in the $1200-$2000 range, so it seems unlikely that even one with such heavy embellishment as this would tilt the scales at $25,000+.

Phillip Lim, your dress is beautiful, and it has the costly double-whammy of sequins, and a fabric-use-intensive bias cut. But could it possibly run to $25,000? A quick phone call to the 3.1 Phillip Lim boutique in Manhattan reveals that this baby retails for $1,500 — but it's currently 40% off. In this lineup, that's a steal.

Sequined or otherwise embellished garments are inevitably some of the most expensive pieces from any given collection, and therefore among the most unlikely to be selected by major retailers, especially during this season of financial discontent. The memory of last Fall's nightmare of inventory-clogged racks and 85% discounts stays many a buyer's ordering impulse. Sequined items from this Proenza Schouler collection that were picked up by retailers are extraordinarily expensive — $1,050 for a t-shirt, $1,350 for a skirt — and the label's regular dresses can top $3,000. But while this beaded tunic, without the pants, certainly looks as though it's not much bigger than Graydon Carter's shirt, we doubt it could actually cost more than $25,000.

Ralph Lauren Collection is pricey stuff. Regular, non-embellished day dresses retail for over $3,000; tailored pieces like jackets fetch nearly as much. We wouldn't be blown away if this offering, with its heavy beading and all around sequin-encrusted lacy good looks were retailing for $10,000-$15,000. But $25,000 might be pushing it.

The tipster who sent in this worthy contender from Versace's Spring/Summer 2009 collection called attention to its briefness and the enviable shininess of its sequins. Dresses from the Italian fashion house generally hit the $3,000-$5,000 price point, with a few "bargain" options at $1,500 thrown in for good measure; we couldn't get anyone at Versace to answer our pricing questions, but given this one has sequins, we'd expect it to go for a lot more than the usual. Versace has steadfastly refused to even consider lowering its prices even as the recession has bitten hard into sales. A contender.

An Yves Saint Laurent silk/polyester blend sleeveless dress costs $5,250 at Neiman Marcus. So how comparatively unusual would it be for this sequined baby to top $25,000? But we just don't think it's short enough.

Which contender do you think edges out the others? Balenciaga 1 or 2, Versace's little number, Chanel Couture Silver Superhero or Chanel Couture LBD, Balmain Space Cadet Y or Z? Marchesa's beaded slip? Hussein Chalayan's stiff-looking frock?

We are simply dying to know.

Earlier: What Piece Of Apparel Is Anna Wintour's Fashion "Rosebud"?
Being Anna: "Sometimes You Don't Love The Press"

• Posters The Last International Playboy, featuring Lydia Hearst in a state of undress have been banned in major cities. We just hope all this publicity right ahead of the June 12 release won't harm its box-office! [Observer]

• Karl Lagerfeld, Olivier Theyskens, and Alber Elbaz are rumored to be doing a grand fashion switcheroo. According to fashion writer Diane Pernet, Lagerfeld hasn't renewed his contract at Chanel, and Elbaz, of Lanvin, is going to take his place. Theyskens won't go to Schiaparelli, as previously thought, and instead will take the reins at Lanvin. Just wrap your head around that for a minute. [ASVOF]
• Proctor & Gamble is ending distribution of Max Factor makeup in the United States. [WWD]
• A nude photo of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy auctioned in Berlin sold for $19,600. It had been estimated to fetch $3,568-$4,997. [AP]
• André Leon Talley says that Anna Wintour was "thrilled" with Morley Safer's softly-lit, mostly softball 60 Minutes profile — this despite the fact that Safer essentially called Wintour a "bitch" to her face. Talley did puzzle at some of Safer's takes on the various designers and models he met in the course of his research — he memorably said Karl Lagerfeld "this season favors a Dracula look." "He's had that look for eight years!" laughed Talley. [Mediabistro]
• Model Daisy Lowe: "I'm going to get old and wrinkly, and when I'm older I'm going to put on loads of weight, and I'm excited about it. I think it's just really important to remember that you aren't your face." [Telegraph]
• Designer Charlotte Ronson: "i lost my favorite black vintage sweatshirt at Avenue in ny last night. Please if anyone finds it contact me. there will be a reward." [CJRonson's Twitter]
• Linda Evangelista says that lip liner and a slick of gloss is a much more "modern" look than lipstick. Okay. [MSN]
• Creative director Esteban Cortazar is said to be on his way out at the troubled house of Ungaro. Although Lindsay Lohan is not, as had been rumored, in the running for any kind of creative position, C.E.O. Mounir Moufarrige favors her, or another celebrity, as a face of the brand. This marketing strategy was not to the 25-year-old Columbian designer's liking. [WWD]
• Jason Wu showed his resort collection yesterday in New York, and some of the editors who came to watch it did not eat any of the hors d'oeuvres. Shocking fashion behavior, that! [P6]
• Banana Republic is going to launch a men's and women's fragrance duo, to be called Republic Collection. [WWD]
• Pictures of the Hotel Missoni in Edinburgh, the first of three currently planned Missoni-designed hotels, are now available. It looks nice. Single rooms start around $289 per night. [Hotel Missoni]
• For those of you who appreciate good design, have several homes, and enjoy the sun (but not the surf), Rosa Cha has a line of beach wear that can't get wet. Although Raquel Welch has already bought up all their $1,200 leather bikinis (joke), and a $1,900 caftan also already sold out, the designer's Swarovski-studded bathers are still available, at $3,200 for a maillot and $1,200 for a bikini. "The people that buy the pieces are people who, well, can definitely afford these kinds of items," said store manager Christina Delice. Indeed. [UPI]
• First order of business for Roberto Cavalli and Clessidra SpA, the private equity fund he just agreed (in a non-binding way) to sell 30% of his business to, is finding a C.E.O. Apparently, they already have a shortlist, although we don't know who's on it. Versace, whose C.E.O Giancarlo di Risio is expected to tender his resignation to the board at its meeting in Milan today, isn't in any such hurry. The company is understood to be still drafting its list of potential leaders. [WWD]
• Abercrombie & Fitch experienced a 28% drop in same-store sales for the month of May. Stock fell by 13% after the announcement. [The Street]
• Madewell, the slightly-less-expensive J. Crew outpost, is going to launch an e-commerce site in its name by the first quarter of next year, said C.E.O. Mickey Drexler. Let's hope it works a little better than the regular J. Crew site. [WWD]
• Although Orla Kiely's privately held company is not obligated to disclose its sales and revenue figures publicly, the designer says her business is going gangbusters, recession be damned. Her housewares line for Target is especially successful. [NY Times]
• A Pennsylvania woman who patented her design for a bra that would provide uplift and a smooth silhouette, and then sought out Victoria's Secret as a potential manufacturing partner, says that the company instead consulted with her long enough to steal the idea. She is suing. [UPI]

• Funny, this picture of Amy Winehouse looking "healthy and stylish" still looks off. British label PPQ is bringing the troubled singer's long-rumored fashion line to fruition — if you count PPQ "providing all materials and doing the design," as anything like having your own collection. [This is London]

• Here are about 500 words on how Michelle Obama sometimes lets the press know what she is wearing, and sometimes doesn't. [WWD]
• Designers at Sao Paulo Fashion Week have agreed to cast a minimum 10% quota of models of African or indigenous South American descent. Last year, only 2.3% of the models — 8 girls out of 344 — were non-white. The quota will be enforced by a hefty $120,000 fine. [BBC]
• In more news from the annals of New York real estate envy, Sally Singer, fashion news and features editor of American Vogue, lives in an eclectic apartment in the Chelsea Hotel. [The Selby]
• Pat McGrath, one of the sweetest and most talented makeup artists around, was in New York to publicize Dolce & Gabbana's new makeup line, which she helped develop. What McGrath would like most, however, would be the fountain of youth in a pill, or her own, namesake line, like François Nars, Laura Mercier, and Bobbi Brown. One of those things just might come true, in a just world. [NY Times]
• Since Gisele and Tom got married and became 78% more boring, voilà: your new model/quarterback couple is Hilary Rhoda and Mark Sanchez of the Jets. [P6]
• Complicated modern woman Miuccia Prada: "If you compare with philosophy, [fashion] is frivolous, but frivolity may be something good, something that is part of our lives, so I don't dislike it and what I like is the mix, that in your life you can have serious things, [and] more frivolous ones...Beauty is not something that is contrary; it is the right of everybody." [CNN]
• Thierry Mugler earned a kind of fashion comeback when Beyoncé chose him to design the costumes for her current world tour. And why not? Cinched waists, severely cut skirts, and padded shoulders are everywhere now. While Mugler has no plans to re-start his label, which he had already sold to Clarins long before he quit designing in 2000, this profile explains just how a ballet dancer from Strasbourg came to fashion prominence, via driving a van around Afghanistan and living in the Haight-Ashbury in the late 60s. Interesting start for a man who's made all his money from perfume since 1992. [Telegraph]
• "I don't like most perfumes," says Nicole Miller. Which is why she had to make another one of her own! Perfectly logical really. [WWD]
• And Armani, too, has a new perfume. His scent pays tribute to his muses. [WWD]
• How does El Museo Del Barrio in New York raise funds? Why, by getting Isabel and Ruben Toledo to tutor students from Spanish Harlem in art, and then auctioning their work — "portraits of Latin icons like Salvador Dalí and Christina Aguilera," reports Style.com. Also, by throwing a kick-ass party where Gloria Estefan took the stage. [Style.com]
• Burberry, which moved into the space vacated by New York magazine on Madison Avenue, will turn on its big neon sign next Thursday. Designer Christopher Bailey and CEO Angela Ahrendts will fly in from London for the vernissage. Neon signs of this type aren't normally permitted in that part of Midtown, but because of New York's iconic sign, now dismantled, Burberry has a rare opportunity to grandfather its own in. [HintMag]
• Oh, how cute. The Daily Mail have an anonymous fashion mole. Today, s/he reveals that — gasp — models aren't paid very much (but do get to meet a lot of the rich menz, which we of course totally love, since we're all privileged alphas doing this to snag hubbies anyway) and are often required to change their names. For practical reasons, such as our agencies not wanting four "Jennifers" on their books. Shocking. [Daily Mail]
• Aeropostale's profit for the first quarter grew a whopping 81% on last year. Sales were up 21%, and same-store sales jumped by 11%. [The Street]
• First quarterly profits at Gap Inc. dropped by 14%. [WSJ]
• Aquascutum's chief executive Kim Winser has resigned after the rejection of her bid to buy out the company. [WWD]
• Designer denim sales are one thing that is not going soft in the current economic climate — high-end jeans sales grew by 2.3% in the quarter just ended. [LA Times]
• Brooks Brothers luggage: launching just in time to take to Southampton for the opening of the summer place. What a relief! [WWD]
• Linda Morand, who runs this website — probably the best compendium of 60s fashion magazines out there, and the members who scan and post to it care about identifying models to boot — is to be one of the producers of a two-hour television tribute to the supermodels of the last six decades. The idea is to make it an annual event, and impanel judges of industry prominence to induct models into it. I can't lie; I would probably watch this. Especially if it turns out better than the Vogue/VH1 Fashion Awards. God knows I've happily killed far more than two hours on MiniMadMod60s. [PR Newswire]