• Alexa Chung has been named British Vogue's best-dressed for her "quirky sense of style." Also: Audrey Tautou, Freida Pinto, and Emma Watson. [ThisIsLondon]
• She's "deposed" Kate Moss, now "relegated to 10th place, only one spot ahead of Lady Gaga." [Telegraph]

• The magazine says the list was given "in no particular order," but whatevs, they totally put Alexa first on purpose. [Vogue UK]
• Speaking of Lady Gaga, she is making a guest appearance on Bravo's new replacement for Project Runway, Launch My Line. After dropping in on the aspiring designers — and scaring the pants off them, we don't doubt, see what we did there? — they learn that their weekly challenge will be to create outfits inspired by the Lady and "make sure they are pushing the boundaries of fashion without crossing the line of good taste." Since when has Lady G cared about good taste? We thought her thing was more to épater les bourgeois. [The Cut]
• Actresses and actors attending the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe Awards, consider yourselves on notice: Joan Rivers is doing Fashion Police segments this year. Yay! [Stylelist]
• Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady have decided to name their two-week-old son Benjamin. [Vogue UK]
• Says Copyranter of the disturbing new Lanvin ad featuring photographer Inez can Lamsweerde in bloody red body paint, "this could be the start of a new zombie trend for 2010." Well, that or "first-year med school." [Copyranter]
• Oh, Daily Mail: "Shamed supermodel Sophie Anderton was held overnight after making a drunken scene at a London railway station." After attempting to board the Eurostar from the wrong station, Anderton, who has been described as "embattled" more than once, apparently made a scene, actually uttered the words "don't you know who I am?" and was arrested for being drunk and disorderly. [DailyMail]
• Abbey Lee Kershaw says that she, Natasha Poly, and Sasha Pivovarova took one look at Alexander McQueen's 12"-tall alien shoes and politely declined to walk in his show. Kershaw has had several runway mishaps in her short international career: platforms caused her to fall at Rodarte in September of 2008, a stumble at the same show six months later injured her knee and left her unable to walk for the rest of the season, and she fainted on McQueen's runway due to a tightly laced corset. Good to know she has her health in mind after those close calls. [Fashionologie]
• Speaking of the health vs. vanity paradigm, a woman in England had an allergic reaction to an eyelash tinting procedure — one she apparently had undergone regularly — that left her eyes swollen shut. She feared she would lose her sight and was rushed to the hospital. After 14 days of treatment with antihistamines and antibiotics, her face and eyes are still swollen, and she has had to take time off work. The salon gave her a refund but accepts no responsibility for her injuries. [Daily Mail]
• High-end retailers claim they are trying something really novel this holiday season: being nice to shoppers. Complimentary champagne, sending thank-you notes to customers, and even designer Dennis Basso himself playing shopboy: these are all strategies that department stores and boutiques are trying after a consultant performed a year-long study that determined service at pricey stores was no better than that at Ace Hardware or Lowe's. At Bergdorf Goodman, the doormen are nicer than ever — because the old ones were fired "when we found the ones we were using weren't as friendly as we wanted them to be." Happy holidays! [NYTimes]
• For its part, Macy's is keeping 12 New York-area stores open 24 hours until 6 p.m. tomorrow. Nothing says "I love you, Uncle Gary," like a box of seasonal socks you pluck from the display at 4:30 a.m. [WWD]
• Lacoste would like you to know that it is going to spend $500,000 over the next three years to try and save an endangered crocodile. Perhaps news of this relatively modest charitable investment will spur you to think fondly of its crocodile logo, and buy an item of clothing with it on it this holiday season? [WWD]
• "Project White T-Shirt" is, yes, another ts-for-charity project, but in this case the results may be purchased for reason other than philanthropy: the 31 contributors, including "Andrea Crews, Bruno Pieters, Pelican Avenue, Slow and Steady Wins the Race, Daniel Palillo and other contemporary avant-gardists" were chosen for their creativity, and the results will be exhibited around the world before being auctioned for Designers Against Aids. [DazedDigital]
• Topshop's London Fashion Week designer collaboration project is brilliant: once again, the high-street innovator will present budget capsule collections with fashion week designers like Jonathan Saunders and Ann-Sofie Back. The way of the future? [Telegraph]
• The first preview for Beyoncé's fragrance, Heat! It shows her in what looks like a Russian bath-house, singing Peggy Lee. [JustJared]
• And speaking of celebrity scents: Danica Patrick has one. It's called Danica. Insert diesel fuel joke. [WWD]
• And speaking of previews: In case you didn't get the memo, Project Runway is back in New York. Like, really, aggressively, back in New York. [BloggingProjectRunway]
• On Sunday, various royals and fashion royals came out to watch the premiere of Karl Lagerfeld's film Sergei, Misia, Coco et Les Autres…100 Ans de Ballets Russes, Chanel et ‘Le Train Bleu. "Guests were given two dance-inspired Lagerfeld picture books, entitled "Sergei, Misia, Coco et Les Autres" and "Les Nijinsky." [WWD]
• Lifetsyle brand Le Tigre put up this charmer of a billboard on Manhattan's West Side Highway yesterday: "Golf Needs a Tiger: Let's Get Back on Course." In case you're wondering, yes, Le Tigre is owned by punmeister Kenneth Cole. [WWD]
• "When I was asked as a child what I wanted to be, I'd say, 'I want to be rich, I want to be famous, I want to live in the big city, I want to have a fabulous life'," says Tom Ford. "All I've done my entire life is fulfil my destiny." Thoughts? [Independent]

Coco Before Chanel is a French film (with English subtitles) directed by Anne Fontaine, about the early life of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's formative years. As a child she is dropped off in an orphanage, then goes on to work in a bar. She becomes a seamstress to the performers and sings in there herself, and is nicknamed "Coco" after a song she sing with her sister (who is a composite of Chanel's sister and mother.) Her lover Baron Balsan introduces her to French society and she begins her fashion career by designing hats for his friends. Their relationship becomes complicated when she falls in love with English businessman Arthur Capel, and eventually she goes on to open her first dress-making studio.

While some critics praised the film for delving into a little-known period of the designer's life, other said by ending before she becomes famous the film doesn't reveal what made Chanel unique. Tautou plays Chanel as harder woman than her previous characters, but some found her unsympathetic and Tautou too "winsome" for the role. However, in general, the performances are good and those with some interest in fashion are likely to find it entertaining, though uninformative.

Here's what the critics are saying:

USA Today

As such, the film, directed by Anne Fontaine (The Girl From Monaco), is not an expansive biopic but a fascinating snapshot of a pivotal chapter for Chanel, her formative fashionista years. Because it's more superficially stylish than profound, Coco leaves one wanting more - more of an in-depth examination of her complex nature, and more about the years when her simple designs captivated the fashion world. Still, the film, while scaled-down, is quite beautifully woven, like a classic Chanel tweed.

The Los Angeles Times

Coco Before Chanel [is] a superior filmed biography that brings intelligence, restraint and style to what could have been a more standard treatment. The most obvious credit goes to the strong, sure performance of Tautou, who costarred in The Da Vinci Code following her breakthrough in the successful Amélie. Tautou not only resembles Chanel, she inhabits the role completely, using flashing eyes and a relentless intelligence to convey the unbending strength of a woman determined to make something of her life in a time and place when that was far from the norm.

The New York Times

Judgments are not really on the movie's agenda. Rather than take a moralizing or pitying view of its characters, who live according to the social mores of their era and the logic of their desires, Ms. Fontaine examines them with curiosity and compassion. The result is an unusually vivid and convincing account of the historical past, composed in the present tense. Though its mood and methods are different, Coco Before Chanel shares with Jane Campion's Bright Star - another new anti-biopic - a fascination, at once intense and dispassionate, with the lives of women in earlier centuries. Coco and Fanny Brawne, the heroine of Ms. Campion's film, are not victims of oppression or paragons of resistance but rather individuals, made not of ideology or wishful thinking but of flesh and blood.

New York Daily News

There are a select few artists who can take the same materials used by everyone else and create a masterpiece. Coco Chanel was one of them. Director Anne Fontaine is not. Fontaine is a competent filmmaker, and Coco Before Chanel is a mildly entertaining period piece. What's missing, ironically enough, is a distinct sense of style.But though Tautou looks charming in her character's boyish outfits, her Coco is a demanding narcissist who draws minimal empathy. And despite some cutting and stitching here and there, we never learn what distinguished this woman from all the others who made their own clothes at the time.

Associated Press

Of course, Tautou looks adorably chic in Chanel's clothes, with her petite, androgynous frame and big, brown eyes. Still, you wonder what moved her, aside from the simplicity of the men's outfits that would inspire her own suits and hats... Fontaine's camera glides smoothly, as if to invoke Chanel's perspective in assessing the fashions she sees around her. She goes through all the paces elegantly but never reaches out and grabs you. Certainly, focusing on the formative time in Chanel's life is preferable to a cursory, all-encompassing biopic. But Coco Before Chanel only starts to get interesting when she asserts her creative and financial freedom - and that's right when the movie's about to end.

The New Yorker

The problem for Audrey Tautou is that she is doomed to trail clouds of Amélie wherever she goes. Those inky round eyes and that pixie mug insure that hers are the features, poor thing, that social anthropologists will eternally reach for when asked to illustrate the term gamine. Or mignonne. She does her best to capture the sullen grit of the young Coco, and the sour distaste she felt for those off whom she sponged; but it's hard to jut your jaw when you don't have much of a jaw, just a perfectly rounded chin, and the adamantine hardness of Chanel-not just in her bone structure and bearing but in the elimination of all fuss from her couture and all wasteful palaver from her soul-is probably beyond an actress as winsome as Tautou. The ideal would have been Kristin Scott Thomas, twenty years ago. Maybe she could take over, should Fontaine decide to tell the rest of the tale.

Time

Those who love fashion will be intrigued by this, at least to a point, after which Coco Before Chanel starts to feel like witnessing a sponge at work in the act of absorption. That's not generally the stuff of compelling cinema. We prefer the end results of a personal education rather than the acquisition of it. If Project Runway were about the formation of the designers' sensibilities rather than the creative execution of that sensibility, would anyone watch? This automatically puts Fontaine's film at a disadvantage, and the truly enigmatic nature of her subject only compounds it. "You want, but you don't know what," Emilienne tells Coco, and the movie keeps us at that same remove. It may be too respectful of the legend it seeks to illuminate.

Below is the trailer for Coco Before Chanel:

• Mickey Rourke, at Max Azria: "I really don't like Max that much. He's a short little guy with a good looking wife. Maybe I'll steal his wife." [WSJ]
• Tom Ford to close-talking columnist: "Are you trying to smell me?" [NationalPost]

• If you care about who People thinks is the best-dressed, their annual list is out. Kate Winslet, Reese Witherspoon, Vanessa Hudgens, and Freida Pinto all made the cut; on the men's side, so did Brad Pitt, Robert Pattinson, and Bradley Cooper. [People]
• Audrey Tautou, currently playing Coco Chanel across multiple platforms, has a print ad for Chanel No. 5 out. [People]
• Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz is to address the UNESCO World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries in Italy next week. [WWD]
• Lauren Conrad presents her fall collection for Kohl's in this video. It's very cute how she pretends to have seen it before. [People]
• Avril Lavigne presented her collection for Kohl's in New York City on Monday night. It includes a hoodie with earbuds in the drawstring. We must have missed this one for the Snuggie show. [People]
• Ralph Lifshitz and Calvin Klein grew up in the same part of the same neighborhood of the Bronx, Norwood's Mosholu Parkway, and both attended Public School 80, four years apart. Former Bronx borough president Fernando Ferrer says, "These are working-class guys — they were neither poor nor wealthy, and it's interesting that their clothes are aspirational. Ralph Lauren designs preppy, polo type clothes. That wasn't his experience then. So does Calvin Klein — elegance, simplicity." [Cityroom]
• Anya Hindmarch believes in "speaking up for bespoke" objects in a time of mass-production. Naturally, she also believes in charging £500 for a wallet. [ToL]
• Meanwhile, for the rest of us, Zara has plans to start selling its clothes online. [FT]
• Georgia May Jagger: "I really don't get it, to be perfectly honest. I still don't have that firm a grasp on why me being my parents' daughter is so interesting." Being your parents' daughter is the only reason you have a career, dear! [Style.com]
• It's certainly the only reason Vanity Fair is talking to her. "Modeling is always something I've really admired because I've seen my mum and sister do it," says Jagger. [VF]
• David Lauren: "We created the first 24-hour shopping experience on the windows of our mansion on 72nd St. You can literally walk up to the glass, press on the glass, and shop the product that's in the store. You can touch your credit card to the glass and buy it." [The Cut]
• Will lazy writers ever abandon the canard that Lara Stone — a model with stated measurements of 33"-24"-35", entirely within the tiny range of straight-size modeling — is somehow "curvy" or represents "change" on the catwalk? Stone — who is incredibly good at what she does, and well established in the business because of it — has not been "opening everyone's shows." In fact she has yet to be spotted anywhere in the lineup at a single show this season. [Telegraph]
• Halston, that long-rudderless brand, had a spring presentation that was a bit of a train wreck. The clothes looked very similar to each other, and the mannequins were weird. [WSJ]
• Barneys New York has now operated for 14 months without a C.E.O. Wracked by debt, the retailer is the subject of rumors alleging its inability to even pay its invoices. The head of Istithmar, the investment fund that owns Barneys, says "We have stood by Barneys and will continue to stand by this company." Words you never want to have to hear from a C.E.O. [WWD]
• Nina Garcia's third book about personal style is naturally all about the recessionista, not the fashionista. [Reuters]
• According to an online survey of 61,000 teens, teenagers are spending less money, because their parents are giving them less money, because their parents have less money. Thanks for getting to the bottom of this important recession conundrum, social networking site Habbo Hotel. [Reuters]

• Colin Firth won Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his role in former Gucci designer Tom Ford's directorial debut, A Single Man. [Vogue UK]
• Did Louis Vuitton make a $590 knock off of this New Balance sneaker? [WWD]

• If anyone had told me Courtney Love was going to perform at the Alexander Wang after party — held at a gas station in Chelsea — I would have totally stayed up, if only because last year I found a copy of Celebrity Skin in someone's back seat and started listening to it (and really enjoying feeling 15) again, instead of hauling my tired carcass to bed at 9:30. [DazedDigital]
• Audrey Tautou wore Lanvin to the Los Angeles premiere of Coco Before Chanel. [People]
• French actress Emanuelle Béart is rumored to be presenting her own clothing line at Paris fashion week next month. [WWD]
• Robert Verdi — sometime stylist to celebrities like Eva Longoria — can't get an invitation to Jason Wu or Marc Jacobs by hook or by crook. He suspects it's because fashion is "ignoring the gay people." [The Cut]
• Marc Jacobs publicist Timothy Mark Garcia is wearing an electronic monitoring device because of his house arrest. Garcia's father, a former Major General of the Philippines, is accused of paying for his son's Trump Plaza apartment with funds he stole from the Filipino people; the entire family is facing extradition. Garcia fils, who has a curfew of 9 p.m. — 1 a.m. during fashion week, with a 30-minute grace period for lateness — has been reduced to wearing his Cartier Tank watch and $1,000 Hermès bracelets in the privacy of his own home, and ordering take-out from the restaurant at Barneys. He says the ankle bracelet is uncomfortable, and "I can't even wear my knee high croc boots by Sergio Rossi for the fall." [TDB]
• Victoria Beckham says she's happy to have earned real fashion credibility. Victoria Beckham has earned real fashion credibility? [Telegraph]
• The pop-star-turned-designer missed her youngest son's first day of school to present her dress collection in New York. "I told them, 'Mommy's going to New York to do a test, you know, you have math tests. Well, Mommy has a fashion test.'" [WWD]
• For the first time in 12 seasons, Tim Gunn was not invited to Diane Von Furstenberg. Which gives us one more thing in common. [NYPost]
• Gunn, on Lindsay Lohan's appointment as Emanuel Ungaro's "artistic adviser": "It's got to be a publicity stunt. Or a crack-smoking board of directors!" [The Cut]
• Lohan kept an entire photo crew waiting for 10 hours at what was supposed to be a shoot for her own leggings line. [WWD]
• Diane Von Furstenberg says Fashion's Night Out was such a success she would love to see it become an annual event. [The Cut]
• Vince Shlomi, the ShamWow guy who allegedly beat a woman in Florida, has been seen around fashion week. Naturally, he's designing a swimwear line. [NYDN]
• Fashion periodically tends to reference homeless "style," and it stands to reason that the industry might do so particularly now, in the midst of a recession. A W editorial, a Sartorialist snap, and some year-old comments by Erin "Homeless People Have The Best Style" Wasson, does not a trend make, New York Times. (Wasson, for her part, feels that those comments were misunderstood. But perhaps the model should avoid making references to "people that you couldn't label and put in a box," when she is in fact talking about people who live in boxes.) [NYTimes]
• "Russian women are treated in a very Arabic way in our country," says supermodel Natalia Vodianova. "You are expected to give birth to children, look pretty and shut up. But we are very strong and intelligent people: there are a few of us out there. My whole life is breaking the stereotype of typical Russian women looking for money." [Telegraph]
• 1970s supermodel Robyn Peterson, once a favorite of Helmut Newton and now a successful actress, says "Fashion is a savage business — an industry that eats people up. Modelling is like being an athlete. It's a young person's game, but similarly no life for a young girl." She's probably just bitter. [Telegraph]
• Lesley Hornby — better known by her industry alias, Twiggy — turned 60 over the weekend. [Daily Mail]
• In other model news, if you want to know what Sessilee Lopez eats for breakfast, now's your chance. (Bodega croissant egg-and-bacon sandwich with coffee.) [Grub Street]
• Once in Milan, Miranda Kerr was walking on the catwalk when her shoe flew off into the audience. Nobody was hurt. [JustJared]
• America's Next Top Model's Danielle Evans made an appearance at the Leifsdottir presentation at New York fashion week. [Racked]
• Actual top models Anja Rubik, Lara Stone, and Raquel Zimmerman have all been absent from fashion week, so far. Although Raquel isn't in her agency's show package for the season, she is in New York, having attended Fashion's Night Out. Lara and Anja, who are in their respective agencies' show packages, aren't in town, having done Fashion's Night Out duty in London. So will we see them at all? It's been an unusually supermodel-light season, so far: even catwalk regular Natasha Poly has only walked Altuzarra and Alexander Wang, so far. [Fashionologie]
• Maybe the absence of so many top girls is due to an economic environment that means many designers cannot afford their rates? Agencies and models say that competition is high, pay is low — with payment in trade being more common than usual — and even Alice Gibb, normally a favorite of Rodarte and Marc Jacobs, says she's been un-booked from shows at the last minute. [Reuters]
• For all the models working for free, of course, there are any number of professionals who eschew such generosity. Forbes has a breakdown of who puts what into a fashion show, and who gets what out of it, from the producers to the stylists to the venue operators. [Forbes]
• The fashion industry in New York City generates about $1.5 billion in tax income, but the garment district is facing a re-zoning plan that could force the displacement of sample houses and manufacturers. [Reuters]
• The normally disapproving Daily Mail takes some time out of its busy day to celebrate girls in lingerie. Agent Provocateur's cheesy new superhero-themed ad campaign is the occasion. [Daily Mail]
• Mario Grauso is indeed leaving Puig. [WWD]
• Keith Pollock, the executive online editor for Brant Publications, says: "There are very respected fashion journalists that can evaluate the state of the market. However I don't see how a fashion editor's perspective on a Prada shoe is more valid than that of a teen blogger in Evanston, Illinois." This worries me very much. [NYTimes]
• Howard Socol, who resigned as Barneys New York C.E.O. in May of 2008, attended the 3.1 Philip Lim men's presentation at New York fashion week because Socol has been mentoring Lim. Socol took the time to count his blessings as one who is no longer running a high-end department store during a global recession; Barneys has yet to replace him. [WSJ]
• JC Penney has launched a new women's clothing brand, She Said, that will cater to the needs of working women. [Breitbart]
• The Colombian company that supplies the Body Shop with 90% of its palm oil successfully sued to have peasant farmers removed from a ranch north of Bogotá. Now 123 of the farmers are appealing the decision, and the ethics of the Body Shop's decision to buy palm oil from the company are being called into question. [Guardian]
• One of the more ridiculous reactions to the release of the Lockerbie bomber: Iconic Scottish company Harris Tweeds is "de-Scottish-ifying" its image in the U.S. in anticipation of a backlash against soft-on-terrorism Scots. [NPR]

Photo illustration images from Amazon and Louis Vuitton

It wasn't even that hard, especially once the folks at Evil Beet Gossip showed it was possible. Unfortunately, the security loophole has now been closed. But I came away with plenty of screen grabs for your delectation.



Just look at fashion maven Mario, nobly presiding over his new online domain! And he already snagged corporate sponsorship.

CocoPerez is billed as a blog with longer-form writing — presumably, in the context of Perezland, that means the unbylined ghostwriters will be permitted one trisyllabic word per 58 posts — with more fashion news content than the mothership. And indeed, when I looked, there was a refreshing absence of acontextual paparazzi photos of stars with cum MS Paint-ed on their faces; the lead story was about Molly Sims' just-announced jewelry line for the Home Shopping Network, and there were two posted spreads from the September issue of Harper's Bazaar, Peter Lindbergh's PhotoShop-free supermodels editorial, and Terry Richardson's bizarre Michael Jackson tribute shoot with Agyness Deyn (their verdict: "Ferosh!")


The content reads like free-association stream-of-consciousness MadLibs, celebumodel edition. It's as though the writers are having a very hard time trying to come up with more than 40 words' worth of copy. (The Sims item throws in mention of Heidi Klum's jewelry line failure, the supposed "big score" of appearing on HSN, and Sims' apparent "love of photography," as though a thesis might magically appear out of sheer topical friction.)


And unfortunately, a lot of the site is pretty out-of-date. That Project Runway trailer hit the Internet almost a month ago; Audrey Tautou's Chanel No. 5 ad came out at the start of May; Anne Hathaway's Magnifique commercial dates from the summer of last year; and Madonna's behind-the-scenes Louis Vuitton video was released back in January.


And that's without mentioning these slideshows, which feature such up-to-the-minute subjects as Angelina Jolie's old modeling photos — saw those in In Touch last April — and Marc Jacobs' Fall 2009 collection, which walked at New York Fashion Week last February. What, Resort is too fresh for them?

The whole idea of Perez Hilton launching a site aimed specifically at young women — a demographic he otherwise shows little respect for or interest in — is pretty laughable. I'm sure women will see right through his bullshit for the marketing ploy it is.

Speaking of bull! Just in case you were worried about the proceedings getting too classy, what with the longer-form writing and the cutting-edge high-fashion sensibility, here's a post, titled "A Load Of Bull," which gives Perez a chance to do what he does best: crack jokes about Viagra and bull jizz.

CocoPerez [Official Site]
Perez Hilton: Tastemaker And Troublemaker [LATimes]

Want A First Look At Perez Hilton's New Site? [EvilBeetGossip]

• Kate Moss was shot by Mario Testino for the September cover of British Vogue. That trench coat looks very Gisele photoshop-gate/neighborhood flasher, no? [Design Scene]

• Speaking of Gisele, she has signed on to voice a series of web cartoons intended to educate children about the environment, finance, and science. The supermodel will record the role of Gigi, a supermodel who doubles as an environmental superhero. [UK Elle]
• Another image from Victoria Beckham's Armani campaign has dropped. [Daily Mail]
• Transformers director Michael Bay shot the Victoria's Secret holiday commercial. [P6]
• For some reason, Lady GaGa apparently told the News Of The World that she spends all her money on clothes. "Every single dollar that I've earned I put into my tour. Mainly into my crazy outfits. My performance is my life. And I'm not that great with money. I've gone bankrupt four times already." Um, hire a financial planner? Or a stylist who can pull Jean-Charles de Castelbajac Kermit coats for free? [NOTW]
• "My fashion wisdom comes from gardening. This is a difficult time for many, but I am not in crisis mode. Like the seasons of gardening, there is a time to plant and a time to harvest, and now is a time to weed. This will pass." Oscar de la Renta, like everyone else, is hoping he has green thumbs. [WWD]
• Mid-size fashion businesses, those who expanded in the boom years to $7-$10 million in annual sales, are at a greater risk in this recession than any other tranche of the industry, so Oscar will in fact probably be safe. But not so designers like Peter Som and Jane Mayle. As retailers continue to contend with falling consumer spending by cutting inventory and ditching labels that don't move swiftly from the racks, more designer bankruptcies over the coming season are likely. [WWD]
• Zandra Rhodes, on her style icon: "Me! Otherwise what am I designing for?" [Independent]
• We are not sure why this story, which has no news about Alexis Bledel and her projects, but several large photos of the actress wearing a leotard with incredibly teased hair, exists. But it does. Also, Alexis Bledel is not Rory Gilmore in real life. Who knew? [WWD]
• John Varvatos, who in the past has chosen rock stars like Iggy Pop as models, this year selected ZZ Top for his fall campaign. The group was shot against a diorama of water buffalo at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History. [WWD]
• The British Fashion Council is moving its headquarters — and its largest event, fashion week — to historic Somerset House. This September, London Fashion Week is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and British designers from Matthew Williamson to Gareth Pugh have vowed to show in the city. [Telegraph]
• Bobbi Brown and Lauren Bush are co-launching a FEED makeup bag. The model's charity project supports the U.N. World Food Program. The makeup pouch will cost $50, including three Bobbi Brown lip glosses, and Bush says the cost will support 10 women in the UNWFP's Food for Work program. [WWD]
• Alexander Wang's e-commerce venture is now live. When it asks for a password, type in AWSTYLE.COM. [AlexanderWang]
• Ciara supports not texting while driving. [WWD]
• Lela Rose may be on to something as an ice cream cook. When asked her favorite flavor, the designer replied, "My own homemade ice cream called Brown Bread. It's an almond base, with bread crumbs that have been baked in butter and brown sugar with almonds. It's just delicious." [WWD]
• Roland Mouret, on quitting smoking: "I read Allen Carr books. I was hypnotised. I am now a non-smoker, and I smoked for 20 years. It's over." [Guardian]
• Catherine Deneuve and L'Oréal principal shareholder Liliane Bettencourt are among those inducted this year into the International Best-Dressed List Hall of Fame; that, in case anyone's wondering, is Vanity Fair's made-up list of well-dressed people. [VF]
• Following the news that leather suppliers were selling skins from cattle involved in illegal deforestation of the Amazon, Clarks, Timberland, Adidas, and Nike have asked that their suppliers stop that. Seems a little weak. [Guardian]
• Tom Ford's directorial debut, "A Single Man," an adaptation of the Christopher Isherwood novel that stars Colin Firth and Julianne Moore, will take place at the Venice Film Festival this September. [WWD]
• Fast-fashion chain Peacocks is making its own très Chanel-inspired quilted rain boots. Maybe they heard Audrey Tautou's endorsement of the real thing? [Guardian]
• Instead of having to pay back 100 million Euros this month, and another 350 million Euros next July, Prada has won a loan extension until 2012. [WWD]
• Uniqlo's same-store sales for the month of July fell 4.2%. [WWD]

• Michael Jackson's entire family — including the kids — reportedly wore Versace to his memorial service yesterday. The singer was a longtime admirer of Gianni Versace's work, and LaToya Jackson contacted Donatella Versace to arrange for the custom outfits. [InStyle]

• The above would seem to fit with the findings of this trend story on celebrities increasingly bypassing stylists to contact designers directly. [NY Observer]
• An hour after the end of his own couture show — which may prove to be his last — designer Christian Lacroix paid a visit to Givenchy. Lacroix then went backstage to greet designer Riccardo Tisci and Delphine Arnault. Givenchy is owned by Bernard Arnault's luxury conglomerate LVMH; so was the house of Lacroix, until LVMH sold it to current owners the Falic group because it wasn't making any money. Despite the fact that Bernard Arnault is nothing if not a canny businessman unlikely to send good money after bad, Lacroix's visit in the midst of his company's bankruptcy has set tongues wagging that LVMH might re-invest. [FWD]
• Precisely because it is incredibly expensive and very limited in its customer base, couture is a sensible business for many kinds of fashion house to be in — the revenues from selling couture may be small, but the brand awareness having a couture collection builds moves a lot of perfume, scarves, sunglasses, shoes, handbags, and ready-to-wear. Companies that tend to do well with couture are either mega-sized Dior logo-behemoths that work the market from all those angles, or really tiny, esteemed couture houses that don't try and wager couture's tiny revenue stream on retail stores or other big costs. According to this story, Christian Lacroix's problem was that his company was in the middle — it expanded in recent years, got the new stores, got the perfume deal, but the core of his business, and its most reliable profits came from couture alone. [WSJ]
• But this season, neither Anna Wintour nor André Leon Talley has been spotted at the couture shows. [FWD]
• Karl Lagerfeld says there's nothing whatsoever to those rumors that he is planning retirement, and will be replaced by Lanvin's Alber Elbaz. He told Cathy Horyn of the Times that he expects to die at the house of Chanel. [OnTheRunway]
• But Lagerfeld, a legendary haver of minor spats, has already found a reason to dislike Audrey Tautou. He wasn't involved in her casting, as Coco Chanel, in the movie Coco Avant Chanel, and says he didn't have anything to do with her selection in the recent Oriental Express-themed No. 5 ad, either. The point of origin of their tiff is purportedly a statement Tautou made about Chanel in the French press. When asked if she often wore Chanel, the actress replied, "Sometimes. This morning I wore the rain boots." This remark Lagerfeld found dismissive. [WWD]
• Armani might be outfitting the Italian swimming team at the World Championships this summer in Rome, but that hasn't stopped Dolce & Gabbana underwear launching an ad campaign starring the men's team's biggest stars. You're welcome. [FWD]
• Are you pale and thoughtful? Do you like boys who sparkle in the sunshine, and hanging out in the woods? Then this $64 "Twilight" hoodie — featured in the movie, fangirls! — is just the thing for you. [FF]
• Alternatively, here are instructions and patterns to make your very own Matthew Williamson caftan out of 2.5 meters of chiffon or georgette. And a sewing machine. [LondonObs]
• Because Jil Sander cannot use her own name —Raf Simons designs Jil Sander, thankyouverymuch — the capsule collection she will produce with Uniqlo will be called +J. As a creative director for the whole brand, other garments that Sander designs for Uniqlo will be simply branded Uniqlo. [WWD]
• The line-up for September's New York Fashion Week is looking strong — organizers say although there are a greater number of presentations (which are cheaper to stage) than runway shows, the total number of presentations and shows matches the total number of presentations and shows from last September. [WWD]
• Seventeen employees of the New York-based retailer Scoop are suing the company, claiming that it gave them bogus promotions to salaried positions to avoid paying them for their overtime hours. Stock handlers and security guards allege that after being hired to work for hourly wages, they received promotions to salaried assistant managerial positions, but didn't actually have any change in their duties whatsoever. Nonetheless, as "managers", they were expected to work 50-60 hour weeks for their salaries. [Crain's]
• Fashion journalist Sarah Mower hates miniskirts ("the aim is a brash, sexy glamour of the most repulsive brassiness") and wearing tights in the summertime. She also hates sales, because "They drag on for months and the shops are a mess. Plus, I do not like the experience of looking at things I've bought at full price hanging there at 70 per cent off." [Telegraph]
• Somebody named Tahnee Atkinson has won a season of Australia's Next Top Model. She's no Alice. [SMH]

• Oy (Oi?): An Australian tabloid is claiming that Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are "in turmoil" because Kristen is pregnant with the sparkle vamp's spawn.

The story is illustrated with a ridiculous "bump watch" close-up of Kristen's rather flat tummy trying to breathe in some super tight leather pants. Oh, hey: While we're on the subject, remember this? [ONTD]

• Will Breaking Dawn, the fourth Twilight film, have a different director? Says New Moon's Ashley Greene: "[Eclipse director] David [Slade] and [New Moon director] Chris [Weitz] will both be busy in postproduction, and Catherine [Hardwicke] will be doing Hamlet." [E!]
• Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson is sick of shooting his film in New York and dying to get back home. A source says he is "so over everything" and overwhelmed by fans: "He's embarrassed by the way girls throw themselves at him. The girls here are stalking him. He stayed in two different hotels over the course of four days just to try to escape the fans who were following him. He's afraid that if he gives a hand, they'll take the whole arm. He's being advised by security not to encourage the crowd, so he doesn't even look up anymore." [Gatecrasher]
• You know that Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning will make out in The Runaways, right? [NY Daily News]
• A tiny, "economically depressed" Indian reservation in Washington state — home of the Quileute Nation — has become inundated with Twilight fans. The tribe opened its Wednesday night drum circle to all visitors, but has "mixed feelings" about the attention. [NY Post]
• Did Chris Brown and Amber Rose hook up at Diddy's white party on July 4? "They were holding hands and making out in the shadows," a witness claims. Kanye West was "devastated" when Chris Brown harmed Rihanna, whom Kanye thinks of as a sister. What will he think of his on/off ladyfriend making out with Chris Brown? WILL HE WRITE A RANT?!?! [NY Daily News]
• Weeks after allegedly trashing a hotel room in L.A., Courtney Love is being accused of leaving a NYC hotel room "littered with needles and used feminine hygiene products." [The Sun]
• Daniel Radcliffe says the idea of him dating Emma Watson is "really incestuous," but admits this of his Harry Potter costars: "There was a period when we were the only boys and girls any of us knew. And so, you know, we were all unbelievably horny from about the third film to probably about the end of the fifth; then it all settled down." Hmm. Sounds like someone was fantasizing about someone! [Mirror]
• Though details are sketchy, it looks like Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys and Aretha Franklin will be attending and performing at the Michael Jackson memorial. [MSNBC Scoop]
• 1.6 million people wanted tickets for Michael Jackson's memorial, but only 11,000 tickets are available. A producer says: "It will be a celebration of Michael's life (but) we're not approaching it as a TV show… In the future, there may be a tribute to Michael Jackson. This is really a memorial service. It's not going to have all the bells and whistles. We want to keep it low-key." [AFP]
• "I want to stress to those people who are coming, or are thinking about coming, to the city for this special event that you might want to consider watching this from the comfort of your home," says Councilwoman Jan Perry, L.A.'s acting mayor (Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is out of the country). [CNN]
• There are already Michael Jackson memorial tickets on eBay. [CBS News]
• Lawyers will be in court today, arguing over who will control Michael Jackson's estate. [TMZ]
• The doctor who was with Michael Jackson the day he died clams he did not administer Demerol or OxyContin to Jackson that day. What about Propofol? No comment on that. [TMZ]
• Fans have created a shrine to Michael Jackson in Moscow, Russia. [CNN]
• A 1984 Andy Warhol portrait of Michael Jackson is up for auction, if you have like $10 million. [NY Daily News]
• This piece by Michael Jackson biographer Ian Halperin alleges that Michael was a drug addict who had recorded 200 "secret" songs before he died, had been depressed for a long time and had recently begun a relationship with a male artist, but was afraid of being revealed as gay. [Daily Mail]
• This paper is running video of Michael Jackson defending himself about child abuse allegations. He looks incredulous and annoyed. [News Of The World]
• According to this report, Michael Jackson may be buried in concrete to prevent fans from digging up his grave. [UPI]
• Will Michael Jackson be cremated, and his ashes scattered at Neverland? [NY Post]
• The bodyguard who called 911 to save Michael Jackson's life is named Alberto Alvarez, and he was apparently so loyal he didn't tell his neighbors whom he worked for. "He would disappear for days at a time. I guessed he was in security because of his size," one neighbor says. [Mirror]
• Paul McCartney is "devastated" that he doesn't have rights to Beatles songs he wrote with John Lennon, which may be part of Michael Jackson's estate. [Daily Express]
• In an interview with Silvio Berlusconi, Bob Geldof forced the Italian Prime Minister to apologize for failing to meet commitments to fighting poverty. "How can you lead the G8? Where is your credibility?" Geldof asked. [Times of London]
• Look for Michael Phelps to appear with that guy Jared in new Subway sandwich commercials starting today. The theme? "Be yourself." [AdWeek]
• Jon and Kate Gosselin spent the 4th of July together (with the kids). they had agreed weeks ago to set aside their differences for the holiday. [People]
• Alanis Morissette's guest stint on Weeds begins tonight. The singer says: "Weeds was my solace and respite in the back of the bus on tour. I was in the middle of detoxing at the time, and it was my replacement addiction for food." [USA Today]
• Gerard Butler partied in Montauk, NY over the weekend, at a "model-strewn" bash thrown by photographer Ben Watts (brother of Naomi). Did Gerard have fun? "He was there with about a million girls," a source says. [Page Six]
• Free your mind! En Vogue marked their 20th anniversary with a reunion show at the Essence Music Festival. [AP]
• Lock, stock and two smoking barrels of turnips: Guy Ritchie is trying to make his country estate, Ashcombe House, more eco-friendly and self-sufficient by adding greenhouses and vegetable gardens. [Mirror]
• Josh Duhamel and Fergie got a stripper pole as a wedding gift, but Josh says: "I've played on the pole more than she has." Pardon? "If you know my wife, she's a perfectionist and won't get on it until she's good, so she wants to take a class first. So the pole is really just decorative at this point." [Page Six]
• "German director Wim Wenders has stopped production on the planned 3D dance film Pina following the death of the film's subject — the legendary choreographer Pina Bausch." [Reuters]
• Blind items! "Which self-important, philandering writer who was dumped recently by his long-suffering wife is complaining that his jerky behavior is no longer covered on Page Six, moaning, 'You start getting used to it. And then you pick up the paper and you're not there and you think, 'Well, what am I, chopped liver?'" "Which unnaturally thin celebrity chef credits her bony frame to good eating habits, but really is addicted to laxatives?" [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which actor may have transformed himself from the drinker he once was, but still travels with his sponsor to avoid a slipup?" [Gatecrasher]
• "Q: What did you think about the Letterman/Palin controversy? (He made a truly tasteless joke about a baseball player and her 14-year-old daughter.)
  A: I thought the joke was hilarious and not only brought her back into the spotlight but gave her sympathy.
  Q: So, Letterman shouldn't have said it.
  A: Of course he should have said it! Oh, for God's sakes. We're comedians. Americans are so ridiculously uptight. Enough!" — Joan Rivers. [Houston Chronicle]
• "I look at Chris Martin who says he has never taken drugs in his life and I think he is an idiot. Doing drugs is the most beautiful thing about being in a rockband. Up until 1998 I must have spent £1 million on drugs then I stopped because it is bad for your health, brain, life and for people around you." — Noel Gallagher. [Daily Mail]
• "I was sort of smarting from Russell Crowe coming over here and playing Robin Hood and all these foreigners coming over here and stealing our great heroes - I felt I was striking a blow back by being a Brit playing a foreigner. I'd love to play Robin Hood but I'd particularly like to play all those parts Johnny Depp plays that are English people like The Earl of Rochester." — Dominic West. [Mirror]
• "It is bizarre, certainly in Hollywood, when you hit 23 [and] people start to ask you, 'How does it feel to get older?' It is absolutely surreal because, as a woman, when you hit your 30s it's just the beginning of owning yourself and being in your own body." — Carla Gugino. [Page Six]
• "I've always loved Chanel's style, but I was more interested in her character than the fashion. Her life is so rich, and her personality so unusual, that the story of her life is far greater than simply being a story of fashion. And I wanted to discover what lay behind the façade…" — Audrey Tautou, who plays Coco Chanel in Coco Avant Chanel. [Telegraph]
• "I've always been an elusive person. Maybe because it's the only way to keep yourself sacred. If you blow yourself out on too many movies and magazine covers, you just get chewed up and spat out. Okay, you might get to know me, but you can only come so far. The public is conditioned to think it's entitled to know everything about Brad and Angelina and whoever else, but that's not so. They're not entitled." — Robin Wright Penn. [Times Of London]
• "It's obvious I'm not dressing for men. I don't want to be sexy, I'm, like, covered in tattoos. I have piercings. I'm just grungy and weird and not what is socially accepted as being beautiful, and I think that's cool. [My heroes were mostly big in the '90s.] The women who were championing things that were different. I loved Winona Ryder in her Beetlejuice and Heathers era, and even when I saw Angelina Jolie on the red carpet, like, years before the Hollywood makeover and everyone was so weirded out because she had long, weird nails and a long, weird dress on. And that's what I think is amazing. Anti-beauty. I don't want to dress for men, I think it's almost like a feminist thing." — Peaches Geldof. [Times of London]

[Rome, May 6. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

Never mind that Chanel herself smoked up to 50 clopes a day. The company, Metrobus, demanded that the poster above be replaced with this more anodyne shot of Tautou and the male lead, Alessandro Nivola.

Metrobus also airbrushed a film still of legendary French comedian Jacques Tati in Mon Oncle, which originally featured Tati smoking a pipe while riding a bicycle. (The still serves as a poster for a Tati retrospective, currently open, at the Cinémathèque Française.) In the new version of the poster, Tati holds a yellow windmill between his lips.

France's current health minister thinks the poster bans and airbrushings are absurd. So too does Claude Evin, the former health minister responsible for the anti-tobacco advertising law in the first place.

Either way, it makes for some pretty fantastic publicity for Coco Avant Chanel, which opens abroad today.

Whiff Of Kafka To Coco Chanel Smoking Poster Ban [Telegraph]

[Paris, April 6. Image via Bauer-Griffin.]

• Audrey Tautou reunited with Amélie director Jean Pierre Jeunet to star in an Orient Express-themed Chanel No. 5 ad, which took three weeks to shoot. The reel's not up till May 5. [WWD]

• In some perfect fashion synergy, Liya Kebede and J. Crew are at work on a creative partnership. Liya will become the first model to lend her services to an entire catalog, front-to-back, and the company's children's line, Crewcuts, will stock pieces from the model's kids' line, Lemlem. Liya launched Lemlem in 2007; it's handmade in her native Ethiopia from cotton. [FWD]
• W, Glamour, T The New York Times Style Magazine and Vogue are among the fashion magazines nominated for prizes at this year's National Magazine Awards. Whoever thinks Vogue is generally excellent — or that Glamour's essays are praiseworthy — is smoking something epic. [ASME]
• More from Jil Sander, on her new role with the Japanese streetwear brand Uniqlo: "We are living in a small world today. People are in easy contact with each other. There is a new collective feeling of democracy. You can sense it everywhere. It is a wonderful challenge to dress this new world as attractively as possible. I am thinking of clothes that are comfortable for everyone, beautiful and not expensive. I am convinced that there can be luxury in simplicity. One glass of water doesn't equal another. One may just appease the thirst, the other you may enjoy thoroughly. In Japan, people know about this difference. Details are everything here. The challenge for me is to establish premium quality in a democratically priced brand: Quality for everyone." [On The Runway]
• Prada's favorite architect, Rem Koolhaas produced the brand's spring look book. (Which, in further proof that falling on the runway doesn't have to hurt a model's career, features Katie Fogarty, one of the girls who fell so spectacularly during the brand's spring show last September.) Koolhaas' offering fits with the trend of ever more bizarre look books — there's a classical theme, with models Photoshopped to look like crumbling statuary and other weird and wonderful effects. [OMA]
• This is what L.A. fashion week has been reduced to: "model-actress Molly Sims donned a bright cranberry colored one-shouldered dress custom-designed by [Kevan] Hall for the event and decorated with real, freeze-dried cranberries to promote a new cranberry body wash by Dial." [Yahoo! News]
• André Leon Talley still bothered to show up. Or was his trip just in honor of the fact that he can only freely indulge in fast food when Anna's safely in another time zone? Someone spotted the Vogue editor-at-large eating at the airport Chili's. [P6]
• L.A. kid Chanel Iman's new gig as a special correspondent on the revived House of Style might be a bridge to other slashy things. [Fashionologie]
• But is Chanel prepared? She admitted to only YouTubing a few minutes of old host Cindy Crawford's footage since getting the job. "There's Cindy, and ... I forgot the other girls' names! But I know there's more. Cindy was the only one I found on YouTube when I did my research," said the model, unpromisingly. She also gave a false birth year in the same interview. Alas, I know very well why even a girl born in 1989 might start shaving a tad off her age in this industry. [The Cut]
• Matt Tyrnauer, the Vanity Fair writer who directed the new documentary on Valentino, The Last Emperor, says that when the designer and his partner, Giancarlo Giammetti, first saw his film, they "freaked out." And tried to have scenes removed, despite having the fact that Tyrnauer held full creative control. But now, having seen audiences react positively to the portrait, they have come to appreciate Tyrnauer's efforts. [On The Runway]
• That much hoped-for bail-out of the Italian garment industry looks like it will indeed come to pass: industry minister Claudio Scajola resumed his talks with industry heads last night. Italy exported $35 billion worth of fashion goods in 2008, making it the world's second-largest apparel exporter, and the center of manufacture for nearly all high-end handbags and shoes. The Italian fashion industry employs some 800,000 people. [Forbes]
• Perry Ellis failed to meet even lowered expectations for the quarter, announcing a loss of $22.3 million, mainly due to write-downs. [WSJ]
• Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, paid $933.6 million in bonuses to about 1 million of its hourly staff yesterday, or about two-thirds of its total workforce. The bonus pool was increased by 46% on last year's. Occasionally a man does bite a dog, I guess. [WSJ]

• Remind the world to never buy a Duncan Quinn suit. Unless, I guess, you know someone who's about to strangle a scantily-clad woman on the hood of a fucking car. [Feministe, via NY Mag]

• Versace's being sued by the former assistant to a US executive, claiming she was subject to harassment based on her race and sex, forced to relay sexually explicit voicemail messages, and fired when she objected. [Reuters]
• One of the alleged messages: to tell her boss he'd given some guy an STD. Versace says it's "confident that . . . [it] will not be held responsible in any way." [New York Post]
• Beyonce's "style secrets" are less than explosive: "Some of the necklines and silhouettes, and even some of the fabrics they chose, [for Cadillac Records] look so appropriate for now. I love them! I feel that everything comes back, and since this is something so special to me we incorporated it in [my House of Dereon] line." [People]
• Want to see Karl Lagerfeld naked? No? What about Donatella Versace? They, plus Agyness and Galliano, have been drawn in the buff — okay, with fig leaves — for a new line of Henry Holland tee shirts. [New York]
• ID Models — apparently home to "models" Leelee Sobieski and Tara Reid — is closing, or merging, or something. [Fashionista]
• Ooh, stills from Audrey Tautou's new Chanel biopic, which we're totally excited about even though it will obviously airbrush out all Petainiste sympathies and anti-Semitism! Yay! Movies! [Fashionologie]
• Upon receiving an award from the Council for the United States and Italy, Miuccia Prada said...nothing. "After an ear-numbing string of speeches, Prada explained: 'I am not shy. I just don't like to be generic. I'm not able to speak in sound bites. So I don't do it.'" [Breitbart]
• Elle jumps on the slightly disturbing virtual bandwagon with some fake clothes. "The collection of short party dresses, leggings and sparkly tops, which debuted Tuesday, retails at a boutique on Stardoll.com, a virtual world for teens and young adults that has more than 23 million registered users globally." [WSJ]
• Kelly Cutrone hopes her new reality show will provide an "opportunity on TV for young women to see women in power.” What's she saying, that fake-working doesn't count? [New York]
• Lovely luxe bag-makers Mulberry's profits wane; they issue a profit warning. [Times of London]
• Moddle Lara Stone gets an entire issue of French Vogue. Says someone at the mag, cryptically: “Have you ever met Lara Stone? If you met her, you would know. She’s an amazing person.” [Fashionista]
• Lanvin's denim line for Acne debuts; jeans cost upwards of $500. [New York]
• Abercrombie's refusing to cut prices; suffering. [The Street]
• Page Six asks, "Which actress who plays a teen on a hit TV show incorrectly insists she's a size zero? Employees at a clothing line have to remove all the bigger-size labels from garments they send her to her to keep her happily deluded ." Yes, it's hard being a Size 2. [New York Post]
• Speaking of vague gossip! Everyone's a-twitter about this Wintour-Ralph Lauren luncheon sighting: "The fabulous fashionistas both arrived on the early side — 12:30 — and were still deep in conversation after much of the dining room had departed. Now that we've been assured by Si Newhouse that Anna's safe at the top of Vogue's masthead, we have to wonder why the pair looked downright anguished. We watched in fascination as the pair leaned over the table with their foreheads practically touching as Ralph propped his head up with his hands and rubbed his eyes. Tough times for the titan?" Or a bad oyster? [Media Bistro]