• Two weeks after adding Nicolas Cage's home to his sheaf of L.A. properties, Ed Hardy designer Christian Audigier has announced he's moving into Michael Jackson's last residence. Audigier will rent the $38 million home from his C.E.O., Hubert Guez. [E!]

• The glove the late King of Pop wore to marry Debbie Rowe has sold at auction for $49,000. [TMZ]
• "I love Japan. I love the people, the shopping, the fashion. I think they have so much fun with fashion...they don't take it too seriously," says Nicky Hilton. Don't take fashion seriously? Because insanely awesome and carefully cultivated street fashion just happens. [WWD]
  
• Mad Men's Christina Hendricks tells InStyle Weddings about her planned wedding to actor Geoffrey Arend, and specifies the designer (Carolina Herrera) and the look (Sophia Loren) of her wedding dress, but doesn't let it be photographed. [People]
• Lily Cole is a model, who is also (very) smart. The Daily Mail took a break from publishing finger-wagging paparazzi photos of her and scurrilous scuttlebutt about her to notice these facts. [Daily Mail]
• Nanette Lepore would like you to remember Labor Day by saving New York's Garment District from rapacious commercial exploitation. [NYTimes]
• Juicy Couture co-founder Gela Nash-Taylor doesn't drink out of common Starbucks cups. She has her own paper cups, because "I'm so into monogramming. I'm doing it on everything right now." [ToL]
• More than 800 stores across all five boroughs are involved in Thursday's shopping-with-fun event, Fashion's Night Out in New York City. Other regional and international events are also planned. [BrandWeek]
• Karl Lagerfeld will be tending the Chanel store with Carine Roitfeld in Paris, for example. [WWD]
• R.J. Cutler's documentary, The September Issue took in more than a quarter of a million dollars over Labor Day weekend. The $40,000 per-screen average makes it the fifth-highest-grossing documentary ever made. [AdAge]
• Meanwhile, Studio 360's Kurt Anderson says that based on the film, the fashion world is "amazingly old-fashioned, like some royal artifact from the 18th Century." [Studio360]
• The Los Angeles Times says the film "charts the intersection of art and commerce with a perhaps inadvertent eye for an excess that wasn't to last." (I am quoted in this article, proving that if you write long enough and, well, long enough on the Internet, someday someone will mistake you for an expert in something.) [LATimes]
• Anna Wintour, for her part, says that complaining about the sea change in the fashion industry that has taken place since the filming of that documentary is "like talking about that house you could've bought for nothing on the beach in Southhampton. Forget it. It's gone. The amazing golden years that everyone in the industry was enjoying were fantastic from a business point of view but also maybe a little unseemly. Every celebrity thought she could be a designer, and how many handbags? How many shoes? How much of a thing does everyone really need?" Then Wintour goes to the Macy's in Queens where she will be — on Mayor Bloomberg's orders that the event not smack of elitism — kicking off Fashion's Night Out, and upon surveying the scene, asks in a horrified voice, "Can we...enhance?" [NYMag]
• Sixteen months of declining same-store sales at the department store chain might make the budget for those "enhancements" leaner, however. [BW]
• And retailers in general, after an apocalyptic fall and winter, and a barely-improved spring and summer, are hungry for the fall sales boost that events like Fashion's Night Out are aiming to provide. [WWD]
• WWD has a beautiful, subscription-only, series of photographs of various New York designers as they prepare for fashion week. Alex Wang looks radiant and un-stressed, but the same can't be said of the male models snapped lining up for a casting at Yigal Azrouël. [WWD]
• Naomi Campbell would like to point out, for all those who called her hypocritical for modeling fur in Dennis Basso's fall campaign, that she actually quit PETA years ago. So her hypocrisy has weathered a few seasons now — like a vintage mink. [SB]
• More bad news for Annie Leibovitz: the practically-bankrupt photographer is being sued by an Italian photographer, Paolo Pizzetti, who claims that Leibovitz used his pictures without consent — or payment — for a Lavazza coffee campaign. Since Leibovitz could not travel to Italy to complete the shoot, which features images of models in romantic poses in front of Italian landmarks like the Trevi fountain and the Piazza San Marco, she had Pizzetti scout locations and take snapshots for her. Then Leibovitz shot the models in a New York studio, and digitally stitched the fore- and backgrounds together. Pizzetti says he was never paid for the rights to his contributions. [AW]
• Lady Gaga is reportedly set to perform during New York Fashion Week at an after-party for Givenchy hosted by Out magazine and to be held at The Box. [WWD]
• On the night of the 13th in New York, a short teaser film for Spring '10 by Gareth Pugh will be screened at Milk studios' M.A.C.-sponsored fashion shows in Chelsea. Although the first screening will be invitation-only, the second is open to members of the public who register on M.A.C.'s Facebook page. [Style.com]
• And newly-minted director Christian Louboutin just wrapped filming on an advertisement for Piper-Heidseick champagne starring model Elisa Sednaoui. [WWD]
• Manolo Blahnik says he never wanted to be a celebrity designer, and blames Sex And The City for his unwilling transformation. "If people talk to me about Sex And The City, I get sick," he told the Telegraph. "The taxi drivers recognize me now. It becomes too much and I don't feel comfortable." [PC]
• Sojin Lee's new online fashion venture, Fashionair, has launched. Lee last worked for Net-A-Porter, and her backer is Simon Fuller's company. [Forbes]
• Giorgio Armani designed a custom costume for a Spanish matador. It's grey and spangled. [Telegraph]
• Despite growing sales, profits for 2008 at Armani shrank by 41.4%, to $188.3 million. [WWD]
• Harold Tillman, a British fashion businessman who already owns Jaeger, has apparently acquired the bankrupt house Acquascutum. [ElleUK]
• Tom Binns for Disney might seem like a weird combination, because, well, it's a weird combination. [WWD]
• The Ebony Fashion Fair, an important industry event for black designers and models, is canceling its fall tour. The largest traveling fashion show in the world, Ebony helped launch the careers of talents like Kevan Hall and Tracey Reese, and raised money for various local and national charities including the NAACP and the Urban League. The economy is the culprit. [Examiner]
• Milan Fashion Week has been thrown into "chaos" by a series of re-schedulings to avoid schedule conflicts, which begat new conflicts and new re-schedulings, and then yet more conflicts and re-schedulings. [WWD]

• 42-year-old Kristen McMenamy, whose deeply unconventional beauty shone in many of the most memorable fashion photographs of the early '90s, was chosen by Steven Meisel for the new cover of Italian Vogue. [FWD]

• Yves Saint Laurent's Stefano Pilati, whose recent ads have starred Naomi Campbell, continues his run with the '90s supes in his Fall 2009 campaign. Christy Turlington, wearing pleated pants that do no women any favors, poses against a white background, inside a black picture frame that floats in space. [Telegraph]
• Speaking of Naomi Campbell, she'll be the face of Dennis Basso this fall. Basso is a well-known fur designer, and Campbell once famously declared that she'd rather go naked than wear fur, but obviously her naked avarice got in the way. [WWD]
• Madonna wore jet-beaded Givenchy couture on stage in London. Says designer Riccardo Tisci, "She's wearing an outfit that will make history." [People]
• The couture shows get underway in Paris today, and in this economy, selling $70,000 dresses seems like a difficult task. But at Christian Lacroix, whose house recently declared bankruptcy, there is an order backlog for more than 20 outfits. [WWD]
• That still might not save Lacroix. Employees were told Friday of a restructuring plan that would cut the 124-strong workforce to 12, and reduce the Lacroix label to a licensing operation. The only hope is for a buyer to step in. [WWD]
• Prodigious design talent — and rumored Madonna collaborator — Christian Audigier has some sharp words for Victoria Beckham and her celebrity dress line. "I like her, she is a nice girl, but she is not completely my style. I have seen some of her designs — they are very simple. It's difficult for an artist or a singer to enter into the world of fashion," quoth the popularizer of such classics as the trucker hat and the tattoo t-shirt. "You can't just rely on your name to help you sell. The way to sell and who to sell to and what you want to accomplish, these are all things you will need help with if you're entering into the world." [HindustanTimes]
• "I can't analyse my appeal. If I did I'd be in a straitjacket," reports supermodel Daria Werbowy. "I am very lucid in relation to the reality of this industry, the ephemeral nature of beauty and fame,' she says, 'and that gives me a certain distance and quite a bit of humour." [Telegraph]
• Stylist Patricia Field took the opportunity of an interview with the Mirror to settle an old disagreement with Kristin Davis. And with A-line skirts, which we always have found extremely flattering. "I hate the A-line skirt. It's like a lampshade. Ugly. Kristin Davis always wanted to wear A-line skirts as she thought it hid her big behind. She has a fabulous figure – she is completely hour glass, and I would say: ‘Kristin, you have a small waist – show off your round ass!' She would never show it. I wanted to make her into a Bettie Page in Sex And The City, but all she wanted were A-line skirts and Ralph Lauren clothes." [Mirror]
• Meanwhile, Roberto Cavalli has deep thoughts on our economy. "I never pay attention to costs — it's not attractive to speak about numbers. Why can't we just focus on the beauty of an object? I don't know anything about the financial crisis." [ToL]
• Times of London writer Shane Watson asks whether Abercrombie & Fitch's decision to tell an employee with a prosthetic arm to stay in the stockroom was really all that surprising, given the chain's refusal to hire anyone who isn't "regulation cute." Because discriminating against disabled people is exactly the same as dictating your employees hair length and nail polish colors! [ToL]
• Seeing the Wall Street Journal's perspectival dry-point etching of a man wearing skinny jeans totally makes up for this pedestrian story about how the trend caught on. [WSJ]
• Foot wear maestro Manolo Blahnik: "Are shoes so important? Really? If I was a woman, I would be dressed in the same thing for a month and just change my hat and gloves. Maybe my shoes too; yes, I see what you mean but, really, it's jewels that change an outfit. And I do love gloves. And I adddore hats. There are toooo many shoes now. I always tell the children, 'Don't do shoes! Do hats!' And the shoes are so strange, so vulgar. I hate these platforms that are all over the place today; they are all about grabbing attention. They are suburban! I never do a platform. Well, I did, in the 1970s, but that was a bad experience." [FT]
• Ben Westwood, Vivienne Westwood's fetish photographer son, whose latest exhibit featured bound models with the heads of celebrities' children inexpertly Photoshopped onto their bodies, is launching a men's wear line. London Fashion Week must be holding its breath. [Harper's Bazaar]
• Children's apparel is more resilient than other sectors of the clothing market during economic downturns. Why? Kids grow. [WWD]
• The Guardian reviewed R.J. Cutler's The September Issue, and called it "utterly riveting." The paper also said, of the relationship between stylist Grace Coddington and editor Anna Wintour, "to watch them do battle over whether or not to shoot a rubber dress is to see the great fashion battle of creativity versus commerciality acted out in an urbane New York office: a Punch and Judy show scripted by Woody Allen." [Guardian]
• If this is news to anyone here: online ads in the form of fake quizzes, à la Coach's new "Are you a Poppy girl?", are rigged. We are all Poppy girls, in the eyes of Reed Krakoff. Buy a $198 tote bag now! [TBM]
• Apparently, while New York has been drowning in a consistent downpour since mid-April, London has been having a heat wave. Unsurprisingly, sales of bikinis — and beer — have spiked. [FT]
• Because he is paid primarily in stock and options, Ralph Lauren's compensation slipped by more than 40% in value this year. He still made $20.3 million. [WWD]
• Despite cashflow concerns, Prada is still opening stores at a fast clip. Two new boutiques will open this month in Paris and Prague, and the company plans to keep up its 2008 pace, which saw 34 new stores open, for the next three years. [WWD]
• For those nights when you can't seem to remember your underwear, behold: the anti-paparazzi handbag! Activated by camera flashes, the bag emits a beam of light (clue: it's like a slave flash) powerful enough to ruin anyone's shot. [BoingBoing]

[New York, February 17. Image via Getty]

• Holy underminer, Batman! Whitney Port on her clothing line: "I'm developing a clothing line. It won't be like Lauren's stuff, which I loved. Mine will be a little more high-end." [Radar]
• "Fashion Victims: The Catty Catalogue of Stylish Casualties From A to Z" by Michael Roberts, fashion director of Vanity Fair, sounds like it will be fascinating to the fashionistas he skewers and completely stultifying to everyone else. "Roberts has written a poem for each letter of the alphabet, for instance P for "photographer": "Why am I so fabulous? What makes me truly great? What would life be without me? It's hard to contemplate . . . No billboards straddling city streets with body parts gigantic/Nor me with glass in premiere class crisscrossing the Atlantic." The accompanying illustration is a caricature of Mario Testino. " Sounds like a gas. [NY Post]
• Early estimates place the price of Cindy McCain's RNC outfit at $300,000. Well, in fairness $280,000 goes towards her three-karat diamond earrings. [US News]

• We love how thoughtfully celebrities consider the challenges of starting a small business! Jamie-Lynn Sigler on her new jewelry line: “We just started beading these gold bracelets with all different types of gold one day and started playing with different charms, and we thought, Hey, let’s do it,” [NY Mag]
• Word on the street is that Cole Mahr, the dude who wore a dress in the Marc Jacobs print ads, will be doing it again on the runway. Does this bode well for Isis?! [Fashionista]
• Lancome adds Dominican model Arlenis Sosa to its "stable." Says Lancome's prez, “Arlenis possesses beauty, intelligence, charm and compassion...All of our brand ambassadors share these attributes, so we knew she would be a wonderful addition. We are very proud to welcome her to the Lancôme family.” [WWD]
• You'll be relieved to know that Fashion Week is civic-minded. A fashion week press release tells us, "In the spirit of the election season and theme at this year’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, unique, fashion inspired election slogan pins will be given out in small quantities each day. Fashionistas can vote for their favorite slogan at www.votembfashionweek.com."
• "Furrier to the stars" Dennis Basso owes the IRS. "The baritone-voiced minkmeister is singing the blues now that the feds have imposed a $200,000 lien on his swanky Central Park West apartment, according to public records." Basso says it's all a misunderstanding because his "accountant's mother had a heart attack." [NY Post]
• ANTM judge and "top fashion photographer" Nigel Barker and his wife are having a baby girl. "We found out it’s going to be a little girl," Barker, 36, told Us Thursday at the Saks Fifth Avenue Ruby Slippers Collection party in NYC. "We’re going to look at her, and when we see her, we’re going to come up with a name." They already have a 2-year-old son. [US Weekly]
• Men's Heath EIC and titanic douche David Zinczenko is psyched about the new Women's Health. Quoth he, "We've pulled into the passing lane, and we're poised to surpass a lot of women's magazines now. We can see Glamour just up ahead. There are a lot of opportunities for Women's Health because of the size of the market." [WWD]
• We wouldn't normally think much of the fact that AOL is relaunching its style and beauty site, StyleList.com, except that they've tapped Carmindy as their beauty expert, and we love What Not to Wear. [WWD]
• A Saks Fifth Avenue employee has been charged with $680K in theft. [NY Post]
• Wait, has Rachel Bilson been on any worst-dressed lists? “I think it’s cool to be on the worst-dressed list,” she says. “If people aren’t accepting, that’s OK. Bring it on, I don’t care!” [People]
• Fern Mallis basically runs Fashion Week. Here's why she's psyched: "First of all, September shows always feel like school is starting. This particular season there's different kind of buzz in the air, especially with the elections. We are all wondering how the outcome will affect our industry, especially with two first ladies who wear clothes particularly well." [Huffington Post]
• Behold fall's least flattering fashion trend: the pegged trouser. "They usually have two front pleats at the waistband that are designed to add volume in the hip area, then balloon out in the thigh before tapering in again at the ankle. They can also be cropped on the ankle and high-waisted. Admittedly, they sound alarm bells for most of us - extra volume around the thighs is always a hard sell." Thanks a lot, YSL! [The Guardian]
• Speaking of the 90s: LA Gear is back, baby! In what The Cut describes as the requisite "in Saved by the Bell shapes and neon colors." [The Cut]
• Italian designer Mila Schon has died at 92. [Reuters]
• Kate Betts, Joel Stein and Isaac Mizrahi will all be blogging fashion week for Style & Design. Says Betts, "I wanted to offer readers the same kind of inside, up-to-the-minute, offbeat look at fashion week as opposed to straightforward reviews...Joel and Isaac, I hope, will add a lot of humor." [WWD]
• Model Lily Cole is leaving modeling to pursue acting, was inspired by Heath Ledger. But more to the point, she's starting Cambridge, where she'll be studying history! Says the 20-year-old, "modelling can get a little lonely sometimes, especially when you are travelling on your own. That's what I'm looking forward to about going to university to meet lots of new people." [Telegraph]
• Not profiting by Lily Cole's example, former internet phenom/partygirl and wannabe-Lezark Cory Kennedy has been signed to One Model Management. [Fashionista]
• Domino really understands the needs of its readers; they've done the important work of making a "fashion week survival guide." "The survival guide includes recommendations from designers, editors and fashion insiders, including Francisco Costa, Bloomingdale's fashion director Stephanie Solomon, Simon Doonan, Anya Hindmarch, Vera Wang, Lela Rose and Peter Som. Musings include recommendations on what to do for an hour in between shows — Humberto Leon, from Opening Ceremony, suggested Wu Lim Qi Gong Master Massage." [WWD]
• Raise your hand if you want the new KISS Vans! Wait...no one? "To celebrate that fateful day in 1978 when all four members of the band released solo albums, the skatewear brand (and main sponsor of the Warped Tour) is releasing the Vans x Kiss Sk8-Hi commemorative T-shirt and shoe pack sometime in the "late fall" of this year." [AdAge]
• As previously reported, designer Heather Thomson has tapped New York's pool of exotic dancing talent for her upcoming lingerie show. "She held a competition of dancers who perform gymnastics-like routines on brass poles at some of Manhattan's poshest strip clubs and picked eight to model her Yummie Tummie Shapewear." [Reuters]
• The Rag&Bone designers are refreshingly enthusiastic! "We are big fans of Radiohead. Actually, seeing them perform at Glastonbury head-to-toe in Rag & Bone would be pretty magic." [Fashion Week Daily]
• In addition to a ludicrous rock-themed fashion mag and a fashion-themed rock concert, Fashion Rocks sponsors a charity auction. "Among the items up for auction: A leather jacket autographed by Keith Urban and seats at Kimora Lee Simmons and Diane Von Furstenberg's coveted runway shows." [People]
• We love Daphne Guinness largely because of her connection to the Mitfords, but on any terms her upcoming shoot for Vogue Italia sounds rad! [Fashionista]