• This rather banal anecdote about Michael Kors being mistaken for Marc Jacobs is enlivened by an adorable photo of the two from when Jacobs was pale and long-haired and still had those clear-framed glasses that are so totally hot. [FWD]

• Kors designed the dress for his mother's second wedding. "Who in their right mind would actually listen to their five-year-old? Though the marriage didn't last, the pictures are timeless." When pressed on his status as a top or a bottom, Kors replied, "Well, I love eveningwear and I love sportswear." [VF]
• Karlie Kloss — who just turned 17 and celebrated at Disney World — booked the fall Alexander McQueen campaign. She looks ethereal and a little frightening — perfect for McQueen's aesthetic. [Fashionologie]
• Eva Mendes does what Eva Mendes does best for Calvin Klein, with Jamie Dornan. [Sun]
• An object lesson in what happens when you refuse a reporter's questions at a press event: they get snippy! Kanye West was described as "skittish" and "visibly withdrawn" as he "avoided all questions" at an event for Casio G Shock. Even though the rapper didn't clam up entirely — he praised Amber Rose, and said she'd just done her first modeling shoot — the interaction motivated WWD to note, "When he later took to the stage, 90 minutes behind schedule, West interrupted his set with a spontaneous, free-style rant against the press, with such lines as 'I'm sorry I broke your arm/I meant to break your camera' and 'I could kill a man/I am a man/Don't forget I could kill a man' regarding his fury at the invasive nature of today's media. As he stirred the audience into a frenzy, the bevy of invited reporters and photographers at the event (marketed by Casio as a press conference accompanied by a concert), were left to fidget uncomfortably with their press passes." [WWD]
• Kanye didn't mention it, but Elle's Joe Zee pointed out that the rapper recently styled a shoot for the magazine. Could Amber possibly have been the model? [FWD]
• Fifteen-year-old Christine Staub, the eldest daughter of Danielle Staub from the Real Housewives of New Jersey, has been signed by the modeling agency IMG. [Fashionista]
• Christian Siriano is looking forward to the advent of marriage equality so that he can marry his long-time partner, photographer Brad Walsh. "Maybe we'll buy a farm or something," explains the Project Runway designer. "I want to raise alpaca or something. You know, make my own alpaca coating." [E!]
• Sarah Jessica Parker is suing a Long Island perfume distributor for allegedly selling bottles of her "Lovely" fragrance without the quality-assurance marks. Her company is accusing the distributor of selling counterfeit or stolen product. [P6]
• Padma Lakshmi had Steven Meisel shoot the fall ads for her jewelry line, and the results are lovely, if a little overly Photoshopped. [WWD]
• Banana Republic's fall campaign is modeled by — wait for it! — actors and actresses. Krysten Ritter, who used to be a working model but would almost certainly never have booked such a gig before becoming an actress, must have had a tremendous case of déjà vu. Joining her in the shots are Lauren Ambrose, Chris Messina, Scott Speedman, Florence Faivre, Nicole Fiscella and Juan Diego Botto. [WWD]
• Residents of SoHo are reportedly unhappy with the new Hollister store downtown. One building is even flying a "Go Home Hollister" banner off a balcony. [Curbed]
• Retail rents are falling all through Manhattan, but the most drastic drop is along the Manhattan shopping corridor of Madison Avenue. With many prominent brands moving out of their former flagships on the Avenue, rents there have sunk from $1,100/sq. ft. to around $500/sq. ft. [Crain's]
• Company earnings for K Swiss fell 62% in the first six months of this year, off the back of a 29% decline in sales, and the company reported a net loss of $11.5 million. [WWD]

• Jennifer Lopez is getting out of the U.S. clothing business, closing her brand, Sweetface. In 2007, Lopez shuttered JLO, replacing it with Justsweet — which then closed after two seasons. It's tough out there for a wannabe fashion mogul. [WWD]

• However, you'll be happy to know that Lopez's Passionista lingerie range is still faring well enough to hire Ana Beatriz Barros for its campaign. [Sun]
• And yet the fall-back advertising strategy remains: if all else fails, throw celebrities at the problem of generating sales in this economy! OP has Sophia Bush, Brody Jenner, Solange Knowles, and a gaggle of other faces in its summer campaign. [People]
• Angelina Jolie takes it easy when it comes to dressing for the red carpet: "I don't think too much about what to wear on the red carpet. I usually have three basic colors and I get the same shapes in different colors!" [MyFashionLife]
  
• Heidi Klum's Barbie, launching this September, comes clad in a sequined mini-dress — and a gold pair of shoes heavily inspired by those Dior gladiator platforms everyone was wearing last summer. Is it still a knock-off if it's plastic and 1" tall? [PopBytes]
• Michelle Obama favored New York designer Rachel Roy with her sartorial selections in San Francisco. The First Lady wore a dress by the designer to attend a conference on volunteering. [The Cut]
• The first of the Michelle Obama style books are here. There's Michelle Style: Celebrating the First Lady of Fashion by Mandi Norwood, Michelle Obama: First Lady of Fashion and Style by Susan Swimmer, and, amazingly, even a Michelle Obama 2010 wall calendar dedicated to 20 glorious full-color pictures of her style. Shockingly, the "experts" agree: the lady dresses well. [USAToday]
• Alexander McQueen said he wouldn't do a runway show for his Spring 2010 men's wear collection, but would instead present his goods in some very special format that the fashion world has eagerly anticipated, McQueen being known for theatrics. Well! If you want to spend 2:19 minutes of your life watching a heavy-breathing pyromaniac in his underwear crawl around an abandoned mental hospital, draw on his own arm, compulsively build a house out of sticks, and slather himself with a brownish substance he then uses to write "Shit" on the wall, all while creepy music plays, now's your chance! Directed by David Sims. Dazed & Confused called it "a daring expedition into both the mind and the wardrobe of an artist." [AlexanderMcQueen]
• Jonathan Saunders is returning to London Fashion Week for the Spring 2010 collections. He had previously shown in New York. Burberry, Matthew Williamson, and Pringle of Scotland have all similarly announced their intentions to celebrate LFW's 25th anniversary by showing there. [UK Vogue]
• The two brothers accused of committing dozens of robberies, mainly on lone women, around London were convicted in court yesterday. Daniel Mykoo, 28, admitted 19 offenses, including choking fashion designer Nicole Farhi until she became unconscious, and stealing her rings and watch. Matthew Mykoo, 27, was convicted of seven attacks but cleared of another eight, including the one on Farhi. [Guardian]
• Vogue hasn't lost any time in replacing Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the director of special events (a.k.a. the woman in charge of the Oscars of the East, the Met Costume Institute ball), who resigned last Thursday. Sylvana Soto-Ward, an accessories editor who started as Anna Wintour's assistant in 2003, will take the reins. [WWD]
• Yasmin Le Bon is behind a U.K. charity that aims to help children in Romanian orphanages. To support it, you can buy weekly £1 raffle tickets with a chance of winning bounty donated from sponsors. The prize for the first week is a £2,000 voucher from Net-A-Porter. [Times of London]
• 17-year-old fashion blogger Jane Aldridge of Sea of Shoes has a deal to sell her own shoes at Urban Outfitters. Three styles will be in stores next month, and three more will debut in December. Pricing information isn't yet available, but pictures are. (Ironically, to my eye, the heel-lover's flats are the best-looking pair.) [SeaOfShoes]
• And fashion designers think using Twitter will help their business. [WWD]
• Gildo Zegna, the chief executive of Ermenegildo Zegna, the Italian suit maker, says fashion talk of an economic recovery by spring next year is foolish. "I remain positive long term, but we have to be realistic about the crisis," said Zegna. "I think it will be longer than initially anticipated and marginal players are going to go out of business. We have the example of the banking system and the car industry. If it happened to them, it can happen in our business." Zegna just showed the younger, lower-priced line Z Zegna at Milan's men's wear week for the first time, and has aggressively expanded over the past few years in China, to the point where it now has 60 boutiques there and foresees China becoming a bigger market than the U.S. within the next 18 months. Zegna also believes luxury's next great frontier will be Africa. "Look how the Chinese are investing in Africa — they are smart." Did we just hear the future of fashion articulated by one of the industry's oldest names? [NY Times]
• Struggling Abercrombie & Fitch is opening a 40,000 square foot flagship mega store for its Hollister brand in New York. [WWD]
• Chinese counterfeiters are shipping products with fake "Made in India" labels. The ultimate blame-the-other-emerging-economy dodge. [Hindustan Times]

• Rachel Zoe and Nicole Ritchie hugged while cameras for Zoe's reality show rolled. Presumably they made up based on their shared love of airtime and handbags the size and price of compact cars. [WWD]

• Stella McCartney designed some t-shirts for a British charity and got besties Gwyneth Paltrow, Claudia Schiffer, and Keira Knightley to wear them for the ad campaign. [Telegraph]
• Aw, Twiggy goes shopping with her daughter, Carly. "If I come out of a changing room and she says, ‘Muummm!’ to what I’m wearing then I won’t buy it." How cute. [Daily Express]
• When in Rome, you should absolutely go check out an exhibit featuring newly unearthed Richard Avedon fashion photographs. [WSJ]
• Is LVMH going to acquire Coach? Some speculators think so. [WWD]
• So, what is this 'vintage' thing? Is it like shopping at a department store? Anna Sui guides Good Morning America around the Manhattan Vintage Clothing Show. "If you find yourself drawn to Victorian clothes, there may be a touch of the Goth in you," warns the host, helpfully. Then she learns what Bakelite is and tries on a $4,000 sable fur. Sui looks on approvingly. [HuffPo]
• UK megaretailer ASDA is going to offer women's jeans in half sizes. Since most women say they are between sizes. Brilliant! [Telegraph]
• Threeasfour give the dreamiest interview answers. Who are your best friends? Ange: "My humor and melancholia." Adi: "Which one? They are all individual. One-of-a-kind." Gabi: "I can trust she is telling me the truth." Ange also makes seaweed omelets for her pit bull, Luna. [The Fashion Informer]
• Rizzoli's coming out with a Kanye West book. You can see Kanye tour the world, perform, go to fashion parties, and even shop in Asian malls. It will be published in October with a flash drive of unreleased music, and costs $50. [The Cut]
• Models.com has started posting agency show packages for the Fall Winter 09 shows in New York. See if you can spot my game face among the hopefuls and the old hands. (Warning: Needle, meet haystack.) [Models.com]
• Marc Jacobs has slashed the number of invitees to his fashion show at the Armory. In fact, the show is only going forward at their usual venue because they don't want to pay the cancellation fee. And, of course, there will be no after-party, either. Instead of seating 1,100 people and letting another 900 stand, this season only 500-700 people will be seated, and the 200 standing room tickets will go mainly to employees. Hopefully they will also do the simplest guest-list cost-trim of all: not coughing up thousands in appearance fees to the usual round of celebs. [WWD]
• Ugly Betty's production moved to New York for tax breaks, and has regained the styling talent of Patricia Field. At a panel discussion of the show's aesthetic, Field accepted an audience member's donation of a patterned, sparkly top that looked like classic Betty wear, and which she said might well turn up on the show. [NY Times]
• Remember when Chloë Sevigny called the guy she buys socks from "like, the grumpiest man on earth" in the New York Times? He doesn't deny it — which is probably wise, considering he admits stealing his employees' lunches, putting trash in unpleasant customers' bags, and barking at people who take their time browsing — but he does say, "Dealing with retail isn't the easiest thing, and maybe she came in when I was grumpy. Maybe she was upset that I didn't know who she was." Burn. [NYDN]
• Oh no. Toby Keith is launching a fashion line. It's called "TK Steelman" and will feature sleeveless shirts and oil-field insignias. Because it is for "average dudes." [People]
• It's kind of strange to read this review of the store Hollister as though it were a foreign object that fell to earth. "The shop entrance felt somewhat like a fairground ghost train..." [Telegraph]
• Whether or not consumers will go back to paying full prices for apparel after seeing deep discounts over the winter period remains an open question. (All I want to know is how long it will take for brands to realize that rather than permanently lowering the prices of their wares, the smarter move is to permanently raise them and then, hey presto, offer a "discount.") For now, Banana Republic is giving its credit card holders an extra 10% off sale and full-priced items through May 1 — meaning none of their stock is necessarily full price. [Shop Talk]
• Sometimes it's depressing just how derivative commercial photography can be. [A Photo Editor]

• Kirsten Dunst looks almost as evil in these Miu Miu ads as we somehow believe she actually is. [Sassybella]
  
• The latest ads for British lingerie label Agent Provocateur features model Vahina Giocante playing "a bored housewife drawn into a love affair with a reform school tomboy." Um, based on this image, she doesn't look so tomboyish to us! [Vogue UK]
  
• First no black models, now no black customers: ck Calvin Klein Beauty Collection cosmetics for Caucasians only. [BellaSugar]
  
• This is what diplomatic disputes look like in Western Europe: The mayor of Paris v. H&M [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Donna Karan: Still trying to cure cancer through yoga with her Urban Zen initiative. [NYMag]

• Ooh, images from the Jovovich-Hawk for Target line. Yeaaaah, jury's still out. [Sassybella]
• Elle fashion director/ em>Project Runway judge Nina Garcia is no stranger to shilling for Blackberry, but now she's shilling a pink Blackberry. [Fashion Week Daily]
• This year, the Make-A-Wish Foundation fulfilled the dreams of a teenage girl named Yali, who had always longed to collaborate with Kate Spade in designing a handbag. "This was the most inspirational and gratifying experience of my life," says Yali. Um, so how's Yali holding up? What's her affliction? What's the prognosis? Yeah, they don't say. But Kate Spade ooh! [Fashion Week Daily]
• Diane von Furstenberg is now designing shoes. "My shoes are not just pretty accessories; they are functional and serve a purpose." Shoes? A purpose other than retail therapy? Shock. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Here's a handy place to hide your ill-gotten subprime mortgage hedge fund gains: a $18,000 belt. [UPI]
• Alexandre de Paris, Elizabeth Taylor's favorite hairstylist, passed away over the weekend at the age of 85. [Independent]

• Holy Aryan Smut Closet Case Pride, the A&F Quarterly is back and under the same old management? Have you ever looked at this catalog? Click to see enlarged Heidi Klum!
  
• ...anyway, I'm not sure it was possible to actually purchase clothes with it, because there didn't even seem to be any clothes displayed in it. (Also missing: Black people.) But there were a lot of naked tits and weird date-rapey advice columns and stuff until CEO Mike Jeffries decided he was "bored" with the stale pornyness of it all. Big mistake! Look at American Apparel! [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• Hannah Montana is an icon of neo biker chic style. [NY Times]
  
• To attract men — and one assumes, Jezebel editors! — beauty salons are offering free Sam Adams, gin and scotch and pool tables. [WSJ]
  
• Blind item guessing game, Arden WOHLcat edition. "Which socialite and vague designer was so high on ecstasy on New Year's Eve that she fell out of her cab on her way to a tiny, exclusive, and smoke filled tavern in the West Village? She might not have even remembered the next day, if it weren't for the massive bruise on her..." [Fashionista]

• Plastic surgery tourism: could it save the African economy? [CNN]
• Citizens of Humanity, Seven For All Mankind, True Religion, Denim For Immortality — it was a great Christmas for all the companies that want to save the world and restore peace to society institute utopia, etc. etc. [WWD]
• Lacoste is suing a dentist it claims is using its logo to advertise dental surgery. [Guardian]
• "A $1,500 bag festooned with logos and showy geegaws — especially if it gets knocked off to the point of ubiquity — will look dated soon." That's Teri Agins, veteran Wall Street Journal fashion reporter, in her latest "Ask Teri" column. Will someone "ask Teri" what's a "geegaw"? [WSJ]

It's Fashion Week, and we know how much that means to you all, but we thought we'd throw a bone to Jezebel readers who'd trade their newfound understanding of Vena Cava for a decent glass of vino. This is the story of Hollister, a powerful branch of the Abercrombie & Fitch youth retail empire and the sort of work environment and probably middle America's closest approximation to working in fashion. All through the country, thanks to retailers like Hollister, average heartland American teenagers are trading wages for status, obsessively attuning themselves to tiny aesthetic tics, throwing themselves into the insecurity-superiority spirals and learning to hate bread. And the tiny crop of straight dudes smart enough to plant themselves in the middle of it is getting unjustly and prodigiously laid. Meet The Douche. His name might have been Scott. Reader Christine has blocked it out. He was her first retail boss, and he was verrrry good at preparing his charges to meet Joe Francis. Welcome back to "I Work Retail," the Jezebel column about the only industry more depressing than women's magazines.

Photo via Slagheap [Flickr]

My memory seems to have permanently replaced the name of my first retail boss with the title "King Of All Douches," but it will never forget his hair. Long and straight with professional golden highlights and a distinct flip at the end, it was an endless source of fascination to me: did he achieve the look with a hairdryer alone? Or did he use an actual straightening iron? Douche King had been dispatched by a retail empire to open one of the first in a new chain of stores that desired to impart a "cool, young, beachy surfer vibe through clothing." Apparently, the Douche had once been a surfer. Now in his mid-thirties, his pastimes seemed to be limited to patronizing tanning beds and teenage girls' beds. He was a longtime employee of Abercrombie & Fitch, and he had come to our local mall in Southern Indiana to open one of the nation's first Hollister stores, a mammoth effort on the part of an Ohio corporation to spread California style to heartland mallgoers. Probably because we were highly susceptible to pretty much anything in Southern Indiana, we had been deemed an ideal "test market" for the Hollister .

I had never, obviously, seen a Hollister before. Perhaps I might have been bothered by the communal dressing rooms, the deafening meathead-rock, the fact that it was darker than most nightclubs. But it was 2001, before Orange County mania swept the nation and Hollister grew to be a mall powerhouse on the backs of skintight sheer "Team LC" and "Team Kristin" T-shirts. I just thought it might be fun to earn a discount at a national mall retailers that wasn't one of the five I had been browsing for my entire consumptive career. It was the summer before my senior year of high school, and I wanted new clothes to accompany my epic senior year.

The interview process was extremely brief. An Abercrombie representative asked about my extra-curricular activities (sports, luckily) and whether I liked the Abercrombie brand ("uh, sure?"). The Douche did not appear until our orientation: "Look around you," he said from behind his long mane and strategic stubble. "These are the coolest people in the area. Your lifestyles and looks set you apart from your peers. You won't find any band geeks here!" Um, were you really allowed to say that? He went on to explain that we were "fresher, better, and better-looking than our counterparts over at the mall's Abercrombie. (The Abercrombie representatives would seem to agree; wandering over to our store during breaks and lobbying for $5.50 positions.)

I stuck around, because at the very beginning, the store actually did seem cool. It was laid-back and we had fun receiving boxes of never-before-seen clothes. I bonded with classmates who had never acknowledged my existence. It wasn't until the days before we opened to the public that everything changed: The Douche informed us he would have to approve the outfits we wore on the job. We had to pay for all our clothes, but in order to qualify for the discount, he had to approve our purchases first. The approval process consisted of parading in front of him and subjecting ourselves to his critiques and suggestions as to how to make our clothes 'hotter" — like cutting the necklines to make our V-necks lower, or buying jeans in a size or two smaller.

Somehow, this process only served to ingratiate the Douche to my sixteen year old colleagues. Unsurprisingly, he was not offended. I began to wonder if he invented the "outfit approval" process just so he could ogle all of us, but I was wrong; Douches played out the same process at Abercrombie outposts in malls across America, something that would eventually become one of the numerous things they'd settle major lawsuits over. Personally, I hated him. I shot him evil glares during the fashion shows and he left me alone, probably because I was, at a Hollister size 5, one of the biggest girls at the store.

I stayed, of course, because it was sort of an honor not to be fired. That I somehow passed the Douche's militaristic standards was a sick form of affirmation, as was the fact I was getting waved at in the hallways and invited to more exclusive keggers. Working at Hollister, in southern Indiana, was a huge deal.

But if I was attractive enough for King Douche, he quickly began to suspect I was not "cool" enough to uphold the "cool" standards of Hollister. One memorable time, I was at the cash register when a normal, unassuming girl asked to fill out an application, and I let him know she was there and wanted to talk to him. "Is she hot?" he asked. "She's normal, not ugly or anything," I said. He rolled his eyes, and lifted himself out of his seat to go take a look. For approximately 5 seconds, they chatted. No sooner had she turned away, the Douche made a dramatic gesture of crumpling up her application and throwing it in the garbage. (This is, not that it mattered, against the law.) "SHE is good looking? Wow. You have awful taste in women. Good thing you aren't a boy." He then laid out the type of person we did not hire at Hollister: "weird" (not white), "ugly" (not skinny), "losers." (It was always hard to say.)

At first I felt sorry for the merely average-looking high schoolers who flocked to our store to ask for jobs; over time it became a kind of pity for their cluelessness in thinking they could work here in the first place, and my real empathy went out to the shift managers; college graduates who coped with Hollister's preteen sizing standards and meager wages by not eating food. One in particular seemed barely able to function. She was always shivering cold, wrapped in a huge sweater, and was permanently attached to a huge cup of diet soda. Of course, the Douche would only tell her how good she was looking and that she would be up for a promotion soon.

Rumors began to fly that the Douche had taken some "chosen" girls, two high school juniors from another school, into his office, where they had stripped for him and made out with one another. None of these girls ever denied the rumors, but I was truly horrifided during the shift during which a friend of mine confirmed them for me. (It helps to remember, Britney and Justin were still together at the time.)

Not long afterward, the Douche informed me that for the Spring/Summer season, we would be required to buy at least 1 bikini and wear the top with a hoodie — unzipped — on top for all our shifts. All the girls with navel piercings were instructed to show them by tying up their shirts (these points were discussed in detail during a special meeting about employee hotness, and anyone who would go against these suggestions would not see their names on the schedule). I quit. Six years later, I am still working retail, and that is still a happy ending.