• Lily Allen told a British radio show that she is quitting performing for two years to open a boutique called Lucy In Disguise. She's also going to found a record label. [Elle UK]

• President Obama wore a parka to visit the Great Wall of China. "The jacket has a fleece bib and removable bucket hood, suggesting that President likes his jackets as he likes his health care bills: riddled with options," notes Women's Wear Daily. [WWD]
• Michaele Salahi wore David Yurman jewelry to that little party she crashed about a week back, if you care. [WWD]
• Japanese outfit Cross Company has bought a majority stake in Thom Browne. Which makes a certain kind of sense, since Browne's aesthetic certainly is well-suited to Japan. Haha, 'suited,' see what we did there? Sorry. Anyway, how much money Browne got to part with his controlling stake was not disclosed, and they plan to open a flagship in Japan next year. [WWD]
• Cathy Horyn, on the closure of Christian Lacroix's couture and ready-to-wear lines: "I remember taking my mother, Nancy Horyn, to the Paris ready-to-wear shows in March of 1990. She saw three — Valentino, Romeo Gigli and Lacroix. She was utterly enchanted by Gigli; it was the season of the celebrated Murano glass collection. She didn't really care for Valentino; it was, you know, not her thing. She adored Lacroix. The show that season was held in the house, on those beautiful banquettes, so it was a different experience, more like a couture presentation. Before the show we stood in the little courtyard of the house, on the steps going up to the salon, and my mother asked about so-and-so, curious about their style of dress or exceedingly impulsive hairdo. It probably all seemed very urgent, though I imagine not in the least to her." [On The Runway]
• Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone closed on a nice little love nest in the Village for $10.4 million. It has a private elevator, yard, roof terrace, and a rear terrace. [P6]
• Anthropologie is moving into the Chelsea Market, at the corner of 15th Street and Ninth Avenue in New York City. [NYPost, second item]
• British designer Christopher Kane isn't having any of this Tommy-Ton-in-the-front-row nonsense: "It's a bit mad, isn't it? It feels like it's happened all of a sudden and at some shows this season the front row was just all bloggers. I think it will die down though, and people know what they are doing. No one who wants to read a serious review of a show is going to look at what a 14-year-old thinks. But it has become more critical; people can say what they want about anyone on a blog without consequences and that's quite scary. There are real repercussions for a designer if a photo of something is leaked by a blog; it can be copied in a fortnight and that can really harm a business." [Vogue UK]
• Dior Homme is launching a line of women's jeans. Women with the means to do so have been wearing Dior Homme's slim cut suits ever since Hedi Slimane was designing pants so sexy the darts alone could make you weak at the knees. Could the specifically-for-women versions be any better than those? [Vogue UK]
• You can buy Joan Collins' Dynasty costumes — along with Shirley Bassey's YSL heels — at a charity pop-up store in London, opening tomorrow. [Elle UK]
• Tom Ford smells like vanilla and has not only a Best Side but a Best Angle. He says things like, "I think of myself as a product." [NYTimes]
• Cathy Horyn likes his movie, A Single Man. [On The Runway]
• The Wall Street Journal investigates the peculiar and specific humiliation of having your once-treasured and still-fashionable clothing picked through by a snarky 19-year-old clerk at Buffalo Exchange, and found wanting. Word to the wise, as someone who used to make food and rent money by re-selling the designer "trade" I was usually "paid" in — and by scouring the $1 rag markets in LA for Lacoste sweaters and old prom dresses I could launder, repair and re-sell: Buffalo Exchange's prices are shit. They do not care if your shoes are thrice-worn Prada; they will offer you $9 for them. If you do not have the patience for eBay, go to Wasteland, if you're on the West Coast. If you're anywhere else, sew in some labels from your dad's old designer ties. Duh. [WSJ]
• Liliane Bettencourt's daughter has filed a civil case to declare L'Oreal heiress Bettencourt, the richest woman in Europe, incapable of managing her own affairs. Bettencourt gave a reported $1.5 billion worth of cash and artworks to a photographer friend, François-Marie Banier, who is already the subject of a criminal case for "abus de faiblesse," or taking advantage of the infirm. Liliane Bettencourt's lawyers reject both of the daughter's cases as an attempt to seize control of Bettencourt's assets. [Reuters]
• Someone you have never heard of before and will never hear of again was in the Victoria's Secret fashion show because she won a competition on the Internet. [AP]
• Aeropostale's third-quarter profit grew by 47% over last year's results. Same-store sales for November were up 7%, and black Friday weekend sales rose 10% on last year. Quarterly earnings were $62.6 million. [WSJ]
• Competitor Abercrombie & Fitch reported a 17% slide in same-store sales for the month of November. Analysts had expected only a 9% drop. The company's Hollister stores saw same-store sales declines of 23%. [TS]

• Stephanie Seymour's divorce from Peter Brant is getting even uglier. After police were called to the couple's home following Seymour's complaint that Brant's security assaulted her, Brant has accused the model of drug use and is seeking sole child custody:

• Brant alleged in court filings that Seymour sought treatment for Vicodin abuse, and subsequently became addicted to the drug Subutex, which is used to treat opiate addiction. He says Seymour has missed multiple court-required breathalyzer tests, and has twice submitted urine samples that, though clean of Subutex, were too cold to meet the minimum valid temperature. The media mogul also says Seymour "broke in" to the couple's Florida mansion and removed $700,000 worth of items, all while the kids sat in a hotel in Connecticut. [NYP]
• When fashion goes Galt, you know we're in trouble. [TDB]
• Nanette Lepore, Michael Kors, Zac Posen, Anna Sui, Betsey Johnson, and that guy who was just endorsed by Barack Obama, whatsisname, Bill Thompson, will be on Seventh Avenue on Wednesday for a rally to save the New York Garment District. Twenty-five thousand people work in the district, and designers say they need their convenient access to sample houses and manufacturers it provides, but lax enforcement of existing zoning laws and competition from cheaper labor sources overseas have led the zone to dwindle. [NYDN]
• Not to be outdone, Mayor Bloomberg — whom some designers have criticized for failing to do enough to protect the garment district — is launching a fashion incubator program for 12 up-and-coming designers this fall. [NYP]
• Woody Allen is reportedly considering casting Adriana Lima in his new movie, which is set in Rio de Janeiro. Because he's "fascinated" by her beauty. [NYP]
• "My fashion advice is to have a flattering mirror at home and then forget about it," says Vivienne Westwood. The designer lives in Captain Cook's old house, and has never sold out to a larger company or a private investor, despite some offers. And some polite nos: reports Cathy Horyn, one backer in the 90s picked another designer instead. "They could have made money with me. They lost it. I'm a woman," says Westwood. "I'm like household management or whatever it is. I would never spend more than I have." [NYTimes]
• Tim Gunn has a cameo in the Sex And The City sequel. [E!]
• JMS, a brand owned by Hanes, is adding a dedicated plus-size apparel line to its existing plus-size offerings, which were mainly jeans and underwear. It'll be sold at Wal-Mart and the creative director promises "slimming seams, strategically placed pockets, freedom of movement and appropriate-weight materials." [WWD]
• Christian Louboutin, the designer who slimmed down Barbie's ankles when he had the chance to release a line of dolls under his own name, says he never meant to imply her ankles were big before. "Fat ankles she didn't have, she just could have had thinner ankles," explained Louboutin. Still digging, then. [WWD]
• Manolo Blahnik: "I hate celebrities. All those pointless girls — I won't name names, but you know who I mean. They are 'famous'. Ridiculous. I like women with style: actresses like Uma Thurman, icons like Audrey Hepburn. I like women with style to wear my shoes." [Vogue UK]
• Model Selita Ebanks joins Sinbad, Darryl Strawberry, and Cyndi Lauper in the next season of Celebrity Apprentice. [NYDN]
• Pat Field made a tote bag for Diet Coke to give away with purchase, which will be available later this month from Boots stores. [Daily Express]
• Erin Wasson, presumably to avoid her dreaded homelessness, makes an appearance in the fall J. Crew catalog. She eats a necklace in one shot. [Refinery29]
• Something called the Japan Jeans Association given the country's first lady, Miyuki Hatoyama, its Best Jeanist Award. (She shares it with a pop star and an actor.) Pleased, the 66-year-old Hatoyama said, "This is the prize I have long wished to win. I'm a jeans lover. I'm always putting on jeans as they're easy to wear." She also recalled that she and her husband were each wearing jeans when they met. [AFP]
• Gee, we're so glad reporter Giles Hattersley puts that nice boss, successful businesswoman, and maker of lovely shoes Tamara Mellon in her place in this hard-hitting profile. Apparently she smokes, wears "teensy" dresses, and altogether reminds Hattersley of "the heroine of some dicey Danielle Steel bonkathon." Can't have that. [ToL]
• Love Moschino, the Italian company's lower-priced clothing line, is adding accessories to its collection. [WWD]
• Georgia May Jagger, already having nabbed the Hudson Jeans campaign, is now the face of Rimmel cosmetics. [Telegraph]
• Yasmin le Bon's daily life: "If lunch is at home then I tend to eat up leftovers from the fridge. I'm the leftover queen. I can't help it. I might mix them into an omelette or throw them all into a soup. One of the children won't eat soups any more because she's worried what old food I've put in it. Simon's mother, Ann Marie, often comes round with homemade bread and cakes." [ToL]
• Alvin Ailey company dancers will wear Mark & James, Badgley Mischka's just-announced lower-priced line, to their season opening gala on December 2. [WWD]
• Henry Holland kinda maybe sorta wants to move to New York. "Every time I come, the need to live here becomes more and more urgent and I want to go home less and less. I spend my entire time here plotting about how I would do it." But even if he did cross the Atlantic, he says he would still show his line in London. [Grazia]
• The luxury market, once in free-fall, is still declining, just not as steeply as some analysts earlier expected. Instead of the overall 10% drop in luxury sales that had originally been forecast for 2009, analysts say the industry is on track for an 8% decline in sales. [WSJ]

Peter Lindbergh shot an entire editorial without recourse to that particular computer program, except for minor color-correction. Kristen McMenamy, Tatjana Patitz, Nadja Auermann, Claudia Schiffer, et. al., also posed without any hair products or makeup.

And they predictably look fantastic. Does this spread in any way address the constant barrage of unrealistically altered images of women in the fashion media? Only obliquely, at best. And the skincare peg — all the models are shilling their supposed favorite spas and products — is a little annoying. I worry sometimes that these non-Photoshopped editorials are becoming more of a stunt than a corrective; French Elle had one, also shot by Lindbergh, and even Life & Style ran a Photoshop-free cover, of Kim Kardashian. How awesome would it be for a fashion magazine to state, as a matter of editorial policy, that excessive and unrealistic retouching will never find a home in its pages? That adjusting the white balance in post-production is fine, but that rhinoplasty-by-liquify-tool and 80 gazillion layers of changes are not? That would be a magazine worth buying.

Which is not to say that it isn't still wonderful to see images of real women at a variety of ages, images that haven't been "fixed" beyond recognition, even if these spreads are annoyingly presented as the fashion equivalent of Very Special Episodes. Shalom Harlow, pictured here, has always been one of my favorite models, and shots like this prove she of all people doesn't need post-production smoothing and sculpting to look bewitchingly beautiful.

Karl Lagerfeld shot this editorial, notionally inspired by Peggy Guggenheim, in Venice with Lara Stone and his latest boytoy, Baptiste Giabiconi. (Baptiste gets to wear boy clothes in this one, amazingly: Lagerfeld has a habit of styling his favorite hot young thing in women's wear and heels.)

Lara often looks kind of severe and disapproving — Cathy Horyn once compared her to Lurch — but the Gugg-inspired blonde clown hair in this spread sure isn't helping her.

These sunglasses, which if you look closely you can see are the shape of a bat spreading its wings, belonged to La Dogaressa (real, and awesome, nickname) herself.

It wouldn't be fall without some kind of a generalist "New Shapes" spread. This one, shot by Camilla Akrans, stars Kendra Spears and Katie Fogarty, who are aged 20 and 17, respectively, and accompanies text by Suzy Menkes. Representative quote: "THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: It could be time to go green. Rethink jade."

Of course, Madonna's bunny ears get a shot.

It also wouldn't be fall without a long, studio-shot editorial of a model — Karmen Pedaru — jumping dazedly.

There is, however, a beautifully shot Glen Luchford editorial, starring the spooky Eniko Mihalik.

And Siri Tollerod turns up with Richard Burbridge to do one of those perennial accessories editorials where the fashion magazines try and convince their readers that even when it's fall and the mind turns to tweed, we will still somehow feel like wearing acid brights and neon and "pops of color."

Oh, look: Our old friend Jean-Paul "I have jungle fever" Goude. Styling Naomi Campbell in leopard print, racing a cheetah across the serengeti, really is daring and original.

Naomi rides an elephant. Like a real African Queen.

She jumps rope. With monkeys. Monkeys.

We all know that black models have been lamentably absent from mainstream fashion magazines and runways. But all that shoots like these do is draw offensive similarities between black women and wild animals, and reiterate, in pictures, the old colonialist assumption that black people are savage and uncivilizable. Naomi Campbell isn't from Tanzania, she's from Streatham; at what point does having a British woman wander around the African wilderness, performing truly awful received ideas of how African women behave, for a publication with a majority white audience, verge on minstrelsy? Having no black models represented in magazines is a problem. But is this kind of representation actually worse than being totally ignored?

Then, Naomi perched on the back of a crocodile — this shoot was obviously not Photoshop-free — while wearing a Dior haute couture crocodile jacket and pants.

Interestingly, the Jean-Paul Goude shoot is followed in the magazine by a 14-page Peter Lindbergh editorial starring Chanel Iman and Arlenis Sosa. The theme? The Harlem Renaissance. This shot of Chanel was taken just outside the iconic Lenox Lounge, on Lenox just south of 125th Street.

Chanel and Arlenis, who are photographed carrying trumpet cases and singing into old-fashioned microphones, make pretty great foxy jazz musician dames. And while the Harlem Renaissance is kind of a cliché — and the period doesn't really have much discernible connection with life in the Harlem of today — it's nice to see a period with a black cast mined for interest in a fashion magazine, rather than just another all-white editorial about the Summer of Love or Studio 54.

Besides, the setting is the perfect way to set off the 1940s looks so many designers have turned out for this coming fall.

Can anyone identify this block? I want to say it's one of those gorgeous brownstone streets south of Marcus Garvey Park, but it also could be Strivers' Row. Either way, it's gorgeous.

The commitment to period realism does falter slightly in places: Sylvia's restaurant was founded in 1962.

And if you look really closely in the magazine, you can see the Fairway supermarket, just under the elevated rail line. In all, though, it's a beautiful shoot.

I don't think I even want to investigate the subtext of Harper's Bazaar using a milk-pale blonde British model as a stand-in for a black American pop megastar; let's just reiterate that this spread, which was obviously thrown together at the last minute, unfolds like an uninspired afterthought. And also the clothes suck.

Jessica Stam and Benjamin Alexander Huseby pop in for an editorial all about gardening, and fall tweeds of the sort that Little Edie would have loved.

Nobody does sublime eccentricity like Stam.

And Magdalena Frackowiak has an editorial all about shopping, photographed by Terry Richardson. Seeing her play a ditzy society lady with more credit than sense would be funny, if the photos weren't desperately captioned things like "SHOP: SAVE JOBS!"

In an accompanying article, by Derek Blasberg, about the macroeconomic imperative of increasing consumer spending, Margherita Missoni says: "It was cool to talk about the recession — which I found extremely annoying. But it seems not that people are no longer embarrassed to have good things." Thank god that recession thing is so over! God, that was such a drag!

I will leave you with images from Harper's Bazaar's Sesame Street-themed shoot, which features models Sessilee Lopez and Tao Okamoto. It's Sesame Street's 40th anniversary this year, so the magazine sent designers down to where the air is sweet.

This shot of Oscar de la Renta with Oscar the Grouch might actually top Harper's Bazaar's awesome The Simpsons fashion spread. Maybe.

Tea, whose last contribution to The Believer was an excellent 2006 essay that offered a queer theory reading of the Annual Taxidermy Convention, Competition, And Trade Show, here offers up a light Paris diary. But in between the Karl Lagerfeld and the Kanye West and the Kate Moss (who actually, during one climactic moment, walks up to Tea and pushes her), there are some real insights.

For one, sexuality issues in fashion are given a hearing, not least because Tea, a lesbian, is accompanying fellow lesbians Ditto, and Tara Perkins — the "Annie Oakley" behind the Sex Workers' Art Show Tour — who manages the Gossip. The fact that the three women are described as having each grown up very poor also motivates Tea to write some eloquent statements about fashion's foundational exclusivity, and about what it means to be on one side of the velvet rope. After being waved past a group of "queer boys with great style and no connections" outside the Nina Ricci show, Ditto remarks, "I've got survivor's guilt. I've got punk guilt."

We all know there's plenty to hate about the insanity of the consumer-driven, needs-manufacturing, world of fashion. But Tea also offers a cogent apologia for liking overpriced clothes:

"For a long time I hated beauty for the way people used it as a measuring stick to beat people, especially women. But I came to believe in a vast idea of beauty, one that included me and all my beautiful weirdo friends As for more conventional beauty, I didn't have to hate it just because people let it make them stupid. My attitude moved from the conceptual to the concrete: Take a beautiful dress. Say it's a Rodarte dress, made by these sort of creepy, gothic sisters who live with their parents in Pasadena. Their dresses look like a storybook princess messed them up while wearing them on a jaunt through the space-time continuum. They are torn tulle and stiff corset and lots of lace and flowers and fluffy bullshit stuck all over the place. Parts make you wonder if these sisters, the Mulleavy sisters — see, even their names make you think of the dark family landscape of a Joyce Carol Oates novel — are employing some sort of spider-beast to do their weaving. The dresses cost upwards of ten thousand dollars at Barneys. At one time in my psychological development, this would have made me hate the dresses, hate the designers, hate those poseur Mulleavy sisters, hate anyone and everyone who could afford them, hate capitalism, hate the world, hate the universe and whatever string of incomprehensible events led to the big bang. Now I think — when I go into Barneys to visit these dresses (the way I have gone to the SPCA to visit with various animals I can't adopt), to just pet their glorious fabrics and marvel at the endless detailing and giggle at the whimsical appliqués — I think: It isn't the dress's fault that it's so expensive. I love it like a living thing, and visit it at this department store. I don't love a painting on a museum wall any less for not being able to own it."

Beth Ditto comes across extremely well in the story. She seems kind, and down-to-earth; she can't sleep alone, and sometimes even then she has to make up jokes to combat insomnia. ("What do D&D-playing goth couples fight about the most? The thermoLeStat! Get it?") She spends hours doing different hair and makeup looks for the women in her life — she says if she weren't in a rock band, she'd be in beauty school. She goes to breakfast at her fancy Paris hotel in her pajamas. And Ditto is light years away from the typical raised-in-privilege star: Tea describes how she grew up "in a part of Arkansas with no MTV, no telephones, no indoor plumbing, and no money."

Yet everyone is on the star swag gravy train; Ditto and Perkins went "shopping" in London prior to fashion week, retrieving articles of clothing from designers' showrooms for nada. Even the girlfriend of a Gossip member grabs a free fur from Fendi. As Ditto puts it, "If people think you're rich they give you things. If they think you're poor, they don't give you anything." The true import of this paradox — the idea that fashion relies on a vast underclass whose belief in the value of products they could never afford actually inflates those very products' prices high enough that the profits they make for the label can be invested in giving away shit to those who actually could afford to buy at the inflated value — is regrettably never fully explored. If fashion is, even in part, a giant system for the regressive redistribution of wealth, then surely Tea could have drilled down on these issues with a source as articulate and informed as Ditto.

Many of Tea's criticisms of the fashion industry, seen through the particular seven-day-circus of fashion week, are similarly implicit. When discussing Ditto's magazine appearances, Tea notes that "magazines are always wanting to dress Beth burlesque, in feathers and corsets and other looks that died out around the turn of the present century, or else they want her to be naked. Beth's onstage stripping has more in common with Iggy Pop's frolicking in broken glass than a burlesque act." The fact that the nudity and burlesque concepts ends up reinforcing one of the tritest and most tired stereotypes about larger women — that they must be lusciously sexually available — must be an annoyance to Ditto, who puts down stereotypes like it's her job, but her reaction is not stated in Tea's piece, beyond the implication that Ditto finds burlesque shoots boring. And although Tea attributes this failure of magazines' imagination in part to "stylists unused to dressing fat girls," she fails to note the number one structural constraint of the industry that influences how Ditto might be styled: magazines shoot fashion samples. Fashion samples are made in tiny sizes. Any celebrity who can't fit into the ridiculously sized clothes is likely to be asked to pose naked. The industry that Ditto loves, and which claims extravagantly to love Ditto back (an LED screen at a party reads "FENDI <3 BETH"), cannot bring itself to make clothing she can wear, except by special arrangement.

Tea evidently likes Ditto; indeed, from the way she comes across in this essay — feminist, self-possessed, genuine — it would be impossible not to like her. But it seems like Tea's affection for her source kept her from asking, at crucial junctures, some hard questions. This shyness, this willingness to go right up to the edge of any of the contradictions that strikes through the heart of the fashion industry, but no further, is the only thing that keeps this piece from being truly excellent. All the sleepovers and makeovers and fashion parties make one yearn for something just a little bit deeper. To a certain extent, this problem of perspective ends up mirroring the frothiness of fashion itself. As Cathy Horyn once wrote, although there are many lively and informative angles from which to interrogate the fashion industry, from inside that world, perspective can be limited: "Fashion ain't deep. It looks into a mirror and sees...itself."

But although Tea's essay is at times perhaps a little too inclined to take the industry at face value, she understands and articulates a lot that most professional fashion writers never seem to get across. Perhaps it takes a genuine grown-up high school misfit to notice that most, if not all, fashion people are not the "cool" kids aged 10 years: "Though many would think of the term fashion people and conjure rail-thin, snotty, sickeningly wealthy women and their male counterparts, in reality, a lot of fashion people are ex-nerds, small-town gays who dressed eccentrically and got made fun of for being flamboyant and fruity." It really is a world populated by people who were always made to feel different. (Of course, having been at one time intimately acquainted with one's own disempowerment isn't necessarily a prophylactic against replicating that power structure later, in a new context, with oneself in a more secure place, and perhaps that is where the industry's "snottiness" comes from.)

At the end of the week, after Tea and Perkins sneak goodie bags and bump into Nan Goldin, and after Ditto talks with Vivienne Westwood about Leonard Peltier, the Gossip plays a Fendi after-party at the VIP Club wearing a specially-made sequin-and-fur ensemble she can take off, piece by piece — "a wonderful Russian nesting doll of an outfit," as Tea puts it. Ditto takes the stage, and announces, "I'm very, very rich!" before throwing her fur headpiece into the audience, and the band starts to play. The writer reflects:

"Even though I have been here all week, knowing that every moment was leading to this, watching Beth accosted by photographers and flattered by designers, I still cannot get over how this little band that I have known for so long, this indie queer feminist punk band, is the absolute star of the Fendi show. The reality is staggering. In many ways it shouldn't be a surprise — less-talented, less-interesting, less-charismatic artists get famous all the time. They just tend not to be so outspokenly queer, so flamboyantly fat, so poor in their roots, so disconnected from the music industry, with no secret dad producer or mom publicist. The Gossip got to this lit-up stage in Paris through the force of their own dogged dedication to their DIY garage-rock band. It makes my eyes fill with fucking tears."

If fashion — or music, for that matter — needed defending, that call-to-arms is plenty good enough for me.

All cell phone photos by Michelle Tea, courtesy of the Believer

Full disclosure: In 2006, I was a summer intern for The Believer and McSweeney's. I did a lot of fact-checking and tried to interest them in an essay about hoboes.

The Gossip Takes Paris [The Believer]
Charming Deformities [The Believer]
Conspicuous By Their Presence [NYTimes]

• Barneys' Simon Doonan: "Criticizing Ed Hardy for being cheesy is like saying that Elvis was 'flashy' or that Liberace was 'tacky.' It's a giant case of DUH! Of course it's cheesy! That's the whole point, you doo-doo heads." [NY Observer]

• "Ed Hardy is fromage-y and hedonistic and naughty and badass and-the ultimate crime in the world of haute fashion — Ed Hardy is FUN!" Doonan, in his entertaining op-ed dissection of the concept of "good taste," paused to riff on Christian Audigier's design efforts. "The unrestrained, bedazzled, heavy-metal-goes-Bollywood aesthetic rivals the gaudy heyday of Gianni Versace. Instead of knocking it, the style arbiters of the world should be grateful. Monsieur Audigier has done a real mitzvah to the insecure fashion cognoscenti: He has given them something about which to feel superior. If Ed Hardy did not exist, they would have to invent it in order to get their snooty fix." Also, "popped his sabots" is the best euphemism for dying, ever. [NYObs]
• Cynthia Rowley is starting a kids' line. [Stylelist]
• Comme des Garçons' Osaka store is inaugurating a floor that will serve as an art gallery with a show by Yayoi Kusama. [WWD]
• Kate Moss's fourth women's fragrance, Vintage, launches this September, and the ads are coming out now. [NowSmellThis]
• Apparently, when a woman cuts her hair after a breakup, that's called a "breakover." Who knew? [Glamour]
• All those who remember fondly the extraordinary 26-page Daphne Guinness spread from Vogue Italia's September, 2008, issue, rejoice: the couture-loving heiress and photographer Steven Klein have teamed up again, and have another 20+ page editorial coming in Vogue Italia's September issue. Guinness says this one will be "moodier" and is inspired by a cult French film from the 60s, though she won't name which one. [Style.com]
• "Everybody thought they had to spend money. They thought it was a new way of life. Now they're rubbing the dust out of their eyes. ‘I don't need that handbag. What was I doing?' " said a brave, but anonymous, Condé Nast editor to Cathy Horyn. [NYTimes]
• Christina Binkley of the Wall Street Journal reports on a well-known industry secret: that the same firms who supply raw materials, and in some cases manufacture, for high-end brands also sell the same items to more down-market brands. Binkley compares a $1,750 cardigan sweater made in Italy by the Quarano, Piedmont, wool company Loro Piano, and a $145 J. Crew cardigan "spun from supersoft, luxurious Italian cashmere from a world-famous mill in the foothills of Piedmont." Lesson: some less-expensive brands still take immense care in their sourcing. [WSJ]
• Which may just be why CFDA executive director Steven Kolb became a J. Crew fan on Facebook. [FWD]
• A gaggle of minor celebrities — some dude who was in a Britney Spears video, the guy from North Dakota who plays Emmett Cullen in Twilight, etc — availed themselves of a pre-season event at French Connection in Los Angeles. Instead of merely being given bags of free clothes to wear when waiting for the paparazzi, the store embarrassed them by making them all play French Connection-themed Twister, whatever that is. [WWD]
• Dania Ramirez, a.k.a. Maya on Heroes, is a newly minted Covergirl. [People]
• Footwear brand Penny Loves Kenny has filed for bankruptcy protection. The company founder, Kenny Robinson, explained the filing as a tactical move in a 6-year legal battle with two China-based agents, and said he expects the brand to emerge intact in 3-6 months. [WWD]
• Philip Lim stepped into his SoHo boutique last weekend and helped some customers find the right sizes and pick out flattering items — all without telling them who he was. Then some fashion-savvy shoppers blew his cover. If more designers did thoughtful things like that, they'd certainly sell more clothes. [Fashionista]
• Burberry's second store in Canada, and its first in Toronto, opens this Friday. [WWD]
• Benetton's profits fell 63% in the first half of this year. [WWD]
• Barneys New York is putting a brave face on its 13 months — and counting — without a C.E.O., its double-digit sales declines, and its recent credit rating downgrade, to Caa3, for "very high investment risk." The company recently received $25 million from parent company Istithmar World Capital to shore up liquidity, and this week it hired an asset management company to help it restructure its $500 million debt. [WWD]

And he didn't quite make it.

Lagerfeld's most consistent gesture was a play on proportions. Far too many of the offerings had short hems coupled with long, trailing back panels — an extreme take on the fishtail hem that manages to combine the body anxieties of the mini with the wearability problems of the train.

I feel like Michael Kors telling Daniel Vosovic "I just wanted to rip that little tab right off!" Sensibly, this back panel appears to be attached with buttons. (Although who wants to sit with two rows of buttons down her back beats me.)

Karl Lagerfeld told Times critic Cathy Horyn that he felt long dresses were insufficiently younthful.

The collection was mostly done in dark colors, with red as an accent throughout, and splashes of hot pink.

Where the designer relaxed his idée fixe into a gentler, fishtail hem shape, the results were more successful.

This chiffon dress, like the one before it, for example, look beautiful and modern.

Although that wasn't the case for this fishtail offering. A fur-edged sequined yoke? Really?

Another solid move was to play with the hem length by setting it askew — this spiral-cut black and red dress is absolutely stunning.

Yet this dress works with the exact same shape, and the level of embellishment overwhelms.

At times, the collection had an overt arts & crafts feel. That cape looks like an afghan throw someone's Grandma would crochet — although I think mine would pick better colors.

Several of the dresses in this tranche had a very grainy, 1970s feel.

One looked new in all the wrong, spangled ways.

And one? Looked like it was made out of the Lorax.

Even the suits, Chanel's signature item and ordinarily something Lagerfeld brings a lot to, were very hit...

...and miss.

And miss again! Red bouclé, leopard print, and black lace tights are far too many colors and textures to mash together.

There was one lovely, diaphanous beige chiffon dress with an asymmetric hem that didn't feel as aggressive as some of the others.

Of course, the downside of beige chiffon is that you can look naked.

The show was held at the imposing Grand Palais. In case you can't tell, those are giant, white Chanel No. 5 bottles on the set.

I totally want the black cut-out dress the woman on the right is wearing. Also, who knew Danielle Steele, center, attended the couture shows?

Perhaps she was after a little sparkler like this one? (Which, on a dark street corner, could easily be mistaken for Balmain.) Still, it's very nice to see a collection presented with sensible, beautiful footwear, instead of 7" platform shoes.

Incidentally, when Lagerfeld did give in and go long, even with a range of transparencies as here, the results were often quite lovely.

This one, too, is gorgeous.

And so is this one, although it may be the kind of thing that, if worn by Chanel's celeb clientele, would set tabloids a-muttering about a baby bump.

And this long one sort of looks like shiny, busy widow's weeds.

For the finale, Lara Stone emerged in a fishtail wedding dress, arm-in-arm with Baptiste Giabiconi. (Brad Koenig is probably crying into a silk shirt somewhere.)

• 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]

• Britney Spears' second trip out the gate for Candie's is an equestrian-themed acid-trip Photoshopped to ridiculousness. [DListed]
• No Shit Headline Of The Day: "New Report Sees Luxury Struggling." [WWD]

• Megan Fox said at the Armani Privé couture show that she is going to star in a fashion campaign for "a worldwide brand." [WWD]
• Lipstick sales may not actually spike during a recession, but that doesn't mean you can't make money off the colorful tubes. If you want to have a go at naming designer Chris Benz's shade of Lancôme lipstick, which will be worn by models at his September show as well as sold to the public, you could win a $500 gift certificate and a whole bunch of the lipsticks. And even if you aren't into lipsticks, you can re-sell these limited-edition rouges on eBay. One of Proenza Schouler's Lancôme lipsticks went for $120. Write your suggestions on Benz's Facebook fan page and wait for the money to roll in. [Fashionista]
• Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs wore a giant, caped caftan printed with lobsters and multi-colored eyeballs to Glastonbury. She topped it off with a Native-American-inspired headdress made of fringed hands of Fatima. [British Vogue]
• Meanwhile Roberto Cavalli, the animal-print-enamored designer who says "I don't know anything about the financial crisis," is opening a made-to-measure service. While it won't technically be a couture collection, it will hit a couture price point: The cheapest item is a $41,000 cocktail dress. [WWD]
• Louise Wilson, head of the fashion design M.A. program at Central St. Martins in London, shared some harsh words for her students and her industry in an interview with Cathy Horyn. "There are immensely talented people around but I feel huge vortexes of them are sucked into this mediocre world where nobody criticizes and it's all terribly politically correct. Even journalists are the same. You now hardly get a bad a review. In their mind the journalists are supporting the industry, so they don't want to dish it. For me it's that banality of what is youth....[A]nother thing I've noticed today — everything is farmed out. Someone else is going to cut it, and someone else is going to supply the fabrics. The hands-on gets more and more removed. If Lee McQueen or Christopher Kane had nothing, they could still make their garments. They have the skills. I think the problem is that fashion has become too fashionable. For years, fashion wasn't fashionable. Today fashion is so fashionable that it's almost embarrassing to say you're part of fashion. All the parodies of it. All the dreadful magazines. That has destroyed it as well, because everybody thinks fashion is attainable." [OnTheRunway]
• For her part, Miley Cyrus says of her upcoming collection for Wal-Mart, designed with Max Azria, "The jeans are my favorite part of the entire line. Because, like, literally this is going to be good for, like, Middle America, and it will be great for kids that really want to be in fashion but that don't have it available." [Sassybella]
• Cheaper designer clothes are our manifest economic destiny! Retailers are requesting collections be produced to hit a much wider range of price points — and designers are mostly happy to comply. [WWD]
• After winning the Council of Fashion Designers of America womenswear award last month for their label Rodarte, the Mulleavy sisters vacationed at Yellowstone National Park, where they saw herds of bison. They would like to go to Redwood National Park next. [W]
• Unsurprisingly, the Dior atelier was a hive of activity prior to yesterday's couture show, the first the company has done in-house in some time. The seamstresses and tailors worked through the night, and the towering floral displays took 4,000 roses to construct. The audience of 500 was actually smaller than the crowds were at some of Christian Dior's own shows at the salon in the 1950s, because fire codes now prevent, for example, letting guests sit on the stairs. [WWD]
• New York Times critic Cathy Horyn's review just went up on her blog. She liked Galliano's collection, although she did admit to needing to "mentally erase the distraction" of certain of the lingerie-inspired elements. "Despite the archive references, the collection didn't feel archival. Every delicate, restrained tuck of the jackets made the difference, as did the emphasis on short dresses and modest splashes of embroidery. There were a few big skirts at the end, including one with a tiny beige silk corset and layers of white tulle, but longer lengths now seem as annoying as Rapunzel's hair. Oh, just chop it off." [OnTheRunway]
• Horyn also put up pictures of model Magdalena Frackowiak reading Proust while her hair was crimped to perfection. [OnTheRunway]
• A judge has upheld designer Anand Jon Alexander's convictions for rape and sexual assault of young women models despite juror misconduct. During the trial, one juror passed a note to Sanjana Alexander, the designer's sister, and she subsequently called him, twice, to discuss the case. Sanjana Alexander alleged the juror asked for money or sex as a bribe to influence the verdict, but this was not evident from her secret recording of one conversation. The judge held that both Sanjana Alexander and the juror, Alvin Dymally, committed misconduct, and found them both to be in contempt of court, but did not agree that the "trifling" misconduct cast doubt upon the jury's verdicts. Anand Jon Alexander, who was automatically sentenced to life in prison, has vowed to appeal. [LATimes]
• On the President's trip to Russia to talk about nuclear weapons, Michelle Obama wore Narciso Rodriguez and the same Sonia Rykiel plastic belt she wore on the cover of O. Malia and Sasha Obama wore J. Crew's kid's line, Crewcuts. [E]
• When they left U.S. soil, Michelle Obama was wearing the Talbots dress from her Essence cover, Sasha was wearing more Crewcuts — and Malia appears to be wearing a See by Chloé skirt. Designer birthday present? [ABC]

This is a "Parrot" jacket, by East West Musical Instruments, the misleadingly-named San Francisco-based specialty leather goods company that operated in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Notice how the patchwork leather on the shoulders and collar almost looks like two parrots in profile, their heads bent around the wearer's neck.

East West Musical Instruments specialized in intricately pieced jackets, and sold to the likes of Janis Joplin, Iggy Pop, and John Bonham; New York's hipster mayor, John Lindsay, even had one. These days, an East West jacket can sell for $1,000-$5,000 on eBay or at auction.

Which brings us to this jacket, presented this Monday in New York as part of Balenciaga's 2010 Resort collection.

Other bloggers have already taken note of this jacket's strong resemblance to the East West offering above.

It's not the first time Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquière has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar of 70s American rock 'n' roll style. In Ghesquière's Spring, 2002, ready-to-wear collection, then Hintmag intern (and current anti-comfort activist) Sameer Reddy noticed striking similarities between Ghesquière's patchwork collection and the work of San Francisco designer Kaisik Wong, because he just happened to be looking through a book of Wong's work at the right moment. Similarities down to the placement of tassels and the shape of the patches.




Balenciaga Spring 2002



Kaisik Wong

Ghesquière admitted his pilfering to Cathy Horyn at the New York Times, telling her "I did it — yes." Unabashed, the designer even said, "I'm very flattered that people are looking at my sources of inspiration."

In this case, Ghesquière is not the only person looking to East West Musical Instruments for "inspiration." Urban Outfitters' Pins & Needles brand, which states clearly on its website that it "takes inspiration from a broad range of exquisite vintage and costume pieces, dating from early 19th to mid 20th century," copied the "Parrot" jacket earlier this year. (Its $298 version is now sold out.)



But Balenciaga, a high-fashion brand currently owned by the multinational PPR, and which acts swiftly when its own copyrights are infringed (for example with the much-copied Balenciaga "Motorcycle" bag), makes no such admission. Balenciaga posits itself as far more than mere knock-offs of vintage items; it's a fashion house that makes some claim to the originality of its designs — "inspiration" aside, when a designer of Ghesquière's talents is involved, you expect him to do his own work.

Or do you? Some would argue that, in our post-modern, post-Warhol, post-Grey Album age, that copying is no big deal. (This is not the view Balenciaga takes as regards its purses, but it is what some people say. Harold Koda, the curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said Ghesquière's copy of Wong's work was an example of the Belgian "just rummaging through extant material culture and juxtaposing it with other things to create something different.") Some even argue that knock-offs force source designers to design more, and design better. And the fact that the East West Musical Instruments is extinct could, to some, seem like an excuse for the copy — and the Balenciaga jacket, with its only slightly adapted collar, is certainly a copy. If a book is out of print and unable to be obtained, in a way it seems only fair for someone else to republish it. But that person really ought, in good conscience, to leave the original author's name on the manuscript.

American fashion designers are currently pushing, via the Design Piracy Act, for the inclusion of their intellectual property under the umbrella of copyright law. They argue that their original ideas are currently too easy fodder for knock-off artists like Forever 21 (who had a very near miss, via hung jury, on a copyright case brought by Trovata earlier this year) and the many, many other brands who take prints, patterns, and other design features directly from the runway without acknowledgment or apology. A high-end designer getting caught stealing from someone else's archives — again — can't but hurt that case.

Balenciaga's Nicholas Ghesquire Copies Again [Addicted to YSL]
East West Musical Instruments Parrot Jacket XS [Goodbyeheart]
Is Copying Really a Part of the Creative Process? [NYTimes]

• It seems Calvin Klein put up a billboard in SoHo which some find a little too sexy. We sure hope this kerfuffle ("It's borderline pornographic!") and all the media coverage of it doesn't hurt the company's denim sales! [NYDN]

• "Nothing will be the same again, it would be illusory to think it will be the same again," now that we're in a recession, said Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive of LVMH. "In the most developed countries, customers will want exceptional brands. In developing countries, customers will increasingly adopt consumption models of developed countries." Funny, that actually sounds familiar! [WWD]
• Watch out for more from model/heiress Lydia Hearst: She was in one independent film, The Last International Playboy, which is a title that every time I read it makes me briefly confused about whether the movie is an adaptation of The Playboy of the Western World, but in any case, for Lydia, the fame train has not yet reached the end of its line. "This is hopefully just the beginning," Hearst said at the premiere. "I'm a model, but you can expect a lot more from me soon." [WWD]
• Phoebe Philo's resort collection for Celine, her first, was given a rave review by Cathy Horyn at the New York Times. "The central thing to know about her Celine clothes, which are terrific for a number of reasons, is that they reflect an every-day style. By that I mean they are clothes you want to wear every day, whether you work in an office or a gallery, part-time or at home. They answer the questions many women have about wanting to look good at work — appropriate — while still looking relaxed and casual. I'm not sure what Celine really means to American women, and I don't really care, but I thought it interesting that Ms. Philo focused on sportswear — not dresses, not ball gowns, not girlish, what-do-I-do-with-this-now separates. She makes one of the strongest sportswear statements we've seen in some time...It looked right for now, a reprieve from the Balmainia of ultra minidresses and chunky little boots." [On The Runway]
• We shudder to think what this collab might look like: Ronnie Wood and Liberty of London. Leather, black eyeliner, and...floral prints? Oh, wait, the apparel and accessories lines will be based around the Stone's "choice quotations" and art. That sounds so much better. [WWD]
• A more successful pairing might be Loomstate and Keds, which reaches Barneys Coop stores and Barneys.com today. Loomstate redesigned five laceless classic Keds with its prints on 100% organic cotton uppers and linings, the insoles are recycled, the eyelets are nickel-free, and the shoe boxes are recycled. Each pair runs $75. [WWD]
• Is this Tom Ford sounding penitent? "That whole obsession with youth, with new, new, new — it's giving us clothes no one can wear. As for the business model that I followed at Gucci — the new this, the It that, the let's get it on a celebrity and shoot her in front of a logo, it was getting old then. Now it's really old." [Times of London]
• Michael Kors and Heidi Klum, already a familiar duo from evening television, are behind this year's Breast Cancer Research Foundation/Saks Fifth Avenue Key to the Cure fundraiser. Kors has designed a t-shirt that will retail at $40 at Saks, and Klum will model the top for print advertisements. Saks will donate $500,000 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and 2% of the shirt sales, up to $250,000, to other local and national breast cancer charities. [WWD]
• O.M.G., everybody: since 1997, Old Navy has sold t-shirts with an American flag on them and the current year at the bargain price of $5, in honor of making money around the 4th of July holiday. But this year, Wal-Mart's private label Faded Glory has a flag t-shirt with the year on it, and it only costs $3! How are we ever going to choose a retailer to affirm our patriotism now? [NYTimes]
• Clever boy that Jason Wu. For his pre-fall collection, the designer created six different pieces for five top stores: Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Jeffrey. Letting everyone get slightly different versions of the same thing keeps the consumer shopping and might go some way to thwarting the race-to-the-bottom effect of discounting. He's doing the same thing for Spring. [WWD]
• Realizing perhaps that in offering 15-year-old Tallulah Belle (Bruce and Demi's daughter) an internship they had in fact violated employment laws, Harper's Bazaar would like to clarify that the youngster is not, in fact, an "intern," but a "guest" of the magazine. Who comes to work every day to shadow the editors. Right. [Daily Express]
• The first pan-African fashion week kicked off in Johannesburg, featuring 50 designers from as far away as Sierra Leone and Nigeria. [Reuters]
• A recent vogue for bobcat fur may be hurting bobcat populations in the Western states. Nevada, New Meico, and Wyoming all have long trapping seasons for the cats, and no limits on how many may be killed. Their popularity with designers has caused prices to surge to around $500 a pelt. [AP]
• Selma Weiser, the 84-year-old founder of legendary Manhattan boutique Charivari, died of heart failure on Friday in her home on the Upper West Side. In the 60s, 70s and 80s, Weiser was among the very first to bring designers such as Claude Montana, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Giorgio Armani, and Thierry Mugler to an American audience. She also gave Marc Jacobs a job as a shop assistant when he was 15. [WWD]
• Someone named Scott Amron — apparently an electrical engineer/designer/inventor, and someone unaware of LVMH's aggressive policing of its intellectual property — had the bright idea to sell "Luis Vuitton" [sic] band-aids made of perforated leather. We sense the descent of lawyers in 3, 2, 1... [AmronExptl]
• Natalie Massenet, founder of Net-A-Porter, and Christopher Bailey, creative director of Burberry, were named MBEs at Buckingham Palace this weekend. [WWD]

The recession has already spawned its own language of buzzwords, as if the right combination of meaningful letters whispered in the consumer's ear will suddenly unlock her wallet: there's "investment" fashion, "green" fashion, the "new vintage." (That one sold out, so perhaps Stefano Pilati's on to something.) "Ethical" fashion. We're told there will be "slow" fashion, to match our slow food. There's the fantasy that we'll all start making our own clothes, and the competing theories that we'll have more of our clothes made in America — or that we'll continue having more made overseas.

What this confusion of language speaks to is the underlying truth that this recession will permanently change the apparel industry — and the profound uncertainties that still cloud what those changes will be. How we dress, how we shop, how we are marketed to, where our clothes come from and who makes them are all up for reconsideration. The propagation of inanities like the concept of "investment" dressing is just evidence that even most industry experts are only grasping at straws, like the rest of us.

Cathy Horyn was asked to speak on fashion and the economy last week at an event for Citi's Women & Co., a $125-a-year members-only women's professional organization run by the bank. Horyn's speech, a "trimmed" version of which she later posted to her blog, and then chased with more thoughts yesterday, amounted to a kind of fashion state of the union.

Horyn gets down to business by assessing the state of fashion before this recession began — and noting how it's different than past periods of economic instability. The downturn of the early 2000s, she argues, barely registered in fashion (in 2001, consumer spending actually increased). The late 90s and the early 2000s, taken together, were a period of remarkable consolidation and expansion in the rag trade. As Horyn explains,

This was the era when luxury groups were being formed — when Saint Laurent sold out to Gucci, when Bernard Arnault hired John Galliano and Marc Jacobs to shake up Dior and Vuitton respectively, when Prada made a bid for global power by buying Jil Sander and Helmut Lang, and when PPR eventually took control of Gucci...This shift from a largely craft-based, family-owned culture to a brand management culture mirrored what was happening in the financial markets, in the explosion in the art markets, and the excitement surrounding new architecture, particularly in countries like China and Dubai. Dress codes and divisions of all kinds have been breaking down for years — we scarcely notice when someone mixes high-low elements. But the late 90s and early 2000s saw fashion's ivory tower crumble a little more as designers became ardent marketers — selling the image rather than, in some cases, the clothes. In 2001, Marc Jacobs brought out the Vuitton bag splashed with Stephen Sprouse graffiti. It was followed by the Murakami bag, along with those indelible, digitally enhanced advertising images by the photographers Mert and Marcus. These designs were plainly creative, but the point is these bags were not precious objects. They expressed perfectly the blending of art and commerce, and insolence over elegance — a mood also conveyed in the ironic images of the photographer Juergen Teller, who for more than a decade has created Jacobs' ad campaigns for his own label, including the one of Victoria Beckham as a commoditized celebrity in a shopping bag.

So the recession of 2001 did not throw anyone off the rails.

In many ways, Louis Vuitton is the perfect embodiment of this grading-down of luxury. Until the 80s, Louis Vuitton was just another nice French handbag brand, perhaps known for quality and definitely known for high prices, sure, but not a "fashion" brand with much season-to-season variance, and certainly not a true "luxury" one either. Its coated-canvas monogram wares were widely available and sold in department stores like any other high-end bag; for nearly 20 years, handbags were even made under license for the U.S. market. Then that all changed: Louis Vuitton restricted the sale of its bags to its standalone boutiques, and started aggressively associating its bags with luxury and status through advertising. Naturally, the company raised its prices, which only raised its cachet. But the Speedy 30 that was sold off the shelf at Saks in 1980 is still fundamentally the same bag that runs $700 at Louis Vuitton's own store today. It was a triumph effected with marketing and precious little besides; the bags did not noticeably change or actually become more "luxurious" in their trip up from "good brand" to "luxury brand." But we bought them anyway. Now the deal isn't looking so good.

The stock market crash of 1973 and the long period of stagflation that ensued, as Horyn remarks, is a formal pendant for the current economic situation: a Wall St. crisis that spurred a recession in the "real" economy. But within the apparel industry, too much has changed to allow for any direct analogy between then and now:

In the mid 70[s], fashion was also a relatively small, familial world, with manufacturers forming relationships with stores through expert buyers, and styles evolving slowly. In 1975, a widely popular style was the quilted Chinese jacket, no doubt influenced by the opening of diplomatic relations with China. I am reminded of a conversation I had years ago with the comic Sandra Bernhard, who told me that when she began to do stand-up, she would include as part of her act a reading from Women's Wear Daily's pages. That's how strange and remote the fashion world seemed — those socialite names sounded exotic. By contrast, in the past decade, fashion has become a marketing tool for all kinds of non-fashion products, from stylish cell phones to boutique hotels. And, for better or worse, it has transformed urban neighborhoods, like the Meatpacking District in New York or South Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas.

So what is next? And what are the issues on the table, according to Horyn?

[T]his recession is different. Just about every luxury group and upscale retail chain has reported declines, and no category, with the exception perhaps of watches, is performing very well. Private investment in fashion companies is virtually non-existent, and there is very little acquisition activity. Of course, part of the problem is over-capacity — there's just too much stuff around.

That's not strictly true; certain luxury categories are performing well. Hermès leather goods division — the sector of the company that sells $50,000 crocodile handbags with a three-year waiting list — experienced a 21.7% jump in sales during the first quarter of this year. (It's the expensive but comparatively lower-priced goods, like watches and perfumes, that aren't doing so well for the French brand.) But other luxury companies are deeply troubled. Harry Winston and Tiffany's both just released quarterly results that were marked by steep losses.

Horyn sees the industry facing challenges along two primary axes. For one, there will continue to be steep growth in consumer spending in emerging markets, like Asia and South America — especially at the high end of the retail continuum. While the recession might be stalling luxury spending in Japan, it won't stop growth in China and India. It can't. At the couture shows in Paris this January, the happiest man around was the consultant who helps introduce wealthy Indian women to the designers and advises them on which pieces to buy. (And by "piece," we are talking here of $75,000 dresses.) These consumers will be predominantly under 35, and they will want "real" luxury — not $4,000 Prada it-bags that only hold any allure for a season. There's a reason they're going to the Paris couture collections.

As for the rest of us? Horyn thinks the designers that will be successful over the coming years and after the recession will be those who cast off "history-minded" dressing and think instead of, wait for it, the future.

It involves thinking of the consequences of technology, and relating these changes more imaginatively to how we dress, how we shop — the design of stores, the potential of online magazines and stores. A "sartorial consciousness," to use Quentin Bell's term, is not limited to moral indignation; it also applies to the raw materials, the energy sources, and labor practices used in making a garment. "Green fashion" will become more and more important, and young consumers in particular will expect to see innovation and experimentation in this area — the kind they see in proposals for wind-powered skyscrapers and carbon-free transportation systems. Indeed, I am somewhat surprised that a big luxury group has not had the foresight to create a separate eco-brand of high-quality garments, with a casual yet sophisticated aesthetic. We've seen a number of niche labels, but not one that draws on the brand power and advertising reach of a luxury group.

Perhaps that's exactly what LVMH is thinking in acquiring Edun, and bringing its tremendous marketing resources and distribution network to bear on the organic cotton, sustainably-made fashion line.

Horyn's closing remarks I'll give in full:

a great many people in the fashion world would share the photographer Horst's view that "fashion is a universe full of art and excess where no one thought of the outside world," even though that statement was made about the late 1930s. This may be why many designers do not know how to fully relate the Internet to fashion — imaginatively. I mean only that it took radio roughly 40 years to reach 50 million people, while it took the Internet just 4 years to reach the same number of people.
This is the dynamic that fashion must embrace in the coming years in order to be truly creative and relevant. It's great to talk about "slow fashion" and the value of handcraft in informing our imagination. These qualities will still be important, as Paris is, but imagine the other system of thought that revolts and finally breaks free of the old world.

If that's the future of fashion, I want to be there to see it. Provided it costs less than $700 for a canvas bag.

The Bigger Picture [On The Runway]
Bic Pic: Further Thoughts [On The Runway]

Related:
Green Fashion: Is It More Than Marketing Hype? [Fast Company]
Pilati Unveils YSL "New Vintage" At Barneys [WWD]
Rethinking Outsourcing In The Recession [Forbes]
Apparel Import Slump: U.S. Importing Much Less Clothing Because Of The Recession [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]
Dress For Less And Less [NY Times]
In The Bag: how Hermès Beats The Recession [ABC News]
LVMH Near A Big Stake In Bono Firm [WSJ]

Earlier:
"Investing" In Your Closet Not Recommended By Actual Investment Experts
New York Times Bets Against Anna Wintour, American Vogue

Rumors have been swirling that Margiela the individual — who sold his business to Diesel in 2002 — would step down since at least last October. They intensified when the label showed its fall/winter collection in Paris this March, which critics roundly panned. "Just about everything at the show tonight — the hokey starlight projections on the ceiling, the empty design techniques, the use of beautiful young models instead of older, interesting-looking chicks — said that Mr. Margiela is no longer involved in his label, as editors have speculated for some time," wrote Cathy Horyn, before calling the actual clothes "home-lab stuff." Style.com's Sarah Mower said, "In the absence of any definitive corporate statement, the only test of whether Margiela is still in the house must be down to whether the inimitable dialogue of excellence, intellectual challenge, and wit is still there in his show. Safe, yet very sad to say, this time it was gone." (Margiela has the lucky distinction, I suppose, of being the only designer who can never make a bad collection, at least as long as the top taste influencers are willing to generously assume the off seasons are not his work.)

But in fact there was a definitive corporate statement. The executives at Diesel have flatly denied the rumors, Renzo Rosso saying last year that he "cannot imagine" Margiela leaving, and Giovanni Pungetti assuring us all this spring that "he's still in position." Pungetti confirmed, however, that the designer spends increasingly little time at the company's headquarters. "He's concentrating on more strategic projects. He's still working with us in the key decisions of the company. This is the spirit [Martin] wanted to create; that's his philosophy. He's more consulting with us than designing every product. The team is more Margiela than him."

Margiela's work has always played with issues of identity — he traditionally masks his models' faces for shows, and his only label is a numbered white cotton tag attached with pick stitches to his garments. In the mid-90s, Margiela stopped talking to the press and being photographed. The last known picture of him, above, is from 1997. His label has always been the product of a white-lab-coated design team (which Margiela leads — or led). Margiela has never stepped onto his runway to take a bow at the close of a show; all communication with the house is done in writing, and the communiqués are composed in the third-person-plural and signed "Maison Martin Margiela." Until Diesel bought the company, it wasn't even in the phonebook. Margiela has long concentrated on being the invisible designer: now the question, and the headwater of these persistent rumors is, how can we actually tell when someone who for so long has suppressed all the usual outward signs of being a designer stops designing? It's not like he's going to tweet it.

Edward Buchanan at JC Report contends that Margiela is backing away from his label out of a sense of disenchantment with Diesel's marketing of the brand. Diesel widened Margiela's distribution, leveraged the brand-name into arenas like home furnishings, and sales have climbed by double figure percentages even into the recession. But the Italian conglomerate's advertising-drenched culture is at odds with Margiela's studied, blank, anti-individualist ethos. If the design associate quoted by Buchanan as saying that Margiela has "not been present" since last season, that sounds like as definitive a statement as we might expect. (Assuming, of course, that the designer meant "present at the company" and not just "present at the office.") Fashion will miss Margiela's widely influential designs; he was doing the shoulder pads that turned up on Marc Jacobs' Fall/Winter runway three seasons ago, the human-hair wig coats from the last collection which Margiela is widely believed to have had a hand in have spawned a whole slew of furry imitators this season, and every time I see a pair of True Religion jeans, with their wide-set twin needle stitching and oversized rivets, I think of Margiela's playful deconstruction of those details in his collections going back decades.

Rumor has it that Raf Simons — who is safely, and for all appearances, happily — ensconced in a three-year contract at Jil Sander, and former Swiss Textiles Award-winner Haider Ackermann are among the candidates Diesel is considering as a replacement.

More Secrecy At The House Of Margiela [JC Report]
A Master Class With Lanvin And Dior [NY Times]
Maison Martin Margiela FW 2009 Review [Style.com]
Fashion World Studies Margiela's Looks And His Next Move [NY Times]
More Margiela, Less Martin [WWD]

• In a move that smacks of Chanel-Audrey-Jean-Pierre, Dior announced it's making a 6 1/2 minute online perfume ad with Marion Cotillard and Olivier Dahan, who of course directed Cotillard in La Vie En Rose. [WWD]

• Richard Avedon's retrospective at the International Center of Photography, opening tomorrow, is the largest show of his fashion work yet mounted. Cathy Horyn spoke to curators Carole Squiers and Vince Aletti, plus friends like the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, about the legendary lensman and his manifest influence on contemporary fashion photography. [NY Times]
• Alexa Chung, the British former model who recently moved stateside to present a new show for MTV, endears perhaps most of all by not pretending her job is difficult. "Presenting isn't hard. You're basically reading cards. I mean, how fucking difficult is that?" And then by sharing these words about the television industry: "I think the mistake a lot of TV channels make is that they assume kids are dumb when they're not. Middle-aged fat men [shouldn't] tell young people [what] to watch when they have no idea." [WWD]
• Aldo, the normally good relatively cheap shoe line, wants us to wear horrendous teal 'n' bronze 'n' snakeskin 'n' studs gladiator sandals this summer. [LA Times]
• Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's fashion line, Elizabeth and James, gave People the exclusive on the release of their fall '09 lookbook. This marks a new uppermost notch on the continual rise of lookbooks into campaign territory. [People]
• Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and her husband are reportedly considering moving into the Paris apartment formerly owned by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. [Daily Mail]
• The Agyness Deyn on Twitter is, says BFF Henry Holland, an imposter. "THIS IS FAKE PEOPLE!!!" typed the designer. "AGGY DOES KNOW HOW TO OPERATE A COMPUTER AND MOST CERTAINLY DOES NOT EAT BREAKFAST!" [Grazia]
• C. Scott Hemphill and Jeannie Suk, law professors at Columbia and Harvard, respectively, give a good summary of the current status of U.S. copyright law in relation to clothing — which is that it offers designers not a whit of protection from knock-off artistes — and why it would be a good idea to change it. [XX]
• In related news: Trovata's case against Forever 21, which it accuses of copying six of its designs, has begun at a federal court in California. [WWD]
• Urban Outfitters is rolling out two new designer diffusion lines for summer: both Burberry and fellow British brand Pistol Panties are going to be selling bikinis at the American chain this summer. [Telegraph]
• Urban Outfitters' Philadelphia-based parent company just announced very disappointing earnings for the first quarter of this year. Same-store sales across the whole company dropped by 9.6%, and profits fell 28%, to $30.8 million. Free People was the biggest-losing brand, with sales at its stores slipping by 23%. Anthropologie's sales were down by 13%, and Urban Outfitters by 6%. The CEO, Glenn Senk, says his company is "well-positioned to show improvement over the next several quarters," in what is surely the understatement of the year. [The Street]
• Yesterday's flurry of rumors about the future of i-D magazine — Derek Blasberg Twittered from the Chanel resort show in Venice that the fashion monthly might have closed — the publishers have clarified that i-D will be bi-monthly as of this September. The current April issue will be on newsstands until then; the magazine will run more frequent online content instead. [Fashionologie]
• Another not-new piece of menswear news: Designers using foam batting, instead of perhaps down, as lofty insulation within garments. You know, because foam has structure. [WSJ]
• According to sources, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy is to buy an almost 50% stake in the eco-conscious fashion line Edun, owned by Bono and wife Ali Hewson. Edun was founded in 2005 and manufactures its organic cotton goods in the third world, while paying workers fair wages. A cash infusion from LVMH would allow it to ramp up its advertising and exponentially expand its reach. [WSJ]
• Philip Lim, whose clothes — though still expensive — hit a price point well below that of many of his designer competitors, is anticipating a 15% growth in sales this year. Accordingly, he's planning to add three new lines to his label: swimwear, footwear, and lingerie. The first, his swim collection, will launch this summer, with three styles, two one-pieces and one bikini, priced at $175 each. Lingerie, for $65-$125, will be available at his Manhattan boutique from May 20. Footwear, at $290-$675, will hit stores this fall. And don't expect 6" heels with fiddly feathered doo-dads that might last twenty steps in their original condition. "Everyone's making crazy shoes," said Lim, "so we were like, ‘Let's do working shoes, but sophisticated and beautiful.'" [WWD]
• Maidenform's first quarter earnings declined by 0.8%. Although the brand experienced higher sales, its margins were hurt by aggressive discounting to move old stock. [WSJ]
• Kohl's profit for the quarter just ended fell slightly on last year, to $137 million, but still beat analysts' expectations. Sales rose during the same period by 0.4%. [Reuters]
• Hartmarx wants another six months to file for reorganization in bankruptcy court. [WWD]

Vogue's May issue is in honor of the Met's annual Costume Institute Gala, a to-do that editor in chief Anna Wintour always supports. This year, the Costume Institute's exhibit is all about the model as muse — and for months now, rumors have been flying about a multi-model Vogue cover exploring the model/muse theme. It is said to celebrate Wintour's picks of the current top girls, and be shot by Steven Meisel.

Kind of like the November, 1999, cover, which featured Kate Moss, Lauren Hutton, Iman, Gisele Bundchen, Naomi Campbell, Stephanie Seymour, Claudia Schiffer, Amber Valletta, Christy Turlington, Patti Hansen, Lisa Taylor, Paulina Porizkova, and Carolyn Murphy. The photographer was Annie Leibovitz, and I have to say, the image has aged rather well.

The last time Vogue did a models cover, for the May, 2007, issue, an image of it leaked in early April, which rather dulled the suspense, if not the excitement of seeing Hilary Rhoda, Doutzen Kroes, Lily Donaldson, Sasha Pivovarova, Coco Rocha, Chanel Iman, Caroline Trentini, Raquel Zimmerman, Agnyess Deyn, and Jessica Stam together under the tagline "The World's Next Top Models."

It's safe to say that this time, Condé Nast won't mistakenly upload the cover early to Style.com, or do anything else to let its secret out of the bag. And so American Vogue, the commercial monthly that perceives boundless reader enthusiasm for what Cathy Horyn called "the 'villa in Tuscany' story," natural home of the humiliating beauty writer first-person piece, originator of the suggestion that we prick our body fat with needles, overall the safest and plainest of the world's fashion tomes, finds itself the object of a fever pitch of fashionistas' speculation. Anna Wintour, this is not the Twilight Zone. This is merely what happens when you pick good models and good photographers, and trust them to do good work.

What we think we know about this issue

Word is, the key to understanding May Vogue and its casting is: Steven Meisel. In addition to the cover girls and their inside editorial, there is said to be an editorial spread dedicated to the kingmaker photographer's all-time favorite muses — models like Karen Elson, Naomi Campbell (who mentioned shooting something "top secret" with Meisel earlier this year), Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Jessica Stam, Gisele Bundchen, Daria Werbowy, and Coco Rocha are all tipped to be involved. There is also rumored to be a third editorial all about Meisel's current crop of favorites, which would basically be a consolation prize for the models who didn't make the cover.

What would be a nice surprise? Seeing some new work from Irving Penn. Although he's now 95, the great photographer does still shoot — and Vogue under Anna Wintour has always made itself an eager venue for his work.

Kate Moss is co-chairing this year's Costume Institute gala, so it's hard to imagine the issue could roll out with no content relating to her — and her name has not been mentioned as one of the cast for the cover. If she doesn't have a standalone editorial, or a spot among Meisel's all-time favorites, she'll almost certainly be pictured in association with an article about the gala and/or the exhibit.

As Far As We Know, The Cover Is Likely To Feature

Caroline Trentini, Brazilian. Chances: Shoo-in

Trentini confirmed her position on the cover in an interview she gave at Sao Paulo fashion week earlier this month. Trentini is a longtime favorite of Wintour's, and she can be seen jumping in head-to-toe runway looks against a variety of studio backgrounds in basically any issue of American Vogue from the past four years. She went on a long holiday this winter, and only interrupted it for two very special jobs — walking in the fall/winter Yves Saint Laurent show for Stefano Pilati in Paris, and shooting the May cover of American Vogue in New York. Trentini said there were a total of nine models at the shoot, and called the photo "historic." She also confirmed Isabeli Fontana and Raquel Zimmerman were shot for the cover. Trentini was on the last Vogue cover that featured models, and by this point, Anna Wintour's patronage of her makes Trentini's supermodelhood a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Isabeli Fontana, Brazilian. Chances: Shoo-in

Why would Trentini lie to us? Isabeli Fontana is well known as a Victoria's Secret girl and all-round sex bomb. She's stalked the runway for years, and did time as Donatella Versace's muse, which fits the issue's theme.

Raquel Zimmerman, Brazilian. Chances: Shoo-in

Besides being confirmed during Trentini's little sit-down with the hometown press, Zimmerman is a Wintour favorite in her own right. Like her freckled compatriot, Zimmerman was on the last multi-model cover, and the Vogue editor's attitude towards her has not appreciably changed since.

Natalia Vodianova, Russian. Chances: Strong

Brazil's RG Vogue named the Russian model — a longtime face of Calvin Klein, who has been extensively featured in American Vogue — among the cover stars. (The same source confirmed Zimmerman, Fontana, Natasha Poly, and Liya Kebede.) Potential problem? RG Vogue said in its story, dated February 13, that the cover would feature eight models, and all subsequent intelligence, including the Trentini interview linked above, points to it having nine. (This would be logical, as there were actually nine muses: Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania. But you knew that.) How much that crucial counting difference actually casts RG Vogue's source in doubt is up to you.

Liya Kebede, Ethiopian. Chances: Strong

Liya Kebede, in case you haven't noticed, is black. Anna Wintour has borne the brunt of (well-deserved) criticism as of late for featuring black models so rarely (not to mention that atrocious LeBron James/Gisele Bundchen cover). This year, Vogue has made sure to up its game: the ladymag has run editorials depicting Jourdan Dunn and Chanel Iman, and the past two covers have featured black women, Michelle Obama and then Beyoncé. How much you wanna bet Wintour would be the type to bolster her publication's some-of-our-best-friends-are-black defense by putting Kebede on her cover and calling it three in a row? To point it out as a cynical maneuver on the part of Wintour is not to impugn Kebede's worth as a cover choice: in fact, she has gotten the cover of American Voguesolo once before, and her work dates back to the 90s, when she was a favorite of Tom Ford. Just this past season, as if to prove she's still got it, she opened Balenciaga and took the Paris shows by storm. She's earned this cover, as a model and a muse, many times over already.

Natasha Poly, Russian. Chances: Strong

If you believe RG Vogue's source, she's in. Poly opens and/or closes every runway show, everywhere, always. She's walked for more designers for more seasons than any other model can shake a stiletto at, and frankly, being the reigning catwalk queen should count for something.

Jourdan Dunn, British. Chances: High

Dunn became the first black model to walk for Prada in over ten years when she was cast in its fall/winter 2008 show. (Then Prada, having done its bit for diversity, promptly went back to never using non-white models.) Dunn has been in American Vogue before, so she wouldn't be entirely unexpected, even though she is a newer model. Besides, Trentini says she's in.

Anna Maria Jagodzinska, Polish. Chances: Fair

Jagodzinska is definitely one of Meisel's current favorite models, and she's been featured in the pages of Vogue before. (What, you didn't remember this story?) Jagodzinska's bagged 12 campaigns this season. But I couldn't find a source exactly confirming her presence on the cover — although her name keeps coming up in online discussions, and ONTD thinks she's in.

Lara Stone, Dutch. Chances: Dicey

Back when speculation about this cover was only just beginning to brew, The Imagist claimed it had on good authority that the eight-model cover would feature "one very unexpected choice sure to send the fashionspot nation buzzing. It must be nice for a girl to make her US Vogue debut on a cover, no?" Stone, a fashion favorite who has never been in American Vogue, fits that description perfectly. But if the 25-year-old Dutch beauty is known for being anyone's muse, aside from the designer Ricardo Tisci, it's definitely Caroline Roitfeld, the Vogue Paris editor and Wintour's ultimate frenemy. (Roitfeld dedicated an entire issue of her magazine to Lara's beauteous form only this February.) Would Wintour really want to implicitly nod to her rival's good judgment? Also, a more recent rumor has surfaced that one of the original girls was cut from the cover photo following her appearance in an editorial that Wintour thought distasteful. That could well be this one.

Karlie Kloss, American. Chances: Slim

Kloss would be the only American national on the cover, if she were to be featured. When the Lara-spiking rumors started to swirl, Kloss's was one of the first names to surface as a potential replacement. The lithe St. Louis teen is a confirmed favorite of Meisel's, and Wintour loves to be able to say she's down with the next big thing — plus, Kloss fills Stone's same niche in the lineup as the industry insiders' choice, not the mainstream girl. Kloss walked over 60 runways in a single season before even turning 16, and she's been in American Vogue several times this year already.

Arlenis Sosa, Dominican. Chances: Slim

Sosa is another model whose name has been bandied about as a possible new Stone. (Replacing girls on covers is not unusual — normally magazines shoot several cover options, and there may have been several different configurations of models shot for this one. Sometimes, airbrushing is used to just re-arrange people — rumor has it, Amber Valletta was shot separately and added later to that November '99 cover.) Why this might be unlikely? Sosa is, in case you haven't noticed, also black. And while Wintour seems increasingly keen to prove her magazine's diversity cred, she'd probably think two black cover models — Kebede and Dunn — were just plenty. Moderation in all things, that's Vogue to a T, after all.

The velvet curtain will be gently tugged back as soon as the issue hits newsstands, which should be April 21, but generally happens earlier in the major US cities. The cover will be released online a few days beforehand. For once in my life, I actually can't wait to get my hands on an American Vogue. You win this round, Anna.

SCOOP DU JOUR: US VOGUE MULTI-GIRL COVER BREWING [The Imagist]
Naomi Campbell, Vogue, Caroline Trentini [Fashionologie]
Super 8, Vogue America [RG Vogue]
SPFW Entrevista: Carol Trentini [Sao Paulo Fashion Week]
Cover Girls for May 2009 American Vogue [ONTD]

Earlier: New York Times Bets Against Anna Wintour & American Vogue
Vogue's Not Racist, Three Black Models Prove It
Is Vogue's Lebron/Kong Cover Offensive?
Self Reflection: A Bizarre & Macabre Short Story, Brought To You By Vogue

• Michelle Obama wore tidy Thakoon in D.C., and vivid yellow Jason Wu in London. New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn wonders what it all means. [On The Runway]

• I love it when the Brits write authoritative, informative articles that get — how would they say it? — pipped at the fact-checking post. The New York Topshop store's opening party may take place tomorrow at 11 a.m., Kate Moss may be there live in person, there may be scones and jam and DJs, and there may be capsule collections from Preen, Richard Nicoll, Jonathan Saunders, and the latest Kate Moss line, but whatever you do, do not turn up for the party in "midtown Manhattan, one of the big apple's busiest, buzziest retail districts." The store's on Broadway near Broome St. That's in a part of town we like to call "SoHo." Yes, we know London has one as well, albeit spelled differently, but trust us, that's where the store is. [Telegraph]
• Those French sure know from populist outrage. François-Henri Pinault, the head of luxury goods multinational PPR (and Salma Hayek's hubby) was surrounded in his car by a crowd of angry workers for the better part of an hour. Pinault was trying to leave a meeting with the European workers' council. PPR, which owns brands including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta, announced plans to cut 1200 jobs recently. And, in a scene right out of Tout Va Bien, three Sony executives were held hostage by laid off workers at a factory the company closed in the south of France a few weeks back. [WWD]
• "Nicole is designing everything herself," says Nicole Richie's business partner, who is apparently unaware of Richie's well-publicized deal with jewelry designer Pascal Mouawad, who does the actual work on her House of Harlow 1960 line. Planning world domination of the accessories trade, Richie announced her intention to "design" bags, belts, and shoes for spring 2010. [People]
• Is Richard Chai going to be the new creative director of the revived Bill Blass? New owners Peacock Holdings are adamant Bill Blass will be on the New York runways come September, but they are staying tight-lipped about their choice of designer, despite the rumors that Chai is heavily favored. The reason for the odd delay in Peacock's next move, despite its stated intention of reviving the bankrupt line following its acquisition of the label from previous owners NexCen, is a six-month embargo period that was a term of purchase. [FWD]
• Resort shows are bearing the recession's bite: Gucci, which showed its cruise collection on the runway in both New York and Rome last year, is doing a mere presentation. Dior, which had a mega-show in New York last time around, isn't going to show at all. That's right. Christian Dior canceled its resort show. Chanel will have nothing of this; Karl Lagerfeld is going ahead with a lavish resort show at Venice's Lido Beach. WWD doesn't give any details about Céline's plans — Resort 09 is supposed to be Phoebe Philo's hotly anticipated industry re-entry after her years spent raising her family far from the madding crowd. If Celine scales back its resort show, then Philo's return won't look half as big a deal as it really is. [WWD]
• The latest images from Britney Spears' Candie's campaign are in, and, folks, it's a Photoshop of Horrors. [Daily Mail]
• Hayden Christensen is in an ad for a Lacoste men's perfume. He's shown reaching up for the bottle, a searching look in his eyes. [JustJared]
• Martha Stewart's shareholders might regard with interest the fact that, while Martha Stewart Omnimedia's stock price, at $2.50, has declined 67% on one year ago, Stewart's personal compensation more than doubled between 2007 and 2008, from $2.06 million to $5.4 million. (Other executives at the company's salaries declined.) Martha's daughter, Alexis Stewart, earned $209,000 for her work on the show "Whatever, Martha!" while her co-host, Jennifer Koppelman Hutt, got $130,000. Nepotism truly is priceless in this town. [WWD]
• Fashionista road-tested three sulfate-free shampoos — they're better for the environment, and your hair — and unfortunately fell for the expensive French one. I know that pain. Once I scored a gigantic bottle of Frédéric Fekkai conditioner after doing an unusually brutal hair job, and I trudged around the world with it for almost a year. Then I ripped off the label, so I could find the product again, and carried that around for months. When I finally found it, it cost $60 or something. I didn't buy it and my hair has never been as shiny and tangle-free since. [Fashionista]
• Speaking of Fashionista, a little bird tells me that editor Natalie Hormilla is leaving the site to pursue unknown other projects. We certainly wish her well.

• The first pictures of Lindsay Lohan's foray into cosmetics have been released: at left, the often-orange starlet shilling for a spray tan called Sevin Nyne. [People]

• Sojin Lee, formerly of online pioneers Net-a-porter.com, and Simon Fuller, the man who gave you the Spice Girls and Roland Mouret, are starting an internet fashion business together. [WWD]
• Times critic Cathy Horyn went to a Chanel party, found Olivier Zahm and Stefano Pilati and no champagne. So she had a Bud. [The Moment]
• "When I'm wearing a hoodie, it looks like I just threw a hoodie on. I'm wearing what I discovered and figured out is the best hoodie I can find. And I'll tell you, if you ever want to know the best hoodie, I know the best hoodie." Whatever you say, John Mayer. [FabSugar]
• Editors are picking designers instead of models for their covers lately. Diane von Furstenberg graced Purple (and the issue promptly sold out) last month. Perhaps noting their success, this month i-D has Miuccia Prada on the front. [Fashionista]
• In case you need to be reminded why models can make great cover choices (perhaps your name is Anna Wintour?), the Times' "The Moment" blog has this neat feature where you can slide your cursor over a photo of Kasia Struss or Jourdan Dunn to see how the makeup and hair looks at the shows come together. Latest additions: Jean Paul Gaultier and Dior. [The Moment]
• And, on balance, why they might not: "I'm not your cheesy girl that's going to dress up in a hokey outfit and say all the sound bites that you want me to say," says Erin Wasson. No, Erin, you're certainly not! [Daily Beast]
• Sean Avery's fashion friends came out to support him at his first Rangers game since that internship at Vogue. Even the guy who works the door at the Beatrice showed up. Who says this business doesn't foster loyal and real connections? [Observer]
• There are pictures of Roberto Cavalli's new Cavalli Pets dog clothing line. The line includes a satin trimmed bath robe. For your dog. And leopard-printed shearling jackets. For your dog. [The Cut]
• Roberto Cavalli also sells sex toys. The inimitable New York drag queen Lady Bunny mentioned them to Fashion Week Daily, although she does say they're kinda small. [Racked]
• Model blind item: "Whicih two veteran models got into a "full-on serious fistfight" in a Paris nightclub this Fashion Week? The fight was so démodé, Uncle Karl himself had to break it up." Invitations to name the offenders or improvise the Kaiser's dialogue in the comments. [Fashionista]
• Freida Pinto says the news she is going to be a face of Estée Lauder is "but a lovely rumor." [WWD]
• "Beauty, economy, and usefulness are the best rules for the well-dressed woman," said Depression-era American fashion designer Muriel King. It's sound advice for today. If you're in New York City, you'd do well to check out the new exhibit of King's work at the Museum at FIT. King was a painter who got into fashion when she became an illustrator for publications like Vogue and Women's Wear Daily — eventually she hired patternmakers and garment workers to turn her original sketches into reality. [Style.com]
• And laundry detergent is the new fashion must-have. Tim Gunn says so. (And we can all agree with lower drycleaning bills.) [WSJ]
• Although J. Crew recently instituted cost-cutting measures including layoffs, a wage freeze, and suspending company matching of 401(k) contributions, the retailer's fourth quarter losses still reached $13.5 million, because of weak sales. However, because analysts had expected even bigger losses, their stock price rose. [Crain's]
• Interestingly, they still have plans to open more stores. [WWD]
• Liz Claiborne CEO Bill McComb lives in New Jersey. His misfortune is lessened by the fact that his company pays $10,500 in monthly rent to maintain a New York apartment for his occasional overnight stays in the city. Liz Claiborne's revenues shrank 10% last year, as same-store sales at Claiborne-owned Juicy Couture, Lucky Brand, Kate Spade, and Mexx all dropped by over 12%. The company announced its plays to lay off 8% of its workforce in February. [Crain's]
• Charlotte Russe is offering itself up for sale. [Dealbook]
• Neiman Marcus's quarterly loss: $509.2 million. Sales in the three months ended January 31 fell by over 20%. [WSJ]
• Comparatively speaking, American Eagle's modest fourth quarter profit of $32.7 million is a relief, in that it's not a loss. Revenue fell 9% on a year ago, and the company says the results are disappointing overall. [The Street]
• That L'Oreal/eBay legal wrangle over the sale of counterfeit goods online has been delayed in the French courts. [WWD]
• In honor of Young Buck's announcement that his clothing line, David Brown, is no more, Complex magazine has a look back at the top ten failed rapper clothing lines, including Master P's No Limit Clothing, and Fat Joe's FJ560. [Complex]
• Who else but Heidi Klum drove the Barbie dream car to the Barbie dream house in Malibu. [FWD]

• Is former overweight person and current size-o-phobe Karl Lagerfeld changing his Hedi Slimane stripes? Beth Ditto, who in addition to being very talented, weighs somewhat more than 100 lbs, is playing a Fendi party. [FWD]

• Agyness Deyn's 17-year-old sister Emily is starting a t-shirt company with a chum named Aliyah Hussein. Their first offerings feature images of the girls' icon, Queen Elizabeth II, whom Emily called "the original gangster!" [Blackbook via Nylon]
• I have no idea why this writer seems to think female models all have drivers — that might be true of the dozen top girls who walk in every show, but, trust me, the rest of us ride public transport. But it is correct that even the top-earning male models are always paid significantly less than their female counterparts. Russian Matvey Lykov, for instance, walked 34 shows in Europe, and only made enough to buy a ticket to the Dominican Republic to relax for a spell afterwards. [LA Times]
• And the indignities just don't stop: Doutzen Kroes, the model and Victoria's Secret angel, was treated to a super-original pick-up line on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten. At a bar called Tantra, a drunk stranger cooed, "I thought you couldn't go out without your wings." Barf. [NYDN]
• The Daily News also has this horrific model blind item: "Which top model's plastic surgeon is in big trouble? He accidentally spilled acid on her chest while they were having sex in his office." That, right there, is fodder for nightmares. [NYDN]
• Caroline Trentini, the elfin, freckled Brazilian whom Anna Wintour puts in every issue of Vogue, has been less omnipresent this show season. In fact, people were wondering where she was — models of her caliber don't normally just skip the shows. Well, mystery solved! She was on exclusive for Yves Saint Laurent, whose show she closed just yesterday. [Fashionista]
• More forthcoming about his schedule is Valentino. The retired Italian designer has announced he'll be in New York on March 17 to tape an episode of The Martha Stewart Show, just ahead of the theatrical release the documentary modestly titled Valentino: The Last Emperor. I hope they bake amazing cookies, or do collage in tones of red together. [The Cut]
• According to Women's Wear Daily's "sources" — who can be pretty spot on about these things — Halston is sizing up the London designer Marios Schwab to become their new creative director. The revived Halston has struggled, and is still trying to replace Marco Zanini, the designer they let go after just two seasons last year. [WWD]
• Cathy Horyn, whose life is more fun than your own, describes what it's like to run into the people she's savaged ("I said hey to Anna...") and then hangs out with Karl Lagerfeld on his doorstep on the eve of the Chanel show. [On The Runway]
• Jil Sander might be back. After being dumped from her namesake label — and then begged to return, and then fired again — following its purchase by Prada, Sander has been a fashion orphan. Attending an industry textiles fair might mean she has a new project. Or it might not. [WWD]
• Feministing is surprised an article in H&M's in-store magazine on dressing like a tomboy ignored any hint of a queer perspective — despite using Samantha Ronson as one of its examples. Remember, girlie, it's OK to steal from your boyfriend, just remember to add that feminine touch! [Feministing]
• Beth Ditto, meanwhile, is enjoying her first fashion week in Paris. Coming off her cover spot in the first issue of Katie Grand's Love magazine, the Gossip songstress has the keys to the carrousel du louvre. And mark no fear of queer connotations on her part: Ditto's favorite thing about the Jean Paul Gaultier show was "the butch clothes! I mean that in the best way. Masculine is hot!" [FWD]
• Three different women designers — get this — respond differently to the question of how to clothe, and by extension, represent, the female body. Imagine, there's not a 1:1 correlation between being female and making feminine clothing! [International Herald-Tribune]
• Buyers at Paris fashion week aren't sure exactly what consumers are going to want to own in six months. Handbags are a sure bet in the Middle East, says one, because they can be toted freely in public despite women's clothing restrictions. Russians will still want to buy, well, everything, says a buyer for one boutique. London might be about jewelry and scarves; Paris stores aren't sure whether to under-order for a fall in demand, or bet on a surprise recovery. Left unsaid is the fact that almost nobody in retail could stand to see a repeat of last fall's choked-off sales. [Reuters]
• American Apparel, which had to recently renegotiate costly new financing of both their $75 million Bank of America revolving credit line and their $51 million loan from private equity group SOF Investments, now is approaching the March 21 deadline for both loans. [WWD]
• L.L. Bean's revenues were down $1.5 billion, or 7.8%, over the last financial year. The company expects to be making layoffs. [The Street]
• The Italian brand Tod's finished out a difficult year with enough money to give $1,700+ bonuses to all its employees, including the people who make their goods in Italy. [WWD]
• A small American fashion brand that sells its wares in France reportedly included the message "We are sorry that our president is an idiot, we did not vote for him" on the care tag. Obviously they meant Bush. Reminds one of how the teenaged Alexander McQueen stitched "I am a cunt" onto the interlining of a suit for Prince Charles when he was apprenticed to Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard. [InventorSpot]

• Like everyone, Anna Wintour heard that rumor Nina Ricci was firing Olivier Theyskens. Her reaction? "How could you do this to me!" It's nice to know her concern rests with the possibly unemployed guy. [Blackbook]

• But does Cathy Horyn know something about that unconfirmed scuttlebutt we don't? The New York Times critic wrote on her blog that last week's Nina Ricci show "appeared to be Mr. Theyskens' swan song for the house," and that senior Louis Vuitton designer Peter Copping will replace the Belgian when his contract expires in October. [On The Runway]
• The Council of Fashion Designers of America awards will be at Lincoln Center's newly reopened Alice Tully Hall this year, breaking the tradition of using the New York Public Library and the Bryant Park Grill as venues. (This confirms the general upward-westerly trend in New York fashion: next season, all the shows will be at Lincoln Center instead of Bryant Park as well.) The awards, once again sponsored by Swarovski, will be given on June 15; nominations are due next week and the nominees will be announced on March 16. [WWD]
• The Wall Street Journal's fashion magazine has an excellent profile of LVMH head Bernard Arnault — otherwise known as the man who can make John Galliano say, meekly, "If you tell me so, sir." [WSJ]
• Aretha Franklin will part with her inauguration day hat. Although previously unsure if she could cede the fancy bit of millinery to a mere institution like the Smithsonian, she has announced that, indeed, that's exactly where it will go. After the period of its loan to the museum, Aretha's hat will be displayed permanently at Barack Obama's presidential library. [The Cut]
• Michelle Obama wore a shirt from Isaac Mizrahi's first — or, if you will, inaugural — collection for Liz Claiborne this week. It's expected to sell out, since wearing a shirt like Michelle Obama's will make you automatically as awesome as she is. [WWD]
• Even though neither the president nor the first lady wears fur, the inauguration caused a spike in D.C. fur sales in December and January, and an unusually high number of the people in the crowd were wearing items of fur. Since Obama's presidency began, a guy who works at the Kennedy Center coat check has seen "ridiculous" quantities of fur. People think this has to do with two things: the fact that the new president has brought so many Chicagoans to Washington, and Chicago is second only to New York City in fur sales, according to an industry group, and also the fact that African-American fur consumption is growing at a much faster rate than consumption of fur by whites. PETA doesn't like this very much. [WSJ]
• PETA, possibly noting the increase in fur on the runways this season, or possibly just riveted by the attention paid their assholery, is stepping up its protests at Paris fashion week. After creating a raucous crush of street harassment outside the Dior show, PETA protesters actually ripped the sleeve off French Vogue editor and regular fur wearer Carine Roitfeld's Balenciaga dress outside Jean Paul Gaultier. She was also wearing a lilac coat apparently made of goat fur; presumably that was the intended target. [Style.com]
• The animal rights organization is also launching a gruesome television commercial wherein Ricky Gervais, Pink, and Stella McCartney — who uses no leather or fur in any of her designs — speak as animals who've been skinned for the garment industry. [Telegraph]
• British journalist Jonathan Heaf tries to get to the bottom of the latest men's catwalk trend — leggings. So he calls up that guy from The Darkness, who tells him to "Step and thrust," and pulls on a pair of sparkly black Margiela leggings. Things seem to go well until his girlfriend tells him his pants hurt her eyes. [Guardian]
• The founder of Net-a-Porter.com, Natalie Massenet, is launching a new business. To be called TheOutnet.com, it'll sell out-of-season designer goods at a discount — but unlike sites like Gilt, it won't require a membership to shop. [Times of London]
• Liz Jones of the Daily Mail does not understand this person named "Agyness Deyn." In fact, Liz Jones thinks "Agyness Deyn" dresses rather strangely. Also, Liz Jones would like "Agyness Deyn" to get off her lawn. [Daily Mail]
• Dancing With The Stars' Cheryl Burke has a new line of fitness wear, available online this week for $46-85. [People]
• It's confirmed: Freida Pinto is to be a new face of Estee Lauder. [Telegraph]
• And, finally an appropriate celebrity product endorsement! Lindsay Lohan is launching a fake tanning lotion. [WWD]
• Nicole Richie's long-planned House of Harlow jewelry line has debuted; Richie went to L.A. boutique Kitson to promote it in person. [Fabsugar]
• Christian Audigier says the rumored partnership with Madonna won't be a clothing line with Ed Hardy, but "a completely new project" with a new brand. I know I am on the edge of my seat. [WWD]
• In London, L'Oreal is suing eBay for allegedly fostering the trade of counterfeit cosmetics and beauty products, in what is seen as a test case for online retail and the enforcement of trade agreements. [Financial Times]
• Daphne Selfe, age 80, still works as a model for photographers like Nick Knight and Mario Testino, and books the occasional Dolce & Gabbana campaign to boot. She says she's only become more striking since her hair greyed. [Telegraph]
• Interior designer Jonathan Adler created a real-life Barbie's dream house, in — where else? — Malibu. [AP]

• Amanda Lepore has a scent which is more art project than perfume — sold at a gallery for $950, the crystal bottle contains notes of steamed rice, mandarins, champagne, and cucumber. It's fermented. [NY Times]

• The first issue of Indian Harper's Bazaar is now available. It features actress Kareena Kapoor on the cover, and a limited number of the issues are also bedazzled with "Xilion crystalized — Swarovski elements," whatever those are. [Mag-Scene]
• Meanwhile, the March '09 issue of V, featuring Natalia Vodianova and Luke Grimes, has a glow-in-the-dark cover logo. [The Cut]
• Back at London fashion week, Sienna Miller threw a "raucous" party for the label she co-runs with her sister Savannah. Her entire street was reportedly clogged with guests and their cars, and she didn't even warn the neighbors. [Daily Mail]
• Niki Taylor gave birth to a daughter, named Ciel Taylor Lamar, with husband Burney Lamar yesterday, the day before her birthday. Aw. [People]
• Chanel Iman has been publicly confirmed as Bar Refaeli's co-host on the revived MTV House of Style. [Sassybella]
• UK Esquire named Prince Charles its best-dressed man. [Yahoo! News]
• Lou Doillon is opening a concept store in Paris's 11th arrondissement. So we can add that to the list of places where I'd shop if I had any money. [Fashionista]
• For a wrap-up of the Milan shows from Aquilano e Rimondi to Versace, you can't really go past Cathy Horyn's analysis for the Times. [NY Times]
• New York decided to count models of color on the runways in Milan — and the results, especially after such a promising season in New York, are depressing. Dozens of shows with all-white casts, and then a cameo from Jourdan Dunn, does not diversity make. [The Cut]
• And, just like that, it's on to Paris. [WWD]
• British bag-maker Mulberry's January sales were up 30% on last year's results — although this article doesn't specify whether those are same-store sales (sales from stores open one year or longer) or if that figure includes sales from stores that have opened in the past 12 months. (Retail expansion inevitably boosts sales but has huge overhead costs, so same-store sales are the measurement usually considered most reliable.) [UK Vogue]
• A Wall St. analyst upgraded Steve Madden to a "strong buy," arguing that the share price had hit a floor and that the company was well-positioned with no debt, and the stock price jumped 10% in one day's trading. [Crain's]
• Urban Outfitters' same-store sales at subsidiaries Anthropologie and Free People fell during the fourth quarter, and earnings for the company were down 24% as a result. Across the whole business, January sales rose 9%, but same-store sales actually fell by 1%. Urban Outfitters won't be opening as many stores as it had planned in 2009. [WWD]
• Jaclyn Smith, former Charlie's Angel and, given her K-Mart label was launched in 1985, grand-mommy of the celeb clothing line world, says her line is doing fine in the recession, but gives no specifics. [Reuters]
• Fashion directors at department stores are finding their roles are changing — or being eliminated altogether — during this economic downturn. Harper's Bazaar interviewed six of them, at top stores like Saks and Bergdorf, only to find that two had been fired by the time the issue went to print. Let's just all cross our fingers and hope Barneys keeps Simon Doonan in our lives. [NY Times]
• Clients of models aged under 16 in the Australian state of New South Wales will have to adhere to a code of practice set by the government, and obtain the permission of the state Children's Guardian, under new legislation under consideration. The government also wants to add a zero to the fine limit for clients found to skip either of the above steps. [News.com.au]