• Fran Drescher is launching a skincare line — called FranBrand — this fall on HSN. The products are organic and paraben-free, because, as Drescher puts it, "Women are schmearing stuff on their décolleté, wondering why we're all getting breast cancer..."

• "...Once you wake up and smell the coffee, it's hard to go back to sleep. So I'm sounding the alarm." Drescher, a survivor of uterine cancer, founded the organization Cancer Schmancer. (And she also taught us to love Loehmann's.) [The Cut]
• As we learned yesterday, London Fog confirmed Gisele Bundchen's pregnancy by the roundabout way of announcing it had airbrushed her 5-6 month belly out of its latest campaign "to protect her privacy." But the outerwear brand also released a behind-the-scenes video of the shoot, which includes footage of the raw, unretouched shots as they appear on the computer monitor. A side-by-side comparison reveals exactly what London Fog thought wouldn't move units this fall. [SassyBella]
• Bar Refaeli is allegedly seeing Israeli multi-millionaire Teddy Sagi. Sagi owns a company that makes software for Internet gambling sites, and the nicest thing the Daily Mail can say about him is that he "has a lovely smile." The supermodel's relationship with Leonardo Di Caprio ended earlier this year. [Daily Mail]
• Liya Kebede addressed the UN Secretary-General's Forum on the topic of maternal health. Writes the supermodel, "In times of economic crisis, it is tempting to turn inward, to ignore or postpone the problems of the outside world and focus on ourselves. But, if we hope to thrive once again, we must realize that there are no outside problems in today's interwoven, globalized world. Each mother who dies leaves behind a devastated family and weakened community that will eventually, somehow, affect each of us. Each mother who dies deepens the financial and social strain on our world and puts economic recovery further away. Mothers are our best stimulus package because they invest in their families and in our collective future." [HuffPo]
• SassyBella unearthed footage of Karen Mulder hosting an E! special in 1999. The Dutch model encounters a new girl, who, when she introduces herself, turns out to be an 18-year-old Adriana Lima. [SassyBella]
• The first pictures of Rad by Rad Hourani, the Canadian designer's diffusion line, are looking pretty good, at least for those who were already fans of Hourani's unisex, pared-down rocker aesthetic. "This is exactly the same thing," as his main line, Hourani confirmed. Only instead of costing thousands of dollars it costs hundreds. We need more of this. [WWD]
• The writer of the sometimes entertaining, sometimes savage, always fascinating fashion blog The Emperor's Old Clothes has revealed himself — as New York designer Eric Gaskins. Gaskins, after 22 years in business, was this week forced to close his doors because of the economy. [NYTimes]
• And in September, Daphne Guinness is releasing a signature scent with Comme des Garçons. Only unlike most celebrity perfumes lines, this is actually the distinctive fragrance Guinness has, herself, been mixing for years. "I'll be in airports or in a taxi and the driver will say, ‘What are you wearing?'" reports the heiress. [WWD]
• Designer Hussein Chalayan is "weirded out" by models with clothing lines, like Kate Moss, Amber Valetta, Erin Wasson, and Elle MacPherson: "If you have a really strong sense of style and people want to aspire to being like you, I can understand that. But if you really are doing it just because you think of yourself as a brand and you haven't had the training and you know nothing about clothes, it kind of demeans all the training that designers have had." Chalayan thought Kate Moss's line for Topshop was a poor effort. "I don't think it represented her, and I didn't think she worked hard enough. I even told her to her face." How did la Moss respond? "She said, ‘Oh, I'm just trying to do a light thing; I'm not trying to do anything serious.' But I said, ‘That's not the point.'" [WWD]
• In which case, add Jessica Stam to the list of models who've raised Chalayan's ire. The Canadian just announced a collaboration with Rag & Bone. [Style.com]
• Vogue's Lauren Santo Domingo, on being told her boss Anna Wintour had worn flats to a party in the Hamptons: "I wonder if that means we can wear flats to the office now?" [The Cut]
• Fashion blind item: "Which fantastical designer has a new man? She's ditched her long term fiance for an artist with prime real estate." We're with the commenters on this: signs point to Erin Fetherston, who hasn't been photographed in public with her longtime fiancé, Hedi Ferjani, since late April. [Fashionista]
• Ali Wise, the Dolce & Gabbana publicist who was arrested for hacking into the voicemail of a woman who was dating Wise's ex boyfriend, is no longer a Dolce & Gabbana employee. Which must seem like the least of her problems: Wise is facing felony charges of computer trespass and eavesdropping. [WWD]
• A well-written parsing of W magazine's cover story on model Lara Stone: "The fashion industry — and, in turn, the fashion media — have such a warped concept of slimness that a model like Lara Stone is so much larger than her contemporaries that they feel the need to explain her presence. If Stone's body is such an outlier, what does that say about the rest of us? Worse, the magazine saw fit to issue the disclaimer that Stone 'is, it should be noted, a very lithe five foot ten.' Why, yes, do note that! As if there's the slightest chance someone is going to look at these photos and think Stone needs to, like, slow down on the Cheetos." [GlossedOver]
• Lagardère, the French publishing company that owns Hachette Filipacchi Media, which owns the U.S. edition of Elle magazine, has denied that it is in talks to sell the title to rival Hearst, as had been reported in yesterday's New York Post. [WWD]
• Scott Nylund, Beyoncé's design director, comes from Owatonna, Minnesota. Which is where you can see an exhibit that spans his earliest childhood sketches of women in dresses, to his college fashion collection, to his creations for Beyoncé. [StarTrib]
• Freja Beha Erichsen says Karl Lagerfeld's house in Vermont — which recently served as the setting for the fall Chanel campaign she starred in with Heidi Mount — is a serious farm. With horses and chickens and — spitting llamas. Erichsen also praised Chanel for providing food backstage at its runway shows, which a lot of brands don't manage to do. [W]
• Fashion Meets Finance, the terrible event for douchebags and gold-diggers, is back. It's happening August 6th in — where else? — Murray Hill. [FMF]
• Will Ferrell has a Nike sneaker coming out in Japan. It's inspired by Anchorman's Ron Burgundy, that lovable asshole we met, uh, five years ago. [HighSnobiety]
• Timberland lost $19.2 million in the last quarter, a worse-than-expected result that came off the back of a 14% drop in sales, to $179.7 million. [WWD]
• Shiseido was even worse off — its profits declined 57.8%. [WWD]
• Likewise Hugo Boss, which lost $21.17 million in the last quarter. [WWD]
• Bare Escentuals profits also slid 20% in the same period. [WWD]
• Competitor Avon's profits fell 64.3% on revenues that shrank by 9.7%. Revlon's sales fell 12.2%, and its total profits declined to just $200,000, from $19.9 million one year earlier. [WWD]
• Bucking this downward trend is Tod's — the Italian leather brand reported a 3.4% increase in sales for this first six months of this year. [WWD]
• Ann Taylor wants to cut $30 to $40 million in costs by "right-sizing" its organization. No word yet on the number of people who will be laid off. [WWD]
• Three members of a multi-million-dollar New York counterfeiting ring received prison sentences, and a fourth was sentenced to probation by a federal judge. Michael Chu, the group's leader, was in 2005 ordered to pay $7 million in damages stemming from an unrelated counterfeiting case involving North Face jackets. This time, Chu, who imported fake Nike, Chanel and Burberry products, was sentenced to prison for just over 8 years. [WWD]

• Confirmed: Madonna will do the Louis Vuitton fall campaign. With Jesus Luz? I imagine LVMH execs did a pro/con weighing the headline value against the risk that Madge would dump her boytoy ere September. [Grazia]

• No pesky swine flu pandemic threat level five business will put the fear into superstylist/downtown savant/Socrates afficionado Pat Field. When asked if she was afraid of the illness, she replied, "No. We're in America and we don't give a shit about anything." [The Cut]
• Frenchie actress and hobbyist 9/11 conspiracy theorist Marion Cotillard, new face of Lady Dior, will, unsurprisingly, wear Dior to the Met ball on Monday. [WWD]
• Fashionologie has an excellent roundup of the Met ball news, from which designers are sitting this year out due to the cost, to who's taking whom as a date. [Fashionologie]
• Michelle Obama's March Vogue cover was a top-selling issue, moving 560,000 copies on the newsstand, which is 1,000 more than 2008's best-seller, the September issue. [WWD]
• Elle MacPherson designed a cashmere sweater for her sister-in-law's line, Banjo & Matilda. It costs $499 Australian. [British Vogue]
• Behnaz Sarafpour went to Saudi Arabia to show her line in a trunk show (organized by a princess and attended by women only, naturally) and the designer reports that it is totally an underrated holiday destination. "I even got to ride a camel for the first time!!! Very Lawrence of Arabia!!!" [WWD]
• The launch party for Matthew Williamson's H&M line doubled as a booze cruise. Only unlike your pre-recession enforced-jollity work do, his had Grace Jones performing. [Style.com]
• And a pants-less Chanel Iman. [The Cut]
• Sophie Dahl: "When you've got big bosoms and a really big bottom it's difficult to get dressed. You end up looking slightly pornographic in everything. But it's nice to be able to get into jeans and a T-shirt and not have your breasts do the talking." [Daily Express]
• V's take on a swimsuit issue looks like a winner. Six different models on the cover, including a sizzling Naomi Campbell, shot against a yellow background. Campbell marks her 25th year in the industry this year, so naturally, she's hinting about a retirement. That'll never stick. [Daily Mail]
• Francisco Costa is going to be on Martha Stewart's show tomorrow. [WWD]
• Kenneth Cole is going to be a commencement speaker at Northeastern University. Wanna take odds on 30 continuous minutes of puns? [FWD]
• A collection of Christian Lacroix's couture theater and opera costumes is being shown in Singapore — the first exhibition of the French designer's work outside France. Patsy would just die to be there. [Dazed Digital]
• Under Armour is recalling 211,000 athletic cups. Because they come from a batch that "can break if hit, posing a serious injury hazard to athletes." [BlackBook]
• An awful lot of Isaac Mizrahi's recently-released first collection for mass-market retailer Liz Claiborne has already been discounted, notes Racked. [Racked ]
• Hugo Boss's net profits shrank by 2% in the first quarter of 2009. [WWD]
• Men's Wearhouse just discovered its own long-existing Prom Rep program — a kind of Tupperware Party of tux rental, with "referrals" and "rewards" for customers willing to transform themselves into vectors of corporate marketing with a target lock on their friends — is perfect for the Twittered, Facebooked, atomized high school world of now. Isn't that nice. [BrandWeek]

• Geithner's proposed new regulatory framework buoyed retail stocks by 4.4% yesterday. Saks' shares rose 15%, Ann Taylor was up 18%, Macy's climbed 10.2%, and Liz Claiborne rose 16.2%. Finally, some good fashion economic news! [WWD]

• But it isn't all rosy on the business side. H&M's profits have fallen for the first time in five years. Their first-quarter net profit was down by 12%, which was worse than analysts had expected. [WSJ]
• Marc Ecko Enterprises owes business partners $170 million. $100 million of that is due to Li & Fung, the global sourcing giants, who announced just yesterday that their net was down 21%. [NY Post]
• Hugo Boss lost $20.6 million in the fourth quarter of 08. That's a decline in net of 27%. for the year. [WWD]
• Thom Browne, whom the New York Post reported was close to bankruptcy yesterday, denies the charge in WWD. The men's wear designer says he is looking for a financial backer to grow his company — but has been slow in his search because the relationship is a crucial one and he doesn't want to sell a majority stake in his business. [WWD]
• The Telegraph takes a tour of the Chanel handbag factory outside Paris, and finds 340 people working very slowly and carefully to complete the 180 steps in the making of a 2.55 purse. [Telegraph]
• Simply Vera by Vera Wang's spring line is out at Kohl's. I agree with this reviewer that it looks basically cute — but one word of advice? Do not ever imitate a runway or lookbook outfit head-to-toe. It's snoozeville. [Fabsugar]
• Last winter, Peacock Holdings LLC — a men's shirt concern, apparently — bought the Bill Blass brand from NexCen, the company which fired Peter Som and 60 Bill Blass employees without severance. At the time, Peacock said it planned to revive the ready-to-wear division within the year; they are just now looking for a creative director. [WWD]
• Kérastase is discontinuing ten products, including their Bain Après-Soleil shampoo. You can mourn them by buying the last little pottles of goodness at 30% off online with the code VIP30. [Kérastase Paris]
• Jane Whitfield, a designer at Louis Vuitton who shares the distinction, with fellow Briton Peter Copping, of being commonly described as "Marc Jacobs Right-Hand [Pronoun]" (or who perhaps doesn't have to share it anymore, following Copping's departure to Nina Ricci), lives in a charming centuries-old cottage near Versailles with her husband and kids. This story is entirely about her apparent knack for interiors and contains no other insight into her design work or experience. [Telegraph]
• In China, Clinique and Sony banded together to create a 40-episode web series that just happens to feature an awful lot of Clinique and Sony products. [WSJ]
• If you want to buy a punk outfit from Bergdorf, it will cost you $3000. [Blogue]

Okay. The ad in and of itself is not so bad. The product is ridiculous. Why not just put vodka in your root beer, if that's what you want? And who drinks root beer except for kids, anyway? Are you marketing booze to kids? Also, seeing the words "root beer" and "vodka" and "olives" so close to each other makes me want to hurl.

What a vivid nightmare. The gum is so fruity, if you are a Carmen Miranda-ish Carmen Electra-ish woman who puts fruit on her head, you can put the gum there, too! But a bird may land on your face to try and get some gum, so if you don't keep completely still, your face may get ripped off. Enjoy!

What if you don't want to dress like an androgynous robot whose hair defies gravity? Don't buy Calvin Klein!

What if you don't want to feel sad as the time your dog had to be put to sleep because she was getting old and couldn't really walk and you found out it was cancer in her bones? Don't buy Jil Sander!

Maybe I don't "get" Marc Jacobs. But a tattooed dude lying in the dirt doesn't make me want to buy this dress. Or that admittedly cute purse.

I mean, if the dress fits him like that, how the hell would my boobs get in it? To me, this is not "cool." This is "trying too hard to be different."

People are so sweet. They clearly donated new boots and a new bag to this cold, homeless street urchin.

Earlier: Big Hair Is Sexy, Cigarettes Whiten Teeth, Not Having Cellulite Is Awesome

• Oh sweet Jesus: Is Amy Winehouse going to be the new face of Roberto Cavalli? And if so, who would be sullying whose image? Though the rumors are still unconfirmed, Cavalli has said in the past, "She is a fashion icon because she is unique." [Vogue UK]
  
• This weekend, American starlets flew to Shanghai to celebrate Ferragamo's 80th anniversary and the launch of its new fragrance, Tuscan Sun. [Vogue UK]
  
• You see, Ferragamo hopes to exploit the people of China because they have so much money to spend on luxury goods. [Guardian]
  
• Adidas, however, is paying its Chinese workers about $5 a week. Good times. [Times of London]
  
• Miuccia Prada will fire you if you eat lunch at your desk. [Page Six]

• Oh the heartbreak that comes with working as a fashion designer! Before Anna Wintour made Laura and Kate Mulleavy of Rodarte go on a diet, the designing duo could hardly afford to eat. Says Laura, "I became a waitress. We sold everything that we owned. We also sold Kate's record collection, which was immense and very in-depth." [Fashion Week Daily]
• Your jeans do not need microdermabrasion. [Chic Report]
• Us: Skeptical of "HD" make-up. [LATimes]
• Lucky Brand: Now doing watches. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Coach: Still selling lots of expensive shit. [Business Week]
• And Hugo Boss is like, totally okay, even though it's in debt. [Reuters]
• Gucci: Wants to be big in India. [Times of India]
• Moscow Fashion Week is big in...Russia. [NYT]
• If I had clothes with sensors in them that could detect my mood, they would tell you that I'm a little sleepy, a little hungry, and wishing it were fucking spring already. [Science Daily]

• What the world needs today: a celebrity fashion "collaboration"! The latest is Rachel Bilson, with Brian Reyes, and the apparel in question is bridesmaids dresses, for her BFF's wedding to The O.C. and Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz. We hope she choses a style that is flattering on people who are not anti-food. [Fashionista]
  
• In a sad day in the history of the legendary House of Givenchy, Justin Timberlake has been tapped to front a yet-to-launch new fragrance of theirs. And in heaven, Hubert de Givenchy cries into the bosom of Audrey Hepburn. [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier, possibly off the deep end: "Love is everywhere. I look at you and I see love. Hearts are everywhere and love is everywhere. This is very good." Um, OK. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn: Banned again! This time from D&G. The As I Lay Dying of the garmentverse, that one. [Fashion Week Daily]

• On the whole, the buyers in attendance at the Milan shows thought they, how to put this, sucked. [WWD, sub req'd]
• A dress worn by Kate Moss! Now on eBay! [Sassybella]
• Do you like McDreamy as the face of Versace Men? [Uh, is that a rhetorical question? -Moe] [Sassybella]
• French label Paul & Joe: Now designing Perrier cans. We last heard of them when they did a Target collection. [Sassybella]
• Karl Lagerfeld, never one to miss out on a moment of potential glory, is staging a shhhhhsecret Fendi fashion show during Paris fashion week. Even though, like, Fendi's an Italian label and just showed. [Vogue UK]
• English designer/Agyness Deyn BFF Henry Holland: Collaborating with Levi's on an eight-piece capsule collection. For those of you who care enough to know who Agyness Deyn's BFF is, we can only assume. [Catwalk Queen]
• Hugo Boss is launching a new fragrance, Boss Pure. Because nothing's really quite as pure as a whiff of oversold department store cologne. [WWD, sub req'd]

• Designer John Varvatos has bought the space formerly occupied by rock club CBGB's to open a new store. He's the one who designs clothes for Converse, which is that super-hip iconoclastic footwear brand owned by Nike, and... Move to North Korea if you hate capitalism so much! [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• Project Runway Season Four designers' designs here. Only a week to go! [FabSugar]
  
• Stella McCartney is doing a denim line with Notify jeans. Will she design a pair with one leg, too? Because that would be sick and distasteful and awesome. [Vogue UK]
  
• Designer Zac Posen's mom Susan on her recent trip to Tokyo: "My guide was like, 'Shall we eat Italian tonight?' And I said, 'Please! You can get Italian anywhere.' Japanese food three times a day? Heaven!" [Fashion Week Daily]

• Marc Jacobs to a passerby who stopped him while smoking outside of the New York Accessories Council ACE Awards on Monday night, when asked "What in the world is going on inside?": "It's a ceremony. I think it has something to do with fashion." [Fashion Week Daily]
• "Dr. 90210" is releasing his own line of "shapewear." Not okay. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Hugo Boss: Profits are up about 13%! Does anyone care? [WWD, sub req'd]
• Maidenform: Profits are down about 13%! Does anyone care? And does this mean that people enjoy a little early 90s style for their outerwear than they do their underwear? [WWD, sub req'd]
• The Agent Provocateur saga continues: The next face of the lingerie label (starting in three months time) is to be French actress Vahina Giocante. We have no idea who she is but we love the name. [Vogue UK]
• Someone needs to tell model Natalia Vodianova that being all smug about how easy it is to be the mother to three children under the age of 5 is fucking annoying. [Vogue UK]
• OMG! Mariah Carey sang "Hero" at the Glamour Woman of the Year awards?! We would rather hear Mariah sing "Hero" (our favorite song in, what, 1993?) than win an award any day. [Fashion Week Daily]