Halloween: All Bullshit's Eve
The last trick-or-treating doorbell is also the starting pistol for news stories about how early "the holidays" are beginning these days. Said stories correspond with advertisers' exhortations to get your shopping done early, and to decorate your home with things like cardboard maple leaves and shellacked ears of inedible corn.

Nov. 20: The Feast of the Weight-Loss Tips
This "feast" is actually celebrated throughout the year, but kicks into high gear a few days before Thanksgiving with advice on keeping off "those holiday pounds." Women's magazines run articles on how to replace something good with something less good (want marshmallows? try something that's not marshmallows!), while every other media outlet stuffs the eyes and ears with food porn. Celebrate this holiday with a traditional snack of rice cakes layered with pure suet.

Day After Thanksgiving: Black Friday
This day is most enthusiastically celebrated in the direct-marketing community. Members of this vibrant culture learn from their mothers and grandmothers how to mix up a delicious batch of junk mail, spiced with exclamation points and sweetened with love. These simple folk delight in sharing their sales, deals, and specials with you — like an iPhone app that tells "recessionistas" where to buy stuff. Today's direct marketers have improved on their ancient customs: holiday shopping isn't just about buying stuff anymore, it's about buying stuff that helps you buy more stuff.

Monday After Thanksgiving: Cyber Monday
Sadly, Cyber Monday is not the day for "cyber sex with a guy named eric" (except insofar as every day is). Rather, this celebration was launched in 2005 to commemorate the noble tradition of spending money without interacting with other people. The term Cyber Monday was coined by the National Retail Foundation, whose website CyberMonday.com advertises can't-miss deals like a "Free signature iPhone case with $250 Marc by Marc Jacobs purchase at Saks.com!" Apparently "It has been postulated that through mainstream media adoption of the term, combined with retailers hoping to drive more traffic to their sites, that the "Gimmick" of Cyber Monday could become a "Real Trend"." The foregoing is one of the most depressing sentences I have ever read on Wikipedia, and possibly anywhere.

Day After Cyber Monday: Downer Tuesday
This is the day when news outlets report the decline in holiday retail sales since the glory days of the debt bubble, and consumers feel bad for how little they bought. This holiday is a lot like Mardi Gras, and should be celebrated similarly — with unbridled consumption. Go buy a Zhu Zhu hamster — hell, buy ten. Hamsters eat their young, so you might need a couple extra.

Sometime Around December 5: St. Abstemius's Day
St. Abstemius was the patron saint of toothless cultural criticism, and his feast day is the time when newspaper commentators bemoan the overcommercialization of the holiday season. Traditionally, the oldest girl in the household spends this day making gifts for everyone else out of old wrapping paper, bottle caps, and her own hair. Then she sprinkles the family's shoes with a mixture of extra virgin olive oil and bile. Then everyone goes out and buys more stuff.

December 20: Panic Day
Those who celebrate Hanukkah will be all done as of this day (at least in 2009), but the fun is just beginning for Christians and other worshippers at the Church of Christmas Shit-Buying. Panic Day is marked by increasingly obtrusive warnings about the amount of time before Christmas, and by a corresponding decrease in the availability of anything anyone would actually want to buy. Celebrate this day by purchasing a talking bottle opener for someone you mildly dislike.

December 25: The Climax of Consumption
Americans open their gifts and, just as the prophets of advertising promised, they are completely, ecstatically happy.

December 26: Boxing Day
Return everything.

Cyber Monday [Wikipedia]

• Karl Lagerfeld gave SpongeBob SquarePants a makeover for a charity auction, resulting in this little charmer, which sold for €1,000. [WWD]

• Zac Posen, who two weeks ago announced a lower-priced line, Z Spoke, will do a line for Target in the U.S. (He already designed a capsule collection for Target's Australian outpost in 2008.) Zac Posen for Target Go International will hit stores on April 25 of next year. Rodarte for Target goes on sale this December, at last. [WWD]
• Even though it's late November in sunny London, Kate Moss is allegedly planning an outdoor dinner party. Her nefarious plan? The supermodel, whose recent choice, in an interview, of a notorious eating disorder sufferers' slogan as her motto we highlighted, wants to be photographed eating food. [Mirror]
• The verdict on "Black Friday" post-Thanksgiving sales: an "unexceptional yet decent" $41.2 billion was spent. [WWD]
• Both potential buyers of the bankrupt house of Christian Lacroix failed to meet a new, extended deadline to provide the bankruptcy court with guarantees of their capital. If the company is not sold, the current owners, the Falic Group, will likely go forward with their preferred scenario, in which only 11 key staff are retained, and the brand is either auctioned off to cover debts, or turned into a licensing machine for scarves and perfumes. [AFP]
• Patrick Dempsey stars with his wife, Jillian, in his new Avon perfume ad. Because this scent is "about two people and the power of the relationship." [People]
• Sonia Rykiel's H&M lingerie line will be launched this December with a fashion show at the Grand Palais. The models will walk on moving floats that travel around a fantasy Parisian streetscape, dominated by a 30 meter Eiffel Tower made from 25 km of wire and fairy lights. Trees will have balloon canopies, and the Café de Flore will be mocked up as the Café Flirt. Also, imagine 6 meter poodles and 2.5 meter bunnies. Best part? It'll be streamed live on the mighty Internet. [SB]
• The pink-and-black '50s-themed collection goes on sale this Saturday in more than 1,500 H&M boutiques worldwide, as well as Rykiel's own stores. Prices range from €7.95 - €19.95 for underwear, and €79.95 for sleepwear. [WWD]
• Morrissey is collaborating with Stella McCartney on a line of vegan footwear. McCartney says the shoes could be in stores next year. [Daily Mail, 2nd item]
• Helena Christensen, on the term of art 'supermodel': it's "silly and cartoonish, but to be a part of that whole group of girls — at the end of the day, I was there. I did it. I am a million experiences richer." [Telegraph]
• It's a comeback for Aussie model Catherine McNeil. McNeil will be on the cover of next month's Australian Vogue, a casting move that her booker says gives any model "credibility" — oddly implying that McNeil needs some. The 20-year-old has been on an extended break from international modeling, but is expected to rejoin the moil next show season, in January. [News.com.au]
• Mulberry creative director Emma Hill, who previously designed accessories for Marc Jacobs and the Gap, on the heyday of 'it' bags: "I was partly responsible, at Marc Jacobs, for the It bag thing. I realized that we'd made it when I saw knock-offs on the street corner. But a trend like that squashes people's individuality. If you're all trying to get the same thing, it's not very special. There are possibly more things to worry about in life than waiting two years for a handbag. I think those years are over." [ToL]
• Jenny Sanford applied to trademark her own name in early July, shortly after the June revelation that her husband, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, was hiking the Appalachian trail enjoying two magnificent parts of another woman. Jenny Sanford applied for the trademark intending to use it to market a line of clothing, mugs, and other household items, to be sold through her website. The trademark application has not yet been approved. [State]
• Christian Audigier is opening an Ed Hardy store in London this week, the U.K.'s first. [Guardian]
• Victoria's Secret is a popular target for professional shoplifters. Four women pepper-sprayed a sales associate in Tennessee this month in order to boost 30 pairs of underwear. [UPI]
• Due to Dubai's debt crisis, the American investors who recently and separately bought significant chunks of Barneys New York's debt, Ron Burkle and Richard Perry, might end up controlling the Dubai-owned company. If they do, they should probably convince someone there to hire a C.E.O. All the best companies have one. [Dealbook]
• Pierre Cardin, 87, was briefly hospitalized in Paris for exhibiting falling blood pressure and a slow pulse. Cardin was en route to Greece, where he was holding a fashion show. As if this were 1963, or something. [AFP]
• French eBay users are banned from selling or buying certain branded perfumes, like Christian Dior and Kenzo. A court in Paris has fined the auction site 1.7 million Euros for not enforcing the law effectively enough. [BBC]
• The market in exotic skins, like alligator, has been among the worst affected by the recession. (It's not hard to imagine why, given a pair of alligator Manolos can easily run $4,000.) The farmers who raise the gators in Louisiana, Florida, and Georgia are paid for their troubles by tanneries, who then sell the processed hides to fashion companies. But while farmers complain that prices offered by tanneries have fallen below the cost of even raising the animals, fashion companies say the reduction in the cost of finished skins has been minimal. Which major fashion brand significantly expanded into alligator tanneries during the boom years? Hermès. The other thing you should know about this article is that a man named Tommy Fletcher, whose work involves going into bayous to fight mother alligators with a pole and frequent bites when handling the live young, says that running an alligator farm is "like being married to Miss America. You get all the benefits of the hugs and kisses, but she's mighty high-maintenance." [NYTimes]

[Fort Worth, November 27. Image via Getty]

FORT WORTH, TX - NOVEMBER 27: Shoppers Jeri Hull (L) and Karen Brashear (R) wait in line while shopping at Toys'R'Us during the Black Friday sales event on November 27, 2009 in Fort Worth, Texas. Toys'R'Us stores nationwide opened at midnight Thursday, November 26, providing shoppers access to its Black Friday deals five hours earlier than ever before. According to the National Retail Federation, a trade organization, as many as 134 million people, 4.7% more than last year, will shop this Friday, Saturday or Sunday. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

What is it that's so horrifying about this story — besides the stark senseless shock of an innocent person's death? Is it the thought of someone who worked through Thanksgiving night being callously destroyed by a mob in search of cheap electronics? Is it the horror of the mob mentality? Is it the fact that people are so in need of bargains that they descend to this kind of frenzy? It's all of it, of course — and it's the complete fabrication that is Black Friday in the first place, a bizarre manipulation that the New York Times terms "a quintessentially American ritual of self-sacrifice at the altar of consumerism." But when that sacrifice becomes human, things have gone much, much too far.

The weird part is, apparently this was a subdued Black Friday: smaller crowds with smaller budgets, and smaller bargains than shoppers had expected. Black Friday's a day when a lot of stores make a profit: the frenzy of promotions and door-busting sales are no mere nod to consumerist tradition. Although it doesn't take a Lifetime "true spirit od Christmas" television movie to see that there might be something misplaced about making a family tradition of dawn-breaking bargain shopping — or the need for a treeful of expensive gifts — however offensive it might be to some sensibilities, it is not wrong. The people seeking bargains were not cold-blooded killers; question consumerism all you want, but anyone storming an already affordable Wal-Mart for bargain-basement prices is probably not flying private jets in his spare time. Doubtless anyone involved in this carnage, when they realized what had happened and the bargain-induced bloodlust had died down, was appalled and sickened. It is so easy to reduce tragedy to metaphor, but it feels horribly fitting here. It is a person's death, tragedy enough. And yet, why is there something of "The Lottery" about this horrible story, something that feels deeper and more disturbing than the sum of its parts?

Worker Dies At Long Island Wal-Mart After Being Trampled In Black Friday Stampede [New York Daily News]
Holiday Shopping At A Subdued Pace [New York Times]

• Apparently Thierry Mugler's doing Beyonce's tour costumes. This could go in one of two directions. [Style.com]
• Diddy: “I’m only about five minutes late because I was running around and spraying people." We think he's talking about his new "I Am King" fragrance — a monarch's gotta mark his territory! [WWD]
• Let's continue to pretend we have some impact on Michelle's inaugural gown selection and evaluate these choices. [Forbes]
• We kind of assumed it was confirmed, but yes! Katie Holmes for Miu Miu. She was shot by "Mert and Marcus," our new band name. [ElleUK]
• Not a trick question: what do moddles eat on Thanksgiving? Food! [New York]

• Extremely awesome Luella Bartlet wins "Designer of the Year" at British Fashion Awards. "Bartley is the mother of three children and lives in Cornwall with her surfer-fashion photographer partner, David Sims." Other honorees included milliner Stephen Jones, Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey, and photog Tim Walker. [Telegraph]
• Check out Luella's Spring line here. [VogueUK]
• And Jourdan Dunn upset Agyness for moddle honors! [New York]
• To add insult to injury, Agy and Lily Allen were strip-serached at Dubai airport! [The Sun]
• Meet the "Madison Avenue (Doll) House, a futuristic structure displayed from suspension hangers. It features four fully decorated floors, replete with miniature replicas of Calvin Klein apparel, accessories and home furnishings, from clothing to tabletop." [WWD]
• Talk of a SAG strike is bad news for the designers counting on awards season for a much-needed boost. [WWD]
• J. Crew is down 30% — but still better off than analysts expected! [The Street]
• About time: they say they're going to return to "more friendly price points for Spring." [WWD]
• Talbots posts a quarterly loss but hopes a new credit agreement will buoy them. [NY Times]
• Meanwhile, the Liz Claiborne slide continues as it's issued a "negative" rating. In case you're wondering, that's bad. [Crains]
• Glam David — designer Richie Rich — beats the Goliath who sued him to stop using the "Richie Rich" name after acquiring Heatherette. [Page Six Magazine]
• Lego fashion show considerably more awesome than real fashion show. [AdWeek]
• Ernest Sewn launches cheap room for the cash-strapped. [Fashionista]
• Black Friday looms extra-manic as stores play 'how low can you go?' [WWD]

• Paris Hilton showed up at the Victoria's Secret fashion show earlier this month and demanded to be cast in the show, according to model Miranda Kerr. And then — and here's where it gets really classy — she stole an outfit from the show to wear herself. [Sassybella]
  
• On being asked who designed the dress she wore to a party for actor Ewan MacGregor's new book, Helena Bonham Carter replied, "I can't remember, I can't remember anything." [WWD, 9th item]
  
• Venus Williams is inspired "as an athlete and as a designer" by Madonna. [WSJ]
  
• Model Gemma Ward: "surprisingly impressive" in her acting debut. [Sassybella]

• Adidas is partnering with Diesel to do a denim line, because what the world needs now is... that's right! Another denim line. [Vogue UK]
• Fresh from their H&M collection, Viktor & Rolf are designing a line of luggage for Samsonite. [IHT]
• Pierre Hardy for Gap shoes: Coming stateside soon! [WWD, 4th item]
• Model Natalia Vodianova and a bunch of "celebrities" we've never heard of are designing t-shirts for the Buddhist Punk label to benefit Al Gore's The Climate Project. And I guess it's understandable for Al to be tired of winning awards and ready to just party with models for once, but seriously, I am tired of the whole "designing" T-shirts for charity trend. [Vogue UK]
• Steve and Barry's is really (really!) a helluva lot more than just the place to buy Sarah Jessica Parker's "Bitten" line. Did you know they bought 3.5 million square feet of retails space in U.S. malls last year? We're not even sure what 3.5 million square feet looks like. [Business Week]
• Topshop is going to China! OMG just like this cycle's contestants on America's Next Top Model! We hope to see Heather at the first store opening. [Reuters]

People all over suburbia gather peacefully in the early morning, in many cases braving treacherous conditions and serious motherfucking indigestion, all in pursuit of something they have been reared in decades of market capitalism to think they desire: more stuff. Okay, so it's all kind of stupid, but what else brings the country together like a snaking line in the dead of early morning outside a Simon property mall? I've actually watched people go on coffee runs for complete strangers on Black Friday! And what better way to spend the afternoon than drunk at Ruby Tuesday, preferably one with a view of one of those half-dressed Abercrombie greeters? Uh, well, almost anything, but as long as you're stuck at home...

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