Blume, in an interview with New York magazine's Amy Odell, appeared to cast aspersions on Tavi Gevinson's success as a freelancer — Gevinson has gained much notoriety through her blog, and has a story in this month's Harper's Bazaar. Her full quote about Gevinson and the Harper's Bazaar piece read:

"A lot of people are going to read this. Is this a smart marketing move? Of course," Blume said. Did she get the sense people were taking Tavi seriously? "I think she's very dear, but I think it's crazy. I think it was insulting enough when we were expected as adult women to take our fashion cues from Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. All of a sudden women in the fashion world were starting to look like bag ladies. I mean, that's very silly."

Blume doesn't think the industry's top buyers will take Tavi's fashion critiques seriously. "Are the creative directors of Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman going to tailor their purchases according to [her tastes]? Probably not. But is Harper's Bazaar going to sell a bunch of issues because of the novelty? Yes. Will she end up on morning shows? Yes she will," Blume said. "I don't think she's a fashion sage, I think she's a novelty and I think she's going to be used as a marketing device as a novelty."

So: Tavi Gevinson's success is "crazy," and vaguely "insulting" to "adult women," Gevinson is better suited to "morning shows" than real fashion criticism, and her appeal is solely based on her "novelty" value and usefulness as "a marketing device." Pretty harsh gist for a girl barely into her teens.

In the same story, Elle editor Anne Slowey wondered aloud if Gevinson actually wrote her blog, or her other freelance work. Slowey even compared Gevinson to JT Leroy, the famous teenaged author and novelist, whose existence was later revealed to be a hoax perpetrated by the writer Laura Albert. "She's either a tween savant or she's got a Tavi team," remarked Slowey.

Today, Blume is distancing herself from the remarks she made to New York. In an e-mail — actually, several e-mails to two different Jezebel editors, plus a bonus Facebook message — about the young writer, Blume says she never meant to imply Gevinson was just a novelty, but rather that she was "addressing how an adolescent is likely being used as a marketing device, which is actually a very protective stance on Tavi's behalf. That said, the tenor of the NY Mag piece is not what I would have liked, so I hope to clarify my own stance."

I'm not in any way leading a charge against Tavi. As I emphasized in parts of the interview not published by NY mag, I believe that passion like hers should be appropriately encouraged and celebrated ... yet I also expressed concern that she is being used as a novel marketing gimmick by an industry not exactly known for its positive messages for and treatment of young girls.

I hope that she's being amply guided and protected as her star rises, as 13 is a very vulnerable age, no matter what confidence is projected. I most certainly would never attack a precocious thirteen year old girl, but rather I am skeptical about the industry's response to her. As someone who's covered the business side of the fashion industry, I think it's more than valid to address the marketing aspect of this phenomenon, especially when the welfare of an adolescent is concerned.

I contacted New York for a response, and they declined to comment other than to say that they stand by the story.

Photo of Tavi Gevinson via her blog

Earlier:Elle Editor Leads Backlash Against 13-Year-Old Blogger

Related: Editors Like Tavi But Don't Take Her Fashion Advice Seriously [The Cut]
Style Rookie [Official Site]

Gevinson's meteoric rise — she made the cover of Pop magazine, and became a darling of Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters behind Rodarte, all before apparently graduating middle school — has culminated, for now, with a column in this month's Harper's Bazaar magazine. (Gevinson also blogs for Pop.) Yesterday, there was a flurry of Tavi-related news, with the announcement of the Harper's Bazaar column, and the release of a video about the Rodarte for Target collection that Gevinson had been working on since August.

Apparently, not everyone is enamored of this precocious 13-year-old's considerable talents. The Tavi Gevinson backlash has officially begun, with big-name editors like Elle's Anne Slowey and prominent fashion writer Lesley M. M. Blume leading the charge.

Gevinson's magazine piece is a pretty self-assured piece of work — and not even necessarily "for a 13-year-old." Her writerly voice is striking: school hallways have "berainbowed motivational posters" and the Mulleavy sisters sent "California condors, draped in burnt cheesecloths and distorted leather" down the runway. The column is a short, considered wrap-up of a fashion season for a general audience. Which means, apparently, that there's no way she could have written it.

Blume writes off Harper's Bazaar's hiring of the adolescent as "a smart marketing move" while Slowey characterizes it as "a bit gimmicky." Blume — who would no doubt prefer that Tavi were reading her young adult novels, rather than competing with her for freelance gigs — then refers to Tavi three times as "a novelty."

Slowey also dismisses Gevinson's writing, saying that the voice of the Harper's Bazaar story "doesn't sync up with" the way Gevinson talks about fashion in the Rodarte video. (This isn't exactly a fair comparison, since the Rodarte video is mostly off-the-cuff, and very few people talk the same way they sound in a piece of writing that they have the chance to revise and edit.) Bizarrely, Slowey says the video clip had "this vacantlike quality where it was like everyone was on Vicodin. Like everyone was uncomfortably dumb except for me."

"Will she end up on morning shows? Yes she will," Blume says. "I don't think she's a fashion sage, I think she's a novelty and I think she's going to be used as a marketing device as a novelty." Slowey doubts she writes her own work at all. "She's either a tween savant or she's got a Tavi team," notes the editor.

Ever since Gevinson's blog first was noticed by the mainstream press — beginning with another post on The Cut last July, followed by a rote online safety trend piece by the AP, and coverage in the New York Times Style Magazine — questions have been raised about Gevinson's involvement in the site that bears her name. "We're not sure if a 12-year-old is actually doing all this or if she's getting some help from a mom or older sister (some of the photos of her were definitely not self-shot)," wrote The Cut. (It turns out Gevinson sometimes uses — wait for it — a digital camera on a tripod with a timer to take pictures without encountering the dreaded self-taken arm-in-shot problem.) Steve Gevinson, her father, says he was only dimly aware of his daughter's blog before the media coverage. "I may have known, but to me it was a kind of a non-thing to know," says Gevinson père, a high school English teacher. "I didn't look at it. I wasn't terribly interested in seeing it."

But the main argument for Tavi Gevinson's authorship of her own blog and associated freelance work isn't her parents' proclamations of non-involvement, it's the consistency of her writerly voice, as evidenced by just over 18 months' worth of frequent posts. Whether she's talking about Darfur — her bat mitzvah service project benefited the charity STAND — or drawing connections between collections across seasons, or detailing a school art project that involved making a miniature model of a Jeff Koons dog, Gevinson sounds like nothing more or less than an uncommonly smart 13-year-old. Because that's what being 13 kind of is: you're young enough that having too much free time is still a problem — hence the ability to devote extraordinary levels of concentration to extracurricular obsessions — but old enough to be developing in curiosity and understanding of the grown-up world. Saying that Tavi Gevinson couldn't possibly be authoring her own work because of her age just underlines our society's innate prejudice against adolescents. Why should our expectations be set so low? And, perhaps, it shows just how willing we are to forget our earlier selves.

A quick survey of the writers for this site revealed a raft of early over-achievers. At 13, Latoya Peterson was writing poetry that people assumed she must have plagiarized. Anna North won an essay contest and met the mayor of Los Angeles. I sent a short story in to New Zealand's oldest literary journal, without mentioning my age — and they published it and sent me a check. Anna Holmes was picked by visiting Irish dance experts to perform a complicated jig, in tap shoes. Irin Carmon wrote a novel when she was 12, "which I hoped would be published before I was a teenager and the novelty wore off." Dodai Stewart had been in a commercial, recognized Andy Warhol on the street and took his picture, and got to light the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center one year. Then she wrote a screenplay, which she imagined would star Bruce Willis. Is it really that preposterous to think that Tavi Gevinson's talents and interests are her own?

I've always thought that a lot of Gevinson's appeal to the fashion crowd relies on the fact that she, with her unapologetic bookishness and self-described intense fashion "fangirling", reminds some of the major players of themselves, at her age. Perhaps this backlash is coming from people who remember how they were at 13, too — and recognize that they weren't at Tavi Gevinson's level of proficiency. Not by a long shot.

Editors Like Tavi But Don't Take Her Fashion Advice Seriously [The Cut]
Style Rookie [Official Site]
Exclusive: Rodarte, Tavi, And Target Team Up On Video [Style.com]
Tavi Gevinson Reviews The Collections [Harper's Bazaar]
Meet Tavi, The 12-year-old Fashion Blogger [The Cut]
Young Fashion Bloggers Are Worrisome Trend To Parents [AP]
Post Adolescents [NYT Style Magazine]

(In reference to this Onion article.)

• Sienna Miller is going to be the face of a new Hugo Boss fragrance. When was the last time you remember Sienna Miller actually acting? [WWD]

• In further crossover tales, newly minted TV host Coco Rocha, who's jumping between walking in shows and filming them for an E! Canada documentary this week, says she's glad she doesn't have to talk to celebrities because, unlike industry people, they don't know who she is. Also, she thinks her red hair makes people treat her differently. "I think people are more scared of me. They think I'm evil." [The Cut]
• The Costume Institute's spring exhibit will be all about the model as a fashion muse and the evolution of beauty standards for women. [Guardian]
• Event co-host Kate Moss's muse status has already translated to the art world: a set of Banksy portraits of the model, done in the style of Andy Warhol's iconic Marilyn Monroe silkscreens, are going to be auctioned in London. [Telegraph]
• Speaking of model muses, Japanese model Tao Okamoto's haircut inspired Philip Lim's runway hairstyle. She shot his look book and he was taken with her. [Elle]
• Meanwhile, Michelle Obama inspired the hair and makeup look at Baby Phat. [WWD]
• If you're taking any New York taxis this week, the video screen of asinine weather and real estate information ("Buy A West Village Condo For Eleventy Million Dollars! Someone From Corcoran Explains Why!") you immediately poke at furiously to turn off may contain images of Cynthia Rowley's fall collection. [WWD]
• Male model Cole Mohr shot a fashion week video for New York. He goes backstage and tells fellow model Tyler Riggs, "Say something meaningful! We're on film!" Riggs pulls a face and replies, "It's better to destroy than create what is meaningless." Then he thinks a second, lights a match, and says, "I am why the ozone layer is fucked up." And this is why I cannot hang out with male models. [The Cut]
• The New York Times has been to the tents and sees only Doom and Gloom (with sides of Sturm and Drang). Representative line about a drag queen: "Having spent two decades capitalizing on the froth thrown off by both boom and bust economies, he was also well acquainted with the uses of sobriety." And Twitters about Marc Jacobs' hair get at something existential. [NY Times]
• PPR, the megaconglomerate whose luxury holdings include Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, and Bottega Veneta, saw flat revenue in the fourth quarter of 2008. But luxury sales for this year have grown by 8.1% on last January. Emerging markets like China saw Gucci sales increase 42% in 2008. [Financial Times]
• Also weathering the downturn passably is Uniqlo chairman and CEO Tadashi Yanai, whom Forbes just named Japan's richest man. $6.1 billion is a lot of $30 cashmere sweaters. [WWD]
• The Italian apparel sector has formally requested aid from the government. Auto makers and homewares manufacturers were included in a stimulus package approved last month, but not fashion or textile companies. One large company, IT Holdings SpA, has already seen its luxury division (owner of the brands Gianfranco Ferre and Malo, as well as licenses for Cavalli Sport) teeter into bankruptcy. [Reuters]
• Dress Barn projects a second quarter loss. [WWD]
• PETA supporter Tim Gunn says designers "Hhve a responsibility to know about [ethical issues surrounding fur]. If you're going to use fur, you at least need to know which sources are less abusive than others...I would never use anything from China. What people don't tell you is that it's most likely dog. And they call it something else and they make it look like something else." Fur cannot be used in the Project Runway final collections, interestingly. [Reuters]
• Even Anne Slowey's dog is fasting this fashion week. [Elle]
• However, this story about how Slowey missed the first few days of shows because her 85-year-old mother in Indiana needed help converting her analog TV for digital signal is very sweet. [Observer]
• UK Vogue features editor Harriet Quick says Posh's new dress collection is good. (It's hard to imagine how a set of Roland Mouret rip-offs could be bad, exactly...) As if to highlight her unoriginality, the story is illustrated with pictures of Posh's dress presentation side-by-side with pictures of Posh wearing similar outfits in years past. [Daily Mail]
• Luckily, she wasn't taking inspiration from Cartier: the French jeweler is suing QVC over the similarity of several watch designs in their Joan Rivers collection. [WWD]
• American Vogue's fashion news and features editor, Sally Singer, is a Berkeley- and Yale-educated former book editor who certainly reads more contemporary fiction than you do. She also skipped several grades, wrote a letter to Andy Warhol when she was 12 asking for a job at Interview, and has sewn her own clothes since she was in middle school, because her family's budget didn't stretch to the kinds of garments she saw in the fashion magazines she scoured growing up. She seems friendly, well-adjusted, and entirely non-sociopathic. It is a heartbreaking paradox of this industry that some of the smartest, funniest, and most culturally engaged women you could ever meet, somehow, once they get together, are responsible for creating the lobotomized morass that is the women's media. [Mediabistro]

• Before we tackle today's inevitable layoffs, liquidations and bankruptcies, look at David Beckham. Look at semi-naked David Beckham. In his very important new Emporio Armani ad. Why, good morning to you, Dave. [People]

• Unfortunately for Heidi Montag, clothing lines whose main qualification as same is the attachment of a famous name are not faring well in the downturn. (Please, let someone therefore piece it together that continuing to announce B-List Star for Major Middle Market Retailer arrangements isn't a recession-proof move.) [AdAge]
• Unfortunately, the news came too late to stop Hilary Duff for DKNY Jeans... [WWD]
• ...and to stop Jessica Alba from dipping her toe into the designer waters. [Fashionista]
• And Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen menswear. (OK, so The Row technically should get a pass for being, actually, kinda good, but it's the principle of the thing.) [Elle]
• But getting a celebrity to wear your dress on a red carpet is still worth a starlet's weight in gold. [WSJ]
• The recession will not, however, kill Spanx, which had sales volume of over $350 million last year. Because while the shitty economy is temporary, hating your body enough to want to squeeze and yank and pull it into a girdle is forever. [Reuters]
• The economic situation is making it tougher perhaps than ever for young designers who were in the midst of expanding in line with pre-recession demand and fanfare. [NY Times]
• Esprit has reported its first interim drop in profits in ten years. Sales are slow worldwide, and particularly so in Europe. [Financial Times]
• Estee Lauder's second-quarter profits are also down by 30%. The company will restructure 2,000 workers out of working existence. [The Street]
• Elizabeth Arden, however, beat analysts' expectations for the second quarter by 2 cents a share. Sales still fell 12.7% and net profit was down from $33.8 million one year ago to $17.4 million now. [Reuters]
• A handful more details about the Mathew Williamson line for Target: it launches on April 23, it will be colorful (which, frankly, if anything at all comes to mind when you think "Mathew Williamson" you already knew), and in addition to the regular frocks and tops, there'll be jumpsuits. Controversial move! [Blackbook]
• Kim Gordon discusses her line for Urban Outfitters, Mirror/Dash, with the New York Times, but although they hit stores on February 16, there's only one picture of the actual clothes. She's surprisingly realistic about Mirror/Dash's design process — she admits she doesn't actually sketch so much as talk about fabric and "ideas" with her partner before sending away to Urban Outfitters' sample houses. [The Moment]
• Never to be outdone by Vogue and its eyebrow-raising Sean Avery internship, Elle now has for an intern the fashlete (did I just make that up? I think I did. Let's go with it!) Stew Bradley, an actual Philadelphia Eagle. May he cherish the coffee-schlepping, xeroxing, and sexual harassment that are the hallmarks of any true New York media internship. [The Cut]
• Except, on his first day, Bradley went to lunch with Diana Ross, Diane von Furstenberg, Jessica Alba, Jason Wu, Anil Kapoor Veronica Webb, Eva Amurri, John Frey, Roberta Myers, Joe Zee, Anne Slowey, Whitney Port, and Olivia Palermo. At Diane von Furstenberg's studio. [WWD]
• Now, if she'd only worn her favorite label, Carhartt, on the campaign trail, Sarah Palin might have had a shot at the Brooklyn hipster vote! [US News]
• Janie Bryant, the costume designer for Mad Men, is crafting a contemporary, not vintage, clothing line. And that's about all she's willing to say just now. [WSJ]
• High-end Baltimore fabric store Michael's Fabrics says it has the lemongrass embroidered wool Isabel Toledo used to create Michelle Obama's inauguration day outfit. It's 33" wide and yours for a mere $500 a yard. Just in case you want to whip a dress up at home. [Unbeige]
• Isabel Toledo is still reeling from the media attention following dressing Michelle Obama. (Her husband, the fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo, calls it "Obamathon.") An exhibition of her dresses is going up at the museum at FIT in June. [WWD]
• Monique Lhuillier is introducing a new, more moderately priced line for fall. Given her regular dresses retail for $3,000-$7,000, "moderately priced" in this sentence means around $2,500. [WSJ]
• The Washington Post saw Jill Biden and her security detail nip into Bloomingdale's to buy some Tory Burch shoes. [Washington Post]
• UK Elle has Vivienne Westwood's handwritten "manifesto," and it includes such worthwhile tips as "DIY Suggestions: Necklace of safety pins" and the reminder "We need an estimated $30 billion per year to save the rainforest. $30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000etc-->" Also, she believes Leonard Peltier is innocent. [Elle]
• PETA Photoshopped a Pinocchio nose on to Giorgio Armani's face for a full-page ad in Variety after the scrappy perma-tanned Italian allegedly went back on his word after pledging to no longer use fur in his collections. Armani's people say they use only rabbit fur from animals raised for meat. [New York Daily News]
• Now, this should be fun: Lynda Carter, Valerie Bertinelli, Katie Couric, Natya Liukin, Jennie Garth, and Tori Spelling are among those modeling for a fashion week show dedicated to heart health. Designers include Christian Siriano, Carolina Herrera, and those guys at Badgley Mischka. [WWD]

With only four contestants left in the competition — all of them boring — this was the highlight of the show. The way Zac spoke about the team's magazine layouts ("This magical title!") was apropos for the industry and its denizens, who feel the need to "explain" the meaning and importance of fashion in a way that actually leaves us even more confused than when we were just looking at pictures of impractical garments. Anyway, in her introduction, Anne said that Zac was discovered by a magazine editor, and then added, "Which would be me." Now, she may have been joking, or it may have been creative editing, but Zac was a very well-connected young man in Manhattan when he got his start — which came from the help of former Interview EIC Ingrid Sischy.

Slate:

The show feels approachably lo-fi (wardrobe by H&M, cinematography by no one interested in the beguiling gold of them thar Hills), and the references to aesthetics are just arch enough to convey that it's in the know as a work of trash about mechanical reproduction. The contestants, being somewhat more literate than your usual reality-TV cretins, say dumb things in an interesting way. (Poor, poor, unfortunate Arnaldo: "I think in the box, out of the box, and sometimes take the box and turn it into a triangle.") Stylista is not a guilty pleasure; the guilt is the pleasure, and never more so than when Kate, freshly savaged by Megan, whimpers with terror at her newfound capacity for contempt: "I've learned what it feels like to hate other people." Chin up, honey. You are only on the precipice of adulthood. With practice, hating people is as fun and easy as an afternoon of backgammon or an hour of bad TV.

Variety:

Given that the show comes from the "Top Model" team, the slick accessories and production style shouldn't be completely surprising; still, this genre is so overcrowded right now (Bravo's "Runway" knockoffs alone are practically stumbling over each other) that the prospects seem inherently limited.

Throw a bouquet, then, strictly to the casting folks for the assortment of types they've assembled. Beyond that, "Stylista" qualifies as fierce, to borrow producer Tyra Banks' phraseology, only in its steadfast commitment to copying the same old models.

Los Angeles Times:

At times Slowey comes off like a Mean Girl writ large, but some of this at least appears to be put on — a put-on. (She barely resembles the Slowey who appears on the Elle website, leading a video tour of her own closet.) At other times, with Creative Director Joe Zee by her side, judging the contestants' self-makeovers or their mock magazine pages, she can seem like a reasonable person.

The New York Times:

Are there any bosses anywhere as demanding as Ms. Slowey pretends to be? Not really, and maybe on some level we miss them. Part of the appeal of a show like “Stylista” is that it resurrects a long-vanished way of office life, one filled with rules and regulations, distinct hierarchies and dress codes and nothing as fuzzy as flex time. As Ms. Slowey succinctly explains to the contestants at the outset: “To be in my world you either get it or you don’t.” No one has to spend a lot of time figuring out a manager like this.

Washington Post:

Resemblances to the movie "The Devil Wears Prada" are obvious; the job that the competitors are vying for is essentially the position that Anne Hathaway had in the movie, and "Stylista" has a very bossy boss in Anne Slowey, Elle magazine's fashion news director. She's not the fire-breathing shrew played so merrily by Meryl Streep, but she's obviously a toughie. She reviews the appearances of the contestants soon after they arrive, telling one of them: "Your cleavage is busting out. It's in my face."

The wisdom imparted by Slowey and by Joe Zee, Elle's creative director, hardly sounds like hot insider poop, however: "First impressions are important" is among the priceless gems. "If you're going to live in my world, you either get it or you don't," lectures Slowey before reviewing the contestants' first assignment: buying her a takeout breakfast from a local deli.

Newsday:

Imagine Slowey's horror to think that someone with my style sense is judging her show. Why, if I were to accidentally drift into her rarefied orbit, she'd faint dead away - then call the fashion police, who'd faint dead away, too. But I do know something about TV shows, and this one works best when she is on camera (which is not nearly enough) and the program focuses on clothing - that great, exasperating, endlessly complicated art form known as "fashion." Really, does anyone care that Anne only eats almonds that have been soaked overnight (amusing, but ...) or how to lay out a page? Of course not. Fashion queens like Slowey promise the keys to the kingdom; landing a gofer gig at Elle would hardly seem to be that.

'Stylista' premieres tonight on CW at 9 p.m.

If this trailer indicative of the entirety of Stylista, than the show's message is clear: in order to work behind the scenes of the fashion industry, you need to fit the limited vision of its glossy exterior.

The saddest part is that some of the most revered arbiters of fashion, the late, great Isabella Blow and the still fantastic Suzy Menkes are far from the fashion world "ideal," and obviously, the runway world would be much bleaker without their contributions. Looks like poor Danielle will be put on the Anne Slowey diet or given her marching papers.

Sneak Peek: Stylista Looks Sinfully Good [E! Online]
The Fashion Week Food Diary: Anne Slowey [NY Mag]

Earlier: The Last Days Of Mademoiselle: Cocaine, Cigarettes & Calorie Counts

• Martha Stewart has a wardrobe mistress paint the soles of her Christian Louboutins black. We would endorse this, as we take most of our fashion cues from the fictional character Cayce Pollard in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and think that conspicuous logos are the scourge of the universe, but blogging about the fact that you not only remove said logos but have a "wardrobe mistress" to do it for you is not exactly inconspicuous. And yet...I love her? [The Martha Blog]
  
• Ooooh, promo shots from Stylista, the new Tyra-produced reality show wherein the winner gets to be the assistant to known-psychopath Anne Slowey! Anne, an Elle editor, is one of those fashion people who is driven batshit by persistent fad dieting, but the resultant batshitism, in an industry whose shallowness is matched only by its aloofness, can be kind of endearing, unless you are her assistant. Ratings gold! [Fashionologie]
  
• Tori Spelling and her son are shilling for Skechers, which I find fitting. I mean, Skechers is sort of the Tori Spelling of shoe brands, and if you don't believe me I'm here to remind you the company was founded by the same guy who brought the world L.A. Gear. [SassyBella]

• Yeah, Bonnie Fuller is retiring from the day-to-day of the magazine industry, but don't worry, like with George W. Bush, her legacy of devastation will long outlive her career. [WWD]
• Nina Garcia is headed to Marie Claire. Marie Claire has been making all sorts of interesting moves lately, hiring "smart"-type editors from the likes of GQ and Forbes, but with Nina Garcia on board, the magazine could snag the Project Runway partnership that could elevate its status in the celebrity-sartorial complex as well, making for a magazine with all the promise and potential and pages and utter schizophrenia of ELLE! [Fashion Week Daily]
• Vanessa Paradis is set to replace Kirsten Dunst as the face of Miu Miu. Think Prada execs finally got sick of a bunch of spoiled, substance-abusing 20-somethings representing their brand? [WWD]
• Nike might buy something to secure a stronger presence in the Asian markets that have grown so wealthy exploiting desperate rural migrants to manufacture cheap tennis shoes for companies like Nike. [Reuters]
• You'll be seeing more of Josh Hartnett in your daily diet of marketing messages, for which you can thank Armani. [WWD]
• Recession? Tell that to the college kids who spent 10% more at your average Urban Outfitters store than they did last year! [FlyOnTheWall
• "Everybody is so beautiful! And everybody obviously looks impeccable, because they're all wearing Dior." Who is this gimlet-eyed observer of the glitterati? Why, it's wide-eyed Leighton Meester, a Dior show newbie, dressed in green and exemplifying everything we love about reading fashion trade publications. [Fashion Week Daily]

• You knew this already, but Project Runway judge/style tome author/ELLE fashion director Nina Garcia has parted ways with the magazine that made her. At least, ELLE has yet to tell anyone the rumors are false.
  
• Our sources say Garcia came in Friday morning around the hour fashion people usually get to work Friday morning, and was gone with all her earthly possessions by lunch time. Her assistants apparently cried all day, packing the rest of her things.
  
• New rumors are starting to surface that she's "in talks" with ELLE regarding some sort of position there.
  
• We suspect the fact that ELLE fashion news director Anne Slowey and creative director Joe Zee are getting their own Tyra-produced show this fall doesn't exactly make for a great environment. (Coupled with the fact that the magazine's fashion coverage has gotten a million times more interesting since Zee came on board.) But these are just our speculations. Know anything? Drop us a line! [WWD, MediaBistro, NYMag]
  
• And in other very important world news, Project Runway guest judge/style tome author/ELLE covergirl Victoria Beckham's denim line DVB has been dropped by Kitson and Fred Segal. Um, anyone else seeing a trend here? [News of the World]

• A reader wrote in to Guardian fashion writer Hadley Freeman asking when it is okay to wear shorts. Freeman's response? "When it's flipping well warm enough to do so, like, duh." [Guardian]
• Despite the rumors, Kate Moss is not on the outs with lingerie line Agent Provocateur and just shot a wedding-themed ad campaign for them. [This is London]
• Phat Fashions is suing Victoria's Secret for copyright infringement. Apparently, no one can use a frilly letter 'P' but the Phat designers. And while I can't believe I'm saying this, I think it's gonna be Kimora FTW. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Whoa, Vidal Sassoon was a resistance fighter during WWII?! [Telegraph]
• Elton John: Wears Tom Ford's fragrances! (Also likes that Tom Ford's ads frequently contain naked men? Again, JUST speculation.) [Page Six]
• The John Varvatos store in the old CBGB's space? Could suck more. [Washington Post]
• Yay for Cambodia, the latest country to allow its young female citizens to be exploited by the western world by making them into runway models. (And Cambodia is usually such a leader on the youth exploitation front.) In all seriousness, [ITN]
• Nicholas Huxley, the director of the Sydney Institute's Fashion Design Studio, says Australian women dress "cheap and nasty." [News.com.au]
• Want to have guaranteed success as a jewelry designer? Than go into a career in anything but jewelry design [WWD]
• OMG will or won't Prada go public in June? The suspense is killing me. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Carolina Herrera junior is pregnant again. Just what the world needs: Another kid with a trust fund. [WWD, 2nd item]

• Oh lord: Tom Ford is having a baby in 2008. It will be "biologically" his, not his partner Richard Buckley's. "I don't want to get to 75 years old and just have made a lot of dresses, done some houses." In the same interview: "I don't find a guy's cock or a woman's vagina offensive; in fact, I find them beautiful." So will he be penetrating one to achieve this demonspawn? He probably won't be able to keep them off him! "I was having sex with girls when I was 14, and that was because they were pouncing on me." [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• Waris Dirie says she's super sorry about that whole "disappearance" thing last week. She said she got lost in Brussels and spent the whole three days she was "gone" walking around and sleeping in hotel lobbies since she didn't know where she was and didn't have any money. Um, Anne Heche enough for you? [MSNBC]
  
• Katoucha Niane's family is asking French police to investigate the possibility that she was murdered, despite the conclusion of accidental death by drowning from the autopsy. [Telegraph]
  
• ELLE Fashion News Editor Anne Slowey learns the whole "never put limp plumper under your eyes" lesson the hard way. [Fashion Week Daily]

• And in other ELLE news, soon-to-be-ousted International Creative Director Gilles Bensimon is very Zen about his looming departure from the fashion mag: "I'm surprised, but I'm not upset. It's not their obligation to use me [to shoot covers] and [creative director] Joe [Zee] does not have to explain anything to me....ELLE is my life. I've been there since I was 23 years old. I will be at ELLE until the last month, the last minute. I'm not upset at [editor-in-chief] Robbie [Myers], really. I don't want to hate people. Hate makes you weak." [Chic Report]
• And in other inspiring news, Diane von Furstenberg is thinking about writing a book about her mother, a Holocaust survivor. When her mother was forced to leave her home, en route to the first of three concentration camps she would be put in, she threw a note into the street which read, "I don't know where I'm going but I want you to know I'm leaving with a smile." [WWD, 1st item]
• Color us shocked: Rihanna says she wants to do her own clothing line. [Sunday Mirror]
• Even better: roses with the Louis Vuitton logo stamped onto them! [Inventor Spot]
• Kate Moss's personal assistant has resigned to have a baby and now Kate Moss is crying, saying her life is over. Oh Kate, maybe you'd be less hysterically self-absorbed easier if you had kids of your own...I mean... [Daily Mail]
• Beck's wife Marissa Ribisi will be showing her Whitley Kros collection at L.A. Fashion Week, which will also play host to Nicky Hilton and Lauren Conrad's shows. [LATimes]
• Urban Outfitters: It grows. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Nike: Feigning concern over the fact that some of its shoes are made in Chinese factories that are not held to the labor standards upheld by the Nike brand. [FT]
• Brace yourselves, Dubai: Bloomingdales is headed your way! [WWD, sub req'd]
• Feathers: Big for fall. Animal rights groups: Unhappy. [Independent]
• Is Colette Dinnigan doing a lingerie line for Target? And if so, will it only be for Target Australia? Wait, there's Target in Australia? [Sassybella]

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• Remember the news about the new reality show in which Tyra Banks pits a group of young women against one another to compete for a job at a fashion magazine? Well, it looks like the ladymag in question is ELLE and creative director Joe Zee and fashion news director/calorie restrictor Anne Slowey are going to be judges. Having worked with these people, allow me to just say this is going to make for good television. [WWD, 2nd item]
  
• The Danish Fashion Institute is putting up signs throughout Copenhagen that read "Eating Is the New Black" and "The Weight of Your Worth Is Not Measured in Kilos." First person to wrangle us one gets a pony! [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Victoria's Secret has named Victoria Beckham the sexiest mom of 2008. We're seriously doubtful about the credibility of this list, though, as it also named Ryan Seacrest as having the sexiest smile. [Sassybella]

• David Beckham wearing the naked Victoria Beckham Marc Jacobs shirt! [Chic Report]
• ELLE's Nina Garcia offers this following advice to the masses, "Don't be a fashion victim. Be true to yourself and get your own personal style and look." She uttered these pearls of wisdom, mind you, while shilling for the new pink Blackberry Pearl on Tuesday night. Exactly. [Fashion Week Daily]
• The fashions at Wal-Mart: Supposedly getting "cooler." [WWD, sub req'd]
• Intimates designer Josie Natori now has a ready-to-wear line. It is called (what else?) Natorious. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Imitation of Christ designer/prepster-turned-hipster/Wes Anderson main squeeze Tara Subkoff has paired with Bebe to do a capsule collection for them. Ooooh, pleaaase call it the Imitation of Christ Bebe Jesus line!! [WWD, sub req'd]
• Moschino has a new diffusion line called Love Moschino. Only it's not exactly new. It's just Moschino Jeans, renamed. Moschino Jeans, incidentally, used to be named Love Moschino. Follow? [Vogue UK]
• We do not approve of Van Cleef & Arpels and Earnest Sewn collaborating on blinged-out jeans. Ew. [Fashion Week Daily]
• For those of you always asking how you get a smoky eye, here ya go. [BellaSugar]

• Jennifer Lopez is expected to file suit against former Sweetface design partner Andy Hilfiger, ostensibly because, uh, the line really sucks. Hilfiger, meanwhile, is expected to countersue because Lopez' hubby Marc Anthony is a psychotic asshole. [NY Daily News]
  
• In a strange twist of fate, PETA's new phone number was previously "owned" by designer Zac Posen's mother, Susan Posen. Now, when people call the number looking for Susan, PETA officials kindly inform them that her son is murdering animals for his designs. [NY Daily News]
  
• Kim Cattrall: Future PETA target? It appears her wardrobe is awfully croc-skin heavy in the upcoming Sex and the City movie. [WWD, 6th item]
  
• Karl Lagerfeld won a raffle? That seems wrong, somehow. [WWD, 3rd item]

• "I have a soft spot for Galliano; Alexander McQueen, however, that's a different story for another day." —Manolo Blahnik [Fashion Week Daily]
• The entire Elle fashion department (including Joe Zee, Anne Slowey, and Project Runway star Nina Garcia) were eating dinner at NYC restaurant Indochine at the very same time that French Vogue's Carine Roitfeld was at the restaurant for her son's birthday. [Fashion Week Daily]
• LOL of course Madonna is co-hosting Gucci's upcoming February fundraising event "A Night to Benefit Raising Malawi and UNICEF." [WWD, 1st item]
• Louis Vuitton and the Burlington Coat Factory have reached a settlement over that whole manufacturing and selling of fake bags things. [Sassybella]
• Boutique perfume label Bond No. 9's top nose Laurice Rahme has launched the first-ever known perfume bottle recycling initiative. Under Rahme's direction, all Bond No. 9 stores and counters will accept empty perfume bottles of any brand and ensure the glass is recycled. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Natalia Vodianova is the face of the upcoming Diane von Furstenberg spring 2008 advertising campaign, the first ad campaign DVF has had in decades. We never realized that Diane didn't advertise, which gives us weird, newfound respect for the wrap dress. [Vogue UK]
• For Vogue's Lauren Davis' upcoming nuptials, each of her socialite bridesmaids has been paired with a different designer who will create a different gown for each woman. (Participating designers are Derek Lam, Proenza Schouler, Vera Wang, Giambattista Valli, and Alberta Ferretti.) This is why we hate socialites. [Fashion Week Daily]
• For the gay geek in your life: A Chloe iPhone! [Portfolio]

Joe is a Scorpio. He is also Canadian, it seems.


Joe likes gossip, both in and out of the office.


Joe imagines himself to be a comic book character.


Joe has a stripper name.


Joe likes sneakers.


Joe is not scared of zombies.


Lastly, Joe is friends with Anne Slowey. And what are their "friendship details"?
Uh, are they talking about China?