• Confirmed: Madonna will do the Louis Vuitton fall campaign. With Jesus Luz? I imagine LVMH execs did a pro/con weighing the headline value against the risk that Madge would dump her boytoy ere September. [Grazia]

• No pesky swine flu pandemic threat level five business will put the fear into superstylist/downtown savant/Socrates afficionado Pat Field. When asked if she was afraid of the illness, she replied, "No. We're in America and we don't give a shit about anything." [The Cut]
• Frenchie actress and hobbyist 9/11 conspiracy theorist Marion Cotillard, new face of Lady Dior, will, unsurprisingly, wear Dior to the Met ball on Monday. [WWD]
• Fashionologie has an excellent roundup of the Met ball news, from which designers are sitting this year out due to the cost, to who's taking whom as a date. [Fashionologie]
• Michelle Obama's March Vogue cover was a top-selling issue, moving 560,000 copies on the newsstand, which is 1,000 more than 2008's best-seller, the September issue. [WWD]
• Elle MacPherson designed a cashmere sweater for her sister-in-law's line, Banjo & Matilda. It costs $499 Australian. [British Vogue]
• Behnaz Sarafpour went to Saudi Arabia to show her line in a trunk show (organized by a princess and attended by women only, naturally) and the designer reports that it is totally an underrated holiday destination. "I even got to ride a camel for the first time!!! Very Lawrence of Arabia!!!" [WWD]
• The launch party for Matthew Williamson's H&M line doubled as a booze cruise. Only unlike your pre-recession enforced-jollity work do, his had Grace Jones performing. [Style.com]
• And a pants-less Chanel Iman. [The Cut]
• Sophie Dahl: "When you've got big bosoms and a really big bottom it's difficult to get dressed. You end up looking slightly pornographic in everything. But it's nice to be able to get into jeans and a T-shirt and not have your breasts do the talking." [Daily Express]
• V's take on a swimsuit issue looks like a winner. Six different models on the cover, including a sizzling Naomi Campbell, shot against a yellow background. Campbell marks her 25th year in the industry this year, so naturally, she's hinting about a retirement. That'll never stick. [Daily Mail]
• Francisco Costa is going to be on Martha Stewart's show tomorrow. [WWD]
• Kenneth Cole is going to be a commencement speaker at Northeastern University. Wanna take odds on 30 continuous minutes of puns? [FWD]
• A collection of Christian Lacroix's couture theater and opera costumes is being shown in Singapore — the first exhibition of the French designer's work outside France. Patsy would just die to be there. [Dazed Digital]
• Under Armour is recalling 211,000 athletic cups. Because they come from a batch that "can break if hit, posing a serious injury hazard to athletes." [BlackBook]
• An awful lot of Isaac Mizrahi's recently-released first collection for mass-market retailer Liz Claiborne has already been discounted, notes Racked. [Racked ]
• Hugo Boss's net profits shrank by 2% in the first quarter of 2009. [WWD]
• Men's Wearhouse just discovered its own long-existing Prom Rep program — a kind of Tupperware Party of tux rental, with "referrals" and "rewards" for customers willing to transform themselves into vectors of corporate marketing with a target lock on their friends — is perfect for the Twittered, Facebooked, atomized high school world of now. Isn't that nice. [BrandWeek]

L & C: Chris Benz SS08, R: Behnaz Sarafpour SS08

L & C: Behnaz Sarafpour SS08, R: Angel Chang SS08

L to R: Vera Wang SS08, Abaete SS08, Marc Jacobs FW08.

[Images via Elle.com.]

(Click on any image to begin gallery)

Narciso Rodriguez:

Monique Lhuillier:

Behnaz Sarafpour:

Marc by Marc Jacobs

• NY Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn (left) ate Cheerios, ran into a bunch of famous people she knows, got coffee, saw a Vera Wang show that was supposed to be about "Rome" and she totally didn't see what was so "Rome" about it. Her blog is sort of like Cory Kennedy's blog, only with better punctuation.[NYT]
  
• Speaking of Horyn, she was banned from designer Carolina Herrera's show, happening today, after trashing her collection even more viciously than Vera Wang's last season. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• Fashion Week (which in case you hadn't realized, we're currently in the middle of) has just struck a deal enabling it to keep itself in Bryant Park for two more years. Bryant Park has been very vocal about wanting the fashion folk gone, presumably because they're tired of cleaning up all the barf. We credit our barf bags for the park allowing the shows to stay! [WWD, sub req'd]

• Angelina and Zahara have matching Valentino handbags. Long sigh. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Almost as exciting as the fashion week currently underway in Boston, Japan Fashion Week is also happening in Tokyo. [WWD, sub req'd]
• We like Michael Kors in a brand new way: He opened his show to the sounds of "Xanadu"! [WWD, 1st item]
• Behnaz Sarafpour missed her own show on Friday because she was too busy passing a kidney stone. If there's one thing more excruciating than enduring Fashion Week, it's probably getting a limb amputated, but passing a kidney stone is still pretty rough. [WWD, 3rd item]
• Meanwhile across the pond, London-based designer Christopher Kane's Spring/Summer 2008 has been stolen! If you know anything, please call Scotland Yard's fashion department ASAP. [Vogue UK]

• Betsey Johnson is selling a majority of her label to a private equity firm, which is sort of like the tent dress equivalent of this year's fashion financing world, but Portfolio blogger Lauren Goldstein Crowe is confused. What would a private equity firm want with Johnson, a "grandmother, 65 years old?" Um, and Valentino: such a strapping young lad himself! [Portfolio.com]
  
• The Atlanta City Council is attempting to amend the city's current public indecency law to stop the (twenty year old) "epidemic" of baggy pants and the horrific collateral damage of exposed boxer shorts. Women would also be prevented from showing thongs, sports bras, or any bra straps. We really hope this is a joke intended to provide Katt Williams with material for some epic Freaknik routine, but just in case, the ACLU is already on it. [AJC]
  
• If you have a Platinum Amex you can go to a New York Fashion Week show for $100 and watch the show from a sky box and, uh, eat some lunch, although shows last an average of 16 minutes, so you won't have time to eat much, which we guess is the point. [WSJ]

• Designer Behnaz Sarafpour sent emailed invitations to her Spring/Summer 2008 show in lieu of paper ones to help the environment. [FWD]
• Beth Ditto to model for Christopher Kane. Um, wow. [The Sun]
• Want to look just like Helena Christensen? Eat snake and drink Guinness. [Vogue UK]
• Anna Wintour will not be attending Paris Fashion Week, because she's going to London Fashion Week instead. The world: shocked. [WWD, 1st item]
• The latest celeb Steve & Barry's line: Venus Williams' EleVen. She says the name is rife with symbolism because the number shows how you can be more than your best? Um, whatever. What happened to her Reebok contract, anyway? [WWD, sub req'd]
• Danskin, in honor of its 125th anniversary, will offer key pieces from its "collection" in cashmere and silk. So what do you call a cashmere unitard? Unitarded! [WWD, sub req'd]

There are cropped mod-shaped dresses with ruffles and rust tones galore. But there are also heart tights. And heart hand bags. Big hearts. Lots of hearts. Everywhere. So if you like to wear your emotions, than these, yes, are the clothes for you. But if you would rather experience burnt orange culottes in your childhood photos only, you might want to pass. Something to consider, though: The shapeless shifts that have dominated the runways for the past few seasons are swiftly on their way out, with tighter, more form-fitting shapes moving in. So depending on your feelings about this, this may or may not be just the price point with which to invest in one (or 10) last babydoll dresses. Contemplate further with the image gallery, below.

The skull-print argyle vest? Not fashion forward. Not even average-folk relevant. It's as if the women behind Libertine got stoned and bored while sketching and fused the a hipster skull with a poor man's prep green-and-argyle. Even WASP mecca J. Crew does ironic better than this.

It's a bird? It's a plane? It's a bolero? It's a cape? We have no idea what the fuck it is, but we don't know whether to laugh or cry to see it paired with (wait for it!) AN ARMY GREEN CARGO PANT! A cargo pant with a BUNCHED ANKLE!

Wow. We would've never thought to put a swirly-stripe blouse with a pussy bow (seriously that's what it's called — look it up in your fashion dictionary) with a matching swirly-stripe pant and Sgt. Pepper's blazer. It's Garanimals on acid!

The last person we saw wearing a cropped blazer with shorts was Mariah Carey. Draw your own conclusions.

There's a huge difference between a slip and a slip dress. A huge difference that seems to have evaded the Libertine girls...

We'd make some nasty comment about the color combinations and proportions on this one, but we burned our retinas looking at it so we're going to go lie down now.

Libertine for Go. International [Target]