Jezebel: dress barn

Jacko's Sparkly Concert Costume; Anna Read What You Wrote About Her On Facebook

TatianaTheAnonymousModel — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:30:00 EDT

Michael Jackson has settled on a costume for his upcoming tour: an ensemble made entirely from Swarovski crystals. His wardrobe uses 300,000 of the sparklers. Of course, this is the man who once wore a gold-plated jacket. [WWD]

Meanwhile at Glastonbury, the band Florence and the Machine had its outfits designed specially by Topshop. [Telegraph]
Anna Wintour is said to have instructed Vogue petty officers to create sockpuppet accounts on Facebook to monitor fan page comments about The September Issue. [P6]
Bucking the trend of British fashion designers returning to London Fashion Week for its anniversary, Giles Deacon has announced he'll show his Spring 2010 collection in Paris. [WWD]
Eva Green read what you wrote about her on the Internet, but unlike Anna, she just doesn't care! "I want to wear something that I wouldn't wear every day, I like to be a bit eccentric and I know lots of people say 'Oh my god blah' but I don't care, I want to have my style, I like to try something new," said the actress, who also pines for Topshop when she's in France. [Mirror]
50 Cent unveiled his new fragrance, Power, at a private party in New York. While unspecific about its target audience ("Everyone human...breathing...") he did manage to shove a journalist out of his path. The way she writes it, she didn't seem to mind. Power indeed. [The Cut]
This week sees the official previews of two dark, "intellectual" fashion ranges, heavy on the strange shapes and deconstruction, and costing around $300-$600. One is by Juicy Couture ("There is...one pair of very expensive leather leggings", but we knew that already). The other is by Comme des Garçons. Odd! [Racked] [Racked]
Council of Fashion Designers of America menswear award winner Band of Outsiders' Scott Sternberg (who tied for the award with Calvin Klein's Italo Zucchelli) was good enough to answer some of W magazine's questions. To "Waverly Inn or Monkey Bar?" he sagely responded: "No." Asked, "Jon or Kate?" Sternberg said: "Who?" Also, Paris Hilton better not ever ask to borrow his clothes. We like him even more now. [W]
Christy Turlington, who bagged the spring campaign, too, is coming back this fall as the face of Bally. Mario Sorrenti shot the ads. A number of fashion houses have made the choice to stick with their spring casting choices for fall. Versace re-shot Gisele in virtually the same position and dress as before, and Louis Vuitton re-hired Madonna. [WWD]
Bar Refaeli is now the new face of Garnier Fructis. [SassyBella]
Speaking of, L'Oréal has been found guilty of racial discrimination in French court. To market its Fructis shampoo in supermarkets, the beauty giant hired a sales staff — and was caught giving instructions in writing to a temp agency to employ only white women aged 18-22 who wear a French size 38-42. L'Oréal and the temp agency, Adecco, each have to pay fines and damages of €60,000. [Times of London]
Models of color did not fare well at Milan menswear week. Even reliably diverse clients, like DSquared2 (which last year used an all-black cast) had virtually no faces of color on their runways. Check out these pictures to see the practically all-white casts for yourself. [FashionBombDaily]
An Australian retail chain called Diva has ripped off a wide variety of jewelry by indie designers. [ShanaLogic]
Let me say this again: Male modeling is just like modeling for women. Only even more poorly paid. (This article quotes 500 Euros to several thousand Euros as a typical rate for men who work the shows in Europe — and says that it's lower than what women models get. Why do reporters never keep in mind who they're asking? In this case, it's a pair of twins who started out by booking campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana. Nothing about their experience of the industry is average.) [Telegraph]
Project Runway's Leanne Marshall wrote on her personal blog that she was unhappy with a business opportunity gone sour — but one which it was too late to pull the plug on. Discontent with retail partner Bluefly is the only logical conclusion. [Racked]
Ex-model and PR whiz Carlos Souza has returned to the house of Valentino to try and repair its damaged reputation. Since Valentino's departure, the brand has suffered through the embarrassing ousting of the talented successor Alessandra Facchinetti, and lackluster collections designed since then by two of Valentino's former assistants. [FWD]
Vena Cava now has a blog. [Viva Vena Cava]
Philippe Starck has launched a new clothing line, which he describes as "non-photogenic." It's made of waterproof cashmere and designed to last a long time, which is still enough to prick our interest. [UnBeige]
Dress Barn announced plans to buy Tween Brands Inc., which operates the Limited Too and Justice. [WSJ]
Nike, which cut 5% of its global workforce, some 1,750 jobs in May, saw sales for the fourth quarter decline to $341.4 million, from $490.5 million the year before. Orders for the next few month are also down 12%. [AP]
Troubled Jones Apparel Group is betting on the Asian market. It just bought a 15% stake in the Hong Kong-based retail distribution group GRI, upping its total stake in the company to 25%. [WWD]
H&M's sales are up by 6.4% in the quarter just ended. Revenue climbed 23%. [WSJ]
Uniqlo is talking about buying the Gap. [Independent]
The company that owns Lacoste has chosen the former head of the European supermarket chain Carrefour to lead the brand. [WWD]

Anna Wintour's "Toothy" Cover Subject To Try Modeling

TatianaTheAnonymousModel — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:30:00 EST

Sienna Miller is going to be the face of a new Hugo Boss fragrance. When was the last time you remember Sienna Miller actually acting? [WWD]

In further crossover tales, newly minted TV host Coco Rocha, who's jumping between walking in shows and filming them for an E! Canada documentary this week, says she's glad she doesn't have to talk to celebrities because, unlike industry people, they don't know who she is. Also, she thinks her red hair makes people treat her differently. "I think people are more scared of me. They think I'm evil." [The Cut]
The Costume Institute's spring exhibit will be all about the model as a fashion muse and the evolution of beauty standards for women. [Guardian]
Event co-host Kate Moss's muse status has already translated to the art world: a set of Banksy portraits of the model, done in the style of Andy Warhol's iconic Marilyn Monroe silkscreens, are going to be auctioned in London. [Telegraph]
Speaking of model muses, Japanese model Tao Okamoto's haircut inspired Philip Lim's runway hairstyle. She shot his look book and he was taken with her. [Elle]
Meanwhile, Michelle Obama inspired the hair and makeup look at Baby Phat. [WWD]
If you're taking any New York taxis this week, the video screen of asinine weather and real estate information ("Buy A West Village Condo For Eleventy Million Dollars! Someone From Corcoran Explains Why!") you immediately poke at furiously to turn off may contain images of Cynthia Rowley's fall collection. [WWD]
Male model Cole Mohr shot a fashion week video for New York. He goes backstage and tells fellow model Tyler Riggs, "Say something meaningful! We're on film!" Riggs pulls a face and replies, "It's better to destroy than create what is meaningless." Then he thinks a second, lights a match, and says, "I am why the ozone layer is fucked up." And this is why I cannot hang out with male models. [The Cut]
The New York Times has been to the tents and sees only Doom and Gloom (with sides of Sturm and Drang). Representative line about a drag queen: "Having spent two decades capitalizing on the froth thrown off by both boom and bust economies, he was also well acquainted with the uses of sobriety." And Twitters about Marc Jacobs' hair get at something existential. [NY Times]
PPR, the megaconglomerate whose luxury holdings include Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, and Bottega Veneta, saw flat revenue in the fourth quarter of 2008. But luxury sales for this year have grown by 8.1% on last January. Emerging markets like China saw Gucci sales increase 42% in 2008. [Financial Times]
Also weathering the downturn passably is Uniqlo chairman and CEO Tadashi Yanai, whom Forbes just named Japan's richest man. $6.1 billion is a lot of $30 cashmere sweaters. [WWD]
The Italian apparel sector has formally requested aid from the government. Auto makers and homewares manufacturers were included in a stimulus package approved last month, but not fashion or textile companies. One large company, IT Holdings SpA, has already seen its luxury division (owner of the brands Gianfranco Ferre and Malo, as well as licenses for Cavalli Sport) teeter into bankruptcy. [Reuters]
Dress Barn projects a second quarter loss. [WWD]
PETA supporter Tim Gunn says designers "Hhve a responsibility to know about [ethical issues surrounding fur]. If you're going to use fur, you at least need to know which sources are less abusive than others...I would never use anything from China. What people don't tell you is that it's most likely dog. And they call it something else and they make it look like something else." Fur cannot be used in the Project Runway final collections, interestingly. [Reuters]
Even Anne Slowey's dog is fasting this fashion week. [Elle]
However, this story about how Slowey missed the first few days of shows because her 85-year-old mother in Indiana needed help converting her analog TV for digital signal is very sweet. [Observer]
UK Vogue features editor Harriet Quick says Posh's new dress collection is good. (It's hard to imagine how a set of Roland Mouret rip-offs could be bad, exactly...) As if to highlight her unoriginality, the story is illustrated with pictures of Posh's dress presentation side-by-side with pictures of Posh wearing similar outfits in years past. [Daily Mail]
Luckily, she wasn't taking inspiration from Cartier: the French jeweler is suing QVC over the similarity of several watch designs in their Joan Rivers collection. [WWD]
American Vogue's fashion news and features editor, Sally Singer, is a Berkeley- and Yale-educated former book editor who certainly reads more contemporary fiction than you do. She also skipped several grades, wrote a letter to Andy Warhol when she was 12 asking for a job at Interview, and has sewn her own clothes since she was in middle school, because her family's budget didn't stretch to the kinds of garments she saw in the fashion magazines she scoured growing up. She seems friendly, well-adjusted, and entirely non-sociopathic. It is a heartbreaking paradox of this industry that some of the smartest, funniest, and most culturally engaged women you could ever meet, somehow, once they get together, are responsible for creating the lobotomized morass that is the women's media. [Mediabistro]

Cathy Horyn Still Talking About Marc Jacobs; London Fashion Week Sounds Fun

Jennifer — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:00:00 EDT

NY Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn continues to stick up for homeboy Marc Jacobs on her blog, disclosing that he personally dressed all of the models in his much-delayed show and that "if you're always under pressure, I suppose you're going to be more sensitive to the things you absolutely can control." Aw, tear? [NY Times]
The Dress Barn's profits rocketed an amazing 38% this quarter. Um, what? Developing... [WWD, sub req'd]
Okay, we totally attended the wrong Fashion Week. Prince performed live at the Matthew Williamson show in London. [Vogue UK]
Also at London fashion week: Courtney Love tripped Kate Moss, who went tumbling upon entering; someone spilled a drink on Anna Wintour; and Jade Jagger and Christian Louboutin were having "a private chat" (a private really ANIMATED and EXUBERANT chat, we're assuming) in the women's restroom. This is all at one party. [Vogue UK]

Speaking of parties, the Christopher Kane afterparty was so good Agyness Deyn had to wait in line. [WWD, 2nd item]
Things we did not know about Karl Lagerfeld that we learned just from reading a 300-word item about the forthcoming documentary about him: He has been sexually active since age 13, his family calls him "Shirley Temple," his bedroom looks just like mine, he talks trash about the former Chanel ("When I took on Chanel, it was a sleeping beauty. And not even a beautiful one. She snored'). [Vogue UK]
Models/modelish types appearing in the Cavalli for H&M ads: Erin Wasson, Jessica Stam, Theodora Richards, Nicolas Malleville, Sean Lennon, Jane Schmitt, Lydia Hearst, Astrid Muñoz, Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, Anouck Lepère. [WWD, 1st item]
Stella McCartney is adding a golf line to her Stella-for-Adidas label. Says McCartney, "I think it is about time that women who play golf can now echo what they wear in everyday life on the green." On our list of things it's about time for, this, uh, doesn't even make our pile of rejected ideas. [WWD, sub req'd]